The Conquest of England. By John Richard Green. With Portrait and Maps. (Macmillan.) Ir has been well said of Mr. J. R. Green that the great love which he bore to his country was "the true inspiration of his life," and that his single aim was "to bring home to every Englishman some part of the beauty that kindled his own enthusiasm in the story of the English people." These noble qualities appear in the indomitable efforts by which he succeeded in throwing into a permanent form the greater part of his work on The Conquest of England, though oppressed by heavy suffering and lying in the grasp of death. We learn from the touching Preface, in which his widow has described his purpose, that he had intended at first to have closed this volume with the account of the Danish Conquest, reverting to the method of his Short History, where the victory of Swein and the settlement of the kingdom by Cnut were taken as a chief turning-point; "and a new period in the history of England began from the time when the English people first bowed to the yoke of foreign masters, and kings from Denmark were succeeded by kings from Normandy, and these by kings from Anjou." It seemed to him, however, after printing the book according to this earlier plan, that it would be wiser to re-cast his work, and to make those changes in its order which appear in the unfinished volume before us. He wrote a new introductory chapter describing the England of Eegberht, and tracing the political and social changes which had followed the settlement of our forefathers in Britain, the gradual advance of civilisation, and more especially the mighty change in all departments of English life which was the necessary result of the conversion of the people to Christianity. Mrs. Green's account of his last labours recalls to the mind the pathetic scene of the death of the Venerable Bede as he finished his translaon of the Gospel. We are told that, as the chapter drew to its end, Mr. Green's strength completely failed. The pages which now close it were the last words ever written by his hand-words written me morning in haste, for weakness had already rawn on so fast that, when in weariness he at last laid down his pen, he never again found trength even to read over the words he had st down. I have work to do that I know is zood,' he said when he heard that he had only few days to live; 'I will try to win but one week more to write some part of it down.' death drew nearer we are told that he said, be the first time, Now I am weary: I can work no more.' Thus he laid down with uncomplaining patience the task he had taken up with unAlinching courage." The work, as it now stands, consists of eleven chapters, of which the first six may be taken as representing his final plan, subject to some possible alterations in his introductory description, and in his account of the origin of the English shire-system, which might to the advantage of the public have been somewhat further amplified. The two following chapters, on the rule of "the great ealdormen" and on the breaking-up of English society in the course of the Danish Conquest, were left in an unfinished state; but, though they are incomplete as a chronicle of historical events, they are full of valuable information as to the social and industrial condition of the English and the causes of the Danish victory. The three closing chapters are less complete. They appear to have been written some years ago, and to have been laid aside without revision. The materials out of which they have now been reconstructed were partly printed for future correction and in part consisted of loose notes and memoranda. It had been the author's intention to extend this part of his work by introducing a full account of the social history of England during the period which immediately preceded the Norman Conquest; and we can only regret the more that he was unable to complete the work when we read the excellent descriptions of London and the principal trading towns which were, at his own desire, inserted in the chapter which deals with the reign of Cnut. We know from Norwegian history what resistance was made to the introduction of the Christian Calendar, with its "scattered holidays and Sunday rests," which were institutions abhorrent to all the Teutonic peoples in their days of heathenism. Mr. Vigfusson has recently shown us, in an Excursus to his Collection of the Poetry of the North, that the fast and the Sabbath were the great causes of hostility: the Friday fast was opposed by the thralls, who objected to work without food; and the Sunday feast or holiday was opposed by the farmers, who declared that they could not give their men food if not allowed to make them work." Mr. Green has enlarged the subject by showing the nature of the revolution which was wrought by the influence of the Church in individual life. "By the contact with