26. Prince George laid at Canea the foundation-stone of the new Christian schools to be reconstructed at the expense of the Czar.

Colonel Lewis, commanding 10th Soudanese, attacked Ahmed Fedil when crossing the Nile cataracts near Roseires, 426 miles south of Khartoum. Five hundred Dervishes were killed and above 1500 taken prisoners, and the last Dervish army dispersed.

27. A violent south-westerly gale, accompanied by heavy rains, prevailed over the British Isles, causing great damage to property, interrupting the channel packet-service, and causing numerous wrecks round the coast.

The dossier secret of the Dreyfus trial communicated to the Court of Cassation under the strictest reserves to insure against its contents becoming known.

A landslip and snow avalanche from the San Rosso on the St. Gothard Pass destroyed the hotel and several adjacent houses at Airolo, and killed three persons. The ruins of the hotel subsequently took fire and spread to the other houses. The damage done was estimated at 1,000,000 francs.

28. Baron Banffy, the Hungarian Premier, having been challenged by M. Horansky, the leader of the Opposition, the seconds were unable to agree as to the terms of the duel. Eight duels were the result between the seconds and others who considered themselves aggrieved.

The municipality of Albi voted a subsidy of 12,000 francs to the Workmen's Glass Works, notwithstanding the protest of the Carmaux glassworkers against this appropriation of public money to a private industrial enterprise.

The Indian National Congress opened at Madras, under the presidency of Mr. A. M. Bose, of the Calcutta bar, and a Cambridge wrangler.

29. The opening proceedings of thirteen Austrian provincial diets marked by scenes of disorder, the Germans and Slavs minorities respectively preventing hostile motions proposed by the majority.

At a great meeting held at Bombay, attended by 5,000 Bohraz, accompanied by their high priest, who explained that there was nothing contrary to religion in Professor Haffnung's system of inoculation against the plague, and forthwith submitted himself and his son to the operation.

-The steamship Glen Avon, shortly after leaving Hong-Kong, struck on a rock and sank an hour later, and nearly twenty lives were lost.

30. Lord Curzon of Kedleston, the fifteenth Viceroy of the Queen's reign, arrived at Bombay, where he was warmly received by all sections of the community.

A wave of intense cold crossed the American continent from west to east, the temperature at St. Paul's, Minnesota, falling in one day from 56° to -16° below zero.

In consequence of a report on the condition of the Doge's Palace, at Venice, three of the halls were ordered to be evacuated, and the library of St. Mark's to be transferred to the Zecca.

30. The Chinese Government, notwithstanding the protests of the British minister, acceded to the French demands for an extension of the French exclusive settlement at Shanghai.

31. A heavy south-westerly wind raged along the south coast of England, doing considerable damage to shipping, and almost totally suspending the channel mail service.

A league, styled "La Patrie Française," founded in Paris under the leadership of prominent men in letters and science, with the nominal object of vindicating the Army, and of bringing about a pacification between contending parties, but including a number of persons notoriously ill-affected towards the republican form of govern

ment.

The Luzon insurgents assumed a threatening attitude toward the American officers who demanded the handing over of the island, the Spanish troops having completely evacuated it.

RETROSPECT

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART IN 1898.

LITERATURE.

To determine what conditions of public life are most favourable to literature is no easy matter, and it would perhaps be rash to assume, as many literary journals have assumed, that during 1898 the quantity and quality of the new books on the publishers' lists have suffered from political disturbances. Wars and rumours of wars, which were rife during the year, no doubt distract public attention from literature. On the other hand they are themselves, as in the case of the international complications in the Far East, or of the Egyptian Campaign, not unfrequently the direct cause of many additions to the list of publications; and so far as internal politics are concerned, there has been very little to hamper the ordinary activity of the publishing world. Yet it is certain that the output of books has slightly but distinctly declined in quantity, and it is equally certain that this decline is not compensated for by the appearance of a number of works of commanding interest or importance. Books of a biographical nature continue to form perhaps the most flourishing department of literature, but even here the two most striking publications came from abroad, and only appeared here as translations, viz., Dr. Moritz Busch's Bismarck: some Secret Pages of His History (Macmillan), and the great Chancellor's own story of his career, published under the title of Bismarck, the Man and the Statesman (Smith, Elder). A fact still more noticeable than the general slight decrease of publications is that that decrease has taken place so statistics appear to show-chiefly in works of fiction. This is satisfactory in view of the excessive number of novel-writers who have found some public during the last few years, though perhaps it is partly explained by the field which magazines now offer to the story-teller. And there is also cause for congratulation to be found in two other features which have marked the literature of the year-the large number of really useful, if not brilliant, works on history, philosophy, science, and especially literary criticism, which imply thought and industry; and the increasingly high standard of excellence which in the average marks works of imagination. Poetry, in particular, flows from the press in great abundance, and if not remarkable for power it undoubtedly shows a very wide and true appreciation of poetic form.

POETRY.

