workmanship, that Mr. H. B. Marriott Watson becomes a strong exhibit for the romancers. To begin with, he knows how to construct a story; and, to finish, he knows how to write one. His "Galloping Dick," a collection of tales of the road, was, as far as we are aware, the first of his notable efforts in this direction. His narration of the several "Episodes in the Life of Richard Ryder, Otherwise Galloping Dick, Sometime Gentleman of the Road," included in the little collection referred to, seemed to a number of discriminating readers to presage a future for Mr. Marriott Watson, whosoever he might be. He had the manner of the romancer, and he had the material which the romancer needs, and he had the art. These all shone conspicuously in "Galloping Dick," and one naturally looked forward to the author's next work. This has come in the story The Adventurers.1 Here again the author has indicated his power to hold the attention of those who read him, and to impress them, if so be they are of a critical inclination, with the workmanliness of his essay. Anthony Hope set the fashion of placing a mediæval romance in the nineteenth century, but he did this by conjuring up a mythical country which he called Ruritania. It is in no sense deprecatory of Mr. Hope's work to say that an author with a certain amount of imagination can do anything he chooses with an imaginary country. It becomes a republic, an empire, a despotism, anything he pleases, according to his whim, in so far as it exists only in his own mind; and Mr. Hope has been singularly restraintful in dealing with a land that is to be found nowhere on the map. On the other hand, Mr. Marriott Watson has dared to write of a sixteenth-century situation in the late eighties of this nineteenth century, and to place the scene of action in a section of England not entirely unknown to those who have travelled. Here treasure is to be found, and the extraordinary behavior of those on the scent form the burden of Mr. Watson's story. The hero, Greatorex, starting out to make a fortune, becomes the unexpected heir of landed property, for which he is offered £20,000 within twenty-four hours of his knowledge of the fact. Certainly, even in these days of fabulous fortunes, this ought to be sufficient for the most grasping of adventurers. As a man of sixteenth-century instincts, however, Greatorex aspires to more; and how he fails to get it, and in the end finds himself where he was at the beginning, minus some sleep and a good bit of blood and much vigor, Mr. Marriott Watson tells. It is not too much to say that the story is such that any modern romancer might well have wished that he had written it.

ANOTHER Striking exhibit for the cause of the romancers is provided by Mr. S. R. Crockett

1 The Adventurers. A Novel. By H. B. MARRIOTT WATSON. Illustrated by AI KELLER. Post 8vo, Cloth, $150. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

in his thrilling story The Red Axe. From first to last this is essentially a story of action, and those who are of that pleasant and good old-fashioned habit of identifying themselves with the heroes or heroines of whom they read will do well to finish the book at one sitting, lest, sleeping over the complications besetting Hugo and the beautiful Helene, they find themselves the victims of nightmare of most soul-harrowing quality. From the moment of her first appearance amid scenes of blood, the young woman is sore beset, at first by the trials which are inevitable for a maiden in love pretending that she is not, and later, as the story progresses, by the more nerve-disturbing troubles which are the result of unscrupulous intrigue against her safety and honor by those who are either jealous of her lover or hopelessly enamoured of her beauty. The hero Hugo is a sturdy figure, vigorous and aggressive, yet, when occasion requires, capable of betraying small weaknesses which show that he is, after all, human, and not a puppet clad in the immaculate armor of impossible virtue. Mr. Crockett has studied his romance thoroughly, and, it may be suspected, his human nature as well, and he has succeeded in making of his Hugo a most admirably living cavalier. He does not compel him to do the impossible to create an effect, but he requires him to face an extraordinary amount of danger, and in such a fashion withal that it all seems to be the very thing nature herself intended the young man to do. Had it been otherwise, the unfortunate Ysolinde, a sort of fortunetelling villainess, for whom the reader acquires, as her character unfolds itself, a somewhat terrified sympathy, would have found Hugo an easy prey to her wiles, which her personal charms re-enforced to an alarming extent, and before which many a man of less heroic mould would have fallen early in the combat.

Both the fighting and the loving are well handled in "The Red Axe," and while one breathes more freely when all the villains are slain and the young couple come into their own, with every prospect of happiness ahead, one is apt to regret that a new crop of adventurers without morals and of bloodthirsty inclinations might not have been conjured up to keep Hugo and his Princess on the anxious seat for a dozen more chapters.

