up all views of taxing America" (Nov. 4th). Several of the letters relate to Francis's purchase of land in America; but

quite the most important letter in the whole batch is one dated June 12, 1770, in which the following passage occurs :—

Junius is not known, and that circumstance is perhaps as curious as any of his writings. I have always suspected Burke; but whoever he is, it is impossible he can discover himself. The offence he has given (to his Majesty and the Duke of Grafton) is more than any private man could support; he would soon be crushed. Almon has been found guilty of publishing his letter to the King, and Woodfall, who was the original publisher, is to be tried to-morrow. If he be found guilty, I fancy he will have reason to remember it.

The fourteen letters from Sir Philip Francis to his cousin, Major Philip Baggs, follow on those to Macrabie in chronological order; but, while they deal mainly with political matters, their primary interest to posterity centres in the references to Junius. The Duke of Grafton, since his appointment to the Privy Seal, has had a peppering letter from Junius, who promises a continuance of his correspondence as long as he is in office " (June 25, 1771). A month later he writes:

Junius has given Horne [Horne Tooke] a most severe correction. The best on't is that Junius, under pretence of writing Horne a private letter, makes him the editor of the grossest and most, infamous libel that ever was printed. This I take to be a coup d'Etat. Wouldn't you laugh if you saw the parson in the pillory for publishing a letter in which he himself is virulently abused.

Again :-"Junius and Wilkes seem to make common cause. Poor Horne is drubbed till he screeches for mercy. Never was there such a letter as Junius has flattered him with. All mankind agree that it is his masterpiece; and now I hope we shall never hear any more of them " (August 20, 1771). Francis and Junius are at one on most points, but neither this fact nor the additional one that they were writing, the one private and the other public, letters on similar subjects at the same time would be sufficient proof that they are one and the same person. It is believed that these are the only letters of Sir Philip Francis referring to Junius and actually mentioning his name which have ever come into the open market.

But the collection includes also a very remarkable series of letters from no fewer than eight other supposed authors of Junius --Lord Barrington, Edmund Burke, William Burke, Christopher D'Oyly, Richard Tilghman, William Pitt (Lord Chatham), John Horne, and Alexander Wedderburn (Lord Loughborough). These letters are 123 in number, and were all addressed to Sir Philip Francis. They vary, of course, in importance. Eleven are from Lord Barrington, whom Junius describes as having, next to the Duke of Grafton, "the blackest heart in the kingdom. Two of these letters are couched in very mysterious terms. In one he asks Francis to call, when " we may, without interruption, converse on a subject very material to me ;" and, in another, "the matter will soon be known to so many persons that it cannot remain a secret" (Feb. 19 and 26, 1772). The letters from Edmund Burke and his brother William relate to various public affairs. One of the two letters from his brother-in-law, Macrabie, is dated from Philadelphia, March 10, 1770, and in the course of it he exclaims :

But Junius is the Mars of malcontents. His letter to the King is past all endurance as well as all compare. The Americans are under small obligations to him for his representations of them. I will do them more justice than he does by declaring that his production is not very favourably received among them. Who the Devil can he be?

The several letters from Richard Tilghman, from Philadelphia in 1773, are printed at length in the "Memoirs " by Parkes and Merivale, and need not be quoted here, with the exception of a passage of the highest importance from one dated Sept. 29, and referring to Francis's extraordinary appointment from the position of an obscure clerk in the War Office ("the most adverse political antecedents ") to that of a member of the new Council of India, with a salary of £10,000 a year. Tilghman was only expressing a very general astonishment when he asked :

But how did you get this appointment? It is miraculous to me that a man should resign office in 1772, and in '73, without any change of the Ministry, be advanced in so very extraordinary a manner. Your merit and abilities I was always ready to acknowledge, Sir, but I was never taught to think much of Lord North's virtue or discernment. His treatment of you has in some measure redeemed him in my opinion. It is certainly a very remarkable coincidence that the Junius letters ceased in May, 1772 (in which year Woodfall published the "author's edition" of these bitter invectives), just at the turning point in Francis's life. But coincidences equally remarkable and startling are not unknown in the political and literary history of this country. Unfortunately, coincidences are not evidence, and, however strong a theory may be deduced therefrom, it is only a theory just the same. And so it is with this intensely interesting series of Francis correspondence, inasmuch as it neither proves nor disproves that Francis was Junius.

At the Bookstall.

