incidental to the main affair - his coloring of the yarns. So he dips and struts his complacent life away, and to be an al boyaji -a dyer of reds is to be one beloved of the Prophet."

"Color," as Mr. Mumford happily phrases it," is the Orient's secret and its glory." This, if not the whole truth, is at least true of that part of the Orient where the rug-makers live. It is a singular fact that retrogression in perception of color harmony should be the concomitant of advancement in the scale of civili

zation. Yet the works of primitive peoples are almost without exception distinguished by excellence of coloring; while among civilized peoples the power of producing color combinations of the highest order is one of the rarest of gifts. To a considerable extent the superiority in this regard of the products of barbaric or semi-civilized peoples is due to simpler and more artistic methods. As scientific knowledge increases, these methods are gradually supplanted by others which lower the cost of production but also cheapen the product and substitute mechanical effects for the more artistic results of individual handiwork with its freedom of selection and variation. Though the mechanism of modern printing presses and looms is indeed marvellous, the most beautiful color-printing the world has yet seen was done by Japanese artizans by simply laying sheets of paper face downward upon engraved blocks upon engraved blocks inked with a brush, and pressing them by rubbing with a pad held in the hand; and some of the loveliest fabrics ever produced were wrought by Oriental weavers upon looms consisting of little more than two upright beams,

"mere trunks of trees roughly trimmed, with the shanks of the lopped-off branches left to support the rollers." The past tense is used advisedly in this connection, for though the rug industry, under the stimulus of foreign orders, flourishes as never before, and the rugweaving peoples imbued with the inertia of the Orient, continue to live as lived their forefathers before them for many generations, nevertheless they have succumbed to the inroads of modern commercialism and have fallen victims to the seductive cheapness of analine dyes. Fortunately, however, there is at least a chance of stemming the tide before it is too late. In some of the rug-weaving districts there appears to be a growing appreciation, which it is to be hoped may continue and increase, that the adoption of European designs and the use of foreign dyes is a fatal error; though it must be admitted that so far the at

The illustrations in Mr. Mumford's book are altogether admirable. The only cause for regret is that they could not have been extended to include reproductions of all, or nearly all, of the typical patterns in use, even though it were necessary to resort to a cheaper and less satisfactory process for the additional cuts. This would have made the book of greater value to students. There are sixteen color

plates by the new photochrome process, which reproduce in a really marvelous manner the color, texture, and quality of the old rugs selected for illustration. Other plates in monochrome reproduce typical rug designs, and there are several interesting half-tone plates from photographs taken by the author showing scenes in the rug-making districts.

FREDERICK W. GOOKIN.

LITERATURE IN INDIANA.*

Indiana is a State about which it is possible to hold very divergent opinions. In the matter of general literary standing, it has, among its sister States, certainly no enviable reputation; within its own borders, the rather resentful attitude toward the foreign opinion emphasizes unduly the importance of what the State has actually achieved. As might be guessed, neither opinion is exactly right: Indiana deserves more credit than she has been given by outsiders; and it will be some time before her merits will justify her own present estimate. This sort of comment might be made of any State that has literary aspirations; but because the very fact that Indiana has literary aspirations seems droll to the outside world, the comment or truism is especially in point. Nettled by the persistent charge of illiteracy, and having anyway a real liking for literary things, the Indianian (Hoosier he calls himself, but does not like others to call him so) has set himself to the cultivation of literature, and has, despite sneers and sarcasms, accomplished things that are distinctly worth while. Of

*THE HOOSIERS. By Meredith Nicholson. "National Studies in American Letters." New York: The Macmillan Co.

POETS AND POETRY OF INDIANA. A Representative Collection of the Poetry of Indiana, 1800 to 1900. Compiled and Edited by Benjamin S. Parker and Enos B. Heiney. New York: Silver, Burdett & Co.

what the State has done in print, Indiana has most emphatically no cause to be ashamed. She does, indeed, estimate this production far too charitably, but she will arrive at a critical apprehension of her actual literary value, probably, before the scoffers have done with their uncritical scoffing. In the meantime, the two books before us, Mr. Nicholson's study of letters in Indiana and Mr. Parker's selections from Indiana poets, will do a good deal toward tempering the extreme views referred to.

