BOOKS.

TEN YEARS NEAR THE GERMAN FRONTIER.* Mn. EGAN, wbo was the American Minister at Copenhagen

from June, 1907, till 1917, has written a most instructive book of reminiscences. The Danes as lookers-on saw most of the game of European politics before the war, and were painfully

interested spectators of the conflict. The Danish Royal family was related to almost all the crowned heads of Europe, who

were constantly to be found at the Court. Moreover, when war broke out, Copenhagen, the neutral capital nearest to Germany, was a " city of news," true or false, and the American Minister could learn a good deal from his colleagues in both the belligerent camps. When Mr. Egan took up his post, he found, to his surprise, that well-informed Danes lived in dread of an early outbreak of war. When he repeated the commonplaces, dear to British politicians before 1914, about war being impossible in the enlightened twentieth century, he was laughed at. Germany was arming, and also conducting an intensive propaganda throughout Scandinavia, as else where. " The Germany of the American imagination, our old Germany, is gone," said the German Minister, Count HenckelDonnersmarek. It was obvious, the Danes thought, that she meant to fight Groat Britain, and, as a preliminary, to occupy Denmark, which the Pan-Germans regarded as their " northern province." The Russian Minister told Mr. Egan that, " as soon as the bankers feel that there is enough money, there will be a war in Europe." In 1909 the late Count Aehrenthal, the Austrian statesman, informed a Danish financier that war was inevitable. Austria and Russia did not want war, but, according to a high German official, the German Emperor had to " justify" the existence of his great Army and Navy. " He will want what his [military] clique wants." But Mr. Egan's informant added significantly that " the war must be short." It becomes more and more clear that Germany's criminal plan was foiled as soon as the armies settled down into the interminable trench warfare. She had staked all on the hope of one short and decisive campaign. Germany, between 1908 and 1910, " was growing more and more furiously jellous of England." " To make a financial wilderness of London and reconstruct the money centre of the world in Berlin was the ambition of some of her great financiers." Wellinformed Germans frankly admitted that they could not take the Monroe Doctrine seriously, and that they thought it impossible for America to oppose Germany's will. " Your great Gorman population will always keep you out of conflict with us," said Count Henckel-Donnersmarck. He and his circle assumed as an axiom that the German-Americans, skilfully organized through their newspapers, clubs, and churches, would oppose any American Government which threatened war with Germany. As it turned out, nearly all the German Americans of military age enlisted willingly in the American Army, though the Emperor expected them to be neutral at least, on the ground that, " once a German, always a German."

The sentimentalists, who think that Germany is hardly used in being compelled to restore non-German provinces, should read what Mr. Egan has to say about Northern Slesvig, an indubitably Danish land. He found that all honest Danes longed for the release of their countrymen from Prussian slavery, but feared to protest openly lest the Prussians should seize the rest of Denmark. Denmark was terrorized into helpless silence, like a deer before a tiger. She did not expect help from any quarter ; Great Britain, she thought, was absorbed in her own affairs, and America was too far away to care what happened in the Baltic. The Germans, for their part, could not see that they were wroug in trying to Germanize the Slesvig Danes by force. Count Brockdorff-Rantzau, the late Peace Delegate, whom Mr. Egan knew as the German Minister at Copenhagen, and whom he commends as " rather liberal " by comparison with most Prussian officials, asked him one day to say what was wrong in Slesvig. When Mr. Egan replied " Everything," Count Brockdorff-Rantzau said :—

If a country is to be ruled by us, it must be a German country. We can tolerate no difference that tends to denationalize our population. It is a dream—the Danish idea that we shall give up what we have taken or rather what has • Ten Fears near the German Frontier : a Retrospect and a Warning. By Maurice ]ranels Egan, former United States }Sinister to Denmark. London: Dodder and Stoughton. [12s. net.]

been ceded to us.' Without the consent of the people '

Who are the people ? When you answer that, I will tell you what is truth. Come, you are a democrat ; by and by, when you Americans are older, you will see democracy from a more practical point of view.' "

