She

Maria's life was full to the brim. managed her husband, her eleven children, and the estates with equal skill and good humor, and not even the advent of a second stepmother could shake her well-balanced mind. She found time for much solid reading in the country, and when, on occasion, she flitted to town, her letters are full of entertaining descriptions of the men and women whom she met. Her keen interest in politics and social progress reminds the reader that Lady Carlisle, the leading figure in the Women's Liberal Association, is Maria Holroyd's granddaughter; her daughter-in-law, the late Lady Stanley, was the chief benefactress of Girton College. The Stanleys lived mainly at Alderley; in the Rectory near them was installed Edward Stanley, the future Bishop of Norwich, and at Alderley Rectory was born in 1815 Arthur Stanley, who was to be Dean of Westminster and the most distinguished of all the Stanleys. His mother was that Kitty Leycester of whom Sydney Smith said, "She has a porcelain understanding," a phrase that may have been the source of George Meredith's famous epigram on Clara Middleton, the "dainty rogue in porcelain." Maria Stanley wrote admirable English, as do most intelligent women who have a large correspondence. It is interesting to find educated persons writing "you was," in the days of Waterloo. For the rest, the excellent plates are an attractive feature, and the book is well got up in all respects.

The Life of the Duchess of Teck proves what a bourgeois affair a Hanoverian can make of the profession of a first-class royalty. Princess Mary, niece of George III., and first cousin to Queen Victoria, was part German Frau, part British matron-an excellent combination, to which one does not look for brilliance. Mr. Cooke, who had access to her journals and letters, was perhaps perplexed with his abundance; he has, at any rate, small talent for transmuting his material, and none for the art of arts, the art of selection. Apparently we cannot hope to find entertainment in royal autobiography, and the last fifty years of English court life must wait for another Greville to glorify it. These pages are full of the names of personages of the greatest weight in European politics, but even if the Duchess had been given to analysis or characterization of any sort, we suppose that her criticisms could not have been reproduced. There were no indiscretions possible to Mr. Cooke; for the journals are a colorless record of the most commonplace travels, country-house parties, and London seasons, so much alike that the record of one year of such a life would have sufficed for most readers. The omission of the bare enumeration of meals would have saved us many a page. Above all, would we have cheerfully foregone the back-stairs views of a semi-regal existence, and have contented ourselves with a general statement that the Princess was kind to her dressers and did not keep the carriage waiting. As an illustration we quote the following anecdote out of many from the recollections of Miss Burt, the family dressmaker (we preserve the grammar of the original):

"It was not always that Miss Burt was in favor with her royal mistress; once, when ordering a dress to be trimmed with rows of graduated velvet up to the waist, her dressmaker unwisely replied, 'But, your

Royal Highness, I don't think I could get so many widths in that color.' 'Then,' said the Princess, with raised head and an air of command, 'get it made, Burt'" (p. 140).

Princess Mary's disposition was enviably cheerful; we find her "in floods of tears till dressing-time" over the 'Heir of Redclyffe'; and the entry, "In the morning 1 had the blues till half-past ten," indicates a most superficial acquaintance with melancholy. In spite of her opportunities for observation, the Princess seldom relates an anecdote. Her admiration of Beaconsfield was tempered with the awe and distrust which he inspired alike in royalties and the crowd. One evening, at dinner, during a crisis in foreign affairs, Princess Mary, who was puzzled at the inaction of the Government, turned to him and said, "What are we waiting for, Mr. Disraeli?" The Prime Minister paused for a moment to take up the menu, and, looking at the Princess, gravely replied, "Mutton and potatoes, ma'am." The Duchess of Teck was a most estimable and charitable woman, who on the whole deserved better of her biographer. The book is partially redeemed by charming plates of the royal family and their homes.

Miss Carey's work is a series of twelve short and sentimental studies of women who have devoted themselves to good works; the record is slight and superficial in every case, and is not worth serious consideration.

The Storming of Stony Point on the Hudson, Midnight, July 15, 1779. Its importance in the light of unpublished documents. By Henry P. Johnston, A.M., Professor of History, College of the City of New York. James White & Co. 8vo, pp. 231.

Prof. Johnston has made a very interesting historical study of the famous night attack by "Mad Anthony Wayne," unearthing much original correspondence bearing upon it, especially that of Sir Henry Clinton with his Government, and some creditable letters of George III. himself. These make it clear that the exploit was reckoned a very important one by the British officials, and that it paralyzed them for the rest of the campaign of 1779. Old sketch maps are brought into comparison with reproductions of recent photographs of Stony Point from north as well as south, and of the lighthouse which marks the east front of the British works commanding the river. Verplanck's Point, opposite, is also shown by photography, and portraits are given of the principal officers on the American side. The book thus becomes a good example of attractive local history, treating with desirable fulness the story of the heroic action which has so appropriate a setting in the picturesque gate of the Hudson highlands.

