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Laura E. Lockwood and Amy R. Kelley are joint editors of the latest volume of epistolary anthology, "Letters That Live," which Henry Holt & Co. publish in a dainty book uniform with "The Poetic New World," "The Open Road," "The Friendly Town," etc. The selections range from a letter by Walter Paston, written in the late fifteenth century, to letters by Ruskin, Sidney Lanier, Thomas Bailey Aldrich and Lewis Carroll, written in the late nineteenth. No more charming glimpses of personality are to be found than those which appear in personal letters such as fill this volume, written in all the intimacy of love or friendship, without consideration of any possible wider perusal. The letters are well chosen, though not in accordance with any arbitrary rule; and the order of arrangement is not topical but chronological.

The Rev. H. H. T. Cleife, Rector of Hardington Mandeville, Somerset, England, is the compiler of a little volume of meditations on "Mutual Recognition in the Life Beyond" which is full of comforting suggestions as to conditions after death. Passages from the Scriptures, hints and intimations, dreams, hopes and expectations, expressed by many writers ancient and modern, in prose and verse, are here grouped, with meditations of the compiler's own, in such a way as to yield a chapter of devotional reading for each day of the month. While it remains true, as Whittier wrote, that

"Still on the lips of all we question

The finger of God's silence lies" there will be no end to the questioning so long as life lasts; and the assurances collected in this little book will be welcome to many.

Rose G. Kingsley's "In the Rhone Country" (E. P. Dutton & Co.) is a charmingly fresh and vivid record of

travel through a region rich in associations and in natural beauty. It is

not written with any intention of supplanting or even of supplementing the guide-books. It is simply a record of personal impressions and experiences during a six weeks journey down the Rhone from Lyons,-made up in part from notes made at the time, and in part from free and joyous letters written to a sister while the journey was in progress. If this process involves the inclusion of some inconsequent material, the resultant freshness and intimacy of the record and the personal flavor are a more than ample compensation. Nearly seventy illustrations, a dozen of them photogravures, add to the attractiveness and interest of the volume. The frontispiece "On the Rhone between Vienne and Valence" is from a drawing made by Miss Kingsley's mother, Mrs. Charles Kingsley, nearly seventy years ago.

In the "Cyclopedia of Illustrations for Public Speakers" of which Robert Scott and William C. Stiles, editors of "The Homiletic Review," are joint compilers and editors, clergymen and others will find a treasury of facts, incidents, anecdotes and various kinds of selections, adapted to use as illustrations. Altogether, there are between three and four thousand selections, alphabetically arranged by topics, with cross references, facilitating a ready choice of pertinent material. Indexes of texts, arranged both topically and in proper Scriptural order direct attention to appropriate quotations. Altogether, orators, clerical or lay, can hardly fail to find in this huge volume some selection fitting whatever subject they may elect to speak upon. Whether, when found, they will care to use it, is another matter; for with much that is good much that is not so good is included, as could hardly fail to be the

case, when a great drag-net is swept through all sorts of material, ancient and modern, books, magazines, papers, poets' corners, and columns of newspaper jests. pany.

Funk & Wagnalls Com

Intense, brilliant, daring, in bitter revolt against the conventional selfishness of the social order, and full of generous enthusiasms, John Masefield's novel, "The Street of To-day," shows the qualities which have made his poetry noticeable. It describes the effort of a young English scientist of family and fortune, just back from South Africa where he has won distinction by his study of the sleeping-sickness, to rouse the public at home to the need of a "scientific supervision of national life," to "put Science in her place in the council, on the throne," to make her "as potent in national affairs as the church and the police." More than an agitation, a crusade, he contemplates with the ardor of the zealot; and with the shrewdness of the practical man of affairs he sets about his preparations-first among them the launching of a popular newspaper, as the organ of the movement, Two women of antagonistic types exert rival influences upon the plot, and the hero's choice of the one whose "many acquired refinements guard an inner emptiness" almost brings it to a tragical conclusion. The book is rich in epigram and satire and will give food for discussion to many readers. Mr. Masefield's talent is not for character-drawing, and the human interest is not strong. E. P. Dutton & Co.

But

Those critics who maintained that the chief strength of "Nathan Burke" lay in its writer's extraordinary power of analyzing a woman's nature will find their judgment triumphantly confirmed by Mary S. Watts's new novel. "The Legacy," sub-titled "The Story of a

Woman."