Christendom," he says, "the whole character of English ceremonialism was altered." The rules of marriage were changed, the child was no longer "dragged through the earth," and the burial-fires were abolished. The new faith had forced on the Englishman a new law of conduct from the cradle to the grave. "It entered, above all, into that sphere within which the individual will of the freeman had till now been supreme-the sphere of the home; it curtailed his powers over child and wife and slave; it forbade infanticide, the putting away of wives, or cruelty to the serf. It challenged almost every social conception; it denied to the king his heritage of the blood of the gods; it labour a virtue. It met the feud face to face, proclaimed slavery an evil, war an evil, manual by denouncing revenge. It held up gluttony and drunkenness, the very essence of the old English feast, as sins. It claimed to control every circumstance of life." He shows, indeed, how long was the struggle before the remains of a rude natureworship could be effaced from the minds of men; and how many of the pagan ceremonies long survived in the rustic superstitions of the peasantry-in the bonfires and May-day games, the mummings and maskings of Christmas, and the revelry of the harvestfeast. It is more important to notice the change from the monastic system under which the country was converted to the parochial organisation by which English society was to be penetrated. This part of the history is worked out with great skill. The three classes of churches which we find noted in the laws mark so many stages in the religious annexation of the country. The great "minster" recalls the time when the monks went forth as missionaries over the face of the land. The manorial church is part of the system under which the private lords set up that ecclesiastical system which, in course of time, has transformed the township into the parish. This system was nearly complete about the beginning of the ninth century; but the growing demands of the people soon led to the building of a great number of churches or chapels of ease of a subsidiary class to supplement the main parochial organisation. Mr. Green is very successful in his treatment of the development of the royal power as the small tribal kingdoms disappeared, and as the class of nobles by blood was superseded by the rich and rapidly increasing body of thanes or nobles by service. The causes of the ultimate predominance of Wessex over the Midland and Northern kingdoms are clearly explained, as well as the difficulties which prevented the existence of a really national sovereignty before the days of Dunstan. "The effort after such a sovereignty had hardly begun when it was suddenly broken by the coming of the Danes." And this was the beginning of a savage strife that was to last till the eve of the Norman Conquest. The life of the pirates in their Northern home is described in the vivid and picturesque style which might be expected from the author of The Making of England. Perhaps too much reliance is placed on the Sagas in Snorro's romantic history; and we must regret that the Corpus Poeticum Boreale had not appeared in time to illuminate the details of the history. It would have removed at any rate several difficulties in the account of the sons of Harold the Fair-haired. Mr. Green appears to have doubted whether Hakon the Good was the foster-son of the great Ethelstan, or of the Danish king whom Alfred conquered and to whom the same name was given on his baptism; and he follows Adam of Bremen in rejecting the notion that the king who was slain at York in 954 was the brave and unfortunate Eric of the Bloody Axe, the husband of the famous witch Gundhild, surnamed "the Northern Jezebel." There seems, however, to be little doubt, when one reads the Dirges of Eric and Hakon with the commentaries of their latest editors, that the older tradition should in each case have been accepted. After an interesting chapter on "the making of the Dane law," in which the author has traced with great skill and industry the abiding influences of the Danish settlement, he passes to the reign of Alfred, for which Asser's work is accepted as the "His aim has been more than fulfilled. His memory has come down to us with a living distinctness through the mists of exaggeration and legend which time gathered round it. The instinct of the people has clung to him with a singular affection. The love which he won a thousand years ago has lingered round his name from that day to this." The chapter dealing with the House of Alfred is distinguished by a learned and original essay on the beginnings of the English shires, which are attributed, after a cogent argument, to the customs of that oldest Wessex which lay between the Southampton Water and the great Forest of Selwood. Our system of county government began to exist, on this theory, even