It is to be hoped that the trustees of our national collections will soon make a definite and regular effort to secure more of the manuscripts of the great English writers. Every year increases the difficulty in regard to this. We know where the Dickens and some few other notable manuscripts are, but most of the finest manuscripts of Shelley, Keats, Browning, Tennyson, the Brontes, and George Eliot are in the hands of private owners, and they may at any moment be induced to part with them to American collectors, who, more than any others, are evincing a very keen desire for modern manuscripts.

Doubtless the element of expense has something to do with the question, but, with the exception perhaps of sporting books, no class of literary property has from the beginning of its existence shown such a steady upward tendency as literary manuscripts. The nation has therefore everything to lose and nothing to gain by adopting a waiting policy. What we contend is that the British Museum should be the first in the field when such property is for sale, because manuscripts of books are of far more consequence than the first editions of such books, however rare. For instance, many of the best Morris manuscripts have already passed into the hands of a private collector, without any effort being made by the Museum authorities to secure them. So also with the Bronte manuscripts. Within the last ten years these have gone up in value to a remarkable degree, and now it is only within the power of the very rich to purchase them. Only recently a collector had an offer from America of £400 for the manuscript of "The Professor," which he refused.

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There is also another way of regarding the matter, and that is from the exhibition point of view. Every cultured man and woman finds a pleasure in looking at the manuscripts of famous authors, and if they do so at all it ought necessarily to be as the property of the public. One gentleman, who has probably the best private collection of these manuscripts in the Kingdom, allows any one to see his collection who comes with a proper introduction; but this is not what we want. These treasures ought to belong to the Nation, and the gratification of seeing them should not be dependent upon the generosity of any private individual.

One hobby which American collectors are riding rather hard at present is the acquisition of fine examples of the work of the great English binders, especially Samuel Mearne and Roger Payne. The result of this demand has been, at least in regard to Payne, that a number of books have been sent out of the country which are not his work at all. There is manifestly no difficulty in identifying those books, and they are not many, which contain his bills. In the absence of such labels it is not always easy to decide upon their claims of a pseudoPayne binding, especially when it is remembered how Kalthoeber and his other contemporaries and immediate successors copied his designs. However, there is one test which has been strangely overlooked. It is not a great matter in itself, but like a hall mark it indicates the genuineness of the work. As is well known, Payne cut all his own tools, which accounts for the qualities of crispness and delicacy found in his bindings. But Payne always failed to make a presentable capital R for his letterings; the upper portion is unusually short, and over and above that it is so squeezed in as to give the letter a very ungainly appearance. Payne's other letters are well designed, and his imitators, while copying most accurately his general forms, omitted to reproduce this peculiarity in the R. Collectors would therefore do well to bear this marked feature in mind when purchasing books said to be bound by Roger Payne.

Among other peculiarities Payne had a fondness for working on russia leather, and this doubtless set the fashion for binding books in that material which so largely obtained at the end of the last and the beginning of the present century. Very little of the material is used for book-binding by self-respecting bibliophiles, so little indeed that Charles Lamb might now go through many modern libraries without meeting his pet aversion. Genuine russia leather-that is, calf or horse-skin curried with white birch tar (oleum rusci)-is hard to procure, but the article "made in Germany "-sheep-skin curried with the essential oil distilled from oleum rusci-is plentiful enough. This latter material is practically worthless, for it possesses no lasting qualities, and should therefore never be used for covering books of any value.

It is frequently asserted that not only has the competition of American buyers sent up prices, but the commissions from that country have made dealers so lynx-eyed that it is useless to

hope to come across a real "find." This, however, is only a halftruth. English collectors are just as keen and as competent as their kin beyond the sea, and rare books of extraordinary value need no longer be sought for here at about a shilling apiece; but there is a secondary class of book which is prized as being among the first-born of the great houses that sprang into existence during the first half of the 16th century. The other day one of these, a copy of "Demetrius Phalereus," Moreli, 1555, bound in russia leather by Roger Payne, and looking as brilliant and sound as when it first left his hands, was picked up for less than one-twentieth its value.

