"MR. STILLMAN'S AUTOBIOGRAPHY." • MR. W. J. STILLMAN, artist and journalist, has at last done what all his friends have long wished him to do. He has published a couple of volumes of his Autobiography. His long and varied life, which I hope will be spared for many years to come, has been passed in the most widely varied scenes. Born in the peaceful home of New England, the son of a mother whose life was a constant prayer and wrestling with God for the salvation of her children, he made his first plunge into active politics by undertaking a mission for Kossuth in the revolutionary middle century; but the most stirring part of his career was spent in the quarter of a century that he passed in the storm-centre of Eastern Europe. The second volume is almost entirely devoted to the Eastern Question. It opens with an account of his appointment to the American Consulate in Crete; and although the last two chapters deal with Italian politics, all the rest of the book is devoted to an account of the struggle of the Greeks and Slavs for independence of the Turkish rule. From first to last it is a book full of deep human interest, and of the first political importance.

The second volume is indispensable to all those who wish to understand the real truth about the Near East. Mr. Stillman is an American, a revolutionist, an artist, a philosopher and a humanitarian. He was reared in an intensely religious atmosphere. He says of his childhood:

I lived in an atmosphere of prayer and trust in God which impressed me so, that to this day the habit of thought and condition so formed is invincible. An unconscious aspiration and prayer, and an absolute and organic trust in the protection of Divine Providence, persisted in my character, though reason has long assured me that this is but a crude and personal conception of the divine law.

His tribute to his mother is charming, and the whole of the first volume, as an autobiography, is far the most interesting; just as the second, from a political point of view, is far the most important. Some day I hope to return to this book, for Mr. Stillman is one of the most interesting personalities of contemporary politics.

But there are two things in this book which I cannot pass by even a cursory notice without special mention. The first is the tribute which he pays to the Times in the preface. Mr. Stillman was for years the white blackbird on the staff of the Times. He represented older and better traditions, and a new Stillman would have very little chance of appreciation under the present régime of Printing House Square. But in his preface he says, "It would be ungrateful and dishonest if I should omit to bear my testimony to the noble character and services to humanity of that great journal, to which the most of my strength for more than twenty years of the best period of my life has been given. If ever I have had a noble impulse aroused by wrongs that came to my knowledge during the course of the years in which I served it, a good cause to defend or an abuse to attack, the Times has never refused to give me room to tell my story. I have never been expected to conform my views to those of the office, nor have I ever done so, and I consider it the greatest honour that has ever come to me to have been so long in its service and to have maintained the confidence of its direction."

The other passage which I must quote is from the remarkable chapter on Spiritism, which constitutes a valuable contribution to the literature of Borderland. Despite his religious upbringing, Mr. Stillman is of a By W. J. Stillman, L.H.D. 2 vols. Price 345. net.

"The Autobiography of a Journalist." (Concordia), London, Grant Richards. 1.

