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THREE GREAT WORKS OF REFERENCE

Published by THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

Dictionary of Architecture and Building

BY RUSSELL STURGIS, Past President of the Architectural League of New York, author of

Volume I., A—E.

Ready this week.

Profusely illustrated. Three volumes in all. The set, $20.00; in half leather, $30.00. Cloth, Royal 8vo.

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"European Architecture," etc.

Over eighty of the best-known American and European writers on Architecture, Art, etc., contribute to this dictionary, of which the first volume stands as one of the most important of modern works of reference, indispensable to every working architect-offering as it does the last word on every important related topic-Acoustics, the Arch, Color, Design, Electrical Appliances, Estimating, Expansion of Metals, with cross references, which add greatly to its convenience as a work of reference, and the whole superbly illustrated.

AUTHORITATIVE in its sources; ILLUSTRATED most copiously; COMPLETE

and in every way PRACTICAL.

*Essentially American ·wholly alive . . . of inestimable value." —CHICAGO TRIBUNE.

Cyclopedia of American Horticulture

Edited by L. H. BAILEY, Cornell University, assisted by WILLIAM MILLER, and many expert Culti

Volume III.

Ready early in February.

Cloth, Royal 8vo. Volumes I. and II. Each, $5.00 net.

vators and Botanists. Superbly illustrated.

"The information given is precisely what the horticulturist and general reader is desirous of knowing." - Scientific American.

"In range, treatment, and editing, the Cyclopedia appears to be emphatically useful: . . . a work worthy of ranking by the side of the Century Dictionary." — Nation. This really monumental performance will take rank as a standard in its class. Illustrations and text are admirable." - New York Tribune.

DESCRIPTIONS OF ALL THE SPECIES OF FRUITS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND ORNAMENTAL PLANTS IN THE MARKET IN AMERICA AND CANADA. DIRECTIONS FOR THE CULTIVATION OF ALL KINDS OF CROPS, OBSERVATIONS ON MARKETING, ETC.

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Whether for learner or expert, there is no dictionary that offers such an immense array of information... a unique work."-W. H. HAZARD in The Churchman.

Encyclopedia Biblica

A CRITICAL DICTIONARY OF THE LITERARY, POLITICAL, AND RELIGIOUS HISTORY OF THE ARCHEOLOGY, GEOGRAPHY, AND THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE BIBLE. Edited by the Rev. T. K. CHEYNE, D.D., J. SUTHERLAND BLACK, from the staff of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and many contributors in Europe and America.

Volume II., E-K. Early in February. Volume I., A—D. Super-royal octavo, Cloth, $5.00 net. Leather, $7.50 net.

"And this initial volume is convincing testimony that they will do the work well and thoroughly. Of the fifty-three contributors to it there are few who are not widely known in the world of Biblical scholarship, and there is not one who is not an authority on the special topic which he discusses."- New York Tribune.

"Laymen as well as professional scholars will find it of invaluable interest and use." - Chicago Evening Post.

Comprehensive, yet concise,

the latest views of leading scholars. With illustrations,

maps, etc.

"It is far and away the most important and valuable reference book for the clergyman who accepts a literary instead of a dogmatic handling of the Bible as the true way."- The New World.

Each is sold only on Subscription for the Complete Work.

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY, 66 Fifth Avenue, New York City

CHINESE HUMOR

A GENERAL was haRD PRESSED IN BATTLE AND ON THE POINT OF GIVING WAY, WHEN SUDDENLY A SPIRIT SOLDIER CAME TO THE RESCUE AND ENABLED HIM TO WIN A GREAT VICTORY. PROSTRATING HIMSELF ON THE GROUND, HE ASKED THE SPIRIT'S NAME. "I am the God of the Target," REPLIED THE SPIRIT. "And how have I merited your godship's kind assistance?” INQUIRED THE GENERAL. "I am grateful to you," ANSWERED THE SPIRIT, "because in your days of practice you never once hit me."

CHINESE PROVERBS

Deal with the faults of others as gently as with your own.
A man thinks he knows, but a woman knows better.
Armies are maintained for years to be used on a single day.

Oblige and you will be obliged.

If you fear that people will know, don't do it.
He who rides a tiger cannot dismount.

These are only a few of the gems found in

The History of Chinese Literature

By PROFESSOR HERBERT A. GILES of Cambridge University.