That is an illuminating comment on the democratic professions which this man made at Versailles a few weeks ago. The Danes were under no illusions as to the character of Prussian rule. They knew that it was en autocracy with a thin disguise of Constitutional forms. Count Szechenyi, the Austrian Minister, told Mr. Egan that the Social Democrats " can be played with as a cat plays with a mouse." " They are very amusing. They may caterwaul in the Reichstag ; they may wrangle over the credits and the Budget ; but the Emperor can prorogue them at any time." His forecast proved correct when the Socialists all voted for the war credits in August, 1914. As for the Centre, Mr. Egan, himself a Roman Catholic with strong French sympathies, rightly contradicts the theory that the Centre was an independent Roman Catholic party ; it was in fact

subservient to the Emperor, and just as Imperialistic as the Socialists under Herr Scheidemann or the Junkers. Germany, knowing that the Danes feared her, sought to strengthen her hold over them through the Lutheran Church, through the Socialist " International "—which was, and is, essentially a

German scheme for extending German influence—and through the influence of the German professors who paid careful attention to Danish scholars, some of whom, like Professor Brandes, became more German than Danish in their sympathies. This propaganda, backed by a great system of espionage, had less success in Denmark, Mr. Egan thinks, than in Sweden, where the Germans could work on the Swede's fear of Russia as well as on the high Toryism of the official and military caste. The Swedish people, as we now know, favoured the Allies, though their officials gave very =neutral help to the enemy. But the rulers

of a country where no politician may take office unless he is a member of the Lutheran Church might be expected to have a warm regard for Prussian despotism. M. Branting, the Socialist leader, who, Mr. Egan says, is " rather more like a

modern disciple of Thomas Jefferson than of Marx or Bakunin," " was obliged to renew his formal adhesion to the Lutheran Church, which he had renounced, to hold office." In fairness to Sweden we must remember that her position between Russia and Germany was difficult, and that she could not expect any military assistance from us during the early years of the war. Norway alone of the Scandinavian Powers was unaffected by German blandishments or threats. " No human being could be imagined as a greater antithesis to the Prussians than the Norwegians ; the Norwegian is in love with liberty ; he is an idealistic individual ; it is difficult too to believe that the Norwegian, the Swede, and the Dane are of the same race."

To illustrate the Norwegian's bluntness, kfr. Egan tells of a shipowner " who, asked to dine with King Haakon, found that a business engagement was more attractive, so he telephoned : ' Hello, Mr. King, I can't come to dinner ! ' " Norway suffered for her independence at the hands of the ' U '-boat pirates, but she did not yield. It may be hoped that Denmark and Sweden will now take heart and free themselves from the evil German influence.

Mr. Egan defends the Vatican against the charge of being pro-German. It is, he declares, a calumny spread by German propagandists in order to strengthen their power in Rome. He recalls the efforts made by the Germans to control the Roman Catholic Church in America, through a certain Dr. Schrader who obtained a chair in the Roman Catholic University. Their design was to appoint German Bishops to look after the GermanAmerican Roman Catholics, Austrian Bishops for the AustrianAmericans, and so on. The plan was foiled mainly by the efforts of Archbishop Ireland. According to Mr. Egan, the German Emperor had his revenge by preventing the Archbishop from obtaining a Cardinal's hat, as the President naturally could not intervene in such a matter on Archbishop Ireland's behalf. Mr. Egan tells us that his main object at Copenhagen was to effect the purchase of the Virgin Islands from Denmark. If Germany had annexed Denmark, she would have acquired these islands, especially St. Thomas, which has one of the best harbours in the West Indies, and is the natural outwork of Porto Rico. America would then have been faced with the alternative of abandoning the Monroe Doctrine or of fighting Germany. Mr. Egan thought that it was better to forestall the danger by buying the islands, which coat Denmark more than she could afford. President Johnson had bought two of

