story among them. The soldier brother returns from the wars the very morning of his brother's wedding to the girl whom he has regarded as his own sweetheart, but the bridegroom is unconscious of the position and urges him to remain in his old home. Little by little, the soldier yields to his affection for his sister-in-law, and, fancying that she is unhappy, begs her to elope with him. Almost at the same time, the inn ceases to prosper, and foreclosure impends over both brothers and the tale moves swiftly to the final tragedy. The book is admirably written and its quiet excellence should make it a favorite for many seasons to come. J. B. Lippincott Co.

In Edwin Asa Dix's "Prophet's Landing" (Charles Scribner's Sons), the attempt is made to apply certain processes of combination and high finance to business as carried on in a small town. The central figure in the story is a village merchant with unusual initiative who adds department after department to his store, regardless of the consequences to more humble competitors; becomes in a small way a railway promoter; uses his secret information to buy up land; gets special rates on his freight; and manipulates the stock of a small local railroad after the most approved Wallstreet methods. The story is told with simplicity and directness; but the characters and even the slender love story which runs through the book are subordinate to the author's main purpose of exhibiting the essential selfishness of the processes described. At points, there is a confusion of standards, practises which are quite legitimate being classed with those which are clearly wrong; and there is now and then a touch of the melodramatic, as when a stroke of lightning during a December thunder storm destroys the new house which the successful speculator has

built at the cost of the ruin of the contractor. But it was a happy thought to cause the young son of the ruthless capitalist to bring his father to repentance by reproducing his qualities in miniature.

Edinburgh, both the Old Town, "mine own romantic," and the New, so completely belongs to Scott that one can hardly see why "Edinburgh under Sir Walter Scott" has waited so long for Mr. W. T. Fyfe to write it. Perhaps the reason may be that every Scottlover has a similar work in his imagination and wanders happily through the ancient burgh, in fancy following the kindly ghost of the Great Unknown, but there are few who will not find Mr. Fyfe a welcome companion in such a pilgrimage. He has used not only Scott and Lockhart, but many a contemporary of the Shirra in turning the stones of the streets into bread for the imagination, and Edinburgh looms before the inward eye as a realm of such originality and individuality as the three kingdoms could not equal. What with the real persons, the extraordinary dignitaries of bench, and bar, and session, and the equally real companies from the Minstrelsy, and the novels, the half real and half imaginary beings who flock from the house of Ambrose, and from the abode of the Blue and Yellow, Edinburgh is as populous as Pekin. Mr. R. S. Rait, who has given the book a wisely appreciative introduction, says that even those who read the "Letters" and the "Journals" once a year may learn something from the work, and this is true, but even greater is its value to those to whom it introduces Scott, and at once compels them to perceive his sovereignty. Lockhart himself is not so good a herald, not so clear voiced in proclaiming the great deeds of the monarch of the pen and the permanence of his glory. E. P. Dutton & Co.