THE NOUVELLE REVUE. MADAME JULIETTE ADAM gives the place of honour in her June 1st number to Prince Albert Monaco, who, as is well known, has devoted a considerable portion of his enormous fortune to maritime explorations. In a four-page article he discusses the proposed English Channel Bridge which I noticed last month when it appeared in an English Review.

A NEW NOVELIST.

In the same number ends the Recollections of the Italian painter, Joseph de Nitis; and M. E. Tissot contributes an appreciative account of the new French novelist, Paul Margueritte, a delicate and earnest writer, whose work gives a truer picture of modern Continental life than is generally to be found in the pages of contemporary French story-tellers. Paul Margueritte is the eldest son of the famous General of that name who was killed at the battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War. The future novelist was born in Algiers just thirty-four years ago, and, as was but natural, the two terrible years, 1870-71, made a profound impression on his young imagination. In deference to his mother's wish he abandoned all thought of becoming a soldier, and entered one of the public offices. His first literary work was a realistic study, not unlike the work belonging to the school founded by Zola. But although remaining personally intimate with the great writer, he soon disavowed his methods, and was one of the five young authors who wrote a protest against their master's methods when the latter published "La Terre." Of his later books, "Ma Grande" and "Sur le Retour" may be quoted as among the best types of French novels, and worthy to take place with the works of Alphonse Daudet.

A LADY IN TIMBUCTOO.

Madame Paul Bonnetain continues and concludes her interesting account of her voyage through Timbuctoo. According to this lady, a constant trade is done in human flesh and blood, and she herself bought, for the sum of £7, and gave to her little daughter, a young girl slave. Belvinda turned out a good investment, she is still devoted to her mistress, and on the party's return from the Niger some months later, the first words said by the doctor, who had once examined the little slave, were, "This is not Belvinda, you must have bought another child," so great a physical change had been wrought in the child by the good food and kind treatment which she had received.

A VENETIAN ASPASIA.

The most interesting article in the June 15th number deals with the life of a Venetian courtesan who seems to have played a considerable part in the Italian world of art and letters during the Renaissance. M. Rodocan chi gives a vivid and exceedingly pathetic picture of this Veronica Franco, who was, according to her biographer, no mean poetess, and who has left behind her one of the most eloquent and terrible warnings to those tempted to follow her evil example ever written. Her reputation for beauty, grace, and learning spread through all Europe, and travellers through Italy went far out of their way in order to catch a glimpse of "the adorable nymph of the Adriatic." Veronica was born in the year 1546, and died comparatively young, leaving her fortune to various religious institutions. But even before she had repented and seen the error of her ways, she realised so clearly and dispassionately the dangers which surrounded her that on one occasion she offered to give a considerable sum of money in order to save the daughter of one of her friends from the fate which had befallen

herself. "Allow me," she said in a letter which has been preserved, "to show you the dangers you are now courting. You know how many times I have counselled you to take care of your daughter. When you brought her to see me, her hair dyed yellow, and she much embellished, the sight gave me great pain. .. Believe me there is no existence so miscrable, so deplorable as that of a courtesan. . . . There are no riches, no delights, no advantages which can compensate for such a sacrifice. Believe me of all human calamities that of being obliged to live in this fashion is the worst, and joined to that is the thought that after all the sufferings we undergo in this world, we shall also be most terribly punished in the next."

Veronica definitely renounced her evil career at the age of forty, and even at one time thought of starting a religious order. She died in 1591, and to this day her verses, especially those in praise of Venice, take a considerable place in Italian literature.

M. Dargène describes a visit to St. Helena, and tells once more the story of Napoleon I.'s exile, imprisonment, and death.

Other articles consist of some recollections of Skobeleff's

campaign, 1880-1, by a Russian naval officer, A. de Mayer; a review of the causes which have led to the estrangement of France and Italy, by J. Caponi; and an article on "6 Past and Present French Parish Rights," by

M. G. E. Simon.

THE REVUE DE PARIS. ELSEWHERE will be found noticed M. de Coubertin's article on "Athletic Sports at Home and Abroad." The June numbers of this, the youngest of the French reviews, are less interesting than usual, if we except the fiction, which is of a high order.

THE CHARACTER OF THE NATIONS.

