of The Arts of Life; a book of wise counsels upon the essential qualities in education, business, politics, religion and personal life. Mr. Bowker has long practiced the art of living for generous ideals; he has been in sympathy with the evolutionary thought of his time, and he has studied the questions which have perplexed his contemporaries in the great fields of human endeavor. His spirit is serious, for he deals with things which are fundamental in human happiness and success; but his touch is not heavy, and he escapes the vocabulary of philosophy without evading its problems or reserving its conclusions. His book is full of sane observation and wholesome suggestion.

In the Diary of a Dreamer there is a relaxation of the tension imposed by serious problems even when they are touched with a light hand. The life of an English woman, largely spent in the country, but with glimpses of seaside and town, is recorded in a series of brief chapters written in an informal style, and dealing with the occupations, recreations and experiences of every sort which make up the life of a woman who loves nature and is concerned chiefly with her own. home. The book belongs to a class of quiet, familiar, every-day meditations and observations of which a good many readers seem never to tire.

Count Tolstoi is one of the most interesting men of the time, not only because of his rare force as a writer, but because his conception of art finds expression in the occupations and conduct of his life. His vocation as an artist has gradually passed into the vocation of a teacher, who cares more to give his message practical efficiency than to clothe it in artistic

THE ARTS OF LIFE. By Richard Rogers Bowker. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE DIARY OF A DREAMER. By Alice Dun-Smith. G. P. Putnam's Sons.

forms. That message has become the supreme concern of his life, and he has come to subordinate all other interests to it. The volume of Essays, Letters and Miscellanies presents that message in a series of brief expository chapters, which find their occasion and their illustration in recent events or in contemporary social and political conditions. The code of ethics, the social theories, the interpretations of Christ's teachings, the view of the function of art with which Tolstoi has made the world familiar, are set forth in this volume within moderate limits, but with a frankness and definiteness which are characteristic of a man who is without fear, without selfishness, and in command of a very noble gift of expression.

The light touch, the easy transitions of thought, and the unforced play of humor over the surface of the matter in hand are delightfully illustrated in Mr. Martin's Lucid Intervals; a series of papers on children, young men and maidens, husbands and wives, riches, social types and kindred themes. The title is a happy one, because it suggests the practical good sense which gives the essays clear insight into many of those relations in life in which are the issues of happiness. The hand never presses heavily upon the themes which are discussed, but the treatment escapes superficiality by its honesty, directness, and clear perception of true ethical and social standards. The manner is engaging, and carries one from page to page without any effort of attention or any consciousness of strain or care on the part of the writer. This is the sign of good essay writing, which is never hurried, burdened with anxiety to convince, or weighted down by literary selfconsciousness. Mr. Martin has learned the secret of a difficult art.

PRESUME that the motto of the book reviewer of to-day, or at least of the reviewer to whom falls the volumes con cerned with travel and foreign parts, ought to be Place à la Chine. Such being the case, and books on the far East in the line of duty, it is pleasant to be able to say that Mr. Wildman's book, China's Open Door, is one that even the tired reviewer is not likely to lay down without regret. It is not too long, it has few or no statistics, no geographical data, no lists of provinces, rivers and mountains with impossible names. It is simply a picture of the Chinaman at home, his manners, and, so far as any foreigner can get at, his ideas. Every writer upon China finds some new reason for believing that the yellow race will some day make us rise up in astonishment, perhaps in terror. Mr. Wildman thinks that the Chinaman's lack of nerves is going to make him the coming wonder of the world. The Chinaman has had a splendid training in thrift and self-sacrifice. There is little difference between day and night in Canton; the deep hum of its million workers never ceases. Mr. Wildman, who, as our Consul at Hong Kong for many years, had ample experience with them, says that he never knew a nervous Chinaman. His cashier, Ah Choy, sat for thirty years bent over a little desk making out consular invoices and calculating intricate sums upon his abacus, while a jabbering, pushing mob of coolie runners crowded his elbows.

