proved the humor of Mr. John Kendrick Bangs's Idiot. In his bachelor days, at the table of the lady who became Mrs. Pedagog, he was amusing; but in the bosom of his family he has become somewhat of a bore, because what he says is so indubitably obvious. The Idiot at Home is the name of Mr. Bangs's new book, the Idiot, Mrs. Idiot and their two children having boarded around in the columns of different weekly papers for some time, before taking up their final abode in this volume. Mr. Bangs is popular, immensely popular, but not with the bulk of critics who have adopted certain formula of denunciation for his work as hackneyed and mechanical as they declare his humor to be. He deserves far better treatment than that, but nothing they will probably say of this latest offspring of his typewriter can be entirely undeserved. It is unquestionably the least entertaining work he has turned out.

Mr. H. G. Wells has made a new departure in Love and Mr. Lewisham, and has done well thereby. This tale of everyday life, of the humble in London, is worth more than all his ingenious imaginings of the days that are to be. He prints on his title-page a bit of Bacon's wisdom, but his story tells itself, and the reader does not feel burdened by its moral. It is just a simple record of the ambitious resolutions of youth, and the interference of life, of the "great spirits and great businesse that doe keepe out this weak Passion . . . yet Love can finde Entrance not only into an open Heart, but also into a Heart well fortified, if Watch be not well kept." That is the story, and it is well told. Its humor, too, is of a fine quality, the opening episode of the youthful assistant master in a provincial private school, and

the typewriter from London, being not unworthy of Mr. Anstey. And there are many flashes throughout, while the spiritualistic impostor who deserts his wife because, like Ibsen's heroines, he feels that he has his own life to live, is a rare touch. By a strange coincidence the question of the signing of checks under hypnotic influence, likely soon to be discussed in a New York court, is foreseen by Mr. Wells; even in a tale of to-day he could not refrain from looking into the future. But love-that is, the little typewriter who upset all Mr. Lewisham's plans, and sent him to fight in the common ranks in the struggle for life-and Mr. Lewisham himself are the main figures of a thoroughly well-written book.

Mr. Will N. Harben has gathered from the different periodicals in which they originally appeared a number of Northern Georgia Sketches. All of them are readable, but none of them is likely to become a part of our precious heritage of dialect stories. The rise of the magazine has given birth in this country to a certain class of tales, of sufficient merit to deserve publication in the pages of a periodical, but ephemeral in nature as these periodicals themselves, fulfilling their mission acceptably during their month of life, but without real claim to preservation in book form. Mr. Harben's ten stories are good specimens of this kind of fiction; they are not out of place between the covers of this small volume even, but, considered as literature, they have but little to recommend them. They are well. written, the central idea of most of them is ingenious or amusing, there is local color in them, but next month, and the month after, will bring as many more just as good, perhaps to be made into little volumes in their turn, with just as much chance of success, and no more.

NORTHERN GEORGIA SKETCHES. By Will N. Harben. A. C. McClurg & Co., 12mo, $1.00.

There are as many possibilities in the creation of perfect physical or mental beauty as in the conception of Frankenstein's monster, or the dual personality of Dr. Jekyll; but Miss Harriet Stark, the author of The Bacillus of Beauty, apparently has failed to see the potentialities of her plot. Tales of this kind are the natural property of romantic writers; only powerful imaginations can make them yield all they hold. But Miss Stark is not a romanticist, but a realist. The idea of the German professor who has discovered the bacillus of beauty, and with it inoculates a far from handsome girl, making her the most beautiful woman in the world, is full of promise. But what does the author make of it? She has dimly felt that the situation should yield some symbolic lesson of life, but has floundered into a chain of commonplace occurrences-making her beauty a ninedays' society wonder, a "special" for the yellow press, a social struggler laden with debts, wrecked in happiness, and finally, after an attempt to get on the stage, a despairing woman who commits suicide. The clever invention is frittered away upon realistic things; the greater possibilities (if such there be, as we do not doubt) are neglected. The tale falls short through its author's lack of imagination.

The good old adventure story continues to hold its own. Its essential components are few, the possible changes in their combination almost endless. Mr. K. Douglas King has taken the old ingredients in proportions that are his own, mixed them in the fine, orthodox manner, added to them a new setting, and produced a tale that, if not the best of its kind, is good enough to keep the reader interested to the end-the closing chapters being, indeed, the best in the book. Ursula is

THE BACILLUS OF BEAUTY. By Harriet Stark. F. A. Stokes Co., 12mo, $1.50.

the story of an English girl brought up with her cousin, a Russian prince, in the depths of the latter's country, on an estate that is a little principality in itself. The master-plotter, his tools, the all but successful abduction, the strange resemblance that causes the kidnappers to be deceived, the rescue at the last moment, the jealous rejected lover who, at the crisis, rises to sublime heights of selfsacrifice-it all does yeoman service once more, to the entire satisfaction of not too exacting readers.