profoundly sceptical disposition. But being of a scientific turn of mind, he entered into the investigation of Spiritism with earnestness and patience. An immense majority of men, he saw, had no real belief in human immortality. His own convictions were ingrained and immovable, but a physical demonstration of their verity seemed to him an eminently desirable result. In common with nearly every impartial observer, he found the threshold of investigations encumbered by a mass of imposture and fraud, which led him after a time entirely to ignore all professional mediums, and to dismiss most of the phenomena of the séance room as devoid of intellectual importance. But instead of being content with this negative finding, he had an opportunity of private investigation with personal friends. The most remarkable of all of his psychics was a Miss A., who had the gift of automatic handwriting. Her hand wrote communications in the handwriting of deceased persons, while her eyes were bandaged, and she herself was actively engaged in conversation upon other subjects. "The handwriting," says Mr. Stillman, "of all the three series of communications was a better imitation of the writing of his deceased relatives than he, knowing it, could have produced. After this indication of her powers, the girl appears to have been controlled by the spirit of Turner, the artist. During the control, the girl sat up in her chair, with a most extraordinary impersonation of the old painter in manner, in the look-out from under the brow, and the pose of the head. "It was as if the ghost of Turner sat in the chair, and it made my flesh creep to the very tips of my fingers, as if a spirit sat before me." When she walked across the room, she did so with the feeble step of an old man. She then went through the pantomime of stretching a sheet of paper on a drawing-board, sharpening a lead pencil, and tracing the outlines, then choosing a water-colour pencil, and then washing in a drawing. The medium seemed much amused by all these acts; she knew nothing of drawing; she understood nothing. Then with a pencil and her pocket-handkerchief she began taking out the lights-rubbing out, as the technical term is. Mr. Stillman believed Turner never did this, and asked: "Do you mean to say that Turner rubbed out his lines?" She answered in the affirmative. He asked whether in the drawing of Llanthony Abbey the central passage of sunlight and shadow through rain was done in that way, and she again gave the affirmative reply emphatically. Mr. Stillman was so convinced that this was wrong, that he refused to hold any further communication with the medium, saying that it was a humbug, and that Turner could never have worked in that way. Six weeks later he sailed for England, and, on arriving in London, went to Ruskin and told him the story. Ruskin got the drawing of Llanthony Abbey down for examination. "We scrutinised it closely, and both recognised beyond dispute that the drawing had been executed in the way that Miss A. indicated."

Mr. Stillman sums up his paper by declaring that his investigations tended to establish him immovably in two conclusions. "The first is that there are about us, with certain faculties for making themselves understood by us, spiritual individualities; and second, that the human being possesses spiritual sense, parallel with the physical, by which it sees what the physical sense cannot see, and hears what is inaudible to the physical ear; and my general, and I think logical, conclusion is that the spiritual sense appertains to the spiritual body, which survives the death of the physical."

Mr. Stillman's courage and fidelity to truth in this honest expression of conviction deserves recognition.

MODERN ITALY.

AN OPTIMISTIC PICTURE.

IGNORANCE, pure ignorance, is the root of much international misunderstanding. Any book which removes the excuse for such ignorance deserves a warm welcome. From this point of view, and altogether apart from its other merits, Italy To-day" (Nisbet) is a valuable addition to the political and social literature of the day. Messrs. Bolton, King, and Thomas Okey have successfully attempted to give some account of the political and social condition of Italy of the present day. Unlike some other observers, they are full of a cheery, if critical, optimism, and are possessed of a strong faith in the future of Italy. In many respects the new Italian kingdom has been a disappointment to those who hailed its advent with enthusiasm. I remember the late Sir James Stansfield telling me that the outcome of Italian unity had been the keenest regret of his lifetime. The old enthusiasm which had inspired the veterans of Garibaldi and the disciples of Mazzini had died down and apparently borne no permanent fruit. The writers of this book, however, see no lack of signs of a bright future due to the exertions of an awakened people. The divisions of Italian life, they believe, are neither as deep nor as permanent as they are thought to be. Beneath the slough of misgovernment and corruption and political apathy there is a rejuvenated nation, instinct with the qualities that make a great people.

THE MASTER FACT OF ITALIAN POLITICS.

The political prospect is less encouraging than the social outlook. Parliamentary institutions have not worked well in Italy, because the people have not yet been educated to take advantage of them. The principal result so far has been the piling up of the national debt until 42 per cent. of the nation's annual expenditure is devoted to the payment of interest; and the spread of corruption. There are no great parties to breed great statesmen, nor are there great statesmen to create great parties. In the Socialist party the authors see the remedy for all this dreary waste of intrigue and corruption. All their predispositions are in favour of the Socialists, who have increased very rapidly in recent years. Up to the present they have kept their hands unsullied from the taint of corruption, and have succeeded in absorbing much that is best in Italian life and thought. Socialism is the master fact of Italian politics to-day, they declare, and is destined to draw the lines of party deep and wide throughout the nation. The party, however, is barely ten years old and has not as yet endured the ordeal of office.

INDUSTRIAL EXPANSION.

