disappointed in her latest book, with its unflagging and brave regard of the pageant of the world. She will be found at her best, perhaps, in "The Sanctuary Lamp," a narrative in blank verse.

In the work of Mrs. Giltner, Mr. Peterson, and Houston Mifflin (now piously reprinted in memory of a good man) we have contributions to that great stream of artistic production which must serve to water the barren wastes of commercialism. One is apt to question the advisability of so copious an output of literary effort as our own day beholds; but after all it is only where artistic interest is widespread and intelligent that we may find hopes of further greatness.

Mrs. Fields is a distinguished figure in American letters, carrying on, as she does, the traditions of the golden era of Boston culture. And her new volume breathes of that time, passing too rapidly away, when familiarity with the classic literatures was much commoner than it is now. There is something very pleasing about her Orpheus, with its dignity and repose. One would not compare it with a masque of Milton's; it certainly has none of the lyrical rush to be found in Mr. Swinburne's work. And yet to find seriousness with a modicum of thought in a book of current verse is enough to make it remarkable and refreshing. A word of most unstinted praise must be accorded.

THE PATH OF DREAMS. By Leigh Gordon Giltner. Fleming H. Revell Co., 12mo, $1.25.

COLLECTED POEMS. By Arthur Peterson. Henry T. Coates & Co., 12mo, $1.25.

LYRICS. By J. Houston Mifflin. Henry T. Coates & Co., 12mo, $1.25.

ORPHEUS. By Mrs. Fields. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

to the Riverside Press for one of the most beautiful pieces of printing of the season.

In The Hidden Servants Miss Alexander has given us a really delightful book of ballads. Very simple they are, certainly, very artless, and not in the least remarkable for any display of craftsmanship. But their sweet sincerity and loving faith lend them a far rarer value than our modern self-consciousness is often able to attain. It will be surprising if they do not find a wide and sympathetic audience. Miss Alexander (known already to the world in her "Roadside Songs of Tuscany ") has gathered up about a dozen Italian legends of the saints, folk tales and old written stories of the miraculous, and retold them with a naïveté and modest charm altogether lovely.

With interest of another sort one takes

up Miss Proctor's New Hampshire poems. Here, too, is homely simplicity, winning us by appeal to sentiment and love of country. Miss Proctor enlists the sympathy of her readers in such subjects as these: "Monadnock in October," "The Hills are Home," "Kearsarge," "Keep the Forests," "Star Island Church," "The Bluebird," "Merrimack River" and "The Lost War Sloop." And she has a straightforwardness in dealing with her themes, and a knack of description, that carry assent with them. This "Old Home Week" edition (as it is called), with its attractive illustrations taken from photographs of various New Hampshire scenes, is a book for New Englanders, at home or away.

THE HIDDEN SERVANTS. By Francesca Alexander. Little, Brown & Co., 12mo, $1.50,

THE MOUNTAIN MAID, and Other Poems of New Hamp shire. By Edna Dean Proctor. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

WE

HEN the Book of Beauty, that historic shape of boredom, was dethroned by the beautiful book (not so very long ago), the publishers rightly concluded to cultivate Art in the strictest sense of the word. The mere collection of pictures, with prose or verse meandering around them or excluded altogether, was put in a category by itself, where the sportive moods of popular draughtsmen could enjoy free play. The gift book was projected along new lines; it became the Art Book, a book about art. The change is cheering to those who seriously care for artistic matters. It is well to beguile a half hour with the pictorial fun that nowadays gets itself printed between covers; and sometimes publications for the nursery, like, for example, Mr. Carton Moore Park's "Alphabet of Animals," command respect in graver places. But

the kind of holiday book that is most satisfying is the kind illustrated a year ago by Sir Walter Armstrong's stately work on Gainsborough, and exemplified this year by a similar monument to Sir Joshua Reynolds from the same hand.

This later volume, like its predecessor, is a picture gallery in binding; it is also an authoritative biography of the painter, and a critical survey of his works. Sir Walter Armstrong, the Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, is a discursive writer, but he has, on the whole, a thorough way with him in the marshalling and collating of facts; his judgments are generally sound, and while a great deal of special knowledge has gone to the making

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. By Sir Walter Armstrong, Director of the National Gallery, Ireland. With 70 photogravures, and 6 lithographs in color. Charles Scribner's Sons, folio, $25.00 net.

of his book, it is not pedantic. The layman and the student alike may profit by his pages. The photogravure plates in this volume are of extraordinary beauty. There are seventy of them, and they serve a double purpose-they give a remarkably varied and comprehensive representation of Sir Joshua's art, and they commemorate many of the most distinguished figures in a brilliant epoch of English society.