Mr. Nicholson's book is a self-restrained, conscientious effort to set forth the facts in the case. The writer traces the growth of the intellectual life within the State, from its territorial beginnings to the present day; the varying make-up of its population; the individual marks of its most characteristic institutions and towns: in short, he soberly essays a chapter in American cultur-geschichte, dealing with the State whose life he knows from within. The result is an excellent piece of work. The chapter on New Harmony (that most interesting and charming of Indiana towns), narrating at length the fortunes of a community that from the early Rappite days has always kept its face toward the light, must have more than local interest. The brief essays, in part biographical, in part critical, on Eggleston, Wallace, Riley, Thompson, and others, send one with an awakened interest to the pages of the other volume under review. And yet it must be said of Mr. Nicholson's book, that it does not prove its case. It shows beyond cavil that things intellectual happen in Indiana as well as elsewhere; but when all is said, it leaves the reader with the feeling that something he did not know much about has been made clear, rather than that here is something new and preeminently worth knowing.

The second book, the volume of selections, has been well managed by its editors. Their aim was to show fairly what Indiana has done in poetry in a century. No fewer than one hundred and forty-six names are on the list of writers. A book of one-tenth as many poets, with ten times as much from each one as is here allowed, would have been a book of far better literary quality, but it would have been correspondingly less representative. One turns the pages respectfully. Here is no revelation of new poetic power, but many a verse that one is glad to read, and many more that will not attract a second time. The best things are already well-known; the hitherto unknown

rarely have the unmistakable note of passion or of charm. But if they fail to make the final appeal, they nevertheless are, as a rule, dignified and sincere. They show that Indiana has an absolute craving to express itself in literary form, and this means that the State has encouraged, and will encourage, literature. But there is too much rushing into print. The craving to express oneself is not the same as the need to express oneself, and this means that much of the Indiana poetry is unconsciously imitative, and therefore expresses no genuine message. That in the three hundred or more poems which make up the volume there should be so comparatively little that is futile speaks highly for the good taste of Mr. Parker and his associate.

Indiana's real contribution to literature is Mr. Riley, a true poet, if I may arrogate the right to judge. Of the rest of the choir, one notes here and there a genuinely poetic voice of the men, Maurice Thompson, whose lamented death has been but recently announced; of the women, Miss Evaleen Stein; perhaps half a dozen besides. The many others who sing have their reward in singing, and in knowing that they have greatly helped to clear their commonwealth of an oft-repeated charge. The "Hoosier literary zeal" is an honest impulse that no American State may live without. MARTIN W. SAMPSON.

NOVEL VIEWS OF NERVOUS FUNCTIONS.*

Professor Loeb's manual to which he gives the title, "Comparative Physiology of the Brain and Comparative Psychology," is not at all a compendium devoted to a survey of accepted facts and principles in regard to the way in which the nervous system performs its functions, but is an original contribution to the fundamental conceptions of what a nervous system is and does.

The work is indeed radical in its tendencies and calls into question certain generally accepted and basal notions. An elaborate and ingenious series of experiments upon the lower forms of animal life leads the author to the conclusion that the responses which these organisms make are essentially physico-chemical in their nature; "life-phenomena are deter

*COMPARATIVE PHYSIOLOGY OF THE BRAIN, and Com

parative Psychology. By Jacques Loeb, M.D. "Science

Series." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Among Mr. Hardy's miscellaneous pieces, the verses called "Iter Supremum seem to stand out above the rest by force of their sheer imaginative vision and their grave beauty.

"Oh, what a night for a soul to go!

The wind a hawk, and the fields in snow;
No screening cover of leaves in the wood,
Nor a star abroad the way to show.

"Do they part in peace, soul with its clay?
Tenant and landlord, what do they say?
Was it sigh of sorrow or of release

I heard just now as the face turned gray?

"What if, aghast on the shoreless main
Of Eternity, it sought again

The shelter and rest of the Isle of Time,
And knocked at the door of its house of pain!

"On the tavern hearth the embers glow,
The laugh is deep and the flagons low,

But without, the wind and the trackless sky

And night at the gates where a soul would go!"