The best article in the June 1st number consists of some extracts from the diary kept by a French student, M. Jean Breton, in Germany. This young man, who has a pretty gift for language, gives a bright and pleasant picture of life in Heidelberg and Berlin, especially of the famous Vereins, or social clubs, which play so great a part in Germany. According to the worthy Frau in whose house he boarded, English students are not held in high honour in foreign universities. "The English," she observed, "are all selfish. When there is any jam or butter on the tables, they take it all, and leave none for the others; apart from this, their behaviour is fairly good. The French are very amiable and witty, but they are not serious, and come in very late at night. The best of all are the Americans, who are correct, good-natured, simple, and straightforward." "And the Russians, madame?" "Do not speak to me of Russians-they are dirty people!" M. Breton noted with astonishment the extraordinary knowledge of French possessed by the German nation, and also the hero worship of Bismarck. He declares that the Professors even quote the ex-Chancellor when giving their lectures.

PRISONERS' AID SOCIETIES.

In the same number M. Rivière contributes an important article on the various French Prisoners' Aid Societies. It seems that there existed in the Middle Ages various associations which had for their end that of extending spiritual and material assistance to those in prison, and Molière makes Tartuffe boast of visiting prisoners. But for a long period after the Revolution little or nothing was done to help discharged prisoners, and it

was not till 1875 that a serious effort was made to deal with the question.

In England, points out M. Rivière, there exist fiftyseven Prisoners' Aid Societies, one of which can boast of the Queen as President. In Sweden the King himself took the matter in hand, and it is there that the penal system is best organised, if we except Holland and Belgium; in Sweden a home also exists for ticket-ofleave women. In Germany there have been for a long time various organisations which differ only in_name from their Swedish and English prototypes. The French society is presided over by M. Beranger, a distinguished Senator and philanthropist. Owing to his efforts, three ex-prisoners' homes are now being worked with most satisfactory results. There an ex-convict is given food and shelter till he can find employment. During the last ten years three thousand discharged prisoners, men and women, have been helped in this manner. Another society of the same kind proceeds somewhat differently and gives all its energies to procuring situations for its protéges. The Huguenots have not been behindhand in the good work, both Pastor Robin and Madame Henri Mallet, the wife of the well-known Protestant banker, taking an active part in the good work.

OTHER ARTICLES.

In the June 15th number Commandant Peroz gives a vivid picture of war in the Soudan, and winds up with the following significant passage: "Thanks to the fashion in which native warfare is conducted even the conquerors may be said to be in some ways the conquered. . . for what remains to us? A blackened and barren soil which native labour can alone make fertile." M. Peroz has evidently no belief in the future colonisation of the French Soudan.

M. Rebelliau attempts to give a new reading of the complex personality of Richelieu's Fidus Achates, Père Joseph, perhaps the greatest diplomatist of his day, and a man whose lack of personal ambition gave him a strange security and power.

The Comte de Circourt, one of the few survivors of the French navy of 1829, contributes a charming review of the Prince de Joinville's lately published Recollections. But his few pages are interesting mainly because of the assurances they contain of the Comte de Chambord's more than friendly feelings toward the Orleans family. M. de Circourt, an old and valued friend of "Henri V.," quotes at some length a conversation held with the master of Frohsdorf in 1854, and which, if accepted as true by the Bourbon Legitimists, should lead to their complete reconciliation with the Comte de Paris and his claims to the French throne.

Other articles in the Revue de Paris deal with the political policy of Leo XIII., the newly discovered Greek Hymn to Apollo, Baron Haussez's Souvenirs, and a critical essay on Baudelaire by G. Rodenbach,

THE ART MAGAZINES.

THE art magazines maintain their usual level of excellence. The July Art Journal has an etching, "A Surrey Landscape," after Mr. Vicat Cole, and a sonnet by Mr. William Sharp, ." The Peace of Summer," is a reproduction in colours after C. Bernamont. Mr. Walter Armstrong again writes on "The Tate Collection," and Mr. Edmund Gosse on the "The New Sculpture." Another writer defends the expenditure on instruction in art at South Kensington; there are articles on the Royal Academy, and Miss Hepworth-Dixon gives an interest

ing reminiscence of Miss Henrietta Montalba, whose premature death is a great loss to sculpture.

The Magazine of Art for July gives an etching, "Homewards," after Fritz von Uhde, the German painter of peasant life and of religious pictures. Mr. John Brett criticises Raphael's cartoons, and Mr. Spielmann writes on the Sculptor's "Ghost." The article most worthy of attention, however, is a brief discussion of the various schemes for enlarging Westminster Abbey. The question is still an open one, but Mr. H. P. Burke Downing, the writer, thinks the site which will ultimately be chosen is that to the south-east of the Chapter-House, while Mr. Pearson's suggested chapel on the Refectory site is the one to which Mr. Yates Thompson has recently offered to contribute £38,000.

