evidently the goal of his lawless and ill-fated ambitions.

The scholarly accuracy with which Dr. Thode marshalls his folios is relieved and lightened by his almost childlike enthusiasm over his results. The tracing out of the ring's ownership is truly, as the sub-title of his monograph puts it, "an event in his life," a vivid experience into which he throws all the sentiment of his quaint personality. And if, a better lover than his hero, he cannot suppress an occasional rhapsody over Apollonia, and perhaps reads a bit of himself into the moody Croatian Count, his story is surely none the worse for the fault.

"I read the words. no! I heard them!" he announces naively of the motto on his treasured ring. It is this very freshness and dramatic enthusiasm in his point of view that makes his book unique, and alive in spite of the fact that its complex setting is absolutely new ground for the average reader.

Another quality rare in the antiquary is our author's truly epic feeling for the value of digression. Not without the predilection of his kind for citations and footnotes, he relegates his bibliography to a brief appendix; but he revels in legitimate episode, and is never in too much haste to indulge in a bit of friendly chat upon side-issues. Of Marino Sanuto, the Boswell of sixteenth century Venice, he tells us that his handwriting is "not very legible." The citations from another chronicler, a lovelorn captain of Vicenza, are prefaced by the wholly irrelevant information that it was he who first set down in writing the sad story of the loves of Romeo and Juliet, as it was told him by a romantic fellow in his troop. Albert Dürer's visit to Venice is introduced apropos of a possible meeting between him and Apollonia's brother the goldsmith, while we catch a glimpse of the "monkish brawl" just convulsing Germany as it cast its shadow over the joyless death-bed of Maximilian.

The present edition of "Frangipani's Ring is a sumptuous one, richly illustrated with very beautiful photographic reproductions. These include portraits of Maximilian and the Doge Leonardo Loredano a comparison of which goes far toward explaining Venetian triumphs,

odd cuts from Maximilian's and the Frangipani Prayer-books, and photographs of Jan Schorel's altar-piece ordered for the church in Ober-Vellach by Apollonia's daughter and representing, with the kindly leniency of the old masters, Saints Christoph and Apollonia

flanking a central panel of the Holy Family. For this elegant book with its wide margined pages, its curious chapter-headings designed by a friend of Dr. Thode, and its choice reproductions of Dürer and Bellini, the linen cover seems a singularly inappropriate housing.

EDITH KELLOGG DUNTON.

THE PERVERSION OF HISTORY.*

Mr. Ernest Belfort Bax is the author of many excellent works on socialism, and in particular early made a name and a place for himself in an examination of the religious and ethical aspects of the modern socialistic movement. Of late he has turned his attention to history, in monographs upon periods of popular revolution and the men who created them. In this work he has evidently adopted the method of the scholar in the study of his subject, and that of the partisan in the writing of his book. Great labor in research is exhibited, facts are accurately stated and citations are exact, but deductions from those facts are so colored by a bitter socialistic prejudice as to be entirely untrustworthy. Mr. Bax's latest effort, a life of Marat, is a notable example of this biased perspective.

Marat, the bête noir of the Girondin historians of the French Revolution, from whom other historians have until recently taken their cue, has commonly been described as a man of little ability, limited influence, unbounded ferocity, and a personality disgusting both in its physical and mental characteristics. From this dictum Mr. Bax rescues his hero. Mr. Bax is not alone nor is he first in portraying his subject in the newer light. All careful modern historians coincide with the view which shows Marat to be in fact a man of education, distinguished as a physician and a scientist. A disciple of Rousseau, he sacrificed position and wealth to the cause of the people, and by the integrity of his conduct, as well as the radical character of his political views, maintained great influence over the Parisian populace. He, far more than Robespierre and his friends, led the Jacobin attack upon the Girondists, standing at first utterly alone in the bitter struggle, and winning his victory by sheer courage and force of will. He was honestly convinced of the necessity of the violence which he urged. Earlier histories fail to state with

*JEAN PAUL MARAT: The People's Friend. By Ernest Belfort Bax. Boston: Small, Maynard & Co.

sufficient emphasis the influence he exerted, or the devotion of the people to his person.