In this "Phalereus "we find all the luxuries of the old-time printing-house fine linen paper, ink even in texture and deep in tone-and there is an air of luxurious ease, a charming oldworld quietude, in the cast of the page so mellowed and refined with its more than three centuries of existence. The lustrous quality of the ink used in many of these old books constitutes an important qualification in the eyes of a book lover, for one of the greatest difficulties that a workman had to contend against in printing a fine and elegant book was the effects of the temperature upon his inks. It is this which gave such an easy pre-eminence to books printed in Italy over most of those printed in more northerly latitudes. Some of Caxton's print cannot be compared for evenness and richness with that of Aldus, but modern workmen, by the adoption of simple scientific remedies, are easily able to counteract the injurious effects of cold upon printing ink. The fly-leaf of this ancient classic indicates that it formerly belonged to Michael Wodhull, who bought it in 1783, and it bears his well-known inscription" coll and compl." Wodhull was a solid scholar as well as a collector. In his collection of the classics he had none but the finest copies procurable, and even then he demanded that they should be quite perfect. A glance through this book shows that Wodhull found no errors of any sort in it, although in the margins he has made frequent suggestions of different readings. It speaks well for the French printer that a really competent scholar, taking his book in hand some 250 years after it was issued, could have detected no mistakes in the work. How different from that first reprint of the first folio Shakespeare, published at the beginning of the present century, which in 56 pages contained no fewer than 368 typographical errors.

Correspondence.

RUDYARD KIPLING. TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, Mr. Kipling has written of the private soldier, his life, and character with so much force, skill, and truth that it may perhaps be not presumptuous nor unacceptable to the literary student for a private soldier to attempt to give his view of the creator of "Soldiers Three." That the keynote of this-dare I term it criticism ?-is admiration will surprise no one. The soldier of to-day owes much to Kipling; his country owes still more. Many writers, from the day of Chaucer onward, have dealt with the fighting man, but none has ever aroused the interest, the enthusiasm, of the soldier's countrymen for the soldier that the author of "Barrack-room Ballads" has succeeded in lighting. Since the publication of those ballads and the soldier stories there has been quite a renaissance of military interest and admiration. Even those good people who do not read must be aware of this, for, if they go to the theatres, military plays were never more frequent and flourishing, and on the concert stage what greater successes of recent times have we heard than Tommy Atkins, or "The Soldiers of the Queen"? Mr. Kipling has succeeded in a task that Acts of Parliament have failed in-namely, in making the Queen's uniform respected. This alone entitles him to the soldier's gratitude. Mr. Christie Murray, in his recently-published work of contemporary criticism, will have it that Mr. Kipling struck new ground in dealing with the soldier's "home life, but this is not quite correct. Many, many writers had worked the soil before, but Mr. Kipling's style, originality, was not there. Mr. Kipling was the Pygmalion who put life into the marble. His marvellous correctness of technique is the feature that strikes the soldier most forcibly; for the everyday life of soldiers is largely composed of details, which, dry and uninteresting as they may be to the civilian, are very real and convincing to the military mind. And if a writer dealing with a soldier story goes wrong even in the matter of a button or a belt he loses his soldier-reader's good opinion for ever. Most people remember

the old story of the ancient mariner, who was shown a marvellous seascape, and at once expressed his disgust thereat. A great critic took the salt to task for daring to unfavourably comment on the masterpiece. "I know nothing about pictures, replied the seafarer, but I do know that a ship won't come ashore when it's blowing a gale off land." Every one is a critic in his own walk of life, and it might be as well if a good many writers remembered this fact. Mr. Clark Russell has pointed out the folly of respectable old ladies or country clergymen being put down to review yarns of the forecastle, and the average stay-at-home newspaper man, whose acquaintance with the military is of the most meagre, cannot be expected to understand and appreciate Mr. Kipling's wonderful command of technique. It is almost perfect. There is a glaring instance of error in one ballad that the soldier at once detects, but, with this one exception, I have never met the soldier who could find any fault with his local colour, nor can I myself. And his command of sailoring technicalities is, I have learnt, just as perfect. A marine engineer to whom I read "McAndrew's Hymn "said, after I had concluded, "The man who wrote that has done his graft in the stoke-hole and the engine-room. Lord! to think a chap could write poetry on my engines!"

The three principal soldier characters, Mulvaney, Ortheris, and Learoyd, are as perfect as was Boswell's biography of Johnson, and more than this one cannot say. His handling of his officers is equally good, so long as he deals with officers of infantry regiments. Bobby Wicks, the Colonel of the "Fore and Aft," and Ouless, in "His Private Honour, are as fine delineations of the English officer of to-day as is Thackeray's Colonel Esmond of the days of Queen Anne or Scott's Ludovic Lesly of the time of Louis XI. of France. Indeed, as one can only judge these latter creations of the writer by contemporary literature, we might assert that the modern are better portraits.

