Six years later, in 1889, Mr. Stevens was sent by President Harrison to Honolulu as minister resident to the Hawaiian Kingdom; a year later his office was raised to the next grade in the American diplomatic service, that of minister plenipotentiary. During the Hawaiian revolution of 1893 Minister Stevens established a protectorate over the islands, and in his despatch to the State Department said: "the Hawaiian pear is now fully ripe, and this is the golden hour for the United States to pluck it." Secretary of State Foster in part disavowed his minister's coup d'état. The incoming Cleveland administration immediately sent forth Commissioner Blount to investigate the situation. As one result of this inquiry, Mr. Stevens was recalled and Mr. Blount was appointed minister in his place. After this Mr. Stevens took little part in public affairs, and died in 1895.

If he had the sense of humor which is promised in his shrewd, kindly face, of an unmistakable "Yankee" type, John L. Stevens probably spent no uncomfortable hours at the close of life, mourning over the sudden ending of his Hawaiian mission.

JOHN MEREDITH READ

It was in our annals the unique distinction of General Meredith Read to have gone a diplomatic mission at his own. charges. When he was minister to Greece, a post to which he was appointed in 1873, he gained promptly the release of the American ship "America," and was nationally thanked for it. He had the business sagacity, during the Turko-Russian war, to suggest the increase of the wheat export of this country to Europe by the tidy sum of $73,000,000 in one year. Notwithstanding these and other activities, Congress, in 1878, then suffering from an acute attack of economy, made no appro

priation for the Greek legation. Whereupon, for almost two years General Read paid his own bills, and the doors of the legation at Athens remained open. Public life was an inheritance to him, for he was the great-grandson of a "Signer," grandson of a Pennsylvania lawyer, and the son of a Chief Justice of the same State. A graduate of Brown University in 1858, he became in the Civil War Adjutant-General of New York. He was made in 1869 Consul-General for France and Algeria, and represented during the Franco-German war the consular interests of Germany, yet retained and increased his popularity in France itself.

He was early interested in historical matters and as a young man had published a "Historical Inquiry Concerning Henry Hudson." He was connected with numerous historical bodies and was a collector of documents and archives, among them the letter-books of Robert Morris. His inspiration for these serious tastes came to him as a mere boy, when he fell under the fascinations of Edward Gibbon and his immortal "Decline and Fall." He never forgot the early passion. When at the close of his Greek mission Read was in Switzerland, he came upon the veritable descendants of Gibbon's "set" at Lausanne, and more than that, he discovered in Gibbon's former château, La Grotte, immense treasures recalling a past of burning interest to him. Here then he staid and buried himself in these mouldy archives. He died in 1896, and the fruit of his labors appeared in two stout octavo volumes the next year under the title "Historic Studies in Vaud, Berne, and Savoy." In spite of the sentimental consideration which inspired it, this monument to Read's industry is not of luminous interest, though the style is informal and written to interest more than to inform. Lindsay Swift.

THE

HE success of our arms in South Africa, after many lamentable mistakes, has been a blessing to the bookshops, which are now beginning to wake up after many months of dire dullness; whilst the crisis in China against an enemy that is the foe of all the West, by removing a certain feeling of isolation which had come over us, is a help in the same direction. The publishers have started warily, it is true, with novels for summer consumption and books more or less bearing on the crises of the day; but there are signs that the worst has been passed, and the autumn will bring forth its due quota of new books. The literature on the South African war has been immensely overdone. Much of it should never have been put into book form at all, for it appeared while the war was yet in full swing; and, even at that, it was not particularly well done. Probably the only two books that will survive out of it all are Mr. Steevens's and Mr. Winston Churchill's.

The sixty-third and last volume of the "Dictionary of National Biography" has appeared, and brings to a close for the time being one of the most remarkable enterprises of publishing in our annals. It was in 1882 that Mr. George Smith, the chief of Smith, Elder & Co., resolved to start a cyclopædia of biography on an unexampled scale. On the advice of Mr. Leslie Stephen he resolved to limit it to British and Irish biography (to the exclusion of Americans even), and the first volume appeared, under Mr. Stephens's editorship, on January 1, 1885. Once Once every quarter since that date a volume has appeared with unfailing punctuality. No fewer than 29,120 men and women have been dealt with by 653 writers (in 29,108 pages). The longest biography is that devoted to Shakespeare (49 pages),

and is the work of Mr. Sidney Lee, who has been associated with the enterprise from first to last, and has been sole editor since 1891. The Prince of Wales honored this great monument to our patriotic pride in an almost unique way by dining with the publishers and the editorial staff on a recent occasion in the Carlton Hotel, the "smartest" restaurant in town. The description of Smith-Elder as "a highclass, sleepy old firm" is singularly inappropriate in view of this achievement. It was the Smiths who gave us Thackeray and Charlotte Brontë, and who started the Cornhill Magazine and the Pall Mall Gazette, over the latter of which they spent £158,000. Of recent years Mr. Smith made a little fortune over a mineral water. By the way, it is rumored that Mr. Astor wants to sell the Pall Mall Magazine, and Lord Frederick Hamilton has resigned the editorship.