Mr. Johnston's reference to "Mr. Washington" and "Mr. Wayne," as our generals figure in the British documents, reminds us that the assumption that this was intended as a belittling designation is not well founded. Probably in imitation of French usage, which set the fashion in military forms of speech as well as the style in high life, the English were accustomed, through the eighteenth century, to drop the military title when speaking of officers without desiring to emphasize the military rank. This was especially noticeable in correspondence. The French custom was more sweeping than the

English, so that examples are everywhere found in official letters. For instance, in the report of Dumas to the French Minister on affairs in Canada in 1756 (Parkman's 'Montcalm and Wolfe,' ii., 425), we find "M. de Beaujeu marcha donc, et, sous ses ordres, M. de Ligneris et moi." So, one of the French officers, speaking of Wolfe, calls him "M. Wolfe" in the campaign of Quebec (id. 277). The English usage seems to have been to use the title of civil rank, if there were one, as "Lord Howe," "Sir Henry Clinton," etc., reserving the "Mr." for the case of officers without civil titles. An example occurs in Prof. Johnston's appendix (p. 145), in a letter of Judge William Smith of New York, a prominent Loyalist, who, speaking of the British General Tryon, says, "Washington was importuned by Connecticut to save her from the flames Mr. Tryon was lighting up on her coast." No better authority for the usage of London society could be given than Horace Walpole. In a letter to Sir Horace Mann of November 20, 1757, he is speaking of General Henry Conway, one of the most distinguished figures of the day, both in the army and in social life, who had gone out as a subordinate in the unsuccessful expedition against Rochefort. "You may easily imagine," he says, "that, with all my satisfaction in Mr. Conway's behavior, I am very unhappy about him." Nu. merous similar references are found in that correspondence. It is interesting to note that in our own country the mistaken notion of the old usage has been so accepted that when General Lee wished to speak slightingly of an opponent on the national side he "mistered" him. The gradual change of custom would be worth tracing. To-day the army usage is to speak of a lieutenant as Mr. So-and-So, but captains and higher officers are spoken of and addressed by their military rank.

The Writing Table of the Twentieth Century. By Schuyler Mathews. With over three hundred illustrations by the author, and the heraldic blazonry of more than five hundred colonial American families. New York: Brentano's. 1900. Sm. 8vo, pp. 178. The title-page does not fully explain this book. There is, indeed, much about heraldry, as we will show; somewhat about invitations and cards; but the real object of the book appears in the closing pages, which are devoted to a gorgeous, and probably deserved, puff of the paper-mills of the Messrs. Crane at Dalton, Mass.

The first third of the volume is given to a heraldic manual, which is entirely superfluous and not very well done. There have been so many issues of this class of books that originality is impossible. The facts are immutable and well known, and each book is a mere copy of its predecessors, except in Mr. regard to examples and illustrations. Mathews, indeed, claims to have furnished the arms of more than five hundred colonial American families, giving the description rather than the pictures of them. He tries to bolster up this ridiculous list by an argument to the effect that as coats-of-arms are not established or even recognized by law in the United States, any one may assume a coat and have it recognized socially. We have repeatedly exposed this fallacy in our columns, but the simple fact remains that so long as it is profitable to the growing class of designers and engravers to prepare pretty

decorative shields of arms, they will do so. and will assure their willing dupes that the custom is right.

It is, of course, nothing but sham and delusion. Heraldry is a fact-a survival, or late form, rather, of what was once a vital principle. It cannot be renewed in a country which lacks the root of the custom, except by the authority of the Government. Coats-ofarms are exactly analogous to titles of nobility, and the man who assumes either is an impostor and a snob. When the Duke of Norfolk lands in New York, he will find a hundred Howards, more or less, all sporting the historic cross-crosslets on a bend, and very possibly also using the supporters of his ducal shield. A mild inquiry would fail to show any connection with any known member of the Duke's family, present or past, but the coat-of-arms would be flourished triumphantly. Now it is useless for Mr. Mathews or any other interested party to pretend that these several coats-of-arms are in the same class. The Duke has the arms, as he has his title, his castles and estates, by legal right and the sanction of Government. But in this free country he may find Howards who not only appropriate his coatarmor, but, if they wish, may also claim his titles. In this country there can be but one honest and respectable claim to any form or title of heraldic honors, and that is a compliance with the rules of nations where such honors are established and recognized.