Mr. Kipling's cavalry officers are not so good. He is evidently not as conversant with the mounted branches of the Service as he is with his beloved infantry. The officers of the Pink and of the White Hussars (writing as a cavalry man) I do not like. But I prefer them vastly to the impossible creations of certain lady writers who profess to have given us cameos of the cavalry officer. Kipling's Three Musketeers are as near perfection as is possible on this sublunary sphere; they are the best yet done, and most likely it will be long before they are equalled, still longer before they are excelled.

"AN HUSSAR."

THE LATE LORD TENNYSON.

TO THE EDITOR.

Sir, I have been much interested in your review of the "Life of Lord Tennyson "; and I venture to trouble you with a little incident in connexion with the great poet which I cannot but think would be of general interest if it were known. I only regret that I have not communicated the fact to the present Lord Tennyson.

Just before the death of the late peer, we were arranging to present a memorial to certain dignitaries of the Greek Church on behalf of the persecuted Stundists of Russia.

In answer to my request, Lord Tennyson signed the memorial and returned it to me almost immediately before his death, thus showing his interest in the cause of religious liberty.

I remain, Sir, yours faithfully,

A. J. ARNOLD, General Secretary. Evangelical Alliance, 7, Adam-street, Strand, W.C.

Obituary.

The name of SIR RUTHERFORD ALCOCK, who died last week, will not be without a place in the chronicles of literature, because he was among the first to instruct the public on the people, the history, and the art of Japan. He began his long diplomatic career in the Far East as Consul at Fu-chau in 1844, and closed it in 1871, after six years' service as Minister at Peking. His early experiences of Japan were described in a valuable work called "The Capital of the Tycoon." As long ago as 1863 he called attention to the importance of Japanese art, and in 1878 wrote a useful work on the subject, called “ Art and Art Industries in Japan." He was also the author of books on the

Japanese language, and contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica and to the leading reviews on the subject of Japan. SIGNOR GIOVANNI BATISTA CAVALCASELLE, whose death was announced at the beginning of the week, is better known for his literary work among art students than the general public. Crowe and Cavalcaselle's works on Italian art occupy an important place in the artist's library. Born in 1820, Cavalcaselle was one of the many foreigners who, after playing a part in the moving events of the middle of the century abroad, sought a refuge in England. He was not a great artist, but his steady industry as an illustrator brought him into connexion with Sir Joseph Crowe, who died in the autumn of last year, and with whom he collaborated in the production of " Early Flemish Painters" (1857, 1872), "History of Painting in Italy (1864), "History of Painting in North Italy" (1871), "Life of Titian " (1877), "Life of Rafael " (1882).

Foreign Letters.

GERMANY.

With the turn of the leaf in the Ladies' Mile of lime trees, Berlin suspends her animation. Authors are correcting their last revise. Schulte's Galleries are filled for the benefit of the provincial cousin, and stage-managers are playing off the old favourites before the new season begins.

The activity of the country is spent in congresses and selfpreparation. In a free Hansa State the leaders of the Socialists kave arranged to push their two million followers to the borders of privileged election, and invade the Prussian Parliament. At Erfurt, in the heart of the region of culture, professors and clergy have combined to raise the ghost of the Emperor's past, and to draw from an ethical Liberalism conclusions not dreamt of in the schools. In the cathedral city of "the Rhine-land and the wine-land an ex-Cabinet Minister has shocked Three Estates of the realm by pledging a toast to the Fourth, and has followed up his indiscretion by becoming part-proprietor of a newspaper devoted to the opinions for which he was turned out of office.

This unrest in the body politic is reflected in the domain of art. It speaks through the panting life of Begas' bronze and stone in his wonderful monument to William I. It cries out from the canvas of Liebermann or Leistikow, or any of that band of 11 who are united to tell "the truth, and nothing but the truth," through the medium of the brush. Socialist versus Individualist, Realist versus Idealist, Democrat versus Aristocrat, -one breath of reaction is fanning all these flames, and the Xoyos of a single spirit is informing all their experiments.