This book is the only one on this most interesting subject; not even in Chinese has the task ever before been attempted. And it is admirably performed. It treats of poetry, fiction, the drama, philosophy, and religion. There is not a dull page in it. Tenth in the Literature of the World Series.

The Story of

MRS. CLYDE A Social Career.

By JULIEN GORDON, author of "A Puritan Pagan." 1 vol., 12mo, 363 pp., cloth, $1.50.

The Social Career is real history; it is a faithful portrayal of life in Boston, New York, and Rome. Dinner-table discussion will assuredly turn on the question: Who was Mrs. Clyde ?

A HERO IN HOMESPUN

A Tale of the Loyal South. By WILLIAM A. Bar-
TON, author of "Pine Knot," etc. No. 295 in
Appletons' "Town and Country Library." Paper,
50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.

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"Vigorous, spirited, truthful, absorbing.” — CRITIC.
A thoroughly interesting, red-blooded virile story. A his-
torical document of the very greatest value.' BOOKMAN.

The Great Spanish Dictionary

Velázquez Spanish-English Dictionary

New Edition; revised and enlarged by EDWARD GRAY, A.B., M.D., F.R.M.S., and JUAN L. IRIBAS, A.B.,
LL.D. 1 vol., 8vo, 801 pp., cloth, $3.50.

More than 8,000 titles have been added; the definitions have been simplified and corrected; a multitude of new terms have been inserted. The pronunciation has been carefully noted, and the accents have been used in accordance with the new regulations of the Spanish Academy.

"It should take its deserved place as THE Spanish dictionary.” — NEW YORK Outlook.

"So far as we have been able to judge by tests here and there, the revisers have done their work with sound scholarship and excellent taste. The NEW VELAZQUEZ is happily timed for the new vogue of Spanish.”—NATION.

A Masterpiece of Biography

In a recent vote solicited by the London Academy as to the ten best books of the year 1900, a majority of the readers who expressed their opinion put second not a novel, but a biography!

The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley

By his son, LEONARD HUXLEY. It is in two 8vo volumes, illustrated, with 549 and 547 pp., index; published by D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, at $5.00 net, in cloth.

E. L. G. [E. L. GODKIN], in the New York Evening Post, says that: "Whatever success England has achieved during the past century has been largely due to the frequency with which such biographies as those of BURKE, PITT, JOHNSON and CHATHAM, WELLINGTON, PEEL and COBDEN, PALMERSTON, MACAULAY and TENNYSON, LYALL, DARWIN and HUXLEY have been put before the youth of the nation." He goes on to call that of Huxley one of the most instructive and brilliant of English lives." This opinion is echoed by the press everywhere.

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D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 72 Fifth Ave., New York

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No. 351.

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A Semi-Monthly Journal of Literary Criticism, Discussion, and Information.

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Desmolin's Boers or English.The British Case
against the Boer Republics. - Cecil's On the Eve of
the War. - Miss Markham's South Africa. - Mus-
grave's In South Africa with Buller. - Atkins's The
Relief of Ladysmith.-Ashe's Besieged by the Boers.
-Churchill's London to Ladysmith via Pretoria. -
Churchill's Ian Hamilton's March. Hillegas' The
Boers in War. - Davis's With Both Armies in South
Africa. -Wilkinson's Lessons of the War. - Doyle's
The Great Boer War. - Arnold-Forster's The War
Office, the Army, and the Empire. - Scoble and
Abercrombie's The Rise and Fall of Krugerism. —
Farrelly's The Settlement after the War in South
Africa.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS

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OUR PUBLIC LIBRARIES. An interesting article contributed by Mr. Herbert Putnam to the January "International Monthly" sums up of recent years the progress in American library development. The public library in the United States has become so important a part of our educational machinery and so influential a factor in our intellectual life that the principal facts concerning its development should be in the possession of every intelligent person, and it is desirable that they should be summed up from time to time by some writer of Mr. Putnam's experience and authority. As librarian of

our great national collection of books he is officially at the head of his profession in the United States, and those who know anything of his zeal and his equipment do not need to be told that the profession could not well have a worthier leader.