The sonnets of Mr. Lloyd Mifflin exhibit a considerable degree of mastery over the mechanics of their verse-form, and usually have enough of substantial thought and imagination to make them acceptable. The collection entitled "The Fields of Dawn and Later Sonnets" includes an even hundred pieces, which are characterized by even excellence. Since there is little choice among them, we select, almost at random, the following:

"There is a legend the Algonquins tell

Of power and splendor of the Great White One;
The God of Light he is, and of the Sun,
And in their strange lore hath no parallel.
He, in the Summer, from his citadel,
Comes to the gates of his dominion,
And throws them open when the day 's begun,
And shuts them in the evening. But a spell
Saps his puissance when the Autumn haze

Spreads its dim-shimmering silver on the rills;
Then to the mountain-tops he slowly wends
And, idly drowsing on the dreamy hills,
Puffs at his pipe, and as the smoke descends,
Behold our mellow Indian Summer days!"

The sequence of nearly fifty sonnets from which this is taken sings very effectively of the procession of the seasons in Southern Pennsylvania, as reflected in the youthful consciousness of the poet during a single year.

The modest collection of verses written during the past ten or twelve years by President David Starr Jordan shows that the more tender and fanciful sides of a man's nature need undergo no atrophy from the most strenuous pursuit of severe intellectual ideals. These verses reveal an aspect of their author that may be strange to those who think of him in his public character - who think of him as the energetic educational administrator, the strong toiler in the difficult fields of science, the uncompromising upholder of the principles of political morality-but they are no surprise to his friends, and it is to his friends that they are addressed. The opening lines "To Barbara" are too intimate for discussion, and in view of the writer's recent bereavement, too sacred for anything more

"I only know, should thou and I

Through its old walls of crumbling stone
Together wander all alone,

No spot on earth could be more fair
Than ivy-covered Vivérols !
No grass be greener anywhere,
No bluer sky nor softer air

Than we should find in Vivérols. "Love, we may wander far or near,

The sun shines bright o'er Vivérols; Green is the grass, the skies are clear. No clouds obscure our pathway, dear; Where love is, there is Vivérols, There is no other Vivérols."

Thus Dr. Jordan strikes the note of sentiment; but a deeper note is struck when his mind contemplates the grave problems of man's destiny. "When man shall come to manhood's destiny,

When our slow-toddling race shall be full grown, Deep in each human heart a chamber lone Of Holies Holiest shall builded be; And each man for himself shall hold the key. Each there must kindle his own altar fires, Each burn an offering of his own desires, And each at last his own High Priest must be." Here is the expression of a faith that can contemplate undismayed the breaking down of beliefs that have had their day, and can find a firm refuge in ideals far nobler than were ever revealed to souls in the bondage of superstition.

- is

Another little book of verse from the far West the work of one of Dr. Jordan's associates taken up with the same deep matters, but reveals a mind still restless from the onslaughts of science upon superstition, and uncertain concerning the ultimate goodness of the soul of things.

"Says Science: Lo, I lift the veil. Behold!'

But when we turn, with eyes that almost fail,
Before the Face in darkness from of old

Shrouded, there hangs a yet unlifted veil." Thus discourses Mr. William Henry Hudson in "The Sphinx and Other Poems." He has no clear vision of what may be beyond that other unlifted veil. But what the intelligence fails to discern seems sometimes to be foreshadowed in dreams.

"Was it a dream? - I know not. This I know-
The memory of that evening long ago,
Though oftentimes I yet have sought in vain
To catch that wind-borne melody again,
Has linger'd in my life, a sacred part

Of all my deepest being; for to me,
With some strange hint of some strange mystery,
That murmur brought a solace for the heart,
An inward sense that everything was well,

A touch of peace, of which no words can tell!" But the old doubt recurs, and the waking hour discredits the vision seen in sleep. The author's mood is that of the "Pathetic" symphony of Tschai

kowsky; it is the mood of Arnold rather than that of Tennyson. Let us once more contrast it with that of Dr. Jordan, as expressed in "The Bubbles of Saki."

"I do rejoice that when 'of me and thee'

Men talk no longer, yet not less but more
The Eternal Saki still that bowl shall fill,
And ever stronger, fairer bubbles pour.

"A humble note in the Eternal Song,

The Perfect Singer hath made place for me,
And not one atom in Earth's wondrous throng
But shall be needful to Infinity."

This is the effective major resolution of the minor harmonies of the other poet.