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It is a part of the same movement in things that the reading public should be waiting with rapt attention for Gerhart Hauptmann's next work. For Hauptmann is the most famous of those literary sons of Berlin who revolted in the early eighties. Rumour speaks of a mystic seven-two less than the Muses whose control they shook off-who are even believed to have repeated the dream of a Pantisocracy across the seas which our poets dreamt a century ago. Certain it was, whatever their theories of emigration might be, they would create a new era at kome. The outworn machinery of composition in painting, of construction in drama, and of harmony in verse, with all its attendant paraphernalia of types, and heroes, and adventures, was to be abandoned at a single sweep. The poem or picture of the future should be a Lebensausschnitt, fragment from real life, dominated by a problem, and with its details submitted to the microscope. In a word, the impulse had come from abroad, and the seven were the pioneers of the naturalistic movement in Germany. Two of them indeed, to whom Hauptmann's first piece was dedicated, were appropriately disguised by a Norwegian name; and Bjarne P. Holmsen's Papa Hamlet was, we believe, the first play to be performed on the so-called free stage which they founded. The Freie Bühne survives, although its organ has taken on the less striking name of Neue Deutsche Rundschau, but the seven brothers in reform have long since parted ways. The authors of Papa Hamlet have fallen a little in the rear. The larger public waits for them no longer; only its stragglers, when they lag behind, are surprised at the beauty and the wealth of weeds where Holz and Schlaf have trodden. But of all the seven, and of all the names which are bound up with young Germany's revolt from Freytag and the Munich school -"never," says one writer, were fathers and sons divided by a deeper line of

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cleavage."-the greatest and the most interesting is undoubtedly Gerhart Hauptmann. The bibliography of books and pamphlets in his honour would occupy two columns of Literature. The ablest critics have quarrelled about his merits, and his fame has been mentioned in the same breath with Shakespeare's. He embodies a problem in himself. Hauptmann's first book, the "Promethidenloos," was published at the end of 1884. His latest," The Sunken Bell," was the production of December, 1886. It appeared simultaneously in book-form and upon the stage. In seven months it passed through 28 editions, and it attained the distinction, much rarer here than in London, of a 100th night during its first season in Berlin. Between these two dates, and within the compass of the two works which they commemorate, there is contained the history of the Realist moversent in Germany. So much is this the case that the critics hardly care to distinguish between the tendency and its exponent. They write that Realism stands to-day at the parting of the ways, when they mean that "The Sunken Bell " was a compromise between the two methods. They speak of the extreme of reaction as exhausted, when they mean that the author of "The Sunken Bell "has fallen a little from the height of his devotion. They point to the reconciliation as near at hand, because Hauptmann's last work was neither wholly realistic nor wholly idealistic in character.

They are all very much in earnest, these critics, and pamphleteers, and lookers-on; and seriously enough, Gerhart Hauptmann's poetical gifts are sufficiently great to justify their anxiety. His first three dramas (1889 to 1891) were originally known to a comparatively small public, and only the third of them, Einsame Menschen, was given on a regular stage. As books, they have passed through six, three, and seven editions respectively. They are reminiscent of Zola and Ibsen, as the "Promethidenloos, in 13 cantos, had recalled Childe Harold " to mind; and it may frankly be said that they did not dishonour their sponsors in the degree of actuality which they attained. They mark together the first period of the poet's history. After another 12 months' silence, his fourth drama, The Weavers, was published. A year elapsed before the Free Stage would produce it, and it was not until September 25, 1894, or nearly three years since its first appearance, that it was put on the boards of the Deutscher Theater in Berlin. By the end of last season it had been played 211 times, and had gone through 18 editions in book form, so that it may at any rate be said that Hauptmann had conquered his public before he scored his greatest success last year.

The Weavers is a so-called milieu piece, a drama where the writer's whole strength is given to a faithful presentation of a definite set of circumstances. Its scenes-and it amounts to little more than a succession of scenes-are placed in a manufacturing district of Silesia in the year of ferment, 1844, and they portray with wonderful truth the pity and the horror of a weavers' strike. The book has been compared with Zola's "Germinal," but the foreigu inspiration cannot be so directly traced as in some of the earlier productions. It has been claimed for the German writer that his naturalism passes into a milder phase, where Zola's brutality is chastened by something more humane, evoked by the very intimacy of the associations. But we need not linger in the prize-ring. Hauptmann's most enthusiastic backers do not attempt to deny that The Weavers is hopelessly depressing; its gloom is unrelieved by a single gleam from the lighter side of the workpeople's life. It may have raised the author at a bound to the foremost rank of modern literary men. It may be a masterpiece of the literature of social revolt, but it does not add to the beautiful things of the world, which we firmly believe to be the final test of art.

