atmosphere, and the story has individuality and brilliancy. Little, Brown & Co.

The "Kölnische Zeitung" states that a rare Chinese manuscript, brought some years ago from Pekin, has been discovered in Copenhagen. It is a translation of the book on anatomy by Pierre Dionis, and contains many copies of anatomical drawings from the works of Thomas Bartholin, the famous Danish anatomist of the seventeenth century. It originated in the request made by the Emperor Khanghi (1662-1722) to a French priest, by name Perennin, in 1677, that he would translate a European book on anatomy into Chinese in order to introduce Western medical science into China. Perennin selected Dionis's and Bartholin's works, and the Emperor gave him a staff of twenty assistants who took five years in producing the manuscript. Only three copies were made for the private use of the Emperor.

That expert traveller and charming writer, Mr. Douglas Sladen, is the author of a unique guidebook to "Sicily the New Winter Resort" which contains everything which the visitor to that picturesque island needs to know about its scenery, its monuments and its people. The plan of construction is unusual. There are first certain general chapters upon the scenery, climate and and people, the gardens the churches, and the conditions of travel and motoring. Then, under the heading "Things Sicilian" arranged after the fashion of an encyclopædia, there are hundreds of paragraphs of informa tion, presented by topics, first relating to the whole island, and then, again with an alphabetical arrangement, to particular cities. Finally, there is a complete road-guide to all the towns which are easily accessible by any means of communication. This alpha

betical arrangement guides the reader at once to what he wishes to know and saves him the trouble of picking it out for himself from pages of general description. Not the least attraction of the book is the illustrations, of which there are nearly two hundred and fifty. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Mr. Bertram Dobell writes to The Athenæum, with pardonable exultation, of a recent literary discovery, as follows:

Most of your readers, I suppose, will be glad to know that I have recently discovered a very remarkable manuscript copy of Sir Philip Sidney's "Arcadia." It is a volume of 226 folios, or 452 pages. It contains a complete copy of the "Arcadia" in five "Bookes or Actes," and also "Dyvers and Sondry Sonetts." Although there must have been a number of manuscript copies of the book in existence soon after it was written, no other copy save that which is before me appears to be now extant. This alone would make it uniquely interesting; but its value does not lie only in its rarity. It is not merely an "Arcadia"; it is, I believe, the "Arcadia." It differs greatly from the printed texts. It contains much matter which is not to be found in the latter, while it omits much that appears in them. It gives us five new poems, and many fresh readings in the known poems. Among the "Dyvers and Sondry Sonetts" there is also an unknown poem. I have not yet been able to study the manuscript sufficiently to be able to see the exact relation which it bears to the printed copies; but I have found a good many indications which point to its being Sir Philip Sidney's first draft of the work. But whether it is this, or whether it is a recast of the first form of the romance, it is without doubt a most remarkable "find." Short of the discovery of a Shakespearean manuscript it is hard to imagine a more valuable treasure trove of its kind. Two things are plain-firstly, that it should find a place in one of our great public libraries; and secondly, that it should be printed with as little delay as possible.

Less than one hundred and forty years ago there might be seen posted up in England a proclamation of the Privy Council in which the Province of Ontario was called "the town." After the passing of the Treaty of Washington, a speaker at a meeting in one of the most intelligent of English cities congratulated a Canadian on the passing of the treaty, saying that he "hoped, now the Alabama question was settled, there would be nothing to divide England and Canada from each other." At that time, educated people in England were still found believing that Canadians were red. Englishmen know far more about Canada now. The opening of the marvellous North-West has done much to attract their attention. A British statesman, however, can still tell us that Great Britain has only one military frontier, that of Northern India.

That there is not a single annexationist in Canada Englishmen are constantly being told. It is true in this sense, that nobody either in Canada or the United States is now talking or thinking of that question. Nor does it seem likely that anybody either in Canada or in the United States will be talking or thinking about it for some years to come. No octogenarian has any practical interest in it. The idea that the people of the United States have any design against Canadian independence may be entirely dismissed. The present writer has for nearly forty years conversed with Americans of all classes and parties without hearing anything of the kind or encountering any appearance of hostility to Canada. The Irish quarrel was embraced by American politicians for the sake of the Irish vote, the importance of which has of late greatly

declined, so that little or nothing is heard of it in the mustering of forces for presidential elections.