before Somerset and Dorset had begun to attain that "rude unity" which had already given importance to Wilton and Southampton as the centres of the oldest shires. The last of the finished chapters is devoted to the relations between Wessex and the Danelaw after the great fight at Brunanburh, "such a battle," as the gleeman sang, "as had never been seen by the English since from the east Engle and Saxon over the broad sea sought Britain." The story of St. Dunstan is told so as to give us a bright view of the life of Englishmen in the west "at a time when history hides it from us beneath the weary detail of wars with the Danes." Dunstan's childhood was passed on his father's estate at the foot of Glastonbury Tor, not far from the island-fort of Athelney where Alfred “A red deer which Eadmund was chasing over along the Somersetshire lanes the death-howl CHARLES I. ELTON. In Upper Egypt, again, where he can find desert-salt in abundance, the fellah is nevertheless compelled to pay the Government salt-tax for every member of his family, down to the infant in arms. In other places, where desertsalt is not to be had, the Government-salt is either withheld or delivered in half-quantities, though the full amount of tax is rigidly exacted. The sheep-tax is so high as to be almost prohibitive, many small cultivators being unable to keep the sheep for the feeding of which they have sufficient refuse-produce. As an example of how local taxation is superadded to general taxation, Mr. Villiers Stuart adduces the case of a town called Benha-elAssa, in the Delta, where the river-traffic is actually saddled with a toll for liberty of passage under a railway bridge which spans the Nile at this point. As for the usurers, 'they are at this moment extorting three, four, and five per cent. per month of four weeks for sums owing or claimed-i.e., from thirty-nine to sixty-five per cent. per annum. They have woven around the fellaheen a tangled network of debt which no Colenso could unravel-the moderate sum originally advanced, compound Egypt after the War. years; and it was in virtue of that experience, Want of space forbids me to do more than refer those who are interested in the fortunes and misfortunes of Egypt to various other important points in Mr. Villiers Stuart's narrative. For instance, to his description of the forced-labour system, as he saw it as I have myself seen it-in actual operation, and to his excellent suggestions for its better regulation; to his account of the existing abuses of the conscription-system, and of the universal dishonesty of the official classes; to his evidence in regard of the dangerous antagonism which everywhere subsists between Arab and Copt; to his frank and far-sighted opinions upon the necessity for a prolonged military occupation and a vigorous, though temporary, substitution of English for native government; lastly to his very remarkable and somewhat startling estimate of the character of the Egyptian peasantry. "It is too readily taken for granted," says Mr. Villiers Stuart, "that the fellahs are so docile and unresisting that no revolt need be apprehended. Speaking, however, not from an experience of a few months, but from an acquaintance with them extending over more than a quarter of a centry, I assert that there is a latent tiger in their composition ready to come to the surface when some agitator may touch the right key" (chap. xxxiv., p. 341). Mr. Villiers Stuart need not cite four thousand years of history in support of the justice of his views. The Alexandria massacre is yet fresh in the public memory; to say nothing of isolated, and still more striking, cases of unprovoked barbarity. It ought not to be forgotten that a European family was deliberately crushed to death under the wheels of a locomotive at one of the provincial railway stations in Lower Egypt, and that this was but one incident among many. The ninth chapter of Egypt after the War is devoted to the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, of which Mr. Villiers Stuart gives a succinct and spirited account, illustrated with sketches and sections of the trenches, and with a capital plan of the field, showing the lines of earthworks, and the relative position of the Egyptian camp, the English forces, and the Sweetwater Canal. Chap. viii. contains an interesting deseription of the site of Pithom (Tel-el-MasLootah), which the author visited during the course of M. Naville's excavations in February 1883. It is strange that Mr. Villiers Start should have something to tell à propos f this ancient Biblical "treasure-city" which 3 new to myself, and, I presume, to my cosecretary, Mr. R. Stuart Poole; but the folwing curious details do not, to my knowdge, occur in any other description of ese remarkable ruins that has hitherto been ablished, "Among the articles which I saw in the ore-chambers was a beautifully made