Among the many sadnesses of the South African war, Miss Mary Kingsley's death has been universally mourned, for she had made her mark not only as a writer, but as a good citizen. She was very popular among the Boer prisoners at the Cape whom she went to nurse. Curiously' enough at the very time of her death a monument was unveiled at Wilton, Salisbury, by Mr. A. J. Balfour, in memory of the Earl of Pembroke, who traveled a great deal in his early life with her father, Dr. Kingsley, and wrote a book with him, entitled "South Sea Bubbles." Lord Pembroke, who was very much interested in the South Seas, and did not a little to introduce Mr. Louis Becke to English readers, represented the famous Herbert family. He died five years ago, to be succeeded by his brother, the present (the fourteenth) Earl, whose Christian name of Sidney recalls the fact that the second

earl married the sister of Sir Philip Sidney. The sister of the present Earl, Lady de Grey, is one of the leading figures in the management of the Grand Opera in London. She was married to the late Lord Lonsdale, who was succeeded by his brother, the Kaiser's friend. She will one day be the Marchioness of Ripon. Mr. Balfour in unveiling the statue of Lord Pembroke declared that he had a greater genius for friendship than almost any man he had known.

The death of Stephen Crane has been much regretted, for, although he did nothing quite so good as "The Red Badge of Courage," that achievement had put him on a pedestal. The Cuban war practically killed him, and the genial atmosphere of Sussex and a visit to the Black Forest proved unavailing. He longed to go off to the South African war, and the climate of the "land of lies" might have staved off the mortal disease from which he suffered for some time, but he was too ill from the very first to start. He left two unpublished books, which will be brought out by the Methuens-one a story of Irish life, which will probably be finished by Mr. Robert Barr; the other a collection of short war sketches. Messrs. Methuen are publishing a history of the war in parts. They advertise it widely as "Methuen's history." Doubtless many people have taken it as Lord Methuen's account of the campaign. The Harmsworths are publishing a similar book on the same plan.

Gibbons' autobiography is to be issued by the Methuens, uniform with their fine edition of the "Decline and Fall," and will be edited by Dr. Birkbeck Hill, the Johnsonian scholar, whose minuteness is almost tedious. Professor Bury, who has just finished his unique edition of Gibbons's masterpiece, is not yet forty. He is an Irishman by birth and education, and has held a chair in Trinity College,

Dublin, since 1893, while he has been a fellow and tutor there for seventeen years. Since the publication of his "History of the Later Roman Empire," in 1889, he has been signalled out as a great authority on the neglected field of study connected. with the expiring empire. He has very sound views on the foolishness of teaching the classics as "dead" languages. In a recent article he tells the story of a man who, having visited the Giant's Causeway, declared that it was "too d-d scientific." "In the same way," says Dr. Bury, "I feel that classical scholarship is growing too d-d scientific. It will soon be a branch of mathematics." Professor Bury's edition of Gibbon is one of the books on view at the Paris Exhibition as a specimen of British (or rather Scotch) typography.

The publication of "Village Notes and Some Other Papers" recalls the great interest attaching to the writer, Mrs. Pamela Tennant, who is the sister of the brilliant Mr. George Wyndham, our Under Secretary for War, and the sister-in-law of Mrs. Asquith, who is supposed to have been the original of Mr. Benson's Dodo. Mrs. Tennant is connected with a family of great ability. Her great-grandfather was the brilliant but erratic Lord Edward FitzGerald, the hero of the Irish Rebellion of 1798. Lord Edward, it may be remembered, was married to an equally erratic personage, known in history as "Pamela," though her real name was Ann Simms. She was long supposed to have been the daughter of Madame de Genlis by the Duke of Orleans, but recent investigation has shown that she was born in Newfoundland, though her parentage is still doubtful. She came to England in 1791, when Sheridan is said to have offered her marriage. She fascinated Lord Edward FitzGerald, who married her in 1792. Her daughter, Pamela, married Major-Gen. Sir Guy Campbell, whose

daughter in turn became the mother of Mr. George Wyndham. The Wyndhams also inherit ability on the father's side, for Mr. Wilfred Scawen Blunt, the poet, is the cousin of Mr. George Wyndham. Mr. Scawen Blunt married Lord Byron's granddaughter, while his daughter married the great Lord Lytton's grandson. It is very rare that so much literary ability at any rate is found to run in the same family for so long a period.

