rian, and not, as hitherto supposed, for the philosopher. It is only just to say that these doubts may not be felt by all, not to mention that they may be lessened or removed by his promised volume on "Folklore in Early British History." Be that as it may, we are less inclined to quarrel with him for mistaking the uses of folklore than for his attitude on certain other points, than, to take one instance, for his somewhat cavalier treatment of the mythologists. It is one thing to say that the key to folklore is anthropology; it is another to suggest that there are no traces of national gods among the European peoples, and that the ob

Nature.

jects of adoration were always of the tribe. Even if the European sky-god is a fabrication of "the Cambridge professor," even if Lud on the Thames and Nod on the Severn were distinct until the Romans united them, he is hardly justified in such sweeping generalizations; he has still to account for, e. g., the cult of Lug in regions so far apart as Leyden and Lyons and County Wicklow, as well as at a host of intermediate places. It is possible that we shall receive greater satisfaction from the new volume; so far it cannot be allowed that the author has said the last word on the subject.

The little volume on Whistler by Bernard Sickert, which appears in the Popular Library of Art, is only briefly biographical. It is for the most part a critical though brief study of Whistler's personality and his art, illustrated with twenty or thirty copies of his most characteristic works. In compact, clear and discriminating statement it leaves nothing to be desired. E. P. Dutton & Co.

ago, but which has been almost forgotten in the rush of far more radical and destructive theological literature, is published anew in Everyman's Library; and with that happy sense of the fitness of things which characterizes the editing of this series, Sir Oliver Lodge is selected to introduce it to the new body of readers whom it is certain to reach in this new form. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Those who love Aytoun, and they will never be few while there are generous boys and warm-hearted girls, cannot see the word "loyalty" without remembering the bitter line in which the old Jacobite, hymning Dundee to his glorious grave, dwells upon the after time, when "honor may be deemed dishonor, Loyalty be called a crime." The cruelty of it, the anguish of such compulsion by injustice bites deep at the age when all one's troubles are in poetry and history, and it returns to one's mind as one opens Professor Josiah Royce's "The Philosophy of Loyalty." Turning hastily

over the leaves, one finds one's consolation in the discovery that to the author loyalty to a lost cause is a duty; that one must be faithful, watching and waiting for possible opportunity, must let one's sorrow glorify one's cause and must use it as a link to bind one to universal causes. With this bit of comfort one begins at the beginning. The eight lectures in this book are the final form of others delivered in part in various places, and as a college course for Yale under-graduates. The nature and need of loyalty; individualism; loyalty to loyalty; conscience; some American problems in their relation to loyalty; training for loyalty; loyalty, truth, and reality, and loyalty and religion are the subjects, and if any man be afflicted with listlessness let him read the last page of each lecture, and he will find himself aroused, not to any blind activity but to an effort to find himself and a purpose which shall not be for himself but for others. Feeling this, let him return and discover by what paths those last pages were reached and it may be that he will find that they lead him to a new world, for this is so very powerful a little book that it seems no exaggeration to call it a great book. Macmillau & Co.

The name of Isabella Bird has so long been familiar as that of a traveller that it will be no small surprise to many who encounter Mrs. Stoddart's "The Life of Isabella Bird" to find that she was equally well known in a large circle in England as a philanthropist, a home missionary, and as that kind friend to her poorer neighbors which seems to be the better part in the estimation of all well-bred English women. Mrs. Stoddart does not fail to give an excellent picture of the charming family group from which Mrs. Bird sprang and dwells with especial tenderness upon the portrait of her cherished sis

ter Henrietta. The story of her happy marriage, of its sad ending, and of her courageous behavior is related with sympathy, but the tale of her travels is comparatively abbreviated. She herself has related the story so fully in her books that it seemed wiser to add to it by drawing upon unpublished letters, than to repeat it or even to summarize it fully. The matters upon which she herself laid most stress, the condition and work of the missions, are given the lion's share of space and what is said is very valuable, being the evidence of an enthusiast on the subject of missions, of a traveller acquainted with the east and an observer and author familiar with the task of reporting conditions. It is not perhaps generally known that this persevering and stout-hearted traveller was, when in her own home, an invalid suffering almost constantly, and forced to seclude herself in order to accomplish her literary work, but in spite of this apparent incongruity she was neither hypochondriac nor hysterical. Her troubles, social and organic, were real but she could, when her fellow creatures demanded her services, forget her own need. Her book, like her life can hardly fail to inspirit many other travellers and missionaries. E. P. Dutton & Co.