HOWEVER the peace loving citizen may choose between the opposing schools of fiction, there can be no doubt that for his own living he prefers the calmer mode of existence. Few, if indeed any, of us would care personally to find ourselves confronted by the conditions of life which prevailed under the reign of the Duke Casimir, in the story of the "Red Axe.”. Man has developed a habit of enjoying peaceful surroundings, and of feeling moderately

2 The Red Are. A Novel. By S. R. CROCKETT. Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 50. New York aud London: Harper and Brothers.

secure in his own home. He lies in no especial fear to-day of a murderous onslaught from anybody, least of all from his rulers, and he may be said to enjoy the immunity; yet there is more nervous prostration among us to-day than there seems to have been in the days of which Mr. Crockett writes. Just what this proves that we of to-day may felicitate ourselves upon is not clear. Certainly most of us would prefer nervous prostration to an ever-present fear that a rascally knight, followed by a mob of even more rascally men-at-arms, should swoop down upon us while we were enjoying our after-dinner cigar in the bosom of our respective families. As a matter of fact, we of to-day cannot but marvel how these heroes and heroines of ancient times escaped that baffling disease which the French called Americanitis. One can scarcely imagine a man or woman of our own time going through the turmoil of an onslaught such as that of which our romancers of the Crockett order write, without bringing up ultimately against the walls of a padded cell.

It may be that in the ancient days what golf is to us having one's family kidnapped and one's own throat ent was to the people of that time. It may be that as golf mitigates, if it does not entirely dispel, our nervous prostration, so in mediæval times the mere act of being routed out of bed after midnight to keep one's household gods intact and to retain possession of one's family lent vigor and health and brought happiness and prosperity to the old-timers. It may be that the old-timers liked that sort of thing, and if they did, we of to-day must be glad that they got it. But we of today, on the whole, prefer golf. It may separate families, but it does not destroy them, and to that extent are we the happier, although it is hardly to be expected that the romancers of the ages to come will find in our exploits on the links quite as much material that will prove exciting to their readers as those of this latter end of the nineteenth century find in the exploits of the midnight marauder of the good old times.

Golf, however, for us, possesses much charm in fiction, because it is by degrees becoming so much of a factor in our daily lives, and the fictionist who takes note of this fact is certain of an ultimate reward. Among the first to do this is Mr. W. G. van Tassel Sutphen, who some months ago put forth a collection of clever tales of the fair green under the title of "The Golficide." This he has now followed up with The Golfer's Alphabet,3 which Mr. A. B. Frost has illustrated with that same rare and rich humor which he brings to bear upon everything he touches. It is in no spirit of depreciation of the merit of Mr. Sutphen's work in "The Golfer's Alphabet " that one observes that the greatest charm of the little volume

3 The Golfer's Alphabet. Illustrations by A. B. FROST. Rhymes by W. G. VAN T SUTPHEN. 4to, Illuminated Boards, $1 50. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

lies in the pictures. Without these Mr. Sutphen's verses would be little more than of that variety of poem which the critic calls fugitive. With them they become entirely worthy of covers, as the bookmen say. No one need pick up the book with the notion that he is to learn anything about the ancient and royal game. "The Golfer's Alphabet" is in no sense the Alphabet of Golf. But one may take it in hand confident that he will extract from it many a good laugh, if he has any sense of humor at all. Those who consider golf a fad will enjoy it, because to their eyes it will seem to poke fun at the golfiac. Those who play badly without knowing it will enjoy it because they will consider it a good joke on the other fellow, and the real golfer, who has got beyond the point where he is at all sensitive about his beloved diversion, will find it a pleasing companion "between holes," because he will recognize in the work of artist and author the touch of two who are in keenest sympathy with all that is virtuous in the game, and who have the most good-natured tolerance of all that is villanous therein-and that it has both its virtues and its villanies is the thing that makes of golf so human a game.

Mr. Sutphen is to be congratulated upon the inspiration which led him to prepare a foundation of verse for the highly interesting superstructure which Mr. Frost has built upon it. Mr. Frost is to be congratulated on having made a "stroke" so wholly worthy of the "lie" Mr. Sutphen has given him.

