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BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

A remarkably sensible book on "Buddhism" written by Mrs. Rhys Davids has been added to The Home University Library. Without going thoroughly into the myths that surround Siddhattha Gotama, she accepts as real the birth and life of that noble and adds that Buddhism undoubtedly follows the original lines in the thinking of that marvellous teacher. She then goes on to study the Buddhist Dhamma, interpreted as a doctrine of the Norm and reaches a high degree of clearness in handling that mystic subject. The great contribution of the book to scholarship is its dealing with only the most ancient sources and its clarity of thought and expression. Henry Holt & Co.

Dr. A. A. Berle, with all that zest so characteristic of the man, attacks the present-day school-system as practised in America. His book is named "The School in the Home"; but the title gives but little hint of the contents. The German and French-particularly the German schools-he finds ideal, wonderful, ever-to-be-copied. After showing how little the American child learns in all the years of his training before College, he goes on to the really formative work he has in hand. The author managed to send a son to Harvard at thirteen and the boy still takes honornank at the end of two years. He tells the reader how he accomplished this wonderful work; for his boy is no prodigy or freak, he is very certain about that. The process is simple, practical and alluring. Moffat, Yard & Co.

A peep at the Trusts from the inside is given to the world in a racy narrative by Charles Norman Fay, called

The

"Big Business and Government." writer was for fourteen years the head of different public service corporations, in and about Chicago, so has had an admirable opportunity for observation, He improved it. Not that everyone will agree, chapter after chapter, with so rosy a view of trusts; that cannot be expected. But a man of clear insight has arisen among all the terrified prophets of to-day to declare, not that trusts are in business for the good of the people, but that the mighty corporations have begun to understand that a steady business with moderately large returns is safer and more remunerative in the end than extortion and jobbery. He has a sharp word for legislative blackmailing of these unwieldy trusts. All the great companies pass under intelligent review, the book being candid and constructive rather than partisan. Moffat, Yard and Company.

"Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People" by Constance D'Arcy Mackay meets a distinct demand. The new emphasis on dramatic expression in education finds fitting exposition in these three pageants and they seem to fulfil every requirement for successful presentation. All of them have been produced by social settlements or schools, and the results are shown in the careful directions for staging, scenery and costuming. The characters are suited to the development of boy and girl players and the well-imagined incidents are all taken from the youth of various patriots. Several oneact plays, parts of the pageants, can be used separately. The action is kept simple and the stage effects easily grasped; every opportunity is provided for processions, dances and tableaux. The book is notably complete as a

working guide, but it also reads well and does not lack literary form. Henry Holt Co.

A brilliant young woman from New York, adventurously travelling alone in Asia, is deserted and set upon by her own Mohammedan servants in the first chapter of "A Goodly Fellowship," by Rachel Capen Schauffler. The note thus pitched is maintained in a novel of thoroughly interesting adventure in that troubled and troublous nation, Persia. The heroine is rescued by a blunt, straightforward and distinctly temperamental young missionary, and sheltered in the missionary settlement for the whole winter. She is obliged to stay in the interior. What she learns of modern life on the far outworks of civilization, the sort of people its devotees are, and in particular the development of love between herself and Thorley Prescott, her rescuer, is all most simply and convincingly told. The background of Persian native life is of particular interest just now, and Miss Schauffler knows the country and the people well. The book is not an apologia for missions, but it will make belief in the usual thoughtless platitudes against missionary work quite impossible among its readers. For a first novel it is remarkably well put together, and the style is excellent. The Macmillan Co.

In "Manalive," Gilbert K. Chesterton has combined his two characteristic specialties, the detective story and the paradox. The novel, if it can be called a novel, begins with the extraordinary antics of a madman who suddenly comes to stay in an every-day boarding-house. The surprising result of this "Innocent Smith's" performances, is an amazing quickening in all his fellow-boarders of the real springs of life. When it comes to the point, however, of his shooting at a distin

guished physician and in a bizarre costume eloping with a certain Miss Gray, the boarders rise up, and investigate, detaining Mr. Smith meanwhile. The result of their research is a series of letters from all over the world, detailing various contretemps with this same Smith. For example, he had forced a college don who had "expressed a preference for non-existence" into a loud confession of a love of life by driving him out upon a perilous flying buttress and shooting carefully all about him. At the end, the whole fabric of madness is rationalized into the completest commonsense, and as a final proof, the book closes with the instinctively keen observations of a woman. The book is an elaborately consistent bit of theorizing, distinctly stimulating. John Lane Co.