the islands in 1868 for £1,500,000, and the islanders voted for the transfer, but the American Senate, disliking the President, rejected the Treaty. In 1902 Amerioa offered £1,000,000 for the group, but the price was too low. When Mr. Egan raised the question anew in 1915, the Danish Government, in sore financial straits, readily agreed to accept £5,000,000, with the renunciation of America's shadowy claims on Greenland. The Treaty occasioned a long party controversy in Denmark, the Opposition trying to use it as a pretext for upsetting the Government. In the end a plibiscite was taken, and the Danish electors by a majority of nearly two to one confirmed the Treaty in December, 1916. Mr. Egan says that an opportune lecture by him in favour of woman suffrage caused many women electors to vote for the sale of the islands. The transaction was completed before America entered the war. Mr. Egan mentions incidentally a strange proposal which was made to him, unofficially, in 1910. Denmark was to cede Greenland to America and receive in return the large and fertile island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Denmark was to be entitled to cede Mindanao to Germany in exchange for Northern Slesvig. It was, of course, a preposterous scheme, evidently of German origin, and recalled the complicated exchanges with which eighteenth-century statesmen, including Pitt, used to divert themselves. The Danes, characteristically enough, feared lest Germany should keep Mindanao and retake Slesvig. Mr. Egan's last word is a warning. " We cannot change the aspirations or the hearts of the Germans. We can only take care that they keep the laws made by nations who have welldirected consciences."

THE BRITISH SOLOMON.*

THERE is a certain piquancy in the fact that New England, whose founders left our shores because they could not agree with James L, should have produced the first good modern edition of that monarch's political works, as the opening volume of a series of " Harvard Political Classics." James did not like the " brain-sicke and headie preachers " who followed Brown and Peary, and whom we now call Independents; but, as a man of letters, he would have been greatly flattered by the compliment which the New England University, founded a few years after his death, has paid him. Nor can we say that James was unworthy of such attentions. No King has suffered more than James in the estimation of posterity from ill-natured gossip and deliberate caricature. Those who, like Scott in The Fortunes of Nigel, construct a portrait of James from the malevolent memories of Welwood and others are as much misled as if they formed their ideas of our leading politicians from the unkindly comments in the sensational Press. The popular belief that James was a fool, even if he was " the wisest fool in Christendom," is unfounded. The young King who had brought order out of chaos in Scotland, taming the unruly nobles and the not less ambitious leaders of the Kirk, must have been a statesman of considerable ability, firmness, and tact. The turbulent kingdom to which James succeeded in his infancy was comparatively docile when he left it, at the age of thirty-six, to make his slow triumphal progress to London. When he ascended his new throne he doubtless shocked many people by his assertion of the Divine hereditary right of Kings. But he showed his worldly wisdom in deciding to support the Bishops of the Church of England against the Puritan Party and the Roman Catholics. There oan be no doubt that Episcopacy divided the country least. Most of the Puritans were professed members of the Church ; they did not object to Bishops in general but to certain Bishops in particular, who were, they thought, unduly precise in administering the law. There was no question of toleration at that time. All sects, except perhaps a few independent visionaries, were far too earnest about their Creeds to regard toleration as anything but a Laodicean device. The Pilgrim

■ Fathers were as intolerant as their opponents, and would indeed have regarded toleration as a mortal sin. To condemn James for not acting as a Victorian statesman in this matter is a gross anachronism. He had very good reasons for desiring to strengthen the Elizabethan Church settlement. The CounterReformation, as Professor Mcllwain points out in his scholarly Introduction, was at its height. The Papacy was regaining its hold over Europe. If England had reverted to her old faith, the Reformation might have been undone everywhere. We owe no small gratitude to James for restraining the theological

• The Politic-al Work, of James I. With an Introduction by C. H. McIlwain. London: IL Milford. i17a. neb-I

fury that might have shattered the English Church, and for making clear to Christendom in his own books and in those which he inspired the fundamental reasons why England and Scotland and the other Protestant nations of the North could not compromise their national independence by bowing to the Pope.

