At the moment when Lord Morley is one of the most interesting figures in England, appears the fourth volume of his "Miscellanies" containing seven critical essays, two on the work of Mr. Frederic Harrison; the others on Guicciardini, John Stuart Mill, Mr. Lecky's "Democracy and Liberty," and Mr. Hothouse's "Democracy and Reaction." To speak of the style, the substance, or the spirit of Lord Morley's work is prodigality of words, but howsoever well one may know it and its qualities, it is a pleasure to give the book a cursory examination, and to meet on page after page memorable phrases recording judgment on statesmen, nations, systems of government, policies and conduct, and to gather from them renewed conviction that at least one official personage is prepared for any responsibility which his high place may bring upon him. He who never yields to the temptation to decide matters of theory by expediency rather than by principle is not likely to fall victim to it in settling actual questions. This is the last of the four volumes of miscellanies included in the Eversley Series of fourteen, making the author's collected works, exclusive of the great "Life" of Gladstone, a noteworthy life work. The Macmillan Co.

Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie's "Stories New and Old, American and English" contain ten tales perfectly representing American fugitive literature from 1820, and British literature from a somewhat later point: "Peter Rugg," "Dr. Marigold's Prescriptions," "Rab and his Friends," "Ethan Brand," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Will o' the Mill," "The Marquis Jeanne Hyacinth de St. Palaye," "Quite So," "King Solomon of Kentucky" and "The Game and the

Nation." The inference, partly drawn from the preponderance of American stories; partly from the arrangement, partly from the restatement of the opinion of Mr. Brander Matthews that the early perfection of the short stories of Poe accounts for the extraordinary production of short stories in this country, is that the true short story originated in America, and that Poe and Hawthorne were the first to tell it correctly. The validity of the inference might be disputed considering the comparative age of Blackwood's and the magazines in which the work of Poe and Hawthorne appeared, but the value of this collection is at once apparent. Poe, Dickens, Hawthorne, Shorthouse, Aldrich, Stevenson, Dr. Brown, Mr. James Lane Allen and Mr. Wister make a rare company. Mr. Mabie has given each author a fitting introduction and has written a general introduction. The Macmillan Co.

It is greatly to be hoped that somewhere in this troublous world there are children sufficiently clever to understand and enjoy the delicate humor of Mr. Vernon L. Kellogg's "Insect Stories," but inasumch as their existence in large numbers is extremely doubtful, and inasmuch as it is wicked to let good things be wasted, it is the duty of elder folk and even of elderly folk to fall upon the book and devour it. It is not very big, and Miss Mary Wellman, Miss Maud Lanktree, and Mr. Sekko Shimada occupy some of its pages with pictures of wasps, and ants, and spiders, and ant-lions, bees and dragon flies, and other creatures who flourish in the text, and the reader will come all too soon to "The end of this rambling, talky little book," as the author words it. He and "Mary," a

dream child as elusive as those who were "not the children of Alice" live in California and became acquainted while Mary was "collecting tarantula holes," and proceeded to emulate the wasp-watching Peckhams, and later they watched the scale insect, hated of all Californians, and the lady-bird beetle which has been imported from Australia to kill it, and they watched a small spider until she died. the stories in which he tells of these things Mr. Kellogg has invented fascinating titles. "Red and Black Against White," and "Argiope of the Silver Shield" are two of them. Henry Holt & Co.

For

"The Cradle of the Deep," which Sir Frederick Treves describes, is the West Indies, the nursery of the British Navy, and if the reader cannot furnish the necessary material to complete the figure, Sir Frederick will not aid him, but will away to find something curious and interesting. He shakes the mud of London, "sour chocolate colored mud," from his neat boots and is off to Barbados; he is as happy as a school-boy on a holiday, and as much troubled to verify his references and allusions, and after all it matters little, for he tells his good stories of the past and present with spirit, and he makes everything as vivid to the reader as it is to himself. In spite of the endless columns and pages that every one has read concerning the disasters at St. Pierre and at Kingston, his chapters of haphazard impression, gathered from men who described them from their very souls, kindle a new horror and terror in the imagination; his light scornful account of Kidd, the "trusty and well-beloved" of Dutch William is as fresh as if Kidd were a Boston bandit of yesterday. The pirates are grim and ugly, the buccaneers grim and remorseless; in four paragraphs he makes the black insur

rection at St. Joseph in 1837 a night. mare vision, and less suffices to give it a companion in the dungeons under the citadel of Puerto Rico; he makes one see the "great auction of the universe," when Rodney held a sale of goods worth four million sterling, and one is willing that he should call his book anything that he likes if he will but make it very long. It does contain some 375 good pages, and many excellent photographs, but would that it were bigger! E. P. Dutton & Co.