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The very use of this word "profession suggests what is probably the most striking fact of all in the history of the American library movement. Twenty-five years ago, people thought of a librarian as a custodian of books, usually a helpless sort of person as far as practical affairs were concerned, and not infrequently a crusty one. To speak of his occupation as a profession was to use strange language, and to make one look askance at the speaker. And indeed, there were then few professional librarians to be found. But the pioneer work which was being done by Poole and Winsor, together with a few of their contemporaries, has since then borne rich fruit, and librarianship is now a professional calling in as exact and distinct a sense as is the occupation of the lawyer or the physician. It has its professional schools and associations, its professional ideals and ethical principles, just as the bar and the pulpit have them, and may be taken up as a life vocation with the same certainty that opportunity for its exercise will be found, and that success will be the reward of exceptional ability.

This settlement of the librarian's status has been made, as we have already mentioned, during the last quarter of a century. A good

many other things of importance to the profession have also been done during the same period, such, for example, as the establishment. and maintenance of "The Library Journal," the formation of the American Library Association, and the adoption of enlightened library legislation by a large number of the States. The decade of the seventies witnessed the beginnings of all three of these movements, for, although there were library laws before that time, the Illinois statute of 1872 set a new pace, and placed the public library upon a more substantial foundation than had before supported it.

When we speak of the advance in library economy and administration, and of the methods by which libraries have increased their helpfulness for all classes of users, we are at a loss to know where to begin in the enumeration of things done. A rough list will include State commissions, travelling libraries, open shelves, popular lectures, children's departments, delivery stations, the extension of service into the schools, annotated lists for readers, and coöperative methods of cataloguing. To the outsider, these terms mean little that is definite, but to the close observer of recent library activities, each of them connotes an agency of approved educational value, and a development to which a volume might easily be devoted.

One result of all this multiplication of activities is, however, sure to impress the most casual observer, and is equally sure of being misunderstood. In the old days, the funds of a library were largely devoted to the purchase of books; in our own times, the purchase of books seems to have become a matter of minor importance. It is rather startling to learn that the Boston Public Library, for every dollar of its income that goes into books, spends ten dollars in other ways, yet such is about the proportion that must be exhibited by the budget of any institution of the size of one of our great city libraries. Nor will one thoroughly conversant with the services performed through the agency of a modern library building, and by the labors of its trained staff, find it possible to deny that the ten dollars are as wisely and usefully expended as the one. The scholar may object, but public libraries are not for the benefit of the scholar alone, and the class to which he belongs, at any rate, gets as large a share of their benefits as any other class. Indeed, no collection of books can be of much value to the community as a whole, unless the means for exploiting it, and for bringing it to

bear upon every form of intellectual need and craving, are provided quite as generously as are the books themselves. Every library, for example, soon reaches a point at which a few thousand dollars may far more judiciously be expended upon the preparation of an expert catalogue than upon any additions, however urgently demanded, to its stores. It is difficult for a layman to see this, but to the initiated, it becomes a proposition so obvious as to need no demonstration.

The public library of the twentieth century is not going to abandon any of the methods, worked out in so painstaking a fashion, by which our public collections of books have been made second in educational importance to the public schools alone. They will all be developed still further in the direction of helpfulness, of the bridging over of difficulties, and of the stimulation of an interest in reading among all classes. To them still other methods will be added from time to time, even at the cost of still further lessening the funds with which books are bought, for the purpose of a library is not to preserve books, but to circulate them. And approval of the methods of modern professional librarianship will continue to be evidenced, as in the past, and in a constantly growing ratio, by increased public support and by the still greater multiplication of generous private foundations. Our country leads the world in the use that it makes of public libraries, and it is going to maintain the leadership already won by every means that are now devised, or may hereafter be devised. We have no intention of going into prophesy at this time, but we will venture one prediction, to the effect that the next marked development of library activity will be found in the schools, and that books will be brought to bear upon the studies of young people to an extent, and with beneficial results, of which few educators now dream. When the use of books comes to have as important a part in the work of the historical and literary group of studies as the use of the microscope and the balance now has in the scientific group of studies when in every school the library shall be as well provided as the laboratory now is then the next important step in education will have been made, and men will wonder why it should have been left for the twentieth century to make. We content ourselves here with this general statement, reserving a more detailed and specific treatment of the subject for some future occasion.

A LOOK AT THE HISTORICAL Novel.