"The Sunken Bell "-to omit the intervening pieces-marks a complete change of perspective. There are two Hauptmanns, say the critics in their perplexity. The one is the realist, whose naked power of will shrinks from nothing which is true; the other is the man of imagination, whose longing for the unattainable breaks his earthly bounds. By all the traditions of his own conviction and example he is forbidden to gratify this longing by an idealization of real life after the fashion of the older school. In default, then, he has recourse to the trick of allegory, as a convenient makeshift which he could slip off at will, should his principles or his followers rise up to reproach him. The allegory of an artist's search for beauty, which "The Sunken Bell " very powerfully embodies, may be Hauptmann's own experience or not. Its lesson and its conclusion are less to our present purpose-they have received a score of different interpretations--than the evidence which is afforded of the author's change of view. His dramatic instinct is too strong to display itself permanently in the narrow field of allegory, and the Conservatives-for it can be expressed in

political terms-are dreaming of Hauptmann's conversion, and of a time when the apostle of literary revolt will write pattern novels of the so-called governess type. The revolutionaries look forward to their champion's return. "The Sunken Bell they would regard as a jeu d'esprit, as the recreation of a serious man whose fame will be founded on The Weavers. The mild men, who stand in the middle, take a half-way view; they believe that the stream, which has been divided for a while, will rejoin and flow on with fresh vigour and strength. It will gather up what is best in the new contributions, their wider range, their clearer view, their abolition of hampering restrictions; but the wildness of their current will be curbed and checked by the old. "The Sunken Bell" is at the point before the junction. There are others, finally, who fear that Gerhart Hauptmam's boat has been too much shattered by the Sturm und Drang of its earlier passage to flow down now with the stream.

This stirring, restless city carefully guards the secrets of its spring. The leaves which have fallen from the lime trees will be swept away by the ablest municipality in Europe. But will the wind of discontent cease to blow through the ranks of those two million workmen ? Will the clergy return in peace to their pulpits, and the professors to their chairs? Will Gerhart Hauptmann's next work follow his Weavers or his "Sunken Bell?" The questions have more in common than might appear at first sight.

THE UNITED STATES.

When one read a week or two ago that we were to have a new volume of cartographic history from Mr. Justin Winsor one hardly noted it as important. It was sure to be full of accurate, minute information; sure to be the result of untiring, intelligent industry and enthusiasm ; but then one felt Mr. Winsor had already done so much work of this sort, and was sure to do so much more, that a volume more or less made little difference. Perhaps, too, one had a secret feeling that, even though Mr. Winsor were undoubtedly a man of extraordinary information and method, he was not exactly a man of letters-an historian, if you like, but not one whose work was to be classed with literature. And now, with hardly any warning, he is dead. Already one begins to feel what a loss he is.

It is doubtful if any scholar in America has been more constantly heartily helpful to all sincere students who approached him. His information, unusual both in range and in precision, was at the service of whomsoever it could benefit. A characteristic example of this transpired since his death. A friend of his some years ago, chancing to get interested in David Garrick, asked Mr. Winsor for the best book about him; to which Mr. Winsor answered that, having once been interested in Garrick, he had collected material about him more complete than was published anywhere, which material was at his friend's disposal. And no one would have supposed Garrick to be one of Mr. Winsor's specialties. That these were various the very names of his publications attest; the best known of these are his Bibliography of Shakespeare, his Reader's Handbook of the American Revolution, the two series of Co-operative Histories which he edited so well as to make them almost coherent-the Memorial History of Boston and the Narrative and Critical History of America; his Christopher Columbus; and his three volumes, under separate titles, on the Early History of the West. His occasional writings and his papers on libraries are very numerous. None of these works is exactly literature, yet none of them can be neglected by any body who should wish to put in literary form the matters with which they deal.

For twenty years Mr. Winsor had been the librarian, of Harvard. When he came there the College Library was only a treasury in which many thousands of books were religiously preserved from injury. Under his direction it has become the most potent educational engine that is working hereabouts. Its resources are open not only to instructors, but to students who wish to use them. Mr. Winsor's generous policy may have worn out a good many books, but they have been worn out in honest use which has almost revolutionized the old system of college education. Students before his time used to rely on text-books now they consult authorities. For some years before taking charge of the Harvard Library, too, Mr. Winsor had been librarian of the Public Library of Boston, where his measures for increasing and extending the circulation of books had been notable. This unusual range of experience in libraries, both learned and popular, combined with his temperamental liking for conferences and other gatherings of human beings-he was a very "clubable " man-to make him distinctly the chief of

American librarians.