The authors are on firmer ground in dealing with the social condition of the people. Here they can point to progress achieved in the past and not merely hoped for in the future. Where the remedy for the ills from which Italy is suffering lies with Parliament, they declare little or nothing has been done; where it lies with the people themselves the progress has been great. The Italian peasant and working man has been slowly working out his own salvation, and learning to stand on his own feet. Co-operation and education have grown rapidly during recent years, and have raised many districts from indigence to comparative prosperity. The whole system of agriculture in places has been revolutionised, and the land immensely increased in value and productiveness. People's banks have exorcised the usurer, and the cooperative societies have worked many marvellous trans

formations in rural Italy. There are signs, too, that Italy is at the commencement of a remarkable industrial expansion. Her rivers will do for her much of what coal has done for England. There is a great and increasing demand for Italian goods among the Italian emigrants of South America.

THE FEUD BETWEEN. CHURCH AND STATE.

The feud between the Catholic Church and the State has lost much of its bitterness. The fighting is now carried on largely with blank cartridge. The attempt of the Church to boycott the State has met with very indifferent success. An increasing good feeling is growing up, although there is little probability that either side will formally renounce its hostility. The Catholic Church in Italy, the authors admit, and their bias is by no means clerical, still gives the impression of a mighty force, strong in its discipline, strong in its able leading, strong often in its good works, strong above all in the existing system of government. Of late years, too, the Church has displayed much social activity. The younger priests, especially in the north, have a high conception of their work, and busy themselves in work which is altruistic rather than religious.

ITALIANISING SOUTH AMERICA.

Municipal reform is the most hopeful channel of social advance in Italy to-day. Parliament is discredited. Many more people take an active interest in municipal elections than in Parliamentary. While unity centralised the administration it centralised nothing else. Another encouraging sign is the large number of emigrants which annually leave the shores of Italy. This exodus relieves the pressure at home and helps to leaven Italian thought with new ideas. The account which the writers give of the new and greater Italy which is fast growing up in the republics of South America is very striking. Already in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentine there are three million Italians, or about one-seventh of the total white population. Indeed, South America promises to become the United States of the Italian races. These Italian immigrants cling tenaciously to their nationality, but they cherish no dreams of living beneath the Italian flag.

A NATIONAL BALANCE SHEET.

To sum up, despite many discouraging features, of which perhaps the universal illiteracy is the worst, Italy has progressed since 1860. The auditors thus balance the account of good and evil :—

It is true that there is wide despair and discontent: that Italians say, 66 we were better off when we were worse off." But none the less, intellectually and morally the gain has been large; materially the current is small and has its breakwaters, but it runs. There is a slow gain in wealth. The country is richer by at least £2,000,000 a year; the savings banks alone show annual accumulations nearly to that figure. At whatever present sacrifice, the nation has covered itself with railways and roads, has built harbours, has reclaimed large stretches of land, has given itself a system of education, has laid the foundations of an industrial future. Wages rose rapidly in industry and agriculture between 1860 and 1885, though it is true that since 1890 they have been on the whole stationary, and have fallen in more cases than they have risen. In spite of protective tariffs, food and clothes are cheaper. In the seventies it cost forty-nine hours of labour in certain industries to buy a bushel of wheat, in the nineties it cost twenty-six. Life is long plentiful and varied, and if wants have grown faster than satisand more healthy, clothes are better, food is perhaps more faction, if discontent with the present is strong, it makes only another spur to progress.