It might be imagined that intercourse with other peoples might change the Chinaman. That, according to Mr. Wildman, is the last thing to be expected.

CHINA'S OPEN DOOR. By Rounseville Wildman. Lothrop Publishing Co., 12mo, $1.50.

Ah Choy, for instance, after thirty-five years' service at the American consulate still wore cotton clothes, slept on a wooden pillow, and ate with chopsticks. We change our fashion in clothes every year; the fashion in mandarins' clothes, down to the smallest insignia, was introduced by Topa in A. D. 404, and King Topa might imagine himself in his own court should he return to-day. The Chinese have no sympathy with suffering. Mr. Wildman once saw a man drown while a dozen sampans (the native boat) could have gone to his rescue. The reason

was that it was no one's business to save him; also, that if the man had wanted to die, the rescuer would have become responsible for his support during the rest of his natural life. The Chinese have a remarkable sense of humor.

Ask

a Chinaman the best of two roads to a town and he will invariably recommend the worst and longest, and consider it a good joke.

Another book on China, by Joseph Walton, an English member of Parliament, gives in rather fragmentary fashion an immense amount of valuable information taken, apparently, from Mr. Walton's diary of a trip he made last year through parts of China, Japan, and Korea. The author does not hesitate to criticise British conduct in China as weak and dangerous. He declares that English statesmen have been hoodwinked into signing absurd treaties, and that when the troubles in South Africa come to an end England will wake up to discover that her interests in China, quite as important, or more so, than

CHINA AND THE PRESENT CRISIS. By Joseph Walton, M. P. Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons, 12mo, $2.00.

those in Africa, have been sacrificed beyond repair. According to this account Russia has outplayed England in every stage of the Chinese game, and while ostensibly sharing the spoils has kept everything worth having.

In some parts of rural China the population numbers a thousand to the square mile. This is in strong contrast to the country explored by the Belgian antarctic expedition under the direction of Adrien de Gerlache, and described for American readers by Dr. Frederick A. Cook, the surgeon of the party in a number of magazine articles now gathered into a sumptuous volume with lots of interesting illustrations. Dr. Cook found thousands of square miles without a human being. His story is a fascinating one and admirably told. After reading this account of thirteen months during which their vessel was held helpless among giant ice-floes, when the antarctic night of months came on and death appeared among the little party, one cannot but wonder more and more at the spirit which helps men to face such horrors. Parts of the narrative are as grewsome as a ghost story. The fact that it is true makes it still more impressive. The results of the expedition are of immense interest to geographical science.

To the average reader the wonders achieved by the mountain climbers are no less fascinating than those achieved by the endurance of the men who face years of isolation in the eternal ice of the arctic regions, and the handsome reprint by the Lippincotts of two volumes of mountain adventure by veteran climbers, Major Waddell's Among the Himalayas, which first appeared in England a few years ago, and Sir Willam Martin Conway's The Alps

THROUGH THE FIRST ANTARCTIC NIGHT. By Frederick A. Cook. Doubleday & McClure Co., 8vo, $5.

from End to End, a more recent work, are full of the rarefied atmosphere that very few of us will ever care or dare to breathe except in print. Sir William Conway's volume will be found invaluable to anyone who wishes to see much of Alpine work in a short time, even if he does not care about the thousand-mile tramp over snowy peaks that the author recommends as a reasonable summer outing. That even this jaunt has some uncomfortable moments may be supposed from the fact that Sir William took with him two veteran alpine guides and two guides whom he had employed in the Himalayas. The volume is full of fine photographs, but greatly lacks a good map. Major Waddell's story is of mountains compared to which Mount Blanc is a foot-hill, for while that giant of the Alps rises to the height of 15,700 feet, the king of the Himalayas towers to nearly twice that height (29,000 feet), and it is by no means certain that Mt. Everest is the king. There are at least a thousand peaks in the Himalayas, according to the most recent estimate, that exceed 20,000 feet in height. Some of the pictures are enough to make one dizzy, yet they are no fancy sketches, but reproductions from photographs. Beside an interesting story of mountain work there is an abundance of information concerning the people of this part of the world, told in a pleasant, easy fashion.