Amending a familiar thought, a novel is a picture of life seen through the prism of an author's mind. When the picture seems to us clear and true, we recognize its technical excellence; and if in addition it has the interest that attaches to a truthful transcript of action, passion, character, and thought, we call the picture a great one.

Amid the discussions which centre around the historical novel, it appears strange that no more effort has been made to differentiate it from the others. It seems taken for granted that an historical novel is

an historical novel; but the varying treatment of the theme shows the widely differing ideas which exist on the subject. A distinction would be useful, and should not be exceedingly hard to make. Any novel is certainly in one sense historical, but by carrying out logically the common and somewhat hazy idea we can arrive at a definition that carries with it the necessary distinction. Should we not consider the true historical novel as one which has to do with people seeming to have had a part in the greater events, the larger forces, that make history?

To illustrate the distinction carried in this def-| inition, look at "Cranford" and "Hugh Wynne." Probably the former is a more truthful, as it certainly is a more convincing, picture of bygone days than the latter; but one would not think of classing them together.

Of the novels of history accessible to English readers there are few indeed which can be placed in the front rank; for many a work which would reach this place is barred by a lack of one or more of the essential characteristics, among which are good workmanship, a convincing portrayal of life, a life in the main current of events. The fatal defect, and the most common, is the absence of that spirit which would give us the innate motif of the time. Take for an example "Ivanhoe," one of the most celebrated novels in the language. The story is most interesting, the picture is clear, it has the interest that attaches to well-drawn action and character; but its people are moderns, living partially the medieval life; we get from the book hardly the slightest inkling of the basic brutishness and savagery of the time. That chivalry which was only a fall of lace on the dirty clothing of society is transformed by the touch of the wizard's pen into the fabric itself. The fault is characteristic both of Scott and of the great school which has followed in his footsteps, though all will admit that we owe to this school some splendid stories. Kingsley's best works, "Hypatia," "Westward-Ho," and "Hereward," have this same lack; but it seems certain that had Kingsley not been so hampered by his profession and his public, his work would stand in the foreground, for he had in him much of the artistic essence, and red blood runs in the veins of his people.

Consider for a moment two novels which cer

tainly do stand in the foreground of literature. "The Three Musketeers" is a model in its way, but the ground on which the heroes stand we feel to be a little uncertain; a glowing, shifting haze hangs over and between us and the immortal three who were four." Still, it would take greater faults than these to displace so good a story. The other, "Henry Esmond," of all the acknowledged standards, should probably be placed first, for it has almost every element which goes to the making of the ideal historical novel. Of course, Thackeray shrinks from a full portrayal; but the real life is so suggested where it cannot be told, the action and plot are so interesting, the characters are so clearcut, the men and events treated are so important to the period, that the novel is practically above criticism, and to many it has seemed above successful rivalry.

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But in the universe of letters a new planet has swum into the ken of recent observers. We have now a writer who perhaps more fully than any other has met the requirements of a literary masterpiece, and that man is the Polish author, Sienkiewicz. He who has not yet made the acquaintance of the trilogy, "With Fire and Sword," "The Deluge," and "Pan Michael," has before him the pleasure of reading works almost unique, that carry out nearly to perfection the idea of a great historical novel putting before us, in a light as vivid as our latter day ideas will permit us to enjoy, the life of the past. These stories oft-times lack delicacy of touch and finish; they have incidents that seem needlessly brutal and reach the limits of our indulgence; they treat of life and character so alien that at first thought they seem unreal. Yet we soon know that we are seeing life as men lived it, that the author is a creator of people who live and move and have being. We find characters drawn with an unerring hand; we come to understand that a master of masters is putting before us the rush and sweep of great events, the elemental passions, all the vital constituents of the life of the time of which he treats.

We have some new friends when we have finished these stories. There is that "combination of Ulysses and Falstaff," Zagloba, with his unfailing resource and wit, with the most human and laughable and lovable admixture of courage and cowardice, of selfishness and generosity, a character destined to live among the few immortal creations of fiction. There is that whole company of noblemen, imbued with the strangest compound of religion and savagery, of singlemindedness and subtlety, men of a race whose spirit is in many ways repellant to us, yet which compels our admiration and respect, for it formed the bulwark between Europe and the powers of darkness.

There is hardly an indistinct character amid them all, nor among those charming women whom they loved and whom we love. Above all, there is Pan Michael, whose fortunes we follow through the trilogy the little man who never met his match

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