BABS THE IMPOSSIBLE.*

SARAH GRAND has now given us a third notable novel, which, although extremely interesting and original, deepens the impression that the authoress is much more interesting than any of her books. There is a sad interest about her, a kind of melancholy. She is a woman of splendid courage, high ideals, and a keen sympathetic insight into many phases of life, but she is like a thrush with a broken wing. There was a time when her wing was not broken, and when all the limitless possibilities of life spread themselves before her every morning when she woke to new life, with a keen zest to see, to learn, to discover, and to possess. But some time, somewhere, whether by accident or by violence, something broke, and the keen zest of interest in the new wonders of the new day died out in her, and henceforth the radiance of life is like the light of the moon, a reflection from another orb. Hence there is a pathos in her stories that is all the more acute because of the somewhat mordant humour by which it is concealed. In "Babs the Impossible' as in "The Heavenly Twins" and in "Beth," the authoress lives again the life of her teens. It is only in the portrayal of girl-life that she can dip her pen in the brighter hues. Afterwards life becomes grey for her, the colour, the brightness, the buoyancy of existence, lie only in the enchanted teens. Beth is younger than Babs, and was more loveable. In Babs we have the dawning of the new life. From maidenhood she nears the mystic verge of womanhood; but it is rather as the falling of a shadow than as the rising of a sun. Babs, wilful, impetuous, reckless, a tomboy of a girl, who is utterly unconscious of the fact that to outward appearance she has emerged into the state of womanhood, while she still remains a child at heart, visiting her men friends at midnight, kissing them, and liking to be kissed as a very child, is

a

very natural creation, although it was hardly necessary to heighten the impossibility of her character by furnishing her with such foils as her conventional sister and her more or less weak-minded brother. Babs is Beth in the atmosphere of a country house, where she has ample wealth, an indulgent mother, and is allowed to do pretty well whatever she pleases. She is an enfant terrible in long frocks. The whole essence of the character lies there. As a study of the dawning of womanhood in a creature in which the child instinct survived into the long-frocked period, it is a subtle study into which the authoress has evidently put infinite pains.

But Babs is not the central character of the book. Babs, after all, is only a second Beth, whereas the real central figure is not a woman but a man, and an original creation. Mr. Jellybond Tinney is a great character. To describe his story in outline would be to convince everyone that it would be impossible to make such a man a living hero of a real story; but Sarah Grand has done it, and done it extremely well. I suspect that when she began her story, she had no intention of making him so prominent a figure. For at least one half the book the reader is in suspense as to whether or not the hero is going to turn out the villain of the piece; but in the end she seems to have fallen in love with her creation, and carries him triumphantly through ordeals to which any other man would have succumbed. His career may be denounced as fantastic and impossible, but all that can be said is that while there is a good deal of the charlatan about him, as there was about Lord Beaconsfield, he is really a living, breathing human being, whom we remember as a permanent addition to the number of our acquaintances in the realms of fiction.

In "Babs," like all the rest of Sarah Grand's writing,

the piteous undertone of sadness is continually recurring. The particular evil upon which she has brooded in writing this book is, what she calls the waste of womanhood in country places. The men-folk go to the great cities, leaving their sisters to starve through life, in an Adamless Eden. "Babs the Impossible" may be regarded as a treatise on the impossibility of women living alone without the shrinkage of their whole nature. The woman is born to be loved, to marry, to be the mother of children, and those who do not fulfil their natural avocation, and who have no great interest coming into their lives to compensate for their lack of the natural sacraments of their sex are apt to become trivial, peevish and unhappy creatures. Into such a country village, seventeen miles from a railway station, Mr. Tinney arrives, a mature bachelor with a kindly heart, an affectionate disposition, and considerable wealth. The immediate result is that in a very few months nearly all the single women, mothers and daughters, and widows and spinsters, have fallen headover-ears in love with him. He has introduced a new interest into life. He is the eternal masculine who

profits by an artificial monopoly produced by the conditions of modern life. That he does not grossly abuse his position, and ultimately succeeds in carrying off the great prize of the county, is due to Sarah Grand's sound ideas as to the impossibility of making a hero of a man who does not place any limits upon the indulgence of his emotions. But the story of the way in which all unmated women cleave to him, bask in his smile, and consider that Paradise has come to earth again in the warmth of his genial presence, is very excellently told, and a very pathetic tale it is. Tinney himself, when expostulated with by the vicar as to this wholesale philandering, by which he laboriously endeavoured to act as handy man for a whole community of women, thus expresses himself in one of the most characteristic passages of his many discourses :—

"But my dear sir," Mr. Jellybond Tinney remonstrated, "that is my way of making myself agreeable. When I think of the paucity of men in this country-of all those who are drafted off as soldiers and sailors, for instance-and of these poor, dear women pining for them, I could turn Mohammedan, my dear sir. Tut! tut! I could indeed." Mr. Jellybond Tinney was so overcome with sympathy and indignation that he had to wipe his eyes.