bronze razier for holding fire; soon after its discovery, wever, it fell to pieces from the action of the 7. In one of the chambers near the river, M. Naville showed me an immense collection of es of various quadrupeds, birds, and even ; they were fragile from age, and we could account for their presence. I saw also, in other chamber close by, masses of a species of For resin; the mark of the sacks in which it ad been contained was still stamped on the stside, although the sacks themselves had long se fallen to dust. I took some of this away with me, and, on setting fire to it, found that it doubt, stored there for the use of the temple. As we looked down from the desert cumference, and supported at their outer edges by twenty-four little pilasters, each of which was cupped at the top," are facts of real interest and value. The spot, described as tion between Ghizeh and Aboosir," must be near a ruined pyramid in an isolated situa 66 were reminded of Pompeii. Beneath our eyes, war. As regards the bone problem, it is to be re- English Comic Dramatists. Edited by Oswald THE fact that this little volume is entertaining without being unsatisfactory or tantalising speaks as ill for the structure of our English comedies as it speaks well for their wit. The ideal comedy should be one and indivisible. When we can take pleasure in a series of fragments, each introduced by the briefest possible account of the work to which it belongs, it is clear that these works must contain much irrelevant dialogue and episodic situation. In most cases, indeed, the ordinary reader has a fuller knowledge of the dramatic context than can be given in the introductory note, but his pleasure does not, as it should, depend on such knowledge. Comedy should be like a mosaic, in which each fragment acquires value and meaning from its relation to all the rest, and, when out of its setting, is a mere piece of gaudy enamel. Our comic dramatists have often been too careful of their material, and too careless of their design. They have worked in jewels instead of in enamel, and have produced not pictures, nor even patterns, but conglomerations of formless brilliancy. It is this defect which renders possible and tolerable such a selection as the present. "it Like all the works of this author, Egypt after the War is printed in large type upon excellent paper, and is abundantly illustrated. I do not think, however, that Mr. Villiers Stuart was well advised when, instead of issuing a second edition of The Funeral Tent of an Egyptian Queen, he embodied nearly the whole of that work in his present volume. The reproduction of so many familiar plates has the effect of making the whole book look like a reprint, while the interpolation of old matter adds enormously to the bulk and cost of the whole. Mr. Crawfurd is rash enough to start with Again, that which is new in Egypt after the an exact definition of comedy. It is to "furWar appeals to a class of readers whose tastes nish cause for mocking but not ungenial and sympathies are altogether distinct from laughter;" it is to deal with real life and not the tastes and sympathies of those who ex-be clothed in "the glamour of romance; hausted the first edition of The Funeral Tent is to eschew "exaggeration and caricature" on of an Egyptian Queen. Politicians are not pain of sinking into farce; and it is not to be generally archaeologists; and archaeologists are still more rarely politicians. Readers who are interested in the Egyptian question, and who will most appreciate the important facts brought to light by Mr. Villiers Stuart in the course of his official tour (the first of its kind ever made in modern Egypt), will care not at all for the leather canopy of Isi-em-kheb, or the identity of Khoo-en-Aten, or the revised texts of the tomb of Rames. All these, together with some new and curious observations made by Mr. Villiers Stuart at Gow-elGharbieh and Sakkarah, would have been more acceptable, and more accessible, in a book by themselves. For information about the pyramid of Unas, Egyptologists will of course turn to Prof. Maspero's learned and exhaustive series of articles now in course of publication in the Recueil des Travaux; but Mr. Villiers Stuart's discovery of the remains of a funerary chapel built apparently of alabaster" in enormous blocks," such as those employed in the famous chapel of Khafra called "The Temple of the Sphinx," and his simultaneous discovery of ten large alabaster basins, each measuring fifteen feet in cir means cynical and contemptuous" on pain of deepening into satire. A definition, this, to which no one will object who admits the wisdom of defining at all. But definition, the necessary preliminary of an argument, is by no so necessary in introducing an anthology. Darwinism is finding its way into aesthetics, and we are beginning to recognise the impossibility of drawing