It is noteworthy that more than half this handsome volume is concerned with the great politico-religious controversy of the day. Had the Pope, if not a direct, at least an indirect power of deposing heretical Kings ? That was the problem which vexed educated Europe in the early seventeenth century, and which had to be solved somehow before the newly consolidated nations could develop freely in their own way. We can see at once why James laid such tremendous stress on the supposed Divine right of Kings. The twentieth century may smile at the doctrine, but to the seventeenth century it was a natural counterblast to the Divine right asserted by the Pope. If James could show that he was King by the will of Heaven, he was securely entrenched against the hosts of Rome. The position of the loyal and pious English Roman Catholic thus became almost untenable. His instincts bade him obey his King ; his creed seemed to compel him to be a traitor. His spiritual father denounced his earthly Sovereign. The most learned prelates of his Church openly preached " Killing no murder when the victim was a Protestant King. The Jesuits, no leas than the extreme Calvinists, advocated Republicanism in order to destroy the heretical monarchies. Parsons, the able English Jesuit, proposed an elective monarchy, and incidentally urged that James's claim to the throne was bad. When English Roman Catholics were perplexed by their painful dilemma, and frightened at the popular clamour raised against them after the Gunpowder Plot, James made his great stroke. He and Archbishop Bancroft perceived that the English Roman Catholics were already divided by the bitter personal controversy between the Jesuits and the seculars. They sought to make the division permanent by propounding in 1606 an oath of allegiance which any recusant might be required to take. " I do further swear," the Roman Catholic had to say, " that I do from my heart abhor, detest, and abjure as impious and heretical this damnable doctrine and position that princes which be excommunicated or deprived by the Pope may be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any other whatsoever." Though self-evident now, this proposition aroused a veritable tempest of controversy. Pope Paul V. denounced it as heretical. Cardinal Bellarmine warned George Blackwell, " Archpriest of the English," that the oath transferred the headship of the Church from the Pope to the King. The learned Cardinal du Perron, a much gentler nature than Bellarmine, was induced to argue, as we may put it, that revolution is not invariably against the Divine will, and that James's oath must lead to schism. Du Perron was replying to James's Apology for the Oath of Allegiance, and the King retorted with A Remonstrance for the Bight of Kings. We need not go further into this battle of the books. The new oath was in fact taken by Blackwell and a large number of English Roman Catholics, in whose favour the penal laws were relaxed by administrative action. The Ultramontane intrigues in England were thus sharply checked, and the idea of religious toleration began to dawn on statesmen, though it was not realized for many a long day.

In so far as he was dealing with English Protestants, James was a dogmatist. He was so fully convinced of his Divine right to be King that he stated rather than argued his case. The True Law of Free Monarchies, which he wrote in 1598, five years before he came to England, is as uncompromising as the Basilikon Boron or " royal gift " to his son Henry, pub lished in 1599. " I am the Husband and all the whole Isle is my lawful Wife," he told his first Parliament in 1603. " I am the Head and it is my body ; I am the Shepherd and it is my flock." The throne was a seat which God by my birth. right and lineal descent had in the fulness of time provided for me." When the ex-Kaiser used to talk in this strain, the world wondered whether he or his people was mad. James at any rate was quite sane and very much in earnest. The Divine right theory not only secured his position against the Papacy, but also disposed of awkward questions about the succession and simplified the problem of government. Professor Mcllwain points out that he was strongly influenced by the Scottish Roman law, which was of course anathema to English Common lawyers, as they showed in their violent protests against Dr. Cowell's law dictionary, the Interpreter of 1607. " Some had a conceit," said James to his Parliament in 1609, " that I would have wished the Civil Law to have been put in place of the Common Law for government of this people." But, whether or not the conceit was well founded, the Common lawyers were too strong to be trifled with, though James indulged in some free criticism of their chaotic rules and precedents. James, being a logician, carried his theory to its extreme limit. " Kings arc justly called Gods, for that they exercise a manner or resemblance of Divine power upon earth ; for if you will consider the attributes to God, you shall see how they agree in the person of a King." It is true that, after elaborating this text, he went on to say that in settled monarchies a King was bound to observe the fundamental laws ; if he did not, he degenerated into a tyrant and became liable to Divine punishment—" and they that persuade them the contrary are vipers and pests." Still, rebellion was un -Christian, so that the tyrant might have a long innings. James warned his faithful Commons not to " meddle with the main points of Government." After seven years' apprenticeship in England, " I must not be taught my office." Nor must the Commons meddle with the King's ancient rights. James's doctrine is now dead—even, perhaps, in Prussia—but it was a very real thing in the early seventeenth century. To underrate the mysterious awe in which the prerogative was held is to underrate the courage of the men like Eliot who headed the agitation for the Petition of Right, or of the leaders of the Long Parliament who actually challenged the power of the Crown. As we read James's speeches, stuffed with learning but full also of shrewd and homely sayings, we cannot help thinking that he exercised a greater personal influence than some of the historians credit him with. Charles I. simply alopted the theories of his father, but, while James died in his bed, Charles died on the scaffold at Whitehall. The difference in their fates was not merely due to circumstances—a conveniently evasive term. James, with his Scottish birth and his Presbyterian upbringing to handicap him, must have known how to manage men, whereas his son neither knew nor cared about that supreme art of the politician. The violence of James's detractors suggests that he was a great deal more popular than they were willing to admit. James's faults were many and obvious, but he had some solid qualities too. If Charles I. had resembled his father or his eldest son, the Constitutional struggle might have been averted, or might have been compromised without a civil war.