How important the office of librarian is becoming in America one need hardly say. Our most notable public

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buildings of the past few years have been libraries. Three years ago the new Public Library of Boston was opened-by far the most elaborate and generous building in New England. A year or two later came the Library of Congress in Washington, which is probably the most elaborate and generous building in the United States. And only last month was opened the new Public Library of Chicago. New York lags behind. But plans are already making there for a larger and richer one still. In each case the building has been necessary; the collections of books have become too large and valuable for anything short of the best attainable accommodation. Whether the new buildings afford this may be disputed. That they are meant to, and that public moneys have been unstintingly devoted to them, is beyond doubt. The architects of the Boston Library, however, and of the Library of Washington have been thought a trifle too scenic in temper. The Boston Library, a masterpiece of construction, which contains some excellent mural decoration, is not intelligently adapted to its main purpose. Its admirable paintings by Puvis de Chavannes, John Sergent, and others are more obviously accessible than its books, which are inconveniently thrust aside for these splendours. The Library of Congress, while rather more convenient, is oftenest remarked for the Roman munificence of its mural pictures and marbles. In both cases the architects were clearly so enamoured of their opportunities as not always to remember that a library should not primarily be a palace or a museum. The Chicago Library is said to be less splendid and to have the architectural fault of superficial insincerity. Its elevation, for example, shows only three tiers of windows and its inner plans reveal four or five stories. On the other hand, it was probably designed with more intelligence than the others. "The controlling idea in the interior plans,' said the president of the Board of Directors at the formal opening, has been to make the book-rooms the heart of the Library, the centre from which everything shall radiate, thus facilitating access from every quarter and lightening the work in every department." If this controlling idea has really been carried out one can forgive the insincerity of the outer walls, in themselves pleasant to look at.

Until the Columbian Exhibition, four years ago, people on our Atlantic sea-board had a patronizing way of 1egarding Chicago as on the extreme outskirts of civilization, much as complacent Europeans are apt to regard the most established parts of America. The Exhibition opened any eyes that saw it to the fact that Chicago is fast becoming an important centre of intellectual as well as material activity. That new Public Library of theirs is not only, in all probability, the best building on this continent for library purposes, but it gives a permanent home to an institution which in the year 1896 circulated more books than any other in the world. The Libraries of Birmingham and of Boston showed for that year a circulation of above 800,000; that of Manchester one of 975,000; that of Chicago one of far more than a million. In each case, of course, figures were greatly swelled by ephemeral fiction and the like; but with all allowance for this such figures mean great mental activity. Of this Chicago shows many other signs. For one thing it has at least two other important libraries in active operation-the Newberry and that of the University of Chicago. This University, only four years old, is already an educational centre of importance, not fairly to be judged by such feats as Mr. Moulton's, who is trying to make "modern readers " accept the Revised Version of the Bible as literature. Again, the daily Press of Chicago, though not distinguished by any single paper so good as the New York Evening Post, maintains an average merit which one is sometimes disposed to think the highest in America. And certainly the literary fortnightly of Chicago, the Dial, though not very profound, is on the whole the most unbiased and satisfactory of our purely critical journals.

A fair notion of Chicago as a modern literary centre may, perhaps, be had from a glance at some of the announcements and books which reach one from there in a single week. One publisher there, whose books are usually notable for good printing and the like, announces a new book by Mrs. Latimer on Spain in the 19th century; a book of travels in Spain, by Miss Nixon, who whimsically calls herself "A Pessimist ; a work on Thought and Theories of Life and Education, by Bishop Spaulding of Peoria; a volume of lectures on Christianity, delivered last year in India by the Rev. Dr. Barrows on a foundation lately given the University of Chicago for the purpose of Christianizing the Hindoos; and a careful study by Miss Mary Fisher of some modern French critics. Meanwhile, among the books which have arrived from Chicago within a few days are Mr. Henry James's last novel, "What Maisie Knew " ; a novel by a well-known American lady, whose pseudonym is Julien Gordon; Miss Godkin's "Stories from Italy "; a pleasant and

sound, though not extraordinary, book of lyrics, called "Love's Way," by Martin Swift; a queer book by Mr. Horace Fletcher on Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fearthought, being one volume of an eccentric system of philosophy which he calls" Menticulture;" and a very clear monograph on the Campaign of Marengo, by Lieutenant Sergent, of the U.S. cavalry, whose previous book on Napoleon's First Campaign was approved by recognized masters of military history. No astonishing contribution to history or literature is here, perhaps; but a city which can give us this and more in one week is not to be neglected.