"That magic tool the jack-knife," no longer has much attraction for the Yankee boy, or for the New York boy, or for the Western boy, although there are still happy sections of the South in which a boy is taught to find as many uses for it as possible, even if he do not quite arrive at the point of "making the thing and the machine that makes it." Elsewhere, the modern boy sedately uses his jackknife to cut string or perhaps to separate the leaves of a book if he do not have a pen-knife or a paper knife. His desire is for a full kit of tools, and

if one of them be missing, he is as helpless as the British workman, and the newest books encourage that frame of mind. Here is "Harper's Indoor Book for Boys" by Mr. Joseph H. Adams; it sets tasks in carpentry, wood carving, fretwork, turning, picture-mounting, metal work in many applications, modelling, pyrography, printing, book-binding, making magic lanterns, fitting up a gymnasium and a theatre and constructing conveniences and ornaments without end. So far from encouraging the boy to make one tool do the work of six, the reader is warned to use each for its original purpose and for no other. The old books conceived a boy as a species of Crusoe set to conquer difficulties with small means. Mr. Adams thinks of him as a fairly well-taught carpenter needing nothing but suggestions as to the end to which the use of his tools should be directed. Indeed to nine out of ten of the half-taught carpenters of to-day, men who never "got out" a foot of "stock" in all their easy lives, some of the work here proposed would be formidable. But if all that a boy needs be suggestions as to the adornment of his room and his home, he could have no better book and the tastes of a large group of boys might find outlets through the channels here opened. Harper & Brothers.

The nature of Mr. Rowland Prothero's "The Pleasant Land of France" is not to be divined from its title. It might be anything from an account of a motor car journey to a disquisition on manners and customs, but it is a group of seven long papers on subjects found somewhere in France, but hardly related otherwise, unless their author's mastery of his subjects and the excellent style in which he writes of them be counted as bonds. The first, "A Day in Provincial France,"

tells of a pleasure departed since the motor car driver has discovered provincial France, and is likely to swoop along the most quiet road at any moment, disturbing the calm of all the centuries since Charlemagne as he goes; and Mr. Prothero's descriptions make one regret the vanished day. The discussion of French character introduced into this paper is enlightening to those inclined to fancy that Paris is France, and that naught else matters. "French Farming," the second paper, occupies some sixty-seven of the book's large octavo pages and includes more that is worth knowing than can be found in many a whole volume of travel by railway. "Tenant Right and Agrarian Outrage in France," a chapter on the history of Picardy, shows that landlord shooting, crop-burning, murder in church, and treating an objectionable occupant of land as if he lay under the greater excommunication are not crimes of Irish origin; it also shows that tenant right dies a natural death if allowed free action. "A Faggot of French Folk Lore" supplements two of the previous chapters by its revelations of some sources of action. "Rabelais," the longest paper in the book, is both critical and biographical. "Fontainebleau" is a delightful blending of description and of historical gossip, and the last paper, "Some Modern French Poets" criticizes Gresset, Hugo, Murger, Theodore de Banville, M. Sully Prudhomme, and M. Coppee and contains many translations from all of them. It will be seen that by one road and another the reader of the book is taken through some thousand years of French history and into many a fair scene. Perhaps the title is justifiable after all, and because it contains so much not to be found in volumes more easy to classify, unsystematic readers will enjoy it immensely. E. P. Dutton & Co.