not a work for the reader in search of pleasure, but for serious-minded students of European policy and politics, and is both written and indexed rather for them than for the seeker after knowledge made easy. The appearance of such a book is a hopeful sign of the growing inclination to prefer careful thinking to combinations of good taste and literary ability. E. P. Dutton & Company.

Mr. John Oxenham, whose work has been more uneven than his most discriminating admirers could wish, has kept at his highest level in his new story, "The Long Road." The book is one of noticeable quality and power, and, in spite of its painful theme, one is constrained to add-charm. Its hero, Stepan Iline, is the son of a household exiled to Irkutsk in Siberia in his childhood, and the narrative follows him through his sturdy youth, his romance and young manhood, till the inevitable encounter with the brutal governor of his province sends him again onto the "long road." Mr. Oxenham improves to the utmost the opportunities for vigorous description and dramatic incident which such a plot offers, and adds with rare art touches of simple, domestic pathos which relieve its grimness while they increase its poignancy. The season will not offer many novels better worth reading. The Macmillan Company.

The jaded reader of historical fiction can scarcely believe his good fortune as he follows chapter after chapter of Ashton Hilliers's story, "Fanshawe of the Fifth," and finds the plot still plausible and not too obvious, the characters still human, and his own interest still unflagging. The period is the end of the eighteenth century; the scene, England; the hero, a younger son, dropped from his regiment through the malice of enemies, working for a

season as a strolling laborer, befriended by a miller of the Friends' connection, and then, through another turn of Fortune's wheel, brought back into the gay life of the day. The coaching, racing, betting and dicing of the time contribute incident: the courts of justice are graphically described: but the most noteworthy feature is the picture of the Quaker household, evidently drawn con amore. The story will bear comparison with some of Stanley Weyman's or Conan Doyle's. McClure, Phillips & Co.

Sir Spencer Walpole's "Studies in Biography" is a volume intended to be the complement of the author's "History of England from 1815," although complete in itself. In his larger work, he considered the general course of national history: in these nine essays, he shows that the individual, although undeniably the product of his environment and heredity, may none the less be a potent and permeating and enduring influence. Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Cobden, Mr. Disraeli, Lord Dufferin, Edward Gibbon, Prince Bismarck, Lord Shaftesbury, Napoleon Third, and "Some Decisive Marriages of English History," are his topics, and so impartially has he treated each subject that readers to whom his political associations are unknown will have no small difficulty in divining them from these papers. To those desirous of attaining Gail Hamilton's ideal state of being well smattered they will be precious indeed, for each one is illuminating in its own fields. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Mrs. C. W. Earle is a wonderful example of the possibilities of a well spent life. Beginning at sixty years of age to publish the treasures of notebooks including a heterogeneous mass of thoughtful observation and criticism of men, and women, gardens,

books, affairs, abstract morals, history, science, and medical practice, she finds herself now able to make a fourth volume almost equal to her first, as literature, and perhaps more valuable to those seeking for information on certain subjects. Its most impressive trait is its wonderful freshness. The letters bear date within the last year or two, but each reads as if its subject were the topic uppermost in the writer's mind, the one matter of any consequence to her, the one upon which it was of the utmost importance that her correspondent should be informed, and each is commensurately impressive. By way of appendix, Lady Normanby's letters from Paris in 1848, and some interesting notes on the exhibition of 1900 are added and they are interesting in their way and increase the value of a book poured forth from a mind matured through years in which no hour can have been wasted. E. P. Dutton & Co.