The great bond and symbol of peace, the neutrality of the lakes, secured by the exclusion of ships of war, has been faithfully observed on both sides. An alarm of American infraction was raised some years ago, but proved groundless. On that occasion some fervid Canadians proposed to introduce British gunboats into the Lakes. They were thinking only of the lower lakes, as of course was Wellington when he penned his dispatch. They forgot Lake Superior, where the Pacific Railway might be easily raided and the Dominion cut in two by an American flotilla issuing from Duluth.

In attempting a forecast, several things must be taken into account. One is the state of American institutions, which shows the truth of Bacon's saying that what man does not change for the better, Time, the great innovator, will be changing for the worse. In the United States Time has been concentrating power in the Senate, while the Senate, in which the smaller States have equal representation with the greatest, has become a conclave of special interests with no policy but "stand-pat," and incapable of forming or pursuing any great design. Nor can we yet tell what effect the Panama Canal, if it succeeds, or extended relations with Mexico, may have in drawing the United States southwards. The awakening of Japan, probably with China in her train, and her apparent tendency to get a footing on the Pacific Coast, are also to be considered in casting the horoscope of the future.

The movement at present on foot and apparently gaining strength is

that of commercial reciprocity only, leaving the question of political relations untouched. Protectionism has never defined its area. The political area is defined by nationality. Nature has defined the commercial area as simply that of profitable exchange.

On the other hand, events march and natural forces show their power. The action of the great forces often is long suspended by that of secondary forces; but in the end the great forces prevail. It was so in the cases of Italy and Germany. Statesmen renowned for sagacity said, after the failures in each case, that union would never come. It came, with the hour of destiny and with the man. So to all appearances it will be in the case of this northern Continent of America.

To know what Canada really is, the inquirer must use not the political but the physical map. The political map presents her as an unbroken expanse embracing half of the North American Continent, including the North Pole; colored red in the Jubilee stamp, and more than equalling in extent all the rest of the British Empire. In reality the Dominion consists of four different sections of territory forming a broken line across the Continent and separated from each other by wide spaces or great barriers of nature, while each of them is closely connected in every way with the country to the south. The railway which links them has to carry wide unpaying tracts as well as the liabilities of a subarctic climate. Apart from the present movement into the newly opened wheat fields of the North-West, there is little interchange of population. There would hardly be any commercial interchange were it not for the tariff. Ontario draws her coal from Pennsylvania, while Nova Scotia sends her coal to New England. An attempt by means of a protective tariff to force Ontario to buy her coal of Nova Scotia failed. It took a thirty

five per cent. tariff in the early days of the North-West to force the poor settler in Manitoba to buy his reaping machine at a distant factory in Ontario when the works of Minneapolis were at hand. He sometimes bought at Minneapolis in spite of the duty. British Columbia, the Canadian Province on the Pacific, is clasped between the adjacent State of the American Union and the American territory of Alaska.

There is already to a great extent practical fusion of the people of Canada with people of the United States. There are 1,200,000 native Canadians on the south of the line. A Canadian boy thinks no more of going to New York or Chicago for a start in life than a Scotch or Yorkshire boy thinks of going to London, and the Canadian in the American market finds himself at a premium. Of French Canadians there are believed to be 150,000 in Massachusetts alone. There is a counter current of Americans into the North-West. Churches interchange ministers. Associations and fraternities of all kinds span, some totally ignore, the Line. The sporting worlds of the two countries are one. The summer resorts are in common. Canadians read the American magazines. American newspapers have a considerable circulation in Canada. American currency circulates everywhere but in Government offices. New York is the Canadian Stock Exchange. American investments in Canada are rapidly increasing. Intermarriage is frequent; and as Canada, in deference to the Catholics, is without a divorce court, Canadians resort to the divorce courts of the United States. The writer attended the other day a great farmers' picnic, at which met the sections of a clan settled, one on the Canadian, the other on the American side of the Line. In fact, nothing separates the two portions of the Eng