Mr. Mathews professes to give the arms of five hundred colonial families. He offers no evidence to support a single one, and the greater part of the examples are mere assumptions. He might just as well have claimed five thousand, and probably the next writer will improve on him to that extent.

Inorganic Evolution as Studied by Spectrum Analysis. By Sir Norman Lockyer. Macmillan Co. 1900. 8vo, pp. 198.

Some thirty years ago Sir Norman Lockyer discovered that the spectrum derived from incandescent metallic vapors enclosing a sufficiently hotter core of the same vapors differed by additional and enhanced lines from that of the same vapors without the core; whereupon he incontinently espoused the hypothesis that this was due to a dissociation-whether depolymerization or decomposition-of substances in our list of chemical elements; and he has been occupied ever since in defending this hypothesis, one might almost say with every means that God and Nature have put into his hands; at any rate with arguments, good, bad, and indifferent, snatched from every side. He has, of course, been assailed with objections of like promiscuous quality; but we must declare that such of his arguments as were drawn from his own observations were, in so far, fashioned of sterling metal, which is more than can be said of his antagonists, on the whole. If Lockyer's hypothesis should ultimately be disproved, posterity will rate him as a man with a fixed idea; while if, as is more likely, it is ultimately confirmed, he will be extolled as one of the most sagacious of prophets, a confidant of Nature, more than a generation in advance of his times. One cannot imagine Lockyer as otherwise than ardent, vivacious, and brimming with new ideas and new observations. If the physiologists could only expedite their promised prolongation of human life in time to save him for another thirty years'

work, it would be an immense satisfaction to the scientific world and to him. We fear, however, that he intends this book to mark a slackening of his activities; and some rest he ought, certainly, to take, for this volume is ominously marked with signs of overwork. It reads as if it had been dictated to a typewriter, without calm preconsideration and without careful correction. Its faults of both kinds are so glaring that we shall simply dismiss them without further remark.

The original hypothesis of dissociation at length gave birth to another in Lockyer's mind, namely, that all the elements of our chemists are derived from one pristine matter, having an atomic weight some hundreds of times less than hydrogen, of which the recognized elements are polymers or compounds of polymers; and that the same matter exists everywhere throughout the stellar system in a few different grades of evolution -that is, of polymerization and combination of polymers depending upon the temperature to which it is subjected. This is an acceptable working hypothesis, for it accords with our existing general conceptions of nature, and it is favored by a goodly squad of facts. This is Lockyer's Inorganic Evolution. That the relations among, the chemical elements are to be explained by some sort of evolutionary process is the only idea we can at present entertain. We ought to begin, then, with trying how the hypothesis of the simplest kind of evolution that could answer the purpose will fit the facts, and adhere to that until it is refuted. Lockyer's seems to be that simplest hypothesis. At present, it is confirmed by but a few facts, over and above those required to suggest and give form to the theory. We cannot expect that it will stand unmodified by future discoveries; but how far or in what respects it will require alteration only time can show.

A History of Eton College. By Lionel Cust. [English Public Schools Series.] London: Duckworth & Co.; New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1899.

Mr. Cust has the good sense to feel that "some apology is due for the publication of this book." Sir H. C. Maxwell-Lyte, the Deputy Keeper of the Public Records, and Mr. J. W. Clark, Registrary of the University of Cambridge, have written scholarly histories of the foundation and its build. ings; and the volumes which record the diversions and the prowess of Eton schoolboys are already legion. Mr. Cust frankly confesses the reason for his book's existence: "The series of English Public Schools in course of publication by Messrs. Duckworth & Co. could hardly be complete without the inclusion of some account of Eton College; hence the present work."

Considering what Eton is and long has been the most important of all the schools for the governing class of England-and considering how abundant is the material easily accessible, it would be hard to write an account of it which did not contain a good deal that was of interest. But the present performance is totally devoid of distinction; it shows neither breadth of view nor charm of style, while it is marked by very nearly every fault that the critics of the English Public-School System are on the watch to detect. It is an old observation that head-masters seldom write good English; this series of histories has gone far to prove that the under-masters suffer