As nothing more encourages immorality than the spectacle of successful villainy, the researches which have cleared the, character of Richard Third from the monstrous accusations of the Tudors must be regarded as clear gain to civilization, and Sir Clements R. Markham's "Richard III" must be counted as a beneficent modern influence. Richard's cleverness is not disputed, even by Shakespeare, perhaps the most mischievous of his maligners, but when seen as the kind uncle and guardian of the boys whose claim to the crown had been authoritatively denied; as the loyal husband of the gentle maiden who had been his playmate in childhood; as the staunch and true ally of his brother he is revealed as far more able than the popular misconception has made him, and as one of the most memorable of English Kings whose reigns have been comparatively brief. The book is agreeably written,

and so carefully indexed and systematically arranged as to make it an invaluable arsenal of defence for those desirous of satisfying either themselves or others that the last Plantagenet, although not free from the faults of his time, could wear the white rose without any glaring incongruity between his behavior and his cognizance. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Mr. Arthur Symons dedicates his "Studies in Seven Arts" to his wife, in two pages to be attentively and gratefully read by those who find him so coldly intellectual that they cannot believe that his judgment is based upon consideration of a sufficient number of the qualities of human nature. Be it distinctly understood that it makes the author no more agreeable to those who hate the sensual and the sensuous, regarding neither as a proper field for true art, and deprecating the glorification of art based upon them, but it at least shows that the author is not wholly free from the bonds in which the Christian moralist would bind the world. The subjects of the essays are Rodin, Moreau, Watts, Whistler, Beethoven, Wagner, Strauss, Signora Duse, M. Jarry, modern painting and stage managing, the newest symbolism, and the decay of craftsmanship, and each one, whether one like its matter or not, is a masterpiece in manner. But it can hardly be said that the book is powerful. If the subject of a given paper be agreeable one accepts it, but if the subject be unpleasant, the author leaves his reader where he found him, unchanged in temperature and in poise. He injures, therefore, only those in whom he finds temperamental or educated weakness and error, and is harmless and even delightful to others, but that small dedication arouses the hope that a time may come when he will no longer consider any but the noblest subjects. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Agitation for the purpose of ending or mending the House of Lords is no new thing; it has been sporadic for many generations, yet the House of Lords still exists as a branch of the Legislature, sometimes violently condemned for thwarting the will of the people as represented in the elected Chamber, and sometimes enthusiastically applauded for furthering the will of the people misrepresented in the elected Chamber. The outcry against the House of Lords is always raised when the party in office is composed of legislators in a desperate hurry, and the matter might be left with that illuminating explanation, but, for many reasons, it may be well to examine into the nature and validity of the alleged grievance, and also to point out that, owing to exceptional circumstances, it is desirable that steps should be taken to strengthen the Upper House by reasonable reform.

It may be premised that the present agitation is really directed against the double Chamber system, and cannot be appeased by mending or reforming the House of Lords; and, to still further clear the ground, it should be noted that the terms Upper and Lower Housé, or First Chamber and Second Chamber, are merely expressions in common use, and have no political or constitutional validity. The two branches of the one Legislature are co-equal. Their powers and functions are, with one exception, identical. The House of Commons can do what it pleases with all Bills coming from the House of Lords; it can accept, amend, or reject them. The House of Lords can do what it pleases with all Bills coming to it from the House of Commons, with the exception of money Bills. It can accept, amend, or reject all other Bills, and

it can accept or reject money Bills, but it cannot, or, to be perhaps more strictly accurate, it does not, amend them. Therefore, except in the matter of amending Bills affecting taxation, the two Houses are in their powers and functions co-equal and co-extensive, and the terms applied to them in common parlance are misleading. The expression Upper House conveys no superiority over Lower House, nor does First Chamber imply any superiority over Second Chamber.

Judging by platform speeches, the exuberant utterances of popular orators, and the more measured complaints of statesmen and politicians capable of exercising some self-control, the charge against the House of Lords resolves itself into the expression of the two following opinions. First, that it is outrageous that the will of the people as expressed in the branch of the Legislature elected by the people should be overruled by the branch of the Legislature that is composed of hereditary scions of "an effete aristocracy." Second, that, owing to the predominance of one of the great political parties in the House of Lords, legislation is easy when that party has a majority in the House of Commons, and difficult when it has not. There are three distinct counts in this indictment—namely, first that the body overruling the will of the people is an incompetent body; second, that the will of the people is overruled by any body; and third, that the political complexion of the existing body is overpoweringly Conservative. Let us examine into these points.

As to the personnel of the House of Lords and the qualifications which its members may claim to possess as legislators, the case against them has been thus stated by a Cabinet Minister