In the Studio (June 15), the price of which went up to eightpence a month or two ago, we have articles on "Stencilling as an Art," by Mr. E. F. Strange; "Dry Point Etchings by Helleu," by Mr. G. P. Jacomb-Hood; "The Colouring of Sculpture," by Mr. G. Frampton and by Mr. M. Webb, etc. An auto-lithograph, "A Study in Movement," by Mr. R. Anning Bell, is included in the number.

The New England Magazine.

THE June number of this magazine contains the best account of General Neal Dowe that I have yet seen. There are two articles which will be of great interest to students of political evolution, entitled "Government by Commissions." In Massachusetts twenty-two permanent commissions have been appointed since 1870. Before that date only nine existed. The advantage of government by commission is that it secures the voluntary and unpaid services of a class of men and women whose labour could not otherwise be obtained. These commissions deal with charities, savings banks, labour statistics, police, free libraries, and I know not what else. A more popular article, and one which is copiously illustrated, deals with "The Telephone of To-day." It is the best account of the telephonic system which has appeared in the magazines for some time past.

The Arena.

THE Arena for June begins the first number of its tenth volume with a frontispiece of Victor Hugo, and a copiously illustrated paper on "The Back Bay of Boston," the wealthiest part of the capital of New England. Mr. Hamlin Garland writes with much enthusiasm on the attempt of New Zealand to apply the principle of the single tax. Rabbi Schindler pleads for the nationalisation of electricity. Mr. Paul Tyner gives directions for the development of the sixth sense, extracts from which will be found in the new number of Borderland. Mr. Flower writes on "The Social Ideals of Victor Hugo," and in the books reviewed publishes a very appreciative notice of If Christ Came to Chicago." Professor L. W. Batten has a paper on "The Higher Criticism of the Hexateuch." The supplement dealing with the Union for Practical Purposes is full of interest. The Secretary of the New York Vigilance League mentions, among other instances of the comparative barbarism of America, the absence of any public lavatories. He says that Birmingham has 96, Liverpool 222, whereas Boston has only twenty-one, Philadelphia six, New York five, and Chicago none. Three-fourths of the people of New York live in tenement houses. For eight months in the year no one can take a swimming bath in New York, whereas Birmingham has five public swimming baths open all the year round.

SOME ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINES.

English Illustrated Magazine. THE English Illustrated Magazine has as its frontispiece a very beautiful female face-Glycera-by N. Prescott Davies. Among the more notable articles may be noted "The Humours of the Duchy of Cornwall," by "Q." "Lincoln's Inn Fields, Past and Present," by Robert Hunter, is another paper of a similar kind. Eva Bright's description of her experience as an organ-grinder is interesting. She blistered her hands and wore the shoes off her feet, and when she got home her wrists ached badly. Lady Jeune writes on "Conversation in Society," and contrives to say nothing in particular. Alan Cole's paper on "Tapestry" is illustrated with several wellknown tapestries, and the rest of the magazine is filled with the usual assortment of fiction, good, bad, and indifferent.

Harper's Magazine.

THE most notable illustrations in Harper's for July are the fifteen little pictures which Mr. Du Maurier contributes to illustrate his novel "Trilby." Mr. Charles Dudley Warner begins a new serial, entitled "The Golden House," which is illustrated by W. T. Smedley. There is an interesting gossipy paper on the domestic life of American presidents, under the title "The President at Home." The paper describing the making of great guns at an American naval factory is very much like a paper upon Woolwich arsenal or Lord Armstrong's works at Elswick. "The Editor in his Study notes that woman suffrage has become fashionable in society, and attributes it very largely to the influence of the World's Fair. Somehow, he says, after the experience of work at the great exhibition teus of thousands of women who had been organising congresses and assemblies and discharging semi-public functions found it very dull to go back to their old lives, and so have therefore rushed into politics. Certainly politics in America have much more need of them than they of politics.

The Century.