every

Mr. Bax brings out all these qualities of person and conditions of influence, and in doing so exhibits unusual biographical ability; but he goes far beyond other writers in his unbounded admiration for Marat's abilities, and in approval of his acts. It is one thing to applaud the purity of Marat's motives, another to approve the motive itself; one thing to uphold his honesty of purpose in the use of violence, another to defend the results of that violence. Mr. Bax yields all his admiration to all that Marat did or wished to do. He does more than this: he defends act and every incident of Marat's life with the ardor of a fanatical partisan, while the results of such defense are published under the guise of a critical and a scholarly examination of his subject. Moreover, Mr. Bax is either dishonest or illogical in the arguments advanced in Marat's behalf, e. g., Marat denied any honesty of purpose or patriotic enthusiasm to the nobles for their surrender of feudal rights on the famous night of August 4. That Marat should have been thus unjust, is explained by Mr. Bax on the ground of political necessity; he could not risk the loss of political influence by approval of this act of the nobles, "and hence from the politician's point of view, rather than the psychologist's, Marat's caustic criticism appeared completely justified." But inasmuch as Mr. Bax invariably measures his hero from the standpoint of the psychologist, as he must in order to defend his acts with any degree of success, his inconsistency here weakens his

cause.

Naturally the author's greatest difficulty arises from the necessity to explain and condone Marat's continual invocation of the use of violence to secure and maintain social and political revolution. It is certain that Marat It is certain that Marat believed force necessary to secure these ends, and was not only not bloodthirsty, as his enemies accused him of being, but was even personally distressed at the necessity of using such means. But Mr. Bax is not fortunate in his treatment of this subject. Writing of various exhortations in the Ami du Peuple to lop off the heads of aristocrats, he says:

"There can be no doubt whatever that by such utterances as these, Marat, whose single-minded object was to save the Revolution from the various plots which there is no denying were at this time being constantly hatched against it, was only concerned to keep public attention alive to the manœuvres of the Court and its satellites."

He concludes with a quotation from a "Fortnightly Review" article by Mr. Bowen Graves.

"Threats of bloodshed are, no doubt, only too frequent, but always in language such as, to an impartial

mind, excludes the idea of calculation. One day it is

ten thousand heads that must fall, the next it is a hundred thousand, a third it drops to fifty thousand, a fourth to twenty, and so on. A few hours before his death, he tells us in his journal what he meant by them: 'I used them,' he says, with a view to produce a strong

impression on men's minds, and to destroy all fatal

security.""

“As to its being no mere rhetorical form, he assured Robespierre that, after the horrible affair of Nancy, he could have decimated the barbarous deputies who applauded it; that he would willingly have sent the infamous judges of the Chatelet to the stake; that again, after the massacre of the Champ de Mars, if he had but found two thousand men animated with the same sentiments as himself, he would have placed himself at their head, poignarded the General (Lafayette) in the midst of his brigand-battalions, burnt the despot in his palace, and strangled the traitorous representatives in their seats, as he had declared at the time. 'Robespierre listened to me with terror,' he says, 'he grew pale and was silent for some time."" So after having asserted that Marat did not really mean to proceed to extremities, Mr. Bax, in his desire to emphasize his hero's political influence, reverses his previous judgment.

These extracts refer to a period when Marat had not yet had the opportunity of putting into effect his threats of violence. When, later, Marat really became a leader in the September massacres, Mr. Bax shifts the ground of his defense to an insistence upon the purity of Marat's motives, and to a favorite comparison with the acts of Thiers at the time of the He says:

Parisian commune of 1871.

"The thousand odd victims (of the September Massacres) were almost wholly well-to-do hangers-on of the Court. But who were the twenty or thirty thousand victims of 1871 ? Almost wholly workmen, partisans of a cause avowedly hostile to wealth and privilege, and therefore hated by wealth and privilege. Herein lies the ground of the divergence in the world's judgment of the two events. If the world' would only be candid in the matter, and avow openly that it likes well-to-do Royalist plotters, and dislikes Proletarian insurgents, we should know where we were, and the issue would at least be clear."