"What has a woman to look forward to in life but her lovetime," he proceeded-" her little love-time? It's soon over, I assure you the best part of it. Women should all be allowed an aftermath of sentiment. It would really be better for most women if they had two husbands-one to minister to their spiritual necessities and their aspirations exclusively, and the other for the usual better-and-worse-till-death-us-do-part business. Ladies we know here in this neighbourhood are quite satisfied with their husbands as husbands; but the diviner side of their natures was starved until I came. What was my rôle? Why, benefactor of my species. The homes that I have made happy, the homes in which discontent once reigned, are er— numerous, I assure you. Women, women especially. There is only one way to benefit women. Love them. I love them all! Short or tall, fat or lean, ugly or beautiful, I love them, and I make love to them. Poor dears!" he exclaimed, "I should like to marry them all!"

Mr. Tinney is a very human man, and the women are not less human, and are some of them etched with very delicate and sympathetic pen. The moral of the whole thing is that the conditions of modern life should not put asunder those whom God hath joined together-a text which may be interpreted in a much wider sense than in relation to a single married couple.

* "Babs the Impossible." By Sarah Grand. Price 6s.

UP FROM SLAVERY.

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A NEGRO. FEW more interesting and instructive autobiographies have been published in recent years than Mr. Booker T. Washington's record of his career from slavery upwards. Mr. Booker Washington is one of the most remarkable men his race has ever produced. The work he is doing among the coloured people of the South in educating them to take their rightful place in American life, has met with the unstinted approval of Southerners and Northerners alike.

IN THE DAYS OF SLAVERY.

He

Mr. Booker Washington's own life-story, told with charming simplicity and humour in the pages of "Up from Slavery" (Doubleday, Page and Co., 6s.), is one of absorbing interest. He was born a slave on a Virginian plantation. His mother was the plantation cook. did not even know the name of his father. The little family grew up amidst all the surroundings of slavery. They lived in a miserable hovel, and were totally ignorant of even the rudiments of education. "I cannot remember having slept in a bed until our family was declared free," Mr. Washington says in recalling the memories of his early days. When he was old enough, he worked at the "big house," fanning flies from the table during meal-times. He was still very young when the slaves were liberated, and one of his earliest recollections is that of his mother leaning over him and kissing him, while the tears of joy streamed down her face, after the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation. The frantic joy of the negroes quickly gave place to misgivings. They had to fend for themselves, and the easy, lazy life of slavery was exchanged for the struggle for existence. Booker helped to support his family by working in the salt furnaces and the coal mines. He did not even know his alphabet. He was seized with an intense longing to read. He says, speaking of the first lesson he ever received :

;

:

The first thing I ever learned in the way of book knowledge was while working in the salt furnace. Each salt packer had his barrels marked with a certain number. The number allotted to my stepfather was "18." At the close of the day's work the boss of the packers would come round and put "18" on each of our barrels, and I soon learned to recognise that figure whenever I saw it, and after a while got to the point where I could make that figure, though I knew nothing about any other figures or letters.

THE STRUGGLE FOR AN EDUCATION.

After the emancipation throughout the South, the remarkable spectacle was witnessed of a whole race going to school for the first time. The young lad managed to learn his alphabet unaided from an old spelling-book which his mother had procured for him. Then a primitive school was started in his neighbourhood. He could not be spared from work by his stepfather, but by rising at four o'clock in the morning and working till nine he was able to slip away to school. In order not to be late at school he used to move forward the office clock half an hour. Young Washington soon exhausted the small stock of learning of the village schoolmaster, and determined to go to Hampton, where a negro college had been established. Scraping together all the money he could earn or save, the young lad started out on the five-hundred-mile tramp. His entrance examination took the peculiar form of a house-cleaning operation, for he had no funds with which to pay for his education, and was compelled to do so in labour. He was set to sweeping a room :I swept the recitation room three times.