The story is told in a fashion leisurely enough to allow some interludes of comedy, with a plot of considerable complexity involving an unusual number of characters, all cleverly portrayed, but the Woman dominates it all. She is not a type-an adventuress or a saint. She is an individual. She is as real as our own acquaintances, and we follow her fortunes with the same intense curiosity with which we should follow theirs, if we were privileged, at the same time, to read their thoughts. The narrative covers a period of some twenty-five years, and the opening chapters show little Letty Breen living in a shabby old house of decaying gentility, made comfortable for her stately, do-nothing grandfather by her sad mother's incessant toil. The Breen connection is a large one, scattered all over the MidIdle West, with a great-uncle who is a bishop and an uncle who is a promoter, and aunts and cousins of all sorts, and among them means are found to send Letty to boarding-school. There she becomes aware that a moderate amount of beauty and a great capacity for accomplishing what she sets her mind to are her definite assets. From that point the story follows the development of a nature in which ambition, coldness and instinctive kindness of heart are strangely blended. Letty's three lovers are sketched with a light but assured touch. To readers who find a novel incomplete without a problem, the question of heredity is offered. The Macmillan Co.

The publication, by Houghton-Mifflin Co., of the Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, marks in a fitting manner the centennial year of the birth of this wonderful woman and still favorite author. The book is written by her son Charles Edward Stowe and her grandson, Lyman Beecher Stowe. Hav ing especial access to the family writ

The

ings, the authors have been enabled to tell their story often in Mrs. Stowe's own picturesque and vivid words. The chief interest of the book naturally centers in the chapter on Uncle Tom's Cabin, but scarcely less fascinating are the earlier chapters which tell of the author's girlhood in the Beecher home, in whose stimulating spiritual and intellectual atmosphere her nature received its training in moral earnestness and broad humanity. earlier years of her married life, when she was struggling to combine authorship with the cares of housekeeping and motherhood, are related with much graphic detail and humor; and her important work as a delineator of New England life is illumined for her readers by sketches of the original scenes and characters of the later books. From her own observation of the evils of slavery, as seen in her father's Cincinnati home, where as she writes, "the underground railway ran almost through our house," and from her brother's bitter experience with the Fugitive Slave Law in Boston, came Mrs. Stowe's determination to strike a blow with her pen at this great wrong; the story of "How Uncle Tom's Cabin Was Built," the phenomenal success of the book, its influence in shaping public opinion before the war, and the love and esteem in which the author was held both at home and abroad, fill out the narrative of the life of the foremost woman of her time. The book will doubtless prove one of the popular biographies of the season.

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"The Long Roll"-Mary Johnston's promised story of the Civil War-will surprise many of her warmest admirers by its evidences of patient and la

borious preparation, and by the enthusiasm with which it enters into the minutest details of the military movements involved. "Extraordinary that a woman should have written this." will be the instinctive comment, as one page after another of stirring narrative is turned. Beginning with a graphic description of the reading of the Botetourt Resolutions to a crowd assembled in a Virginia county-seat, in December of 1860, the story follows the career of its hero, Stonewall Jackson, and ends with his untimely death. Nearly seven hundred pages in length, it is a volume which no one will pass by who wishes to count himself conversant with all the varied aspects of the great struggle which it describes. On the other hand, it must be admitted that, from the novel-reader's point of view, it is over-loaded with information, and fails to make the impression that it might have made, had it been shorter. The portrait of General Jackson himself does not stand out, clear and bold, as it would have done with less detail. One feels that the book has been a labor of love for Miss Johnston, and that the interest of its subject will secure it wide appreciation, but one regrets that it could not have been written more in the manner of "Lewis Rand." Chapters here and there-like the one which describes Richard Cleave's venture into General Banks's headquarters in Fredericksburg in the uniform of a Union officer -are as brilliant as any in the earlier book, and the love-story is of intense interest. The Virginian life of the period, with the self-sacrifice and courage called forth by the stress of the time, is vividly portrayed. A sequel is suggested. Houghton-Mifflin Co.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME LII.

No. 3496 July 8, 1911

FROM BEGINNING
VOL. CCLXX.

CONTENTS

1. The Outlook for Arbitration. By Sir John Macdonell, C. B.

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II. The Scottish Homes and Haunts of Robert Louis Stevenson. By
Flora Masson
CORNHILL MAGAZINE
III. Fancy Farm. Chapters XI. and XII. By Neil Munro. (To be con-
tinued).
BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE
By Clement Antrobus Harris

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IV. The Bi-centenary of the Piano.

V. Kingship and Poetry.

VI. Dear Old Cecil.

72

80

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By His Honor Judge Parry. (Conclusion.)

VII. The Big Bass of Salajak. By Ardern Hulme Beaman

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IX. Where Men Decay.
X. At the Sign of the Plough. Paper V. On the Works of Sir Walter

OUTLOOK.

113

Scott. By Andrew Lang. (Answers.)

XI. The Attraction of Trouble. .
XII. The Ingratitude of Edwin..
XIII. Life in London: By the River. By Arnold Bennett . NATION 120
XIV. Light and Humorous Verse.

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FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is 50 cents per annum.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered let ter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

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