The interesting character-study begun by J. D. Beresford in "The Early History of Jacob Stahl," is continued in his most recent book, "A Candidate for Truth." We follow the career of Jacob Stahl as he comes under various new influences and strives to find his real vocation through a number of different occupations. The keynote of this volume is a quotation taken from Emerson's Essay on Intellect which begins, “God offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose. Take which you please-you can never have both." Jacob is a "candidate for truth," according to Emerson, in that he submits to the "inconvenience of suspense and imperfect opinion," and "respects the highest law of his being." A more searchingly accurate psychological novel would be hard to find. So truly does Mr. Beresford understand human nature that although Jacob seems an unusual person, every reader, in some degree, identifies his own problems and moments of indecision with those of this strange hero. A rarely drawn character is Cecil Bar

ker, Vicar of St. Marks, "a gambler in souls." Jacob's encounter with the Vicar and his failure to impress this "fisher of men," as a catch worth saving, is one of the cleverest situations in recent literature. The book is genuinely absorbing, and the footnote at the end which promises a continuation of Jacob Stahl's affairs in another volume is most welcome. Little, Brown and Co.

"The Golightlys, Father and Son" by Laurence North, is a story of competition and struggle in the world of English journalism. Potiphar Golightly is self-made man a steadily by methods the integrity of which he does not stop to question; indeed he is burdened by no conscientious scruples whatever. Just at the pinnacle of his success, when the magazines and papers which he has originated and owned are bringing in great wealth, a discharged editor devises a scheme which gradually proves the downfall of Golightly's establishment. There is a domestic tragedy of the sort which does not come all at once, but which grows subtly and secretly. The heir of the Golightlys is a dilettante with no strength of purpose or character. His failure to come to his father's aid, and the identity of the chief enemy of Golightly, are blows which hasten the complete destruction of this man, who is wonderful in some respects. Life as depicted in this book, is surely hard; with few redeeming features. There is but one character who is thoroughly true and good, the Dean of Craven College. Of the modern English psychological school the novel is searchingly realistic, although more rapid in action than most of its class. It gives an admirable portrait of an unscrupulous business man, and the other characterizations are clever and life-like. George H. Doran Company.

time. who advances

"The Loss of the SS. Titanic," by Laurence Beesley is a careful, detailed narrative of that disaster that as history written by an eye-witness, as the report of a trained and observant mind, and as a spur and suggestion to reforming action has more than justification for existence. It is no harrowing tale of horrors, although the very restraint of the author's manner makes more poignant what he leaves unsaid; as an authoritative account of the whole tragedy it will no doubt stand alone. Among the noteworthy points made by Mr. Beesley are his denial of suicide by officers or of panic at any His proposed remedies differ little from those already suggested, but his placing of the blame for the tragedy on the American government as well as on the general public and the British regulations is rather different from what one ordinarily reads in the American press. Three features of his last chapter will be found of great interest; his admiration of the courage of the crowd, not the individual, and his pride in the race that could normally so act; his explanation of prayer in time of peril as the supremely practical thing to do; and his insistence upon the "normal" behavior of the passengers, the lost as well as the survivors, at every stage. The book is distinctly well written, well planned, lucid and vivid. While the author nowhere is hortative, the theme of his book may be indicated in this sentence from his introduction: "Whoever reads the account of the cries that came to us afloat on the sea from those sinking in the ice-cold water must remember that they were addressed to him just as much as to those who heard them, and that the duty of seeing that reforms are carried out devolves on every one who knows that such cries were heard in utter helplessness the night the Titanic sank." Houghton Mifflin Co.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME LVI.

No. 3552 August 3, 1912

FROM BEGINNING
VOL. CCLXXIV.

CONTENTS

1. The Mediterranean Peril and How to Meet It.

By H. W. Wilson. NATIONAL REVIEW 259 ENGLISH REVIEW 267

II. The Folk-Song Fallacy. By Ernest Newman.
Ill. Fortuna Chance. Chapter XXIX. Merry Wakefield. By James
Prior. (To be continued.)

IV. Revolutionary Sentimentality. By Robert Launay.

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277

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FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW 290
CORNHILL MAGAZINE

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VI. The Eleventh Hour. By Austin Philips.
VII. Wanted: A Boycott. By Owen Seaman.
VIII. America or the Philippines? By Sydney M. English. ACADEMY
IX. Sunday Afternoon. By Filson Young.
X. The Greek Genius.

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XI. Efficiency in Elfland. By G. K. Chesterton.

296

PUNCH

306

307

SATURDAY REVIEW

309

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