To pass from new America to the older, Mr. Paul Leicester Ford has just issued an exhaustive book on the New England Primer, in which the Puritan children were taught to read. Whatever can be known about this quaint little volume Mr. Ford has collected, digested, and pleasantly set down. His work has but one fault; it appears in what the late Mr. Lowell used to call an "edition of looks."

Notes.

In a second kindly notice of Literature Sir Walter Besant in The Author makes the quaint reproach against our first number that he sees 66 no space devoted to correspondence. It was, we think, hardly to be expected that correspondence should be addressed to a paper before it came into existence, but we would point out that all our advertisements have laid stress on the fact that our columns would be open to correspondence, and our third number, as well as the present one, shows that we have been taken at our word.

Mr. Arthur C. Benson, of Eton College, is engaged upon a anemoir of his father, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, which will probably be published at the end of 1898 by Messrs. Macmillan. It is understood that the work will consist of a personal memoir, reminiscences by various friends, letters and extracts from the Archbishop's private diaries, which were very fully and completely kept. Any letters of the Archbishop's or biographical particulars which ought to be included should be sent to Mr. Benson at an early date.

Mrs. Hodgson Burnett's new novel is published to-day by Messrs. F. Warne and Co. lt is called "His Grace of Osmonde," and though not a sequel it may be regarded as a complement to " A Lady of Quality.' Mrs. Burnett has conceived the idea, probably original in the world of fiction, of treating the same history from two points of view. The former novel told the woman's side of the story, and "His Grace of Osmonde gives the man's. Messrs. Warne also publish today another novel by Caroline Masters called "The World's Coarse Thumb." The same publishers have in hand a Nursery Rhyme Book edited by the indefatigable Mr. Andrew Lang, and illustrated by Mr. L. Leslie Brooke.

Mr. Marion Crawford has made up his mind to take up once again lecturing work, and he will tour in several of the large American towns under Major Pond's management. Unlike most authors who from Dickens onward have added fortune to fame on American platforms, Mr. Crawford will not read extracts from his own works. He will deliver extempore lectures on "The Italy of Horace,' "Italian Home Life in the Middle Ages," "The Early Italian Artists," and "Leo. XIII. in the Vatican."

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The American lecture public seems to be very eclectic in its tastes. Russia is always interesting, and for a long time George Kennan was the most popular speaker in the States. The lecture room appears to take in many American towns the place of a theatre, for the lecture public is largely a religious public. The late Henry Ward Beecher travelled half a million miles in twelve years, and great efforts were made to persuade the late Charles Spurgeon to undertake a lecturing tour. Charles Kingsley's success in 1874 was undoubtedly more owing to his literary than his religious reputation; and it is interesting to note that some years ago Major Pond, when asked who of all living Englishmen he would rather take back with him to his own country, replied unhesitatingly, Lord Tennyson. Mrs. Beecher Stowe would undoubtedly have made a record tour, but she lost her voice early, and she never consented to turn her personal popularity to a money-making use.

We understand that M. Emile Zola is seriously thinking of visiting the United States on a lecturing tour early next year. At the beginning of the present year M. Brunetière, the eminent French critic, gave a number of lectures in different cities in the States and met with considerable success, though it is very doubtful whether more than half of his audience were able to follow his somewhat elaborate criticisms of present-day degeneracy. If M. Zola visits the States he will doubtless be able to reply to the very strong strictures passed upon him by his compatriot when in that country.

Mr. Bernard Shaw is publishing through Mr. Grant Richards two volumes of his dramatic works, including a number of unpublished and unperformed plays. The volumes, which will be entitled Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant," will be sold separately, and will each contain a preface by the author. In the first will appear a portrait of Mr. Shaw from a private photograph.

Mr. Shaw began writing for the stage as long ago as 1885, when he was asked by Mr. Wm. Archer to write a drama in collaboration with him. The result was the first two acts of Widowers' Houses, ultimately produced by the Independent Theatre in 1892.

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The new book by George Egerton (Mrs. Clairmonte) which Mr. John Lane is publishing carries on the nomenclature which began in "Keynotes. It is called "Fantasias," and she may be congratulated on having preferred this title to what, we believe, she had first thought of" Fairy Tales for Grown-ups.

It is not generally known that the author of "Pêcheur d'Islande "" once made a journey in the Holy Land under conditions strongly resembling some of Sir Richard Burton's famous wanderings. Pierre Loti performed the greater portion of his journey disguised as an Arab, and, with characteristic love of solitude and isolation, he refused the offers of several friends who were very anxious to accompany him. As in the case of