the greater part of their social news, and would be a little less unscrupulous in gratifying their owner's private spites, their home columns would leave little to be desired by people who were not too particular about the English language. The influence of their foreign news and opinions both at home and abroad, during some crisis and in the process of manufacturing the crisis, is, however, wholly unfortunate. The proprietor, usually a man of utterly unbalanced judgment, ignorant observation and violent prejudices, insists upon his point of view being adopted and explained day after day in the brief, forcible language of true sensation; special correspondents are sent out to certain foreign ceremonies or serious political conferences, tinged The Saturday Review.

Samuel G. Blythe's "We Have With Us Tonight" (Henry Altemus Company) is a clever skit which hits off the various types of bores who succeed one another as after dinner speakers at public banquets. Every one has heard them, the confused and ineffective toastmaster, the turgid orator, the flamboyant poet, the highly informing speaker who reads his address from acres of manuscript, the professional raconteur, the man who makes a blunder in telling what should have been a funny story and waits flushed and expectant for the laugh which fails to come-these all are tedious enough as one encounters them in the flesh, but as they move in procession through Mr. Blythe's pages they are certainly amusing.

with this emotional, ill-judged partisanship; and, under the same influence, their messages are smothered by the sub-editor under "scare" headlines whose irresponsible absurdity is not yet understood on the Continent. Rebukes, entreaties, threats and promises of every description are lavished by those in authority on such occasions to prevent the "yellow" proprietor making a fool of himself; but I have never yet known these to have the slightest effect. Fortunately it is only rarely that the sensational journalist of this description is able to "let himself go"; but when some such foreign crisis arises the saner press of this country ought to address its erring brethren in very emphatic language. Edward H. Cooper.

"Young gentlemen," a celebrated naturalist was wont to say to his classes, "you do not know what an insect is

and you do not know what insects are," and then, for the promotion of humility, he would betray them into definitions that would classify half the animal kingdom as insects, and then would lay before them a set of characteristics apparently denoting a ferocious monster, and show them that the creature possessing them was nearly microscopic. The world is not so very much wiser to-day, in spite of newspaper entomology and the reports of various slaughtering commissions, and the information in Dr. John B. Smith's "Our Insect Friends and Enemies" is needed by the Audubon Societies, the seeker for a home site, the housekeeper, the gardener, the farmer, the traveller, and numberless other folk. It has a colored frontispiece showing some fourteen unfriendly creatures; and also a great number of good pictures in black and white, and its twelve chapters are admirably arranged for consultation besides being well-indexed. Insects

are considered in relation to the animal kingdom; to plants as benefactors and as destroyers; to one another; to particular animals; to man, both in their beneficent aspects, and as carriers of disease, and to the farmer and fruit grower, and a whole chapter is given to the war on insects. The style strikes the happy medium between the strictly scientific and the over-simple, and the volume may be read with pleasure by an intelligent High School pupil, but it is intended not for amusement but for instruction. It is more valuable than most books intended to cover the same field, because its chapters on insects in their relations to other creatures, animal and vegetable, awaken the uninstructed mind to the truth set forth in the preface that nothing exists to, for, or by itself alone. The first glimpse of this principle is often marvellously enlightening. J. B. Lippincott Co.

Sidney McCall's fourth essay in fiction, "Red Horse Hill" evades comparison with either of the two types represented in its author's earlier work, and enters a field in which little has been attempted in this country. Hitherto, such juvenile victims of the curse of Eden as have appeared in American novels have been slaves, or have labored for sweaters of their own foreign nationalities, but those who toil in the Regina cotton mill in Sidon, Alabama, are free born Americans, and Sidney McCall so describes them that no reader of hers is likely soon to forget the poor young creatures, transformed by the exigencies of their daily labor into nervous, restless-eyed, wiry little elves, with fingers cramped to catch the flying threads, voices shrilled to rise above the clatter of machinery, minds narrowed and shrivelled by lifelong starvation, souls stained by encounter with coarse and vicious elders. Nevertheless she treats her subject