THE YEARS OF THE SHADOW.*

IN this, the third volume of her Reminiscences, Mrs. Hinkson tells us of her life from her return to Ireland in 1912 down to April, 1918. It was spent first of all at Shankill, near Dublin, and latterly, on her husband's appointment as an R.M., in Mayo. The record is one of unceasing industry in which time was always found for extraneous activities—hospitality, correspondence, the 'maintenance of old and the making of new friendships. The mere labour of writing in these years must have teen immense, for Mrs. Hinkson has never used a typewriter ; but it has always been a labour of love, for she " cannot lay down the pen for a day or t*o without secret desires after it, as though it were a drink or a drug. People have sometimes said to me that in such and such conditions I need not work so hard. I have heard them aghast. Why, if writing was drink I should be a drunkard : I simply could not refrain from it. It has filled my life with happiness." This frank admission is the best index to the strength and weakness of this chronicle. Her method of reprinting letters and reproducing conversations, her intimate personal sketches of friends and acquaintances, may not please all readers ; she acknowledges herself that it laid her open to a charge of want of reticence from another distinguished Irish writer, and the charge cannot be denied. But the indiscretions are nearly always animated by affection ; nothing is " set down in malice," and in the few instances in which Mrs. Hinkson deviates into criticism it is tempered with geniality, as when she says of Mr. James Stephens that " he was as much interested as Willie Yeats used to be in poetry," and then adds : " and had the same generosity." The picture of Mr. Yeats at a luncheon party constantly retiring to the telephone, and again never allowing the lure of psychical investigations to distract him from the delights of the tea-table, exhibits the fairy-poet in a more mundane and material aspect than we are accustomed to expect from his writings. But in the main Mrs.

• The Year: of the Shadow. By satparthe Tynan. London: .Constaide. 115e. net.]

Hickson finds it far easier to praise than to blame, and her heroes, dead and living, as revealed in these pages are drawn impartially from the ranks of Roman Catholics and Protestants, Nationalists and Unionists. Her devotion to Parnell remains unshaken. " Time has brought him back to be the incomparable Leader to all sections of Irish Nationalists." For Mr. George Wyndham she had, and has, an intense admiration. Of living Irishmen, " lE " inspires her with the greatest reverence. But she reckons Sir David Harrel—who, she is persuaded, would have been the ideal Chief Secretary—amongst her most honoured friends, writes with warm feeling of the late Professor Tyrrell and of Judge Gibson, and with enthusiastic respect and affection of Lord and Lady Aberdeen. Eighteen years spent in England had given her many friendships and a real love of the country, but she remained, in her own phrase, Celtic and Catholic at heart.

She was going home to her own people, and, though fully alive to their topsy-turviness and inconsistency, did not love them any the less.