hard-andfast boundaries in the debatable border-lands of literary species. For purposes of exposition the impossible must be attempted, but Mr. Crawfurd's purpose is not expository. The sole result of his definition is to provoke cavil at a selection which is in itself judicious enough. If all that is cynical and contemptuous is to be excluded as satire, why include the grim sarcasms upon human nature embodied in Sir Epicure Mammon and the courtiers of Volpone? If we are to distinguish exactly between comedy and farce, how can we admit the humours of Bessus from "A King and no King," or the scene of the terrified servants from Addison's " "Drummer"? Can "The Beggar's Opera " rank as pure comedy any more than "H.M.S. Pinafore" or how can "Iolanthe "? And if the laughter called forth by comedy is to be "not ungenial," we include anything from the saturnalia of cynicism which bears the names of Wycherley and Congreve ?-names which in this respect, at least, must be bracketed, in spite of Mr. Swinburne's protest. A selection of English comedy with these writers unrepresented would be glaringly incomplete; but why adopt a definition which ought to exclude them? His definition apart, Mr. Crawfurd has dealt judiciously with his embarrassment A scene from Massinger might perhaps have replaced one of the three from Ben Jonson, Colley Cibber might have been shortened to make room for a passage from Steele, and Cumberland scarcely deserves a place in a selection from which Macklin is omitted. Any other faults one might find rest on mere differences of personal taste, and are not worth dwelling upon. of riches. Mr. Crawfurd's critical remarks are sometimes so suggestive as to make one regret their extreme conciseness. A fuller contrast between the comedy of types and the comedy of individuals would have been especially welcome, as this selection amply illustrates it. As we pass from Falstaff to Sir Epicure Mammon, from the Foibles, Frails, and Froths of Congreve to Honeywood, Miss Richland, and Mr. Hardcastle, we feel strongly the superiority, for us Teutons at any rate, of the comedy of men over the comedy of masks. Lessing, who discusses at great length the tendency of comedy, as compared with tragedy, to deal in personifications rather than characters, does not recognise the distinction of schools within the sphere of comedy itself. The tendency he notes is, indeed, unquestionable. Comedy deals with physiology rather than pathology, with normal rather than abnormal conditions. When it touches on the morbid, it confines itself to those developmental diseases which all flesh is heir to. Hence its characters are apt to be generalisations rather than individual studies. This tendency, however, is to be struggled against, not elevated into a principle. The typical character-the allegorical figure of avarice, or envy, or jealousy, or hypocrisy -gravitates towards farce, and often towards grotesque and cruel farce. An abstract presentation of a human passion, even of one in itself noble, awakens the lurking cynic in our composition. A man all love or ambition, even a woman all charity or chastity, tends to show the pettiness of human nature at its noblest. Only when the passion is rooted in a conceivable, credible, manysided human organism does it become sympathetic. Again, the comedy of types is apt to lose all relation to nature, and to exist, like the Indian art denounced by Mr. Ruskin, as a thing apart, revolving endlessly on its own axis, interpreting nothing but worn-out conventions, revealing nothing but the cleverness of its manufacturers. Such is the comedy of Congreve. His figures are mere masks, not even of universal-human characteristics, but of artificial vices. His world of self-conscious wits is if possible more painful than the American novelist's world of self-conscious psychologists. How refreshing to pass from it, through the reviving naturalism of Farquhar, to the genial humanity of Goldsmith. In such a collection as "The Parchment Series," absolute correctness of typography should be held essential. In this volume there are, unfortunately, several errors of the press. For example, one sentence in the Introduction is quite unintelligible, and in the scene from "The Alchemist,' "through" is printed for "thorough," to the ruin of the blank verse. Nor is the elegance of Mr. Crawfurd's English always in keeping with that of the dress in which it appears. "Typist" and "dialoguist" are pieces of half-American slang, which lead by necessary sequence to Nor can the "playist" and "knowist." following sentence be called happy :"When all is done that wit and epigram can do, no way at all hardly is made with the comedy unless all these intellectual fireworks are homogeneous to the play, promote its plot, or set forth its purpose.' study, in which arguments on both sides should be impartially weighed, and facts ascertained. In