fairly, showing the little ones as anxious to begin to earn money, and afterwards eager rivals, and she does not forget to show that the parents inflict no hardship more severe than that forming part of their own daily lot. The added oppression of overcharges for food and clothing material, and the deadly, murderous wrong of machinery unfurnished with the protective apparatus required by the law are also adequately and effectively set forth, and it is to be hoped that the book will be read in Alabama. Also, it is to be hoped that critics of other states will not wax too Pharisaical when contemplating the picture. New England boards of inspection sometimes find it necessary to hold both manufacturers and parents to weekly reports of school attendance. It is said that the author's sympathies are so strongly engaged in behalf of the mill children that her book was primarily undertaken in their interest, but she has so steadfastly resisted the temptation to produce a tract in their behalf, that the mill-owner and his wife, and not the mill-hands occupy the centre of the picture, and next them stands a pair of typical modern American lovers, both profoundly resolved to reconstruct their environment, and hardly sensible of the approach of Eros as he comes bringing sheaves of reports and a quiver full of impressive circulars. Thus has she made sure of readers, and of the wide presentation of her problem, and thus has she made an artistic novel. "Truth Dexter" was successful because it was based upon a plot of which women never tire: "Red Horse Hill" will succeed because it has so blended four distinct threads of interest that it will almost equally attract those who dispute of divorce, of child labor, of the mission of woman, with a capital letter, and of a minister's duty to speak the plain truth to wealthy sinners. Little, Brown & Co.

With the accession of the House of Coburg, English-speaking or rather English writing man is haunted by a shrinking, tremulous dread that he may be called too severe in his morality, too tenacious in his grasp upon the proprieties. Not yet does he hesitate to be comfortably sober and decent, but it pains him to consider the possibility of being accused of scruples, or of principles, and the thought of being suspected of requiring scruples or principles in any other person, from a small street boy to a large capitalist racks him with unspeakable pangs. Consequently, only a newspaper here and there, contradictorily condemned by its fellows as "yellow" or priggish speaks otherwise than gently or sweetly, and the inordinate urbanity of which Meredith complained increases daily. It would be easy to find an instance in the history of the last month, but in new literature nothing is more significant than Professor Wilbur L. Cross's "Life and Times of Laurence Sterne." It is not many years since Sterne's name might have been sought in vain in school manuals of English literature, although the story of Le Fevre figures in many a "Reader" and certain Shandean proverbs are in the mouths of the most prim. Even now the chief source of opinion in spite of later more pretentious biographies has been Thackeray's lecture on Sterne and Goldsmith, and had Sterne been fashioned for no other purpose than to be the man of genius whom Thackeray would loathe and detest with his entire heart, soul, and commonsense, he would have been precisely what he was, as far as Thackeray knew. Professor Cross has found some new material, has detected many fairly astounding forgeries, and the figure for which he asks tolerance and a certain measure of admiration differs in many details from that visible to the imagination of Cole

ridge and Thackeray. Indeed, it differs so much that there is danger that the reader of even ordinary carelessness may fancy that Mr. Cross is but that common gentleman with the whitewash brush whose labors have so changed the aspect of many statues in the hall of fame. He is nothing of the sort, but merely the post-Victorian man with the post-Victorian dislike of apparent narrowness and with new knowledge. He refuses to judge Sterne as anything but what he was; to condemn him for not being other than he was; to forget that in spite of certain reckless sins against cleanliness of speech and thought he was delicately kind to his inferiors; patient with those dependent upon him; a faithful friend when no jest was toward, and above all no worse than his time. In all this, there is a curious absence of warmth and charity. Professor Cross is determined not to be narrow, but he makes no pretence at affection for his subject, and considering his coldness, the impression which he leaves upon the reader is evidence of the possession of a very strong sense of justice. Scott, although nearer to Sterne as far as the chronological tables are concerned, was more remote in spirit, and although he saw both the humor and the pathos of Sterne, disliked him. Mr. Fitzgerald presents him in so many aspects that a blurred composite photograph is definite compared to the general picture. Professor Cross offers a new glass, carefully polished, delicately adjusted, and invites examination of a newly mounted specimen carefully cleared of extraneous matter. Those who accept his offer will find themselves both entertained and enlightened, and they will not be disgusted by the too common post-Victorian exhortation to tolerance of evil when it is the comrade of genius. The Macmillan Co.