Putting aside other considerations tending to form the "world's " judgment upon these two events, it is at least clear that a policy of violence, solely destructive in its purpose, and failing in its objects, cannot stand in popular judgment, with a violent constructive policy that succeeded. Looking only at the purity of motive, as does Mr. Bax in defense of Marat, it is difficult to see why an equal purity of motive should not be ascribed to Thiers. Yet Thiers is a "scoundrel," while Marat is a hero. In a like manner Mr. Bax characterizes each of Marat's opponents: Lafayette is a rascal, Mirabeau a traitor, Bailly a silly-minded savant. The royalists and constitutional monarchists are always denied any patriotic honesty of purpose, and Marat is always right in regarding them as intriguing plotters, and fit subjects for violent retribution. Surely if the "lying Carlyle" has perverted history in the interest of a class, Mr. Bax is equally guilty in the interest of a social theory. Of Marat's assassination he writes:

"Oh, exponents of a class public opinion, satellites of privileged power and wealth, whose tap of indignation and gassy horror is always turned on to the full whenever a representative of privileged class-interest is smitten down-you who can slaver a slain monarch or statesman with undeserved adulation, who can fulminate against the author of his death at the top of your voices, when will you find your cant no longer profitable? What has been your attitude towards the People's Friend' and the dastardly wretch who murdered him her sick and helpless victim? As one might only expect, your sympathy has changed sides. Your horror' at assassination has suddenly evaporated. For the man who suffered a four years' martyrdom for his convictions and for the cause of the disinherited, and who finally sealed his testimony with his blood, you have no words but those of coarse vituperation and the foulest calumnies that malice can divise. . . . To every unprejudiced reader of history the deed of Charlotte Corday must appear as the most dastardly, cruel, and wanton political assassination in the world's archives."

Invective is not the weapon best suited to win a hostile "world," nor will a denial of patriotic motives to the opponents of Marat enable Mr. Bax to convince the "unprejudiced reader of history." Thus his very partisanship forbids the realization of his object. Has he an object? The "lying Carlyle" did not intentionally pervert history, for he gave the facts as he knew them. Mr. Bax, idealizing Marat, stating the facts of his life and influence, and mis-stating the motives of other patriots, seeks to emphasize the rights of a propaganda of socialistic reform, as against all constituted government, and to deny to such governments the right of self-defense. He has not merely

perverted history: he has prostituted it, for it is impossible to believe that a man of Mr. Bax's ability and scholarship, as exhibited in other writings, is in this instance either unconsciously dishonest or honestly illogical. It is unfortunate for the reputation of Marat that the author's purpose, evident to the most casual reader, casts an unjust doubt on the real greatness of his hero. EPHRAIM D. ADAMS.

OUTLINES OF GERMAN LITERATURE.*

In easy and popular style, Professor R. W. Moore has presented the main outlines of German literature in his "6 History of German Literature." The book is a revision and extension of a course prepared for English readers, which has been tested for several years in college classes. Its purpose is to offer in a concise and attractive way a course for students and others who wish to know something about "the great men and the important works of German literature." The characteristics of the different literary movements are clearly stated; the writers of each period are treated according to their importance, and brief résumés give a general knowledge of their best works.

66

As is to be expected, the main portion is devoted to the literature of the modern period, Luther's work in beginning with Luther. giving to the German nation a uniform, standard literary language is justly praised as his greatest service to literature. Especially through his translation of the Bible, which came into the people's hands all through Germany, did this new High German gain a foothold, and become the exclusive literary language, that has remained until the present time" (p. 59). Perhaps more space should have been devoted to his work, which was the most important of any before the classical period. His reforms were not confined to religious beliefs, but influenced all parts of life by exalting the individual and stimulating personal effort. His prose writings show great variety of style, and contributed much to the development of the literature by arousing a national feeling and stirring men to mental action.

The classical period receives the fullest treatment, as it deserves. The opening of the period by Klopstock, the development under

*HISTORY OF GERMAN LITERATURE. By Robert Webber Moore, Professor of German in Colgate University. Hamilton, N. Y.: Colgate University Press.