There is quite a run on books about gardening, both practical and purely fanciful. The literature of contemplation has received a fillip by the work of Bethia Hardacre, who is known in private life as Mrs. Fuller-Maitland. By far the best writer on gardening is the lady who signs herself" E. V. B." She has just written a new book on Hampton Court Garden, entitled "Seven Gardens and a Palace." "E. V. B." (the Hon. Mrs. Boyle) is the widow of the Rev. Hon. Richard Cavendish Boyle, uncle of the present Earl of Cork. Her first book was written so long ago as 1852. She lives at Huntercombe Manor, Maidenhead, a very beautiful place where Evelyn, the prince of gardeners, was once a welcome guest. The gardens are unique, and under the fostering care of Mrs. Boyle they have increased in splendor. Mrs. Boyle is seventy-four years old, and published her first book, "Child's Play," a series of seventeen drawings-for she is also an artist -so long ago as 1852. Lady Warwick has also taken to gardening literature, for she recently published in a semi-private way an elaborate and expensive book dealing with her Essex home near Punmow.

One cannot think that D'Annunzio's work can ever become really popular in England, although Mr. Heinemann has ventured to publish some translations of the young Italian's novels. Mr. Heinemann has always shown a very friendly feeling towards continental writers of

every school, and one can understand his partiality for D'Annunzio in his having married an Italian, who, under the name of "Kassandra Vivaria," has written a notable novel herself. Mrs. HeinemannSindici, as she is called, is said to be engaged on a translation of D'Annunzio's latest romance, which contains a character suspiciously like Signora Duse. Miss Helen Zimmern has been protesting against the English reception of "La Giaconda" by English people at the Lyceum, on the ground that it was hissed off the stage at Naples. It was another of his plays that shared that fate; but, even had it been "La Giaconda," the great enthusiasm of Londoners for La Duse would make anything she plays pardonable. When you have said that, however, you have said everything, for D'Annunzio is much too tropical for the circulating libraries. He has taken to politics, and Ouida thinks he may become "a new Rienzi."

The writer in Literature who has been declaring that "five-sixths of the reviews one sees in most papers are of the indeterminate, flabby, no-view-at-all variety,” is well within the mark. "The writers of them," he goes on to say, "write not what they themselves think, but what they think the public thinks they ought to think." Morally, this is true; but it is very difficult to substantiate when you come to particular cases, as Dr. Conan Doyle discovered on a notable occasion. One of the severest critics (in private) that I have met writes less pungently than many men with half his knowledge and eclecticism. He would probably defend himself on a hundred grounds, taking his stand primarily on the desire not to hurt. the feelings of writers; but in most cases such a conflict between private and public views results in the flabby review of which the writer in Literature complains; and in the case of the weaker critics it ends in

a careless cynicism that will not put itself about to discriminate. The recent attempts to start purely literary journals have been peculiarly disappointing, for the simple reason that real scholarship and an enormous circulation will not run in double harness. I believe that the daily newspapers will cease to do any reviewing as such, but will go in for a system of bright reporting, entirely on the lines of the news of the day. That will bring a book before the notice of more readers than the present system of huddling "notices" altogether, but it is not discriminating reviewing of the type Literature's correspondent pines after.

Dickens enthusiasts who wish to see some of the more interesting parts of London which the great novelist immortalized, must make haste, for the last of his favorite spots are rapidly disappearing. Notably among these is Clare Market in the heart of London, which has already been shut up and is about to be demolished in order to make way for the great new street between the Strand and Holborn, a much needed improvement, for at present moment the entire traffic between these two great arteries is conducted through the narrow alley, Chancery Lane. Clare Market, which has long been a hotbed of crime, is connected with "Joe," "Mr. Guppy" and "Mr. Krook." The old "Magpie and Stump," where Mr. Pickwick made the acquaintance of Mr. Lowten, has been replaced by a gorgeous new "gin-palace." Almost the only re

maining part of Dickens' land in this part of London is the Rag Store at the corner of Lincoln's Inn Fields and its authenticity is doubtful. Meantime Bleak House at Broadstairs, which Dickens loved, is in the market for £3,000. There is a proposal on foot to buy it for a Dickens Museum. Prices for first editions of Dickens' works keep up wonderfully. A copy of the "Letters of Dickens" in three volumes, Grangerised to eighteen, was sold the other day for £90.

Mr. Charles Frohman is reported to have declared recently that good plays are so scarce that he means to get good novels dramatized. He probably finds this in accord with the tastes of his public, for he annexes a book, as well as a playhouse audience. London, however, while also feeling the absence of good new plays, shows the difficulty by harking back to good old ones. We are, therefore, having an unprecedented number of revivals. The Haymarket management has found a gold mine in Goldsmith and Sheridan, and has just put on "The School for Scandal." Sir Henry Irving, rejuvenated by his

American tour, has revived "Olivia." Mr. Tree has gone back to

'Rip Van Winkle." Mr. Martin Harvey has had to rely again on "The Only Way." Mr. Wilson Barrett is playing " Quo Vadis," one American version of which completely failed; and at the minor theatres we are getting revivals of farces and light. opera.

J. M. Bulloch.