this manner I hoped best to attain what must be the first object in all research, but especially in such as the present-to ascertain, so far as we can, the truth, irrespective of consequences." To most Christians, in default of special historical study of what may be called the milieu of the Gospel story, the chief actors therein stand out in a kind of heroic or superhuman isolation against the dim background of a little-known contemporary world. Their severance from the flow of the common life that constituted their real environment is ideally absolute. We do not say that the Gospels, rightly understood, justify this imthe Gospels are misunderstood. Dr. Ederspression. The impression prevails because heim's work will undoubtedly do much towards the diffusion of correct conceptions about those conditions of Jewish life and thought which determined the outward form By and manner of the teaching of Christ; and in achieving this it will also furnish, as he desires, a vindication and illustration of the Gospel narratives, as presenting "a real historical scene in a form wholly characteristic of the times. All English readers may now know what hitherto has been too much So true a thought was worthy of more careful expression. WILLIAM ARCHER. The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. the peculium of a select body of scholars. They may become acquainted with "the leading personages in Church and State in Palestine at that time, their views, teaching, pursuits, and aims, the state of parties, the character of popular opinion, the proverbs, the customs, the daily life of the country." And not only this, He 66 Alfred Edersheim. (Longmans.) THIS book differs from its English predecessors in several important particulars. In the first place, although written in a popular style, it is saturated throughout with the higher erudition of its subject, which Dr. Edersheim has striven, not without success, to bring down to the level of ordinary comprehension. Further, the author has neither been content, nor compelled by stress of ignorance, to derive this special knowledge from the published works of English and foreign experts. He is himself profoundly acquainted with the entire store of Jewish Rabbinical literature. quotes and refers to Talmud and Midrashim, as one to whom every page and line of those famous repertories of Jewish lore are as familiar as the alphabet. But, although he starts with these unusual qualifications for the work of "presenting the life and teaching of Christ in all its surroundings of place, society, popular life, and intellectual or religious development," the author has not grudged the labour demanded for the examination of all the principal, and of many obscure, German, French, Italian, and English writers who have contributed anything to the discussion of the momentous problems connected with the origines of Christianity. We are not, therefore, surprised to learn that, as he states in his Preface, he has spent over his book "seven years of continual and carnest labour," or as, with a native touch of that Masoretic fondness for minute calculation traces of which are discernible in his work, he declared to the writer of this notice-"more than twelve thousand hours." they can, in imagination, enter their dwellings, associate with them in familiar intercourse, or follow them to the Temple, the Synagogue, the Academy, or to the marketplace and the workshop. They may know what clothes they wore, what dishes they ate, what wines they drank, what they produced, and what they imported: nay, the cost of every article of their dress or food, the price of houses and of living-in short, every detail that can give vividness to a picture of life.” It is hardly necessary to add-it will have already been inferred-that the author by no means ignores the question of questions, with which, in fact, every writer claiming serious attention in this subject is bound to grapple. He is especially careful to consider the arguments advanced by supporters of the so-called "mythical theory; and he labours, often with striking effect, to establish the thesis underlying his own work, which, shortly stated, is thisthat, while the forms of thought and speech, the theological dialect of the day, were the same for Christ as for the Rabbis, the inner spirit and entire tendency of His doctrine were absolutely antithetical to those of the Synagogue. Το say that Dr. Edersheim's standpoint is orthodox might raise in some minds a prejudice against the result of his arduous labours. We shall, therefore, be doing him mere justice in setting before our readers his own account of Little space remains for points of detail. the dominant idea of his work. Deprecating at We have noticed a great want of uniformity the outset the assumption of any pretence on in the transliteration of Hebrew terms; occahis part to write a life