Then I got a

dusting cloth and dusted it four times. All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table and desk I went over four times with my dusting cloth. Besides, every piece of furniture had been moved and every closet and corner in the room had been cleaned. I had the feeling that my future depended in a large measure upon the impression I made upon my teacher in the cleaning of that room.

HELPING OTHERS.

At Hampton, Booker Washington learned that labour was no disgrace, and came to love it for its own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. After he had secured his own education he at once turned his attention to the helping of his less-favoured brethren. When an application came from Tuskegee for a coloured teacher to take charge of a normal school for coloured people he was selected as the most capable man for the post. The school was in what is called the Black Belt-that portion of Alabama where the negroes are most thickly settled and where the antagonism between white and black was most likely to be accentuated. When Booker Washington arrived at the scene of his labours he found, that nothing had been provided. A ramshackle shanty and a dilapidated church were secured for the school buildings. Both were badly in want of repair, and the school was opened under somewhat trying conditions :

I recall that during the first months of the school that I taught in this building it was in such poor repair that, whenever it rained, one of the older students would very kindly leave his lessons and hold an umbrella over me while I heard the recitations of the others.

The school grew rapidly, and by hard work a farm building was taken over. Every inch of space was occupied, even the stable and the hen-house being utilised for recitation rooms.

Many students flocked to the new school in the hopes that they would be no longer called upon to work with their hands. They regarded education very much in the light of the old darkey who felt called upon to leave the cotton field for the pulpit. "O Lord," he exclaimed, "de cotton am so grassy, de work am so hard, and de sun am so hot, that I b'lieve dis darkey am called upon to preach." From the beginning Mr. Washington set before him an ideal of education which would turn out his students useful, if not indispensable, members of society. Their education was much more comprehensive than mere class work :

We wanted to teach the students how to bathe; how to care for their teeth and clothing. We wanted to teach them what to eat, and how to eat it properly, and how to care for their rooms. Aside from this, we wanted to give them such a practical knowledge of some one industry, together with the spirit of industry, thrift and economy, that they would be sure of knowing how to make a living after they had left us. We wanted to teach them to study actual things, instead of mere books alone. The forty buildings which make up the college have been entirely constructed by the students with the exception of four. They have done everything, from baking the bricks to fitting the electric light. The result is that all over the South there are scattered negroes who are experts in many handicrafts because of the practical training they have had at Tuskegee. It has been found if a negro does better work than his white competitor race prejudice is no barrier to prevent his employment.

Mr. Booker Washington has, by sheer force of character, devotion to duty, tact, and a genius for organisation, raised himself from an ignorant slave to a position among the foremost men of the United States.

A MODERN BOOK OF MARTYRS.

THE China Inland Mission has compiled a modern book of martyrs, under the title of " Martyred Missionaries," to commemorate the death of those who have perished in the China mission field during the Boxer uprising. No fewer than fifty-two men and women, and sixteen children, connected with the mission, died at their posts. Very few details of the deaths of these brave and devoted men and women are published. The mere record of the facts and a brief memorial by a friend or fellow-worker is all that is given. In the majority of cases the foreign missionaries appear to have been put to death speedily and without torture. The statements which have been made implying that the Boxers outraged their victims are declared to be untrue and without foundation. The most interesting thing about the many letters from missionaries, who have barely escaped with their lives, which are published in this volume, is the entire absence of any vindictive feeling against the Chinese as a whole or even those who were most active in persecuting. Again and again the missionaries speak in the highest terms of the assistance which many Chinese officials rendered them in their peril even at the risk of punishment and degradation. Although an Imperial edict expressly withdrawing all protection from foreigners was circulated, governors and mandarins privately warned the missionaries in many instances of their danger, provided them with an escort, and in other ways assisted them to make their escape to the coast. If the viceroys and governors of the greater part of China had not ignored the Imperial edicts there is small doubt but that the whole foreign community would have been exterminated. "The refugees from Shansi,” Dr. Griffith John testifies,

are loud in their praise of the treatment received by them from all the officials of Hupeh. It corresponds with testimony borne by all refugees from all parts to the kindness of the officials of this province." Wherever an anti-foreign official had supreme control, as in the province of Shansi, the Christians had no mercy shown them and were killed without remorse. The native Christians nobly stood by their teachers, and numbers suffered martyrdom for their devotion to their faith. The letters also bear witness to many kindly deeds done by individual Chinese in spite of the violent opposition of the Boxer rabble.