A DISTINGUISHED gentleman, of much wit, and high standing as a poet, once observed that the proper study of mankind is man. This dictum of Alexander Pope has stood the test of years, and within the past twenty has been received with such marked consideration that a large number of persons have gone deeply into the question of how mankind may study man scientifically. The conclusions of these investigators have, of course, been various, but the general trend has been toward a common proposition that a thoroughly scientific course in man must begin with the child, man having been a child at some period of his life. Some extremists have maintained that even infancy is not a sufficiently early period at which to begin the process, and these have delved somewhat into the principles of heredity and prenatal environment; but this would seem like the starting of an endless chain, stretching backward into the past to Father Adam and Mother Eve, and beyond them to the link that has escaped us, and at each step becoming more variously complicated.

The study of a child, however, from the moment it becomes a material fact in life, and breathes, and shows a sense of the discomforts of existence, and manifests a capacity to resent certain ills for which it is not responsible and which it has not deserved, seems to be a reasonable and useful field of endeavor for the specu

lative mind; and for so long a time as the speculative mind interests itself in real children, and not in theoretical ones, the conclusions reached may be considered to be of value. The abstract child may be a comfortable sort of young person for a philosopher to get along with, but he becomes, after all, an impossible creature upon whom to base any definite conclusion having scientific worth. The real child, the aggressive boy or the active girl, studied sympathetically by one who regards children as worth while, and not as necessary evils for the prolongation of the race, becomes a premise worthy of any logician's attention.

It is such a study as this that Mrs. Louise E. Hogan has given us in her book, A Study of a Child. It is manifest from the outset that the author regards children as they should be regarded, not as young bundles of savage propensities and dangerous possibilities, inferior, and needing drastic treatment, but as beings deserving of respect; having rights which their elders may not override at will, and tending more toward good than toward evil. Every parent who cares for his offspring must find in Mrs. Hogan's attitude throughout something which touches a responsive chord, and marvel as well at her patience in observing so closely, and for so long a period of years, in the boy of her pages, so many seemingly trivial details, all of which, however, when gathered together, form a work of undoubted value to the scientific investigator of the ways of the young. It is to be regretted that the early chapters show some lack of careful preparation, in that the text presents certain contradictions, which, while not particularly important in themselves, may lead the hypercritical reader to doubt the accuracy of the study as a whole. It does not matter much, of course, whether a small youth pronounces the 7 in clock for the first time on July 18 or on October 20 in his third year of existence, but when the diarist states that he did it for the first time on both of these dates, the reader naturally wonders which of the two statements is correct, and some of the more scientific will wonder if either is so. Similarly the word "papa" is recorded to have been first used on a choice of dates, as well as the word "kitchen." These inaccuracies, however, are not vital. They merely show that the author has not the editorial instinct, which is not an uncommon failing.

While there can be no doubt that the book will convey more that is suggestive to the psychologist than to the ordinary lay reader, there is much in Mrs. Hogan's study of the little lad that the unscientific parent will do well to take to heart. The suggestions as to happy environment in the nursery; as to the mutual attitude of parent and child; the author's animadversions against the eternal "don't," which every healthy-minded child

A Study of a Child By LOUISE E HOGAN Illustrated. Post 8vo, Cloth, $250. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

would like to see relegated to, the limbo of such words as "fail" and "can't"; the hints as to the value of intelligent anticipation of a child's reasonable wants as conducive to “serenity"-these and many others go to make a volume which at times seems somewhat too dryly analytical for any but the scientific, oue well worthy of the attention of a father or a mother with an infant just launched upon the seas of life.

By no means the least interesting feature of the book is its illustration, made from the boy's efforts with pencil and with crayon at various stages of his development. No one who has ever had a boy come to him with his first artistic venture in the drawing of a locomotive, or in the portraiture of his various uncles and aunts, will view these with anything less than a sympathetic interest.

ONCE the object of Mrs. Hogan's work is attained, a good finishing course in manfulness or womanfulness becomes the quest of the truly reasonable being, and even as it requires some knowledge in the art of training children to achieve the best and surest results, so there is some science required in learning How to Get Strong, and How to Stay So. We are not living in the age of Samson, when it would appear that the acquirement of strength followed close upon an avoidance of the barber. We are, it is true, living at a time when an abnormal hirsute adornment is often an indication, among young men, of cleverness at football; but it is by no means true that the best half and quarter backs are rated according to the length of their hair. What it is that induces strength Mr. Blaikie told us many years ago, when his little book was first published. How to keep that strength after it was acquired he also essayed to say, and so successfully that his work became a standard upon the subject. For this reason it has been thought wise to issue a new edition of the famous work, which Mr. Blaikie has revised wherever the developments of the years succeeding the first publication of his papers have seemed to make revision necessary. Of the new edition it need only be said that it is the same authoritative consideration of a vital topie, by one who is thoroughly versed in the science of acquiring strength, as was the old. It is a text-book that every student of his own physical wellbeing should thoroughly digest. Whatever Mr. Blaikie says concerning the acquirement and the retention of a 'sound body may be regarded as ex cathedra, and any reader who accepts his hints as to physical development, and at the same time rejects the author's singular system of punctuation and italicization, will find himself in a fair way to acquire muscle and a reasonably good literary style.