Mr. Charles Keeler's "Idyls of El Dorado" are Californian lays and legends, picturesque in their portrayal of the Pacific coast in its physical aspects, and reflecting the free expansive spirit of its inhabitants. As a bit of local coloring, these Monterey stanzas are effective:

"The sea throbs faintly at my feet,
Amid the rocks it swashes low,

In pale green sweeps

And purple deeps

It undulates with tireless beat,

It pulses in unending flow.

"All green and brown the seaweed clings
To pallid rocks, wave-worn and grim;
The mountains rise

To misty skies,

The wind amid the cypress sings

And sea-birds wander dark and dim."

But the writer is not content with the natural beauty of the land which is his home, and his vision foresees the added beauty of art in some future day. "Beauty shall here hold court upon the heights

And men shall fashion temples for her shrine,
With chantings high of praise and starward flights
Of silver chords and organ's throb divine.
"The sculptor here shall hew the formless stone

To shapes of beauty dreamed on cloud-throned crest,
The painter shall reveal what he alone

Saw as he brooded on th' earth-mother's breast."

All this may well be. Meanwhile, we note with more satisfaction than all this prophecy the fact that the writer's voice is raised in indignant protest against the madness, springing from the lust of foreign conquest, that has of late made a mock of all our political ideals, and that has infected the Pacific Coast more fatally than any other section of the country. It is from Alaska that a text is taken for the following fine stanza:

"We who have failed to rule a wilderness
Now preach of liberty in tropic seas;

Forsooth our sway the Orient hordes shall bless
While politicians trim to every breeze,

O God, must our dear sons be slain, such men to please?" Still another Californian volume is Mr. Howard V. Sutherland's "Jacinta." It is a very small volume, and the narrative poem which serves it for a title makes up the greater part of the contents. A simplicity and a sentimentality that seem to be alike affected are the characteristics of this versified tale. Instead of quoting from it, we prefer to

select one of Mr. Sutherland's miscellaneous pieces, and it shall be this "Prayer for a Man's Passing." 'Let me not pass till eve,

Till that day's fight is done;
What soldier cares to leave

The field until it's won!

And I have loved my work and fain

Would be deemed worthy of the ranks again.

"Let twilight come, then night,

And when the first birds sing
Their matin songs, and light
Wakens each slumbering thing,
Let Someone waken me, and set

My feet to steps that lead me upward yet."

Mr. Frederic Crowninshield has written a century of sonnets, and appended to them a few short pieces in other lyrical forms, all for the purpose of illustrating the thesis that painters have emotions peculiar to their own special art, and that they alone can give them adequate verbal expression. "Pictoris Carmina" is the title of this volume of verse, which does not mean that all of its contents are poems for pictures, although a series of eight illustrations to some extent bear out this suggestion. These poems exhibit refinement and the culture that comes from wide reading and journeying; they also display considerable technical ability. That they are far from faultless in this respect may be illustrated by such a line as the second of these two:

"We of the East, who you but yester bore, Were aliens, and variations racial show." Another illustration is this opening of the sonnet "To Science":

"In the world's race, O Science, you sore strain
Our credence with the miracles that bring
Great gain-perchance not bliss."

Mr. Crowninshield's diction is not essentially poetical, and it is the thinker rather than the singer whose voice speaks from these pages. There are too many words not yet mellowed to poetic uses, too many startling and cacophonous collocations, and the poet's hand is clearly not subdued to the material in which it works. Yet there are frequent phrases that arrest the attention by their vivid presentation of truth, and a certain not easily definable pleasure may be derived from these stiffjointed measures. To exhibit the writer at his best, we will select the sonnet called "Decadence." "When fields are green with aftermath of Fall,

When trees parade in rich vermillioned dress,
Wan exhalations from the vales possess
The full, ripe forms of Earth, and cast a pall
Impalliding o'er mellowed hues. Withal

Not charmless - but the charm that doth impress
Pale fever on some deep-eyed shepherdess
Near Rome, who croons her morbid madrigal.
Yet when the waxing sun with lusty rays

Burns into nothingness the vapors white, And bares the splendid view of mount and lea, Then gladsome Nature chants his ringing praise. O, Life, consume the pale malarious blight That hangs o'er Art, and give us Sanity!" "Withal not charmless this is the final verdict upon Mr. Crowninshield's labored but interesting

verses.