from the same inability. That Mr. Cust is an Eton master we are not sure, but he certainly sprinkles his pages with infelicities. "In no school are the duties of parents to their children shown to such advantage or disadvantage as they are at Eton" (p. 230). The advisers of Edward VI. "were bigoted in their desire to enforce the Reformed Church upon the country" (p. 27). "Gray stereotyped, so to speak, his literary rank with his famous Elegy" (p. 109). These instances will be enough to illustrate what we mean. Snobbishness, again, is the besetting sin, of the eulogist of Eton, and Mr. Cust has not succeeded in steering clear of it. He pursues the usual method of blowing a school's trumpet; he recites the names of the distinguished men who have gone forth from its walls. But what lists they are!-the epoch-making statesman and the insignificant placeholder jumbled up together with impartial hand. The page which begins with a Prime Minister will end with a Commissioner of Greenwich Hospital (p. 129). Even now, says Mr. Cust, in these days of civil-service competition, it is satisfactory to find that, "in a public office, no man is so likely to get on well as one who has been an Eton boy." We do not doubt for a moment that there are some excellent masters at Eton, or that Dr. Warre is an exemplary head; but Mr. Cust knows perfectly well that if Eton were blotted out of existence and the families which now send their sons to Eton had to send them to Clifton-a nightmare to make Mr. Cust shudder-no man would be so likely to get on well in a public office as one who had been a Clifton boy.

Like many of the other writers in the series, Mr. Cust speaks of Dr. Arnold with ill-veiled jealousy (pp. 196-7). But among Dr. Arnold's services to the Public Schools of England must be reckoned this-that he widened the range of their intellectual interests. Tutors at the universities still groan over the colossal ignorance of the average Public School man; but it is at any rate possible now for a sixth-form boy to know something of the history and literature of his own country as well as write good verse in prose and the languages of Greece and Rome. Yet this book not infrequently suggests that some improvement is still possible in this respect in the atmosphere of Eton. It might be asking too much to expect Mr. Cust to be acquainted with the way in which bishops were appointed in the later middle ages (p. 14). Even with Mr. Gardiner's history on the shelves, Mr. Cust may have some reason for speaking of the writings of "the ever-memorable John Hales" as "a plunge into schismatic controversy" (p. 84). But for such a statement as the following it is hard to find an excuse in these days of Anglo-American entente; and we will leave it without comment: "At the Restoration .. John Oxenbridge, on being ejected from his fellowship,

resumed his missionary efforts in Surinam, Barbadoes, and other places, and eventually found his way to the new settlement at Boston, Massachusetts, of which he became the first pastor, thus forging a curious link between Eton and the New World" (p. 89).

The Biography of a Grizzly, and 75 Draw-
The
ings. By Ernest Seton-Thompson.
Century Co. 1900. 8vo, 167 pp.
Biology attempts to record impartially the

facts of observation, to weigh and measure them. Literature calls in the imagination, as he who gives a feast illuminates the banquet hall, even with shutters barring out the too literal sunbeams. In dealing with our shy relatives of wood and field, the interpreter may portray their lives so that we recognize exactly how we should act and feel were we wild animals, yet mentally as we are; as in the immortal "Jungle Books." There we recognize a perfect harmony of the impossible, and revel in it, disdaining concrete fact. The alternative method would draw aside the veil which obscures our comprehension of the mental processes of animals, and thus attempt to picture sympathetically their hopes, fears, triumphs, joys, and tragedies, as they really are or might be. Success in this line depends upon a rigid restraint of the inevitable anthropomorphism, in terms of which the drama must be stated. The least relaxation into strictly human sentimentality, and the whole will ring false.

In 'Wild Animals I have Known,' the author attained to an almost complete success in this extremely difficult task, and that work is still, so far as we know, unique in its character. The present story, considered in the light of literature and measured by the standard of the former, is less perfect. The illustrations are delightful, and much of the narrative is all that could be asked for; but its conclusion, the suicide of Wahb, is a blemish on the perfection of the rest. Let the author be warned that that way failure lies.

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ON THE TRAIL OF A SPANISH PIONEER

No. 3 of American Explorers Series

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NEW YORK, THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1900.

The Week.

The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, upholding the Constitutionality of what is known as the inheritance tax, establishes several principles of the very highest importance. Speaking generally, we may say that Congress is now competent to seize for public uses such portion of the personal property of a dead person as it chooses. It is henceforth restrained by no Constitutional objections of equality or uniformity from establishing progressive rates; and the large revenue obtained by the English Exchequer from high death duties will no doubt tempt our rulers to adopt similar taxation. The decision of the court incidentally sustains the power of the State Governments also to impose a like tax. We may regard it as probably our future policy to appropriate, or confiscate, for the expenses of government, an increasingly large part of the property left by wealthy decedents. The fact that such property may consist of Government bonds exempted by law "from all taxes or duties of the United States, as well as from taxation in any form by or under State, municipal, or local authority," is held to be immaterial. The theory by which this conclusion is reached is, that a tax on the transfer of a bond, on the death of the owner, is not a tax on the bond. Whether such a theory has any foundation, either in fact or in logic, is now unimportant; it has received the highest legal sanction. The theory on which the tax on income from the rent of land was held unconstitutional-that a tax on the gain derived from property was a tax on the property-may seem inconsistent with the present decision; but that is also immaterial. No proposition seems less open to question than that a tax on the transfer of property has the same effect on value as a tax on the property itself; but that proposition is discountenanced by the present decision. We may summarize its scope and effect by saying that both State and national Governments have now the Constitutional power to take for public purposes the whole or any part of the personal property of every citizen upon his death. The principle that taxation should be proportioned to value is finally repudiated, and that of progressive taxation definitively established.