How to Get Strong, and How to Stay So. By WIL LIAM BLAIKIE. New Edition Illustrated. Post svo. Cloth, $1 75. New York and London: Harper and Brothers.

THORPE'S CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY.1

IVE to the Malays of the Philippines a

own, yet you will not have reorganized society nor secured private rights and public order. Destroy every vestige of government and written law in England, and in a month they will be restored. The meaning of these indisputable facts is that the ultimate safeguards of civilization are not forms of government and laws, but beliefs, habits of thought and of customary conduct in the people, of which constitutions and laws are but the partial expression. It is not the record of the fundamental law and its changes alone that Mr. Thorpe attempts to write, but the history of the popular mind in its attitude towards government, of those convictions which form constitutions and make the administration of them possible. This mode of approaching the subject gives freshness and interest to the whole inquiry. Between the date of the Declaration of Independence and the middle of the nineteenth century a gradual revolution took place in the political thought of the country, more profound and more momentous than any sudden transformation in the form of a government. It is this evolution of American democracy which Mr. Thorpe undertakes to describe.

The industry with which he has collected his evidence deserves unqualified praise. Already during the War of Independence the colonies began to frame constitutions; and the representative bodies through which this work was done gave the fullest expression of the people's political thought in its formative stage. The constitutional convention, which then took form as an institution, has continned to flourish throughout our national life. Such a convention has been commissioned by the citizens of every State, and by some of the States four times or more. The instruments thus produced are themselves instructive; but it is the process of making them that best shows their significance. From the journals and debates of these conventions Mr. Thorpe has drawn a mass of information of the highest value, which has not heretofore been accessible to students. Selecting four typical commonwealths, in which the varying processes of political thought sufficiently illustrate the intellectual conditions of all parts of the country, he gives a sketch of the work done by constitutional conventions in Louisiana, Kentucky, Michigan, and California. Here we see

A Constitutional History of the American People, 1776-1859. BY FRANCIS NEWTON THORPE. With Maps. Two Volumes, Crown 8ro, Cloth, $5 00. Harper and Brothers: New York and London. 1898.

the popular mind at work upon the elements of government, striving to define its purposes, and to devise the best methods of empowering it to fulfil them, while preventing any perversion of its powers.

From the first, conflicting theories come to light, each of which seeks to embody itself in institutions and control the future of the State and nation, but no one of them has become supreme. How to promote the welfare of the whole vast community has been recognized as the practical problem, not soluble in advance by any wisdom, but to be worked out in detail under the pressure of successive needs as they arise. The solution actually reached in the present political organization of the country could not have been foreseen at any earlier period, and may be said to differ as widely from the views of the founders of the republic as the external life of the people differs from that of a century ago. But this organization is an evolution, a natural growth, and is still, as it must ever be while it has vital strength and serves its end, in a formative state. Every feature of it from the first has been open to challenge and discussion, as an experiment. The perpetual discussion has been the highest political education of the people.

Yet the process has, on the whole, been progressive and in well-defined lines. The principle of equality before the law was from the first a leading article of the political faith professed by all parties. But the traditional forms of society were founded in inequalities, and the new principle could only step by step make its way, as one after another the distinctions and privileges of class were broken down. The elective franchise was steadily widened by abolishing qualification by property and reducing the required time of residence, and finally by removing restrictions of race. Election by the people was substituted for appointment by the chief of the State, first in selecting executive officers, and then even in forming the judiciary. Each decade brought the government nearer to its source in the popular will, and broadened its basis by making the elections more and more the expression of that will. Mr. Thorpe has appreciated more highly, and therefore more accurately, than his predecessors, the importance of this movement, though he has omitted to notice one most significant aspect of it-the removal of social restrictions upon the suffrage. In the early days of the republic the polls were attended by but a small proportion of the qualified voters. Partly from apathy, but largely also from the pressure of a public opinion which regarded with jealousy votes not sustained by property, intelligence, and respectability, multi

tudes of them refrained from voting. The progress of the democracy is clearly seen in the gradual growth of a public sentiment which regards the exercise of his franchise as the right and the duty of every citizen. In spite of the vastly greater proportion of unnaturalized immigrants, and in spite of the complaint so often heard that "the better classes" take no part in politics, the percentage of the adult freemen voting in recent elections for President is more than one-half larger than it was seventy years ago.