Mrs. Hinkson was, and remained throughout the war, enthusiastically " pro Ally " ; two of her sons fought in the

British Army, and readers of the Spectator do not need to be

reminded of her homage to our immortal dead in " Flower of Youth," and many other moving poems. Yet she has not a good word to say of Ulster, and, while regretting the hostility of Ireland, is quick to recognize the idealism, the chivalry, and the clean fighting of the Sinn Fein leaders, and to contrast the insignificance of some English "Tommies" with the splendid physique of the Irish National Volunteers. She witnessed the triumphal return of the Countess Markievicz, and describes it without a word of criticism—the only references to "Madame's" record are distinctly laudatory—and on the following morning went to the Requiem Mass for Major William Redmond. And she relates, also without com ment, the reply of a Dublin newsboy to her husband on being asked his politics. " This special newsboy eyed the R.M. and apparently could not place him for all• his experience, for he said cautiously : I'm whatever gets me my tay.' " Mrs. Hinkson traces the Rebellion of Easter Week to the great strike of 1911, and that in turn to the scandal of the Dublin slums. But she omits the final step in this investigation, and fails to inform us who is responsible for this scandal, just as she omits to decide whether Larkin was a prophet, a madman, or a design ing demagogue. Yet she does not abstain from hard sayings, as when she frankly confesses that " if Thrift enters the soul of the Celt he becomes a thousand times harder and more closefisted than the Anglo-Irish." Even the Rebellion had its strange humours. The " little war " up in Dublin left Mayo as unmoved as the Great War. The comment of one " strong farmer " was the sorrowful ejaculation : " And now we shall get no more money for Land Purchase. Was ever anything so uncalled for ? " Another farmer merely complained that he had never known a worse fair for pigs. A woman at a level-crossing remarked that the Rebellion was a terrible thing : it had stopped the fairs all over the country, the people couldn't get their pigs to Limerick. And another woman asked : " Isn't it a desperate situation these villains have made for us ! The man that comes collectin' eggs is stopped, an' I've five score on me hands." Mrs.

Hinkson was not in Dublin during the Rebellion, but she gives us the narrative of a priest who was. He witnessed the sur render, and, though he knew what their madness would have cost, " he could have cried like a child." More remarkable still is the record of another eyewitness, Mrs. Hinksort's friend John Higgins, a brilliant young writer from Roscominon, who died of consumption in 1917. His account of the unreality of the earlier stages of the Rebellion is extraordinarily vivid :—

" Whether it was du3 to the flashing sunshine or the raucous foolery of the mob, there was something unreal about the ensemble, something almost indecent. If I fail to make this picture convincing, it is because it was not convincing at the time. For a few seconds of the preceding night one seemed to have vision and understanding ; but, in the morning, as if God was withholding the interpreting talent that sees into the very heart of life,the whole scene swam before and around us like some colossal melange of high purpose and buffoonery, austerity and profanity, mysticism and vagabondage, blend for blend, all thrown headlong by the Devil's own stage manager into the proudest street in Europe."

And though Mrs. Hinkson never goes so far herself, she is clearly much of the same opinion as John Higgins when he wrote of the sequel :—

" On Saturday, with infinite relief and some incredulity, came the tidings of surrender, of another dream laid, of the end of good, impractical men's hearts' -desire, the end of that Irish Republic that struck, in the full confidence of victory, fifteen hundred against the greatest empire the world has known, in fair fight, struck and failed, but kindled for the generous imaginations of mankind a touch of romance that darkened a whole continent of armies."

In spite of the title, there are many cheerful and entertaining interludes in the chronicle and an abundance of good stories.

Travellers familiar with the vagaries of Irish railways will be pleased with the story of the passenger who arrived one day at a station, depending on the train being late, and found it gone. " ' Surely the train wasn't up to Ow ? ' he said to the porter.

' She was, thin,' said the porter. ' She's the punctuallest train in Ireland and—a great inconvenience to the travellin' public.' "

And the frequenters of Irish country hotels will. appreciate the experience of a guest who, on being asked what he would like, and replying : " Anything at all. A chop or a steak would do,"

was met by the cri de coeur " Is it a chop or a steak ? Glory be to goodness, we haven't had a bit of fresh mate since the butcher

died." Very typical, also, is the continent of a landlady on some exacting guests : " Och, them was the ladies we wor glad to see the last of ! I'll tell you what, Mr. S. There's same people in this world that think they can go into a hotel an' make a convenience of it." That reminds us of a story of Miss Violet Martin's about some people who kept a fish-shop in a small Irish town, but gave it up " because people used to come bothering them at all hours of the day for a bit of fish." But whether she is trailing her green coat, or delighting to honour her friends, or reproducing the anonymous criticisms of her inappreciative neighbours at Southborough, or talking of gardens and flowers, Mrs. Hinkson is always good company. Criticism is largely disarmed by a writer who never fails to enjoy a joke at her own expense.