So far as the existing inheritance tax is concerned, the decision of the Supreme Court lightens it materially. The law provides that executors, etc., having in trust "any legacies or distributive shares

arising from personal property, where the whole amount of such personal property as aforesaid shall exceed the sum of ten thousand dollars," shall pay certain taxes. It seems to have been held by the courts below that the limit of ten thousand dollars had application to the total value of the estate of the decedent. With this construction, every legacy, no matter how small, would be taxable if charged on an estate worth ten thousand dollars. The Supreme Court decides it was the intention of Congress to tax "the separate and distinct sums or items of personal property passing." The tax is "on the legacies and distributive shares." Hence no such shares, if below the limit, are taxable, no matter how large the estate of the decedent. A man might leave a million dollars and no tax would be imposed on it, provided he left it in small legacies, or his next of kin were of proper degree and sufficiently numerous. This construction of the statute is certainly a merciful one, as it exempts those who would suffer most from this tax.

The administration of the Post-office in Cuba clearly requires investigation by Congress, and not by the Department alone. Under the military régime the War Department and the President of the United States can do very much as they please. But the Postal Department of the United States Government is not competent legally, and it seems doubtful if it is practically, to administer the postal service of a country which is outside of our Union. This service, under the present conditions, should be wholly under the control of the military Government of Cuba. Under that government something like military discipline would be maintained. If our Postal Department is to operate in Cuba, it will be bound by

no laws. All its acts there are extra-legal, and none of the restraints exist which experience has shown to be necessary. It seems that one of the officers in this anomalous Cuban postal service was formerly connected with that of Porto Rico. He was unable to account for a large sum of money which he had received, and was dismissed from the service, his bondsmen being obliged to make up the deficiency. This untoward event did not prevent him from getting his Cuban appointment. The civil-servce law evidently does not apply ex proprio vigore to such cases.

The armor-plate controversy in Congress comes down essentially to thisshall the Government allow contractors to make a confessedly exorbitant profit out of our alleged necessities as a "world

Power"? Even the Imperialists admitted that the price charged was inexcusably excessive; but as an Imperial Power we must have the ships and allow the armor-makers to pocket their enormous profits. Senator Lodge attempted to wear the Imperial purple for the purpose of helping out the contractors. It is an old trick of theirs to raise a loud alarum whenever they see Congress hesitating over their bills. At the time of the Chilian excitement in 1891-92, a well-known naval contractor was asked if he thought there would be war. "No," he said, with a wink, "only just war enough to get us our contracts." On Friday the armor people put up Lodge to threaten Germany, as a means of persuading the Senate not to look too closely into the cost of the plates. Politically, it was a grievous blunder, for which he was properly rapped over the knuckles next day by Senator Spooner, speaking for the Administration. Strange as it may seem to the war-breathing Senator from Massachusetts, Mr. Spooner and the President would actually like to win a few German-American votes in Wisconsin and Illinois next November. But Mr. Lodge's speech was, after all, merely symptomatic of the tendencies of Expansion. It is a policy of commercialism, pure and simple, which we are to go into only for "what there is in it for us."

The weakness of the opposition party in Congress is illustrated afresh by the fact that the Democratic members of the Merchant Marine Committee could not agree upon a report regarding the Ship-Subsidy Bill. Three of the minority have gone so far over to the Republican side on this issue that they sustain the principle of the subsidy, and content themselves with pointing out some defects in its application. The rest of the Democratic committeemen, under the lead of Representative Fitzgerald of Boston, present a cogent argument against the whole policy, as unnecessary and indefensible at a time when there is a remarkable increase in our shipbuilding, and then show how the pending bill would not promote foreign commerce in any case, as the money would go chiefly to fast passenger steamers which carry little freight. One section, indeed, as has been pointed out in the Evening Post, would allow an owner to run an empty ship and still earn a full subsidy. Such a showing ought to be fatal to any scheme. The real hope of defeating the subsidy job, however, rests not so much upon the arguments which some of the Democratic committeemen have to present if the bill shall come to a vote, as upon the doubts of the Republican managers whether the party can stand such a load during the campaign.