Mr. Herbert C. MacIlwaine has added, in Fate the Fiddler, a decidedly good novel to the as yet rather short list of the fiction of Australia. He has enlarged the scope of this kind of story-taking in the larger financial forces that link the mother-country to the squatter on the edge of the never-never, the monetary power that enables him to do his giant pioneer work, often only to dispossess him at the moment when his labors are crowned with the dawn of prosperity. The Napoleon of finance is having his day in English fiction: South Africa, and now Australia, furnish the type, as well as London. The man of the market-place is not a pleasant figure—at least in novels; he is far inferior there, indeed, to the sturdy Anglo-Saxon who pushes ever farther the boundaries of empire, buys with his strength and youth the greatness and power of the realm, yet at the end finds his reward taken from him by holders of mortgages and organizers of vast companies. It is all the economic law of the market-place, no doubt, and probably for the best of the nation, but the humble worker who lays the foundation is cheated of his wage. All this may be read between the lines of Mr. McIlwaine's novel, which

URSULA. By K. Douglas King. John Lane, crown 8vo, $1.50.

FATE THE FIDDLER. By Herbert C. McIlwaine. J. B. Lippincott Co., crown 8vo, $1.50.

arrests attention in the flood of average fiction as something fresh and strong.

Mr. Frank R. Stockton resolutely remains a story-teller. Purposes, tendencies, schools-all the modern complicationsare far from his aim, which is that of amusing merely, and he succeeds in it above all others. The topsy-turvydom of the world as he makes us see it when he wishes never loses its freshness, nor does his art, which is sound and well-balanced, though he hides it so carefully that few ever stop to consider the excellence of his workmanship. Afield and Afloat, his new volume of stories, has an introduction that none should miss, for it is one of the best things in the book. As for the tales themselves, what can one do except recommend their reading? There is a man here who loves sailing and is afraid of horses, and his partner, who loves driving and is afraid of sailing-craft; yet the one is got into trouble by a horse that is towing his boat through a canal, and the other into deep water by his horse, the two being in both cases together. Then there are some strange complications caused by the Spanish war, in out-of-the-way spots whither the news of its declaration penetrates tardily to the discomfiture of children of both nations alike; a beautiful tribute to the romantic sympathy of the much-abused but useful mule; a most cheerful family ghost, and many other men and things of land and sea.

Uncanonized, by Margaret Horton Potter, is a historical novel of sterling merit, well planned, well written, scholarly and dignified, and yet it is not likely to share the popular success that comes to so many books of its class. On the other hand, it is not a story that will die entirely unnoticed, for whoever happens upon it will

AFIELD AND AFLOAT. By Frank R. Stockton. Charles Scribner's Sons, 12mo, $1.50.

UNCANONIZED. By Margaret Horton Potter. A. C. McClurg & Co., 12mo, $1.50.

recognize it for what it is, and its merits will be as patent many years hence as they are to-day. A tale of monachism in the early years of the thirteenth century, of King John's quarrel with Pope Innocent III over the archbishopric of Canterbury, it deals with the ecclesiastical and historical conditions of that day, the author, whose evident deep research entitles her opinion to respect, drawing a picture of John that is far more favorable than the traditional one. The central idea of the novel, apart from its monachic study, has great possibilities. Hubert Walter, the forty-third Archbishop of Canterbury, implores and commands his illegitimate son to give up the world and his love, and to enter the cloister, that he may thus expiate his father's only sin, and secure paradise for him. This youth, thus made a monk against his will and all his inclinations, takes the reader into the monastic life of the century, and reveals the growth of liberalism under the Papal interdict. Miss Potter may not command success, but she deserves it.

The Lost Continent is, of course, Atlantis. Mr. Cutcliffe Hyne has woven from his imagination a romance of this mysterious country, drawing upon the Oriental absolute monarchies of the dawn of history, upon the Rome of the decadence, and even upon palæontology, for his material. The Empress Phorenice, who, after the manner of Nero, has declared herself a goddess, rides on a mastodon; the megatherium still roams the wilderness, and the ocean holds gigantic monsters. The great empire is in a condition of disintegration, senseless luxury, impiety and cruelty reigning in the capital; poverty and discontent without, the people being stirred up by the priests of the discarded sun worship. Then there is the old high priest, who denounces Phorenice in all

THE LOST CONTINENT. By Cutcliffe Hyne. Harper & Bros., 12mo, $1.50.