So far as poetry is concerned, the century now drawing to an end seems to represent something more than a mere division of time. It includes within its limits a distinct chapter in the history of English poetry, and now in its closing years, when the poets most characteristic of the great Victorian age are heard no more, there is little of importance to record, and we are waiting, as it were, for the opening music of the new century. Mr. Meredith's is perhaps the greatest name that has appeared on the title-page of a book of poems. His Odes in Contribution to the Song of French History (Constable) contains, besides new poems, one which had been first published many years before. The new odes, powerful in expression and lofty in conception as they are, are marked by an exuberant turgidity of diction and an excess of that rugged obscurity which is sometimes characteristic of this writer's prose writings. Mr. Davidson's The Last Ballad and other Poems (Lane), in which the title-piece tells a story culled from the Arthurian legend, displays the qualities which have always marked his work, a vigorous and fertile imagination, with a contempt for "correctness in technique. Two poets of high standing have collected their already published works without anything new in The Collected Poems by William Watson (Lane), and Poems by W. E. Henley (Nutt). Mr. Henry Newbolt also reissued his patriotic "Admirals All" with considerable additions under the title of The Island Race (Elkin Mathews).

A beautiful Pastoral Play called Pan and the Young Shepherd (Lane) was written by Mr. Maurice Hewlett, whose "Forest Lovers" had attracted much attention as a successful attempt to revive the old romance of chivalry. Another contribution to the "literary drama” was Mr. John Davidson's Godfrida (Lane), which contains many passages. of great beauty.

Among books by other writers whose poems have aroused some interest among literary people, and for whom the future may have something in store, we must mention briefly Poems by Stephen Phillips (Lane), a young poet of great promise; Mr. Laurence Housman's Spikenard (Grant Richards), a book of devotional Love Poems; Mr. Money Coutts' The Revelation of St. Love the Divine (Lane); "E. Nesbit's " Songs of Love and Empire (Constable); Mr. Lawrence Binyon's Porphyrion and other Poems (Grant Richards); The Shadow of Love (Duckworth), by Miss Margaret Armour; By Severn Sea (Murray), a scholarly collection of verse by Mr. T. H. Warren, the President of Magdalen College, Oxford; Mr. Edmond Holmes' The Silence of Love; and a pleasant book of country verse by Katharine Tynan Hinkson, called The Wind in the Trees (Grant Richards).

Two well-known novelists have stepped into the paths of poetry, Mr. Thomas Hardy and Mr. Conan Doyle. To those who know their other writings, the titles of these two books will sufficiently show that in both cases the poet follows the same lines as the novelist-Mr. Hardy wrote Wessex Poems (Harper), and Mr. Conan Doyle Songs of Action (Smith, Elder).

BELLES LETTRES.

The most valuable contribution to prose literature comes from Mr. Alfred Austin. In Lamia's Winter Quarters (Macmillan), a delightful sequel to "The Garden that I Love," the Laureate showed once more that his true gift lies in his power of interpreting the poetry of nature, and that, beautiful as are many of the lyrics contained in the volume, it is in poetic prose that he finds his most congenial medium of expression.

The essay as a form of literary composition has become more and more out of vogue. Mrs. Meynell is one of the few writers who attempt it, and her The Spirit of Place and other Essays (Lane), if somewhat wanting in depth and sincerity, is marked by a highly cultivated taste, a delicate appreciation of fine shades of feeling, and a consistent love of the choice phrase.

Mr. Leslie Stephen in his Studies of a Biographer (Duckworth) shows to the full his varied learning and high critical power. The University Addresses (Maclehose) of the late Principal of Glasgow University were edited by his brother, Dr. John Caird, the Master of Balliol, and contain much suggestive matter, clothed in a style of dignified eloquence, on a variety of subjects connected with university studies. Mr. I. Zangwill in Dreamers of the Ghetto (Heinemann) unveils something of the mystery of the world of Jewish life and tradition. A witty book which achieved considerable success was published anonymously under the title of Pages from a Private Diary (Smith, Elder). So much interest attaches to what Mr. Rudyard Kipling writes that we must chronicle here his excursion outside the realm of fiction and poetry in A Fleet in Being (Macmillan), a series of vivid descriptive sketches of life on board a man of war.

In the realms of criticism, Shakespearian literature has received one or two important additions. A Life of Shakespeare (Smith, Elder), containing a most complete and accurate account of the present state of our knowledge of the poet's career, was written by Mr. Sidney Lee, the editor of the "Dictionary of National Biography". The controversy which has so long raged on the subject of the sonnets has revived during the year, and Mr. Lee had a new theory, which he produced good reasons for accepting, as to the identity of "Mr. W. H. the only begetter" of them. Mr. George Wyndham showed both good taste and good sense in a scholarly edition of The Poems of Shakspeare (Methuen).

The only other work of real note dealing with a single English author was a book on Dickens in the "Victorian Era Series" (Blackie), a very original and thoughtful study from the pen of a writer who is himself a well-known novelist, Mr. G. Gissing.

A good many books on Dante have appeared, among which a special place should be accorded to Dante's Ten Heavens (Constable), in which Mr. E. G. Gardner met a want in providing a readable and yet scholarly guide to the student of the "Paradiso," and to a Dante Dictionary (Clarendon Press), compiled by a recognised authority on Dante, Mr. Paget Toynbee.

There has been a large output of literary histories. Professor Saints