Van Dyck, who prefigured in the Low Countries of the seventeenth century, that courtly elegance which made the fame of Gainsborough and Reynolds in the England of the eighteenth, is likewise celebrated this year in a volume somewhat less imposing as to its dimensions than Sir Walter Armstrong's two books, but otherwise of equal sumptuousness and value. It is called "Fifty Masterpieces of Anthony Van Dyck," and contains fifty photogravures of paintings in the great Antwerp exhibition of 1889. Max Rooses, a writer respected not only in his own. country, but among connoisseurs everywhere, provides the text, which embraces a biographical sketch of Van Dyck and concise notes, historical and critical, on the pictures reproduced. This is a perfect illustration of the newer sort of art book. Designed as a souvenir of a particular exhibition, it is really something more than the record of a fugitive enterprise. The photogravure plates, taken, in many instances, from pictures ordinarily inaccessible to the public, place new and important material in the hands of the student. The text of M. Rooses adds just the light that is necessary to turn the exquisite reproductions into practicable documents for purposes of study. It is a gorgeous Christmas book, and it is, moreover, a worthy addition to the literature of Van Dyck.

FIFTY MASTERPIECES OF ANTHONY VAN DYCK. By Max Rooses. With 50 photogravures. J. B. Lippincott Co., folio, $25.00.

Much material for æsthetic publications is naturally found this season as heretofore on Italian soil. Herr Franz Wickhoff, in his "Roman Art," of which an excellent translation has been made by Mrs. S. A. Strong, seeks to trace the classical ideas which influenced Christian art in its earliest phases. His analysis leads to conclusive proof that " even as the Fathers could not invent for themselves a language in which to expound the doctrines of Christianity, but had to make shift with Greek and Latin, so too the Christian artists could not dispense with the art forms and methods which lay ready to their hand." This is an abtruse essay, characterized by Teutonic gravity, and it is not the easiest reading in the world. But Herr Wickhoff unfolds his argument with a zealous regard for the importance of every link in that chain of evidence which he has set out to forge from the rare, disfigured, or otherwise. obscure artistic remains at his command; and for the right reader, with some knowledge and more patience, he is a most helpful guide to difficult periods. His prose is reinforced by numerous fine illustrations, of which no fewer than fourteen are in photogravure.

Herr Wickhoff's industry is rivalled in modest fashion by that of Mr. Langton Douglas, author of a new book on Fra Angelico, though this critic is not without a certain over-hasty petulance. Fra Angelico, we are told, has been misrepre sented by nine writers out of every ten who have dealt with his works; and even the tenth, Mr. Douglas seems to think, has not always been able to resist the

ROMAN ART. Some of Its Principles and Their Application to Early Christian Painting. By Franz Wickhoff Translated and edited by Mrs. S. Arthur Strong. With 14 plates and 80 text illustrations. The Macmillan Co., quarto, $8.00.

FRA ANGELICO AND HIS ART. By Rev. Langton Doug. las. With 60 illustrations. The Macmillan Co., small quarto, $5.00,

popular tradition of the painter as a pietistic enthusiast with a taste for art. This author denies that he was a man who "bolted his monastery doors, and sprinkled holy water in the face of the antique." He was primarily an artist who

From "Fra Angelico and His Art."-The Mac

millan Co.

AN ANGEL

[Detail from the Madonna Dei Linajuoli.]

only happened to be a saint, says Mr. Douglas; and he has no difficulty in showing that Fra Angelico was in full sympathy with the artistic tendencies of his time, that he studied Nature face to face, and gladly made use of the antique. The book is welcome for its intelligent readjustment of an interesting painter in the perspective of artistic history. With its good illustrations, its appendix of documents, and its index to the painter's works, it is a decidedly creditable performance. But the reader should be warned that the popular misconception justly criticised by Mr. Douglas, has at bottom a certain value. The essence of Fra Angelico's art is the spirituality which has engaged the attention of the world. Despite Mr. Douglas it must remain the important thing in the work of that gentle dreamer of San Marco.

Count Plunkett, an Irish lecturer and writer on art, has composed a monograph on Botticelli which gives a scholarly account of the Florentine master. Like Mr. Douglas he is wise on points of origin, deals judgmatically with the claims of this or that picture to authenticity, and subjects Botticelli, in short, to a ruthlessly scientific analysis. Though ruthless and Morellian the author has a lively sympathy for his theme. If his rigid fidelity to a rather cold-blooded method acts as a check upon his insight into the work of a peculiarly original and poetic painter, it at least saves him from the highfalutin in which writers on Botticelli are prone to indulge. Perhaps the most gratifying factor in Count Plunkett's criticism is his insistence upon Botticelli's prime significance as a pioneer in landscape painting. The Florentine's gifts in this direction have too often been overlooked. Intensely imaginative as he

SANDRO BOTTICELLI. By Count Plunkett. With 20 photogravure plates and many illustrations in half-tone. The Macmillan Co., 8vo, $12.50 net.