A book of mountaineering of even more importance, because it covers ground but little known, and records an achievement that deserves to be as famous in climbing annals as Whymper's conquest of the Matterhorn, is Fitz Gerald's account of the first ascent of Aconcagua, the highest peak in America, and long looked upon by noted travelers, from Humboldt down, as inaccessible. Before Fitz Gerald

Lippincott & Co., 8vo, $2.00.

THE ALPS FROM END TO END. By Sir William Martin Conway. Lippincott & Co., 8vo, $2.00.

THE HIGHEST ANDES. By E. A. Fitz Gerald. Charles Scribner's Sons, 8vo, $6.00.

gen planted his ice-axe in January, 1897. The struggle he made against weakness, sickness, and cold was nothing less than heroic, and his account leaves the reader breathless.

The name of William Cotton Oswell carries one from frozen mountain peaks to the torrid heat of the African jungle. Two handsome volumes contain all that the most indefatigable reader will care to know about this traveller and explorer whose services to science have been repeatedly recognized by learned societies. Oswell's African explorations began in 1844 and lasted less than a dozen years in all, in which time, however, he found it possible to make a number of important discoveries and to be of an inestimable service to Livingston. This elaborate memoir shows him to have been an uncommonly manly, modest gentleman. Some of his hunting tales are enough to make Nimrod turn in his grave, if he has one. Think of running into a herd of four hundred elephants! It is a pity that the illustrations given are too fanciful to be of interest; but Oswell's day was before that of the field camera.

Going still further back and crossing the ocean, we have a big book by Charles Moore in which the explorers are the intrepid men who, nearly three hundred years ago, took their lives into their hands and plunged into the wilderness to find the great lakes about which the Indians boasted, and the China seas that were thought to be not far beyond them. The story of Cartier, Champlain, Marquette, Cadillac and their brethren, English, French and American, is an old one, but ever new when told as pleasantly as it is told here.

If we are to invest animals with the

WILLIAM COTTON OSWELL. By W. Edward Oswell. Doubleday, Page & Co., 2 vols, 8vo, $8.00.

THE NORTHWEST UNDER THREE FLAGS. By Charles Moore. Harper & Bros., 12mo, $2.50.

power of speech and with human prejudices and passions, the more their talk resembles that of people the more extraordinary and effective it is likely to be, as coming from the bear, the moose, the fox, the beaver and the other forest dwellers who may be supposed to meet from time to time to discuss their neighbors, to criticize or ridicule their common enemy, man, and to talk over a variety of interesting matters, from politics to the latest ideas in traps. The greatest difficulty which any writer who attempts such a task is likely to meet with is to forget that his talkers are animals, and not people. In a book called "Mooswa of the Boundaries," Mr. Fraser has succeeded so well that one is almost inclined to think that his characters walked on two legs before he transformed them, adding to the talk and behavior of each such peculiarities as may seem proper. Our Indians and the white woodsmen and trappers, who from their intimate association with wild animals, come to know them as daily friends or enemies, naturally invest them with human attributes; and for this reason we have to go to the woodsman for the most telling stories of this kind. This is what Mr. Fraser has done. For year after year he has listened, over the smouldering campfire, to the tales told by famous trappers, white and copper-colored, of the cunning, the wisdom,the wickedness and the virtues of the animals they have known. Having absorbed the stories from one point of view, the author lets the animals repeat them from their standpoint. There is admirable character-drawing here, beginning with Mooswa, the Moose, a good deal of wit, and, best of all, an atmosphere that suggests the great woods and the lakes, where peace reigns. Mr. Arthur Heming has drawn pictures which illustrate the text brilliantly, and also finely charac

MOOSWA AND OTHERS OF THE BOUNDARIES. By W. A. Fraser. Charles Scribner's Sons, 12mo, $1 50.