PERHAPS the most striking' illustrations in this number. are those by J. W. Taher of "The Flying Dutchman," "The Phantom Burning Ship," "St. Elmo's Fire," and other phantasms of sailors' superstition. Mr. Harry Fenn's pictures accompanying Mr. Marion Crawford's "Coasting by Sorrento and Amalfi " are models of clear and beautiful engraving. Messrs. Ellwanger and Robinson contribute a jubilee retrospect of the German Punch, the Fliegende Blätter, which was started in 1844 in Munich by Caspar Braun and Friedrich Schneider. Characteristic specimens of its comic art are reproduced. A portrait of T. W. Parsons, for whose poetry Mr. Aldrich prophesies lasting and growing fame, forms the frontispiece. Mr. A. F. Matthews gives a glowing account of the U. S. battleship Indiana, which cost, by-the-bye, just half as much as the territory of Alaska, and very nearly (fourteen-fifteenths) as much as Louisiana. Mr. J. Van Dyke discusses the pictures at the World's Fair, and finds them only intensify the impression made by the pictures at Paris in 1889. "In the older countries of Europe the changes have been few, but with Scandinavia at the North and America in the West, they have been sudden and rather brilliant." The book of our art has just been opened." Dr. Albert Shaw's study of "Municipal Housekeeping in Germany "and M. Antonin Dvorák's paper on "Franz Schubert" claim separate notice.

Ludgate Illustrated Magazine.

THIS magazine publishes a rather gruesome story entitled "The Dead-Shot Gunner, a Legend of the Field Artillery." The story forms the subject of the frontispiece, which represents the unfortunate gunner shooting himself from the cannon into the grave he had dug for his corpse. Mr. James Payn, of the Cornhill Magazine, is the subject of Mr. Joseph Hatton's sketch in the series entitled "Pens and Pencils of the Press." There is an illustrated paper devoted to Champion Dogs and another describing Highgate School. The paper describing "Rambles Through England," deals with the country round about Torquay.

The Idler.

IN the Idler, Dr. Bowdler Sharpe writes an article entitled "Some Humours of Bird Life." Nearly all the illustrated papers go in now for the humorous side of natural history; witness for instance the "Zig-zags” in the Strand, which seem as if they would never come to an end. A paper entitled "A Saunter through Somerset" is illustrated by a number of photographs of bits of scenery which are much better printed than usual. The Idlers' Club takes as its theme for discussion whether or not a substitute can be found for swearing. Robert Barr, J. Gordon, and several head masters express their opinions, and Dr. Parker sums up by declaring that the swearer is akin to the mad dog!

Scribner.

THERE is a strong flavour of summer and holiday about the July number, which opens suggestively enough with a copiously illustrated sketch of the North Shore of Massachusetts. Carl Lumholtz's researches "Among the Tarahumaris, the American Cave-dwellers," furnish a curious travel-paper. E. L. Week's pictures of Beasts of Burden, and A. B. Frost's "types" of American workingmen, may also be mentioned. The frontispiece is a fine reproduction of Flameng's "The French in Holland." The journal kept by the late Dr. Schaff during the Gettysburg week, when the war swept over his seminary, which was only some forty miles from the great battlefield, is exceedingly vivid.

McClure's Magazine.

THE first place in the June number of this magazine is given to Mr. Hamlin Garland's somewhat lurid account of his visit to Homestead. A great deal that he says would equally well apply to any large English ironworks, although we gather from Mr. Garland's description that the work at Homestead is more trying than it is here. General Greely discusses the question as to whether or not the present Arctic expeditions will reach the Pole. It is somewhat slight, and not very hopeful. The Polar icecap which lies immediately north of the Behring Sea will always, he thinks, dominate the Polar Ocean. Mr. Cleveland Moffet has an excellently illustrated article on "Wild Beasts in Captivity."

paradox it was, that book-how delightfully characteristic of the topsy-turvydom of the new order! Who could have foreseen that the new, and in many respects the most distinctive note of the literature of the last decade of the nineteenth century, would be sounded by a little chit of a girl reared in the solemn stillness of the Karoo, in the solitude of the African bush? The Cape has indeed done yeoman's service to the English-speaking world. To that pivot of the Empire we owe our most pronounced type of the Imperial Man and of the Emancipated Woman. It is not impossible that when the twentieth century dawns there will be few to dispute the fact that Cecil Rhodes and Olive Schreiner present the most characteristic and distinctive representatives of the genius of the English-speaking world; the man and the woman who, for good and for evil in their respective vocations, have stamped the signet of their character most deeply upon the plastic thought of the coming generation.

Last month Olive Schreiner sent me, with kindly greeting, a picture of an African farm. It represents her husband and herself counting the sheep on the Karoo in the early morning, watched meanwhile by a congregation of sedate and stately ostriches. It is a pretty idyll of that free natural life for which the desertborn has always pined, and in which alone she is really at home. Far from the madding crowd, in the radiant solitude of the South African Karoo, where merely to breathe the air is an intoxication of life, Olive Schreiner conceived the story, the influence of which, confessed or unconfessed, can be seen or felt in all the literature of the Modern Woman. The chapter "Lyndall” contains the germ and essence of all the fiction of the Revolt, expressed with a sanity and a restraint which are not always conspicuous in those who come after. For Olive Schreiner, unlike most insurgents, is no mere rebel, too hot with the heat of the barricade to forget the justice of the judge, nor does she, while demanding human rights for her sex, set wrong to balance wrong by pretending to see nothing that is weak and faulty among those whose cause she pleads. This moderation is her strength, for we seem to be listening to the summing up of the judge rather than to the pleading of the advocate.