Nor can this extension of the basis of our institutions be regarded as a transfer from the competent to the incompetent, from the more to the less intelligent. On the contrary, democracy has not only made the whole people rulers, but has undertaken to fit them for rule. At the beginning of the century, in 1802, Congress authorized one-sixteenth of all the land in the territory northwest of the Ohio to be set aside for the support of schools. Yet a generation later public schools were almost unknown. But with the demand for universal suffrage came that for universal education. The experiment, feebly made at first in a few States, succeeded but imperfectly, and as late as 1840 could hardly be said to have enlisted popular favor. But a few years later the doctrine that the community owes to every child the training of an intelligent voter was accepted as a constitutional principle. The common schools have now become the chief source of the nation's intellectual life, and each succeeding year those who have acquired in them a clear insight into the rights and duties of citizenship form an ever greater majority of its voters. This silent revolution is traced by our author from its beginnings to its practical completion. But he has not inquired to what extent these schools foster the desire for a paternal government, and accustom beneficiaries to trust to organized society instead of to individual effort and enterprise, a question which he may well consider, should he, as every reader will wish, continue his history to the present time.

The great controversy over slavery, which ended with emancipation by civil war, has been described in hundreds of books, and every aspect of it has its special literature. But the annals of the thoughts of leaders on both sides, of the expression they strove to give these thoughts in law, and of the influences which controlled them, are nowhere more instructively written than here. Mr. Thorpe gives to the problem of the negro's share in American life its true place, and shows how it affected all statesmanship, and mingled inextricably with every political question. He keeps steadily in view the resistless force of the doctrines of liberty and equality, forever undermining the oligarchy of the slaveholders. No doubt he ascribes too much importance, as a decisive moment in the struggle, to the action of New York in 1821 in admitting free negroes to the

suffrage. But his forecast of the possible future development of the conception of citizenship deserves to be weighed with care. "The Constitutional Convention of the eighteenth century.... enfranchised the white man. The New York Convention of 1821 enfranchised free persons of color. President Lincoln, the reconstruction conventions, and Congress in the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution enfranchised the African slave. These are the three great steps in the process of political enfranchisement in American democracy. But each of these steps was taken practically by the States rather than by the United States, because the right to vote is a privilege granted by a commonwealth, not by the nation. The fourth step in the enfranchisement of a citizen may be the constitutional definition of his rights and privileges by the United States, and the necessary abolition of all commonwealth distinctions in the elective franchise." (Vol. II., p. 354.)

It is impossible here even to enumerate the important questious of policy, the history of which will be found in Mr. Thorpe's pages. Many of them, while of great historical interest, already belong wholly to the past. But other questions, however they have seemed at times to be finally decided, rise again into discussion and doubt. Shall the right to vote continue to be confined to males? Is it best that judges be appointed or elected? The nation cannot permanently continue one method and the States another. How shall the pardoning power be exercised? How far shall the tendency to restrict the powers of the State goveruments be permitted to operate, while the powers of the President continue to grow? How can bribery and corrupt influence be excluded from legislatures? What degree of autonomy can safely be given to great cities? What limits should be set to the authority of legislatures over corporations? What public improvements must be constructed by the State? To what extent should it build highways, and control or even conduct transportation? How can taxes be levied with approximate equity? Shall the State provide for a few citizens a higher education than it is possible to give to all? Can prison discipline and prison labor be reconciled with the claims of the labor unions? How can the power of appointment be best controlled for the public interest? These and scores of other questions are pending with experiments going on to illustrate the arguments on every side, and the final answers will be embodied in the constitutions of the future. No better training for the consideration of them can be found than the study of this work, in which the principles on which each decision must turn are traced from their simplest elements as revealed in the first experiments of democratic government to those more mature if not final formulas which have resulted from generations of experience in orderly freedom.