the materials of which sionally, also, an interpretation or an etymdo not exist, he proceeds in the next place to ology such as would approve itself to a mind disavow "any predetermined dogmatic stand-whose Hebrew scholarship was rather of a point." "I wished," he says, Rabbinical than of the newer philological type. Sometimes questions of Old Testament criticism are glanced at in a wholly satisfactory. English halts; and isolated examples of chro "to write, not for a definite purpose, be it even that of the defence of the faith, but rather to let that purpose grow out of the book as would be pointed out by the course of independent manner not Here and there the nological inaccuracies are not entirely absent. But these maculae are incidental, not pervading. None is of such importance as to affect the substantial value of the work considered C. J. BALL. as a whole. Life and Letters of William Ballantyne Hodgson. Edited by Prof. J. M. D. Meiklejohn. (Edinburgh: David Douglas.) This work will not be considered quite satisfactory by persons who knew, and even by persons who knew much of, the late Dr. Hodgson, of Edinburgh. Prof. Meiklejohn is enthusiastic, indeed, even to provincialism of style, as when, in his Preface, he laments his inability to reproduce for the public the earnest and intense presence, the quick thought, the steady judgment, the powerful eye that flashed at sense of smallest wrong; the clear, vivid, and firmly knit speech; the argument that seemed to develop itself as by an innate necessity, the glowing eloquence that caught fire as it went on, and kindled fire in the listeners." esting question what he would set himself to do. Capital milk, and oat-cakes, with a dash of whisky, were very acceptable.' Prof. Meiklejohn's last five chapters, embracing nearly two hundred pages, ought to have been confined within fifty; and the contents of these, in turn, might have been distributed over the narrative portion of the work. Prof. Meiklejohn tells us, further, far too little of the personal and domestic life of Dr. Hodgson. We learn next to nothing of his parents or of the family circle of his infancy, although a gloomy father and a quarrelsome sister appear, on his own showing, to have done their best to spoil his character. of his life between leaving Edinburgh College and being appointed secretary to the Mechanics' Institute at Liverpool at the age of twenty-three, it is only said that it was divided between lecturing and editing; and were confined chiefly to the county of Fife, where he made many useful and valuable friendships, which he retained throughout his life." He was much attached to his brother Thomas, who was lost in a shipwreck off the Farne Islands in 1843; he was twice married, and was an affectionate husband and father; and we learn from Prof. that these tunate Meiklejohn that he befriended many unforthis aspect of Dr. Hodgson's life the history and struggling persons. Upon of his heart, so to speak-his biographer is singularly, disappointingly reticent. Yet Dr. Hodgson was not, and did not pretend to be, what Prof. Meiklejohn would style an "intela being so bright and good as to have led only lectual" existence. Dr. Hodgson was born in Edinburgh in 1815, and died of angina pectoris in Brussels in the autumn of 1880. At the time of his But he has not fulfilled his own desire "to build up an intellectual portrait in mosaic of the man from his letters at different periods." There is, in fact, no life-like sketch of Dr. Hodgson in this volume except a representation of him as teaching his class of political conomy in Edinburgh by Mr. Eric Robertson, the warm colouring of which is due to a student's pardonable enthusiasm. The impression of Dr. Hodgson that is too likely to be carried away by people who make his acquaintance for the first time through the medium of Prof. Meiklejohn's biography will be that he was a restless and indeed rather self-conscious and priggish man, who was per-death he was Professor of Political Economy betually writing letters on the ephemeral subjets of the day, lecturing his friends, and and Mercantile Law in the University of ndeavouring to say smart things. This is Edinburgh, and he was an enthusiastic exot the Dr. Hodgson of fact, the active educa-ponent of what may be termed the Turgot nist of Manchester and Liverpool, much Economics. But he gave the best of his life ess the kind host of Bonaly Tower. and thought to education. He was, in a Prof. Meiklejohn's biographical method is, sense, a martyr to it; for his death was at in truth, far from good. His book is built least hastened by hurrying to attend an educational conference in Belgium. Ep too much on what is known in naval By hitecture as the compartment principle. far the most readable chapters of Prof. hs, instead of associating a number of Dr. Meiklejohn's book are those which tell of Dr. Higson's