UNDER THE CURSE?

The first note of the novel of the Modern Woman is the recognition of the fundamental fact that in society as at present constituted woman has the worst of it. This fact, as obvious as the sun at mid-heaven, has hitherto been conventionally denied. In face of the undisputed conviction of every living male that he would regard it as a change for the worse to be born of the opposite sex, it is an amazing illustration of the power of makebelieve that it actually strikes many readers as a startling and daring assertion when Lyndall calmly remarks that "this one thought stands-never goes-if I might but be one of those born in the future, then, perhaps, to be born a woman will not be to be born branded." That they are so born now, is so true that, speaking as a man, I always feel as if every human being born a woman owed Nature a grudge. The whole woman movement of to-day may be summed up in Lyndall's aspiration. Woman at the end of the nineteenth century demands, just as man demanded at the close of the eighteenth, the opening of the career to all who have talents, without distinction of caste or sect or sex. Because Nature has handicapped Woman adversely is a reason for handicapping her favourably by law and custom. But that is not demanded, even by the Modern Woman. All that she asks is that the

natural disabilities of her sex should not be artificially aggravated by the arbitrary interdicts, restrictions, and vetoes of the other sex. Woman, in short, claims the rights, the privileges, the opportunities, and the responsibilities of a human being. Woman has a mind, and it may be, strange though it may seem, an immortal soul, and therefore with as much right to live her own life and save her own soul as if she had not inherited the sex of Mother Eve.

HER MEDITATIONS ON MARRIAGE AND MOTHERHOOD..

But this in no wise involves or implies any forgetting of her sex, of her destiny, and of her duty as the mother of the race. So far from this being the case, it will be seen that in almost every case the novels of the modern woman are pre-occupied with questions of sex, questions of marriage, questions of maternity. To be a mother is and always will be the chief responsibility, the crowning glory of woman. So far from ignoring this, the novel of the modern woman dismays Mrs. Grundy by taking marriage seriously. Marriage may not be the only object of a woman's existence, but it is a chief element in her life, and the indispensable condition of the perpetuation of the race. Marriage, then, is no longer a mere affair of trousseaux and of bridesmaids, of finding an eligible parti, and being provided with board and lodging

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for life. It is much more an affair of cradles and of nurseries, a question involving grim and terrible questions of heredity, and imposing weighty responsibilities of training and education. Therefore," cries the modern woman, "let me know and understand, and allow me at least an equal right in deciding upon shaping the conditions of the new life, which I have to take a predominant share in fashioning before birth and in training afterwards." And nowhere in our fiction is this cry more clearly and more calmly urged than in the "African Farm." If woman is to suffer and to be sacrificed to the new generation which she must nurse at her breast, she must know and understand all that marriage involves, all that maternity demands.

HER REVOLT AGAINST LOVELESS WEDLOCK.

The third great note of the Modern Woman novel is the revolt against monogamic prostitution, or sex union without love, endured for the sake of economic advantage, or indulged for the satisfaction of mere animal appetite. And here also Olive Schreiner strikes the true key with firm and unfaltering finger. Every one has read Lyndall's discourse to Waldo, but all of us will be better for reading it again. It is a marvellous compendium of all the ideas struggling in the brain and finding expression in the life, the writings, and the acts of the Modern Woman.

WHAT OLIVE SCHREINER SAYS.

We were equals once when we lay new-born babes on our nurse's knees. We will be equals again when they tie up our jaws for the last sleep.

Mark you," she said, "we have always this advantage over you-we can at any time step into ease and competence, where you must labour patiently for it. A little weeping, a little wheedling, a little self-degradation, a little careful use of our advantages, and then some man will say, Come, be my wife!' With good looks and youth marriage is easy to attain. There are men enough; but a woman who has sold herself, even for a ring and a new name, need hold her skirt aside for no creature in the street; they both earn their bread in one way. Marriage for love is the beautifullest external symbol of the union of souls; marriage without it is the uncleanliest traffic that defiles the world." She ran her little finger savagely along the topmost bar, shaking off the dozen little dewdrops that still hung there. "And they tell us we have men's chivalrous attention!" she