Lessing and Herder to the full maturity under Goethe and Schiller, are well described. As with special preference the author dwells on the two greatest names, the poets of Faust and Wallenstein. The latter he calls "the

first and greatest poet" in the popular mind. "His poetry by its wide circulation and its natural genuineness has nourished in the German people the most noble sentiments-love for the fatherland, for freedom, for honor, for justice and truth, for friendship and fidelity' (p. 175). In Goethe, on the other hand, "were united Klopstock's ability to enrich the language, Lessing's clearness of vision and bold individuality, Wieland's elegance and grace, Herder's universality, and Schiller's rhythm and rhetoric. His works and his influence will endure as long as language lasts (p. 187).

Of the multitude of authors of the present age, the most important are briefly discussed, and the various literary tendencies are clearly brought out. The tendency during the last few years is described as a "revolt of the working classes against the middle classes." Some will miss familiar authors, although the list of those mentioned is quite complete. Bertha von Süttner's "Waffen Nieder" might have been used as a good illustration of the "novels of purpose (p. 251). Johanna Ambrosius, whose poetry so touched the people recently, and Rosegger, whose simple sketches are full of the breath of nature, seem to deserve some brief recognition.

Credit might have been given (p. 193) to the scholarly labors of Jacob and William Grimm in the domain of medieval literature and especially in legend and folk-lore. Mention might also have been made of the celebrated historians of the present age, such as Mommsen, Ranke, von Sybel, and Treitschke, whose works are ornaments of literature as well as of scholarship. But these criticisms are slight compared to the merit of the work as a whole, which will prove a boon to college classes and to many general readers. About a hundred illustrations, all of authentic or historical nature, are an attractive feature. W. A. CHAMBERLIN.

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE, chiefly known for her numerous books for girls, died March 24, in Winchester, England, at the age of 78. Miss Yonge's first story was published when she was but 21, and her work has been so prolific that the titles of her books now fill eight pages in the British Museum library catalogue.

RECENT ECONOMIC LITERATURE.* For several decades past, studies made by Englishspeaking economists in the theory of distribution have been mostly of a fragmentary character. The promulgation of the law of marginal utility by

Jevons and the Austrian writers has been followed

by a mass of literature dealing with theories of value and price, and numerous attempts have been made to apply these theories to the valuation of labor, the origin of interest, and to explaining the existence of surplus-values in the shape of profits and rent. Not until recent years have there been serious attempts made to harmonize and consolidate these theories into a general theory of distribution. Of these attempts none seems more satisfactory or more likely to find a permanent place in the literature of economics than the works of Messrs. Clark and Hobson now before us.

Both writers have contributed largely to the development and extension of the theories above mentioned. Professor Clark's theoretical work alone covers a period of twenty-five years, while, for at least a decade, Mr. Hobson has been prominent among the British economists of the newest school.

There is not space within the limits of this article to do more than give a scanty notice to the theory of distribution developed by each author, and there is them. Perhaps even a lengthy comparison would no room to institute an adequate comparison between at present be premature, since Professor Clark's work is an unfinished one, and it is only in the second volume which he promises that we may expect to find work analogous to that done by Mr. Hobson in his present treatise. Nevertheless, there are some points of resemblance which may be noted, and some points of difference between the theories of the two writers which may be briefly touched upon. Both writers agree in making the price of commodities the starting point in the theory of distribution. Professor Clark takes normal price as his starting point, for he is investigating distribution in a static society in which all disturbing forces are eliminated and competition alone has free play. Mr. Hobson, on the other hand, takes as his starting point the market price of commodi

*THE DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. By John Bates Clark. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE ECONOMICS OF DISTRIBUTION. By John A. Hobson. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE TRUST PROBLEM. By Jeremiah Whipple Jenks. New York: McClure, Phillips & Co.

THE TRUSTS. By William Miller Collier. New York: The Baker & Taylor Co.

ECONOMIC CRISES. By Edward D. Jones. New York: The Macmillan Co.

RURAL WEALTH AND WELFARE. By George T. Fairchild. New York: The Macmillan Co.

THE GOSPEL OF WEALTH, and Other Timely Essays. By Andrew Carnegie. New York: The Century Co.

WAR AND LABOUR. By Michael Anitchkow. New York: Longmans, Green, & Co.