letters with different periods of Hodgson's teaching, and still more of his life, he reserves them for special chapters organising work, as an educationist in Liverring such imposing titles as "Religion," pool and Manchester. He was, in the first Politics," "Education," "The Encourager, instance, as has been already noticed, ap"Glimpses of Places, Books, Friends, and pointed secretary to the Liverpool Mechanics' Aquaintances." Letters, dealing necessarily Institute in 1839. Having been eminently rth matters of controversy, may be interest- successful as secretary, he was, in 1844, as showing the mental growth of the appointed principal of the Institute. It was ter of them; but, when they are printed in this position, and in the office which he er separate headings, they invite judgment subsequently held, of principal of Chorlton their positive as distinguished from their High School, in one of the suburbs of Mantive value. Many letters here given by chester, that he showed his great powers of d. Meiklejohn will not stand such criti- organising and managing large schools. His It may be doubted if much good can views on education, which were associated done at this time by letting the world with the phrenology he had learned and Low that Dr. Hodgson wrote, lectured on earlier in life, were not original, but he showed much enthusiasm in applying them. In 1851 he left Manchester and spent a rather wandering life for some years. Such of the letters he wrote at this time indicate quick-wittedness and capacity for intense absorption in the interests of the moment rather than reflectiveness, although some of the observations he made in Paris at the time of the coup d'état are not devoid of We all suffer for others' transgressions as well for our own. This is the inevitable condition ciety, form or change it how you may. sad to see the same blunders committed rywhere without profiting from distant ample, and to think that improvement seems ainable only after blunders have been exsted. If Christ were to revisit the earth appear in Edinburgh streets, it is an inter sagacity. In 1858, Dr. Hodgson came to London as assistant to the Royal Commission appointed to enquire into the state of Primary Education in England, and found his work thoroughly congenial. In 1871 he was elected to the Chair of Political Economy in Edinburgh; and three years later removed finally to Bonaly Tower, which had been previously occupied by Jeffrey's friend, Lord Cockburn. Dr. Hodgson came across some of the more eminent of his contemporaries apparently when he visited London rather than when he lived in it; his accounts of his meetings with such are fair examples of bright reporting of the In 1854, he thus describes a personal kind. visit to Carlyle: "Mr. C. had been asleep on the sofa, tired with a journey from Lord Ashburton's. Tea and rather indifferent miscellaneous talk, with strong denunciations of the Glass Palace, and He and I then smoked many things beside. two pipes each in the little garden behind, enclosed by high walls. He talked much and strikingly about silence, and the duty of doing, not writing and speaking, of needlewomen and incapacity, and the Corn Laws, &c., &c. He is an unsatisfactory man. Walked home all the way, cold night, to bed at one." If Prof. Meiklejohn had given a little more of this kind of thing, and a little less about would have been much more enjoyable, and education, politics, and religion, his biography would have been more appreciated by the friends and admirers of Dr. Hodgson. WILLIAM WALLACE. NEW NOVELS. Hester. By Mrs. Oliphant. In 3 vols. Sweet Mace. (Macmillan.) By Geo. Manville Fenn. In 3 vols. (Chapman & Hall.) A Late Remorse. By Frank Lee Benedict. The Philosopher's Pendulum, and other Stories. Aleriel; or, a Voyage to other Worlds. By Rev. W. Lach-Szyrma. (Wyman.) MRS. OLIPHANT writes so fast that it is almost impossible to keep pace with her. All she produces is readable; only a little of it is memorable. It is a thousand pities that she cannot bring herself to write less and work more; for, at her best, she is, I think, with one or two exceptions, the best of living English novelists. Hester. There, from first to last, she is the Mrs. Oliphant of Salem Chapel and Miss Marjoribanks-an artist, that is, in portraiture and observation, an excellent humorist, a master of human character, and an adept in Not certain forms of human experience. since A Beleaguered City-that admirable allegory, in some ways surely the best of its kind we have had since Bunyan-has she done anything, as it seems to me, so vigorous and sound, so rich in quality, and so capable in style. It is a story of life in an English country town-Redborough, to wit-and it sets forth the fortunes, material and spiritual, of divers members of a certain family from the head of the house down to the poor relations She is at her best in |