In writing his "Lord Kelvin," Professor Andrew Gray made choice between working for the extremely small circle needing no explanation of subjects upon which he must touch, and, addressing himself to the vast number of truth lovers to whom the famous name was dimly inspiring, bringing nebulous visions of a great light afar off, fed by devoted, untiring labor, and now and then flashing into a brilliancy of revelation, and he chose the latter group, and devoted some pages to definition of terms and explanation of hypotheses. To those who read a biography merely to set another figure in the museum of their memories he paid no thought at all, and those persons must wait until this "account of scientific life and work," as he calls it, is followed by a real biography, and meanwhile, the other two classes will find great pleasure in the volume. Lord Kelvin's period of active scientific work included nearly all the great discoveries in electricity, and there was hardly a species of the great scientific family called physics in which he had not seen mutations that were transformations, and to read the tale is to gather vast respect for the tireless workers who are really the great powers of the world, controlling commerce, war, politics, and ever adding to the stores of truth. Professor Gray has revealed enough of Lord Kelvin's per

Col. C. R. Conder's, "The Rise of Man," although a volume of less than four hundred pages, is a generalized history of the human race, up to the present moment, sketching its physical, social, and religious development, and slightly indicating the glory of its possible future, estimated by the forces of which the existence is at present manifest. Naturally, in such a piece of work many things must be taken for granted, for even while its author writes special discoveries may mar the validity of certain chains of reasoning, and its permanence is doubtful; still, the unprofessional reader will find that it gives him an excellent vantage-point whence to survey the past, to estimate the sum and accuracy of his knowledge, and to perceive wherein it needs the re-inforcement of deeper or wider study. The two introductory chapters may have this effect, and the four given to "Early Man" are even more fertile in suggestion. ***Civilization" is rather conventionally considered under the heads ancient, mediæval, and modern, and the ten chapters of "Historic Religions" deal with some which until very lately would have been regarded as conjectural. In the two remaining chapters the history of the Hebrew and Christian faiths is given, and a few pages of "Conclusions" summarize the whole. The motto of the book, the familiar stanza from "In Memoriam," ending

one far-off, divine event

To which the whole creation moves."

prepares the reader for the triumphant tone of these "Conclusions"; this is a Christian book, finding nothing incompatible in science and Christianity, and expecting glorious things of a future proceeding from a past in which the best things have come from Christianity, and it justifies its author's reputation as a Christian soldier. E. P. Dutton & Co

"Myrtle Baldwin," Mr. Charles Clark Munn's new story, is such a tale of a poor and friendless girl gradually advanced to good fortune as he is fond of writing, but this girl's early life is novel, and her experience in the endeavor to earn her own living is related with evident knowledge and without sentimental exaggeration. The hero, the architect of his own fortunes, finding Myrtle in her poorest estate, attempts to place her in better surroundings, flattering himself that his motive is purely benevolent. When his plans miscarry, and the girl disappears, he discovers that in reality he loves her, but froward chance separates the two until the girl has undergone some woful experiences and the man is well-nigh discouraged. But Mr. Munn never leaves his heroines unhappy, and this one is last seen in high content with fair prospects before her and all her secret heart's desires gratified. Myrtle and her little circle of hard-working friends make a picture to rejoice the heart of all self-supporting women, set as so many of them are between the greedy employer, and the egregiously ignorant "philanthropist" making them conspicuous by blundering assertions as to their needs and condition. In their behavior may be read the answer to many a vexed question, and "Myrtle Baldwin" should have a place in all the "settlement" libraries, for girls. Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.

DAWN.

Listen, I know this garden at the dawn When day is breaking and the world

is new,

When all the cobwebs drenched upon the lawn

Are silver meshes that have caught
the dew.

Before the birds awake, before the sun
Has led the misty vapors to arise,
I know this garden when night's sands
have run

And yet no daylight shows upon the
skies.

No movement is there in the quiet trees,
The very universe is robed in gray,
It is an hour of waking silences,

As if the leaves upon each slender
spray

Were listening, waiting for the creeping breeze

That says "the dawn, the dawn," and dies away.

MY LADY'S GARDEN. My Lady's garden lies between

Tall hedges of the close-clipp'd yew, With here and there quaint shapes of green

Set high against the sky's soft blue:
A peacock with his tail outspread,
An old Dutch ship with sails set
wide,

A shepherdess with hat on head,
Her little crook still at her side.

My Lady long since left her flow'rs,
Her pale sweet roses, bells of blue
That softly chime the passing hours

'Mid lavender, and thyme, and rue; Her hollyhocks like maidens gay Bedeck'd with many a pink rosette, And columbines that dance all day,

And scented stocks and mignonette.

But sometimes in the quiet dusk

I think soft footsteps tread the way Between the marigolds and musk, And down the steps so old and gray. So very softly past they go,

Like patt'ring sound of summer rain. But, as I hear them, well I know My Lady tends her flow'rs again. Augusta Hancock.

The London Magazine.

ROBIN'S AUTUMN SONG.

His small brave note makes glad the year

When all the greater songs are mute; Not his to harbor winter fear,

Not his to mourn the time of fruit.

All day he sings, but best when mist At twilight floods the valley ways, Or when at dawn the hills new-kissed By sunlight, glimmer autumn's

praise.

He has the constant mind, the heart To welcome change, since change must be;

His is the greater, nobler part,
The soul of all philosophy.

I listen to his tiny trills

With tranquil hope and calm content. Robin, when come the daffodils,

We'll tell each other what we meant! Kennett Burrow.