The narratives of those missionaries who escaped are full of thrilling interest. When the church and mission houses were burned and looted by infuriated mobs of Boxers the missionaries fled for their lives. For hundreds of miles they trudged to reach a place of safety, beaten from village to village by the angry villagers with stones and sticks. They were not allowed a minute's peace; they were continually face to face with death; they never knew which minute would be their last. Men, women, and children were stripped of their clothing, robbed of everything they possessed, and refused both food and shelter. It is not to be wondered at that several of the women and children died from wounds and exhaustion before they reached a place of safety. The following extract from the account of Mr. Charles Green gives a vivid idea of the torturing suspense which even those who eventually escaped had to live through day after day :

To die in the cave or outside was all the same to us, and after briefly committing each other to our faithful Creator we made our way through to the kitchen; not a soul could be seen through the open doorway, but as I stepped on the threshold I saw a man on each side against the wall, with their long ghastly swords uplifted. Stepping back for a moment to tell the

two ladies to be prepared (one of them his wife), I walked out with one of the children in my arms, the ladies following with the other child. We were immediately seized and the great knives brandished over our heads.

The missionaries utterly repudiate the charge that they were the cause of the troubles, excepting so far as the demands of the Roman Catholics for official recognition tended to increase the exasperation of the Boxers. The Protestant missionaries were martyred, not because they were missionaries, but because they were foreigners.

China and Her Mysteries.

THIS is the somewhat fanciful title of a little handbook which gives within the compass of one hundred and twenty pages a popular account of China and the Chinese. It is written by Mr. Alfred Stead and is introduced by a preface from Baron Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador in London. I am naturally much gratified to find that so distinguished an authority on the affairs of the Far East can thus refer to my son's book :

Careful readers of the work now presented to them by Mr. Stead will find all the prominent features of Chinese life lucidly set forth therein, and will be put in possession of knowledge that will greatly assist them to understand the general direction of the ideas and sentiments of those many hundred millions of Chinese who are now becoming an important factor in international politics.

The little book, which is published by Hood, Douglas, and Howard, of Clifford's Inn, bears the following dedication :-"I dedicate this book and all my life to her who has made all things possible and to whom I owe ali." In elucidation of which cryptic sentence some of our readers may be interested in knowing that its author is now honeymooning in Japan. He married Miss Elaine Hussey, of Indianapolis, on March 12th.

A Year in China.

MR. CLIVE BIGHAM had the good fortune to spend a year in China as Honorary Attaché to the Legation at Peking precisely at the moment when China occupied all men's minds. His descriptions of his travels contain little that is new, but they will be of interest to those who are not already saturated with literature on the Celestial Empire. His travels included journeys through the heart of China from north to south, and from the Yellow Sea to the Tibetan frontier. He also traversed Manchuria and Korea, returning to Tientsin in time to take part in Admiral Seymour's unsuccessful attempt to relieve the legations. He gives a detailed account of this expedition and of the nature of the opposition it had to contend with. The pictures with which "A Year in China" (Macmillan, 8s. 6d. net) is illustrated are much above the average in excellence, and add greatly to the attractiveness of the volume.

The Passing of Victoria.

MR. J. A. HAMMERTON has edited and Mr. Horace Marshall has published a daintily got up volume of verse, entitled "The Passing of Victoria: the Poets' Tribute." It is surprising to find how many poets have been moved to lament in verse the death of Victoria. This volume of one hundred and eighty pages is entirely filled with the versified laments. We have contributions from seventysix poets, but, strange to say, the collection does not include the Poet Laureate's poem. Alfred Austin is conspicuous by his absence. One of the best poems in the book is "The Queen's Last Ride," by Miss Wilcox.