the glamor of her court, even as John the Baptist denounces Herod in Flaubert's story-in short, the tale is an ingenious rearrangement and adaptation of old things. Mr. Hyne chooses to make Deucalion an Atlantian; whether he identifies him with the Noah of Greek mythology we do not know, nor does it much matter. The author of "A Hero in Homespun' has given that vigorous tale of the Kentucky mountains in wartime a worthy successor in Pine Knot, which reveals afresh the virility of his handling of characters, his power of interpreting the thought, speech, primitive manners and customs of the mountaineers, and his gift of suggesting the rugged character underlying these outward manifestations. But the Rev. William E. Barton is more than a successful chronicler of a race and conditions that are passing away; he is a good novelist as well, a man who can invent a good plot to carry the lore he wishes to preserve from oblivion, a student of character who can draw individuals as well as a people, and make them lifelike Therefore his books are good reading even for those who care little about the Kentucky mountain folk as they were half a century ago, who seek rather the common human nature that underlies all life the world over, and for whom strong situations, the eternal story of love, ambition and manly endeavor, never lose their charm. The Civil War closes these pages, which contain also a picture of the champions of abolition in East Tennessee, whose memory should not be allowed to fade. A strong, manly American novel.

The publication of a translation, by Pauline W. Sill, of Adrian Chabot's The Dancing-Master, in a neat little volume, with illustrations by Jessie Wilcox Smith, is decidedly an act of supererogation in PINE KNOT. By William E. Barton. D. Appleton & Co. 12mo, $1.50.

THE DANCING MASTER. By Adrien Chabot. Translated by Pauline W. Sill. J. B. Lippincott Co., 16mo, $1.00.

these days of many books. This short story has neither wit, sentiment nor art to recommend it; it belongs to the wishywashy, colorless kind of fiction made in France specially for young girls. Not one of the characters is sufficiently individualized to be understandable; the poor dancing-master himself is a lay-figure, notwithstanding his senile love for the young girl; the youthful lover is a sorry kind of an indistinct figure, at whom the author may be poking some quiet fun; and the love of mademoiselle is mawkish

just of the kind that prevails in works of this stamp in France, but which we exclude from the reading of our girls.

The title-page of Sigurd Eckdal's Bride gives no clue to the nationality of its author, Richard Voss, but a note accompanying the copy sent to THE BOOK BUYER for review states that it has been translated from the German by Mary J. Safford. If Richard Voss really be a German, it must be said that he has caught the style of the modern Scandinavian school to perfection. Of this school we know but little here and in England, Selma Lagerlöf being the only one of its members who has succeeded in making an impression upon the English readingworld in a translation of her " Story of Gösta Berling." Sigurd Eckdal's Bride belongs to the school, in its sombreness of subject, its grey twilight of the high North, unrelieved by the warmth of sunshine and laughter. The solitude of ice and snow, the depression of long months of eternal dusk, lies over all these books. This latest story, whatever its origin, and we are convinced that it is Scandinavian, shares the grimness of human tragedy that belong to them all, the depressing grey atmosphere, the bleakness and melancholy of the extreme North.

A. Schade van Westrum.

SIGURD ECKDAL'S BRIDE. By Richard Voss. Translated by Mary J. Safford. Little, Brown & Co., 12mo, $1.50.

MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM iii. 1.

507.-(1) I have been told that in Yale University Anna Katharine Green's novel, "The Leavenworth Case," has been used as a text-book, to show the unreliability of circumstantial evidence, and again I have heard the statement denied. I am much interested in knowing the exact truth of the matter.

(2) In Benjamin F. Taylor's story of the battles at Chattanooga, under date of "Tuesday-Twentyfourth" he says: "Let me think what is to-day. Away there at the North, there were song and sermon; and the old family table. spread its wide wings; and the children came flocking home

It is Thanksgiving to-day!" A few pages farther on, under date of "Wednesday-Twentyfifth," he says: "I think, too, that the chair of every man of them all will stand vacant against the wall to-morrow-for to-morrow is Thanksgiving and around the fireside they must give thanks without him, if they can." Please explain the apparent discrepancy. Thanksgiving day was not always the same in all States, but was it ever on Tuesday?

J. V. D.

(1) It is improbable, for an imaginary case would have little or no force as a text for actual teaching, especially when real cases are plentiful. There is a remarkable collection of real cases in "Chambers's Miscellany."

(2) The explanation is, that "Tuesday-Twentyfourth" is not the date of writing, but the title of the chapter. He is about to describe the events of Tuesday, but it is Thursday when he is writing. But when he arrives at the next chapter he imagines himself in the day it describes. Taylor was always loose in his writing.

513. For years I have been trying to find out about the royal historiographers of Great Britain. From & reference book I learn that James Howell was the first. I know that Dryden and Southey held the office, but where can I get the complete list and in the proper sequence?

R. H.

514. (1) Who said that an after-dinner speech should consist of a joke, a platitude and a quotation?

(2) Who spoke of authors that are rather praised than read?

(3) Who was it that said of Ruskin that he "could discover the Apocalypse in a daisy"?

L. T.

515. When I was a boy I was much interested in a story of Sir Matthew Hale, the English jurist, told in one of the school readers, in which he changed clothes with a miller, got himself chosen