TWO GOVERNMENT HOUSING MANUALS.*

A POOR book that is expensively produced is merely ridiculous. Even a useful book, particularly if it be an official book, especially produced to throw light where light is urgently needed, has no business to dress itself up in all the pomp of " art" paper at a cost of half-a-crown a copy, when the inquiring taxpayer might well have obtained all he sought at the cost of a single shilling. For we would certainly class the Local Government Board's Manual on Housing as " useful." There is in it much that is true and a little that is new, and about it a pervading atmosphere of reasonable common-sense. It is neither inspired nor revolutionary, but the very sound and proper offspring of its respectable parent.

General remarks and advice soon run dry ; thereafter following is a sheaf of alarming though doubtless necessary Model Forms for " Estimates," " Statements," " Applications," " Proposals," and what not—that it seems must ever lie between the would-be home-builder and his house. At the end come eleven sheets of " Suggested House Plans," which are essentially sane and workable, though not faultless. For instance, it may be objected that when the only approach to the baCk-door lies through the scullery, that apartment is but ill adapted for use as a bathroom. Also a larder ventilating merely into an open passage, and a coal-hole with access from the scullery only, are not examples, one imagines, of perfect planning. Still, even these defects occur in but two or three of the plans, and the rest are carefully worked out on sound and well-tried lines.

At first glance it appears that the varying plans have all been arbitrarily fitted with a " Standard" elevation—an austere rectangular affair with an unvarying low-pitched roof, hipped back at its ends. The gable has, apparently, been utterly barred as a whimsical extravagance not to be countenanced by serious-minded Housing Authorities. Pendulums will be pendulums. If, however, every trace of variety is to be sternly eliminated from Local Government Board elevations, one wonders why it was thought worth while to print them at all ; though certainly the designs do serve to illustrate the commonplace that Plainness does not necessarily mean Ugliness, which, for many, is a lesson still to be learnt. Intelligently carried out in decent materials, houses built to the Local Government Board's designs, if they did not actually adorn a place, would still not seriously disfigure it.

Part I. of the Manual issued by the Board of Agriculture and

• (1) Manual en the Preparation of State-Aided Schemes. Local Government Board. 12s. .6d. net].--12) 3/towed far the Guidance of County Councils and their-Architects in the Equipment of IStnult-Holdings. Board of ..kgrlculture and . Fisheries " for the guidance of County Councils and their Architects in the equipment of Small-Holdings " is concerned only with cottages, their planning and construction. More adventurous and catholic than the Local Government Board, the Board of Agriculture reveals considerable variety and elasticity in its type designs, seventeen in number. One is offered anything from a minimum three-bedroomed bungalow to a four-bedroomed and bathroomcd " semi-detached," with a considerable choice of elevations. This Manual, though far less pretentious in its get-up than its Local Government Board counterpart, will, we believe, be found to give thoughtful, welldigested advice, in a very readable form, on the urgent matter of cottage-building : " The plans which follow are no more than types, which can rarely be translated into bricks and mortar on any given site

without more or less modification. They are intended to illustrate the recommendations contained in the following notes, and to establish a general standard of convenient planning and seemly appearance, consistent with the building traditions of England and Wales. The Board are satisfied that without excessive cost, but by good design, which in a cottage means right proportions and a wise use of materials, the new homesteads of small-holders may be made to look both substantial and pleasing.

Architects employed by County Councils should study very carefully the special conditions of each locality where building is proposed, and so draft their specifications as to avoid unnecessary expense through specifying rigidly certain materials or treatments, when satisfactory and less costly alternatives exist.

One principle seems to have been established by the process of trial and error. It is that dwellings of small-holders should so far as possible be grouped together in neighbourly fashion

and not dotted about as isolated unsociable units. In other words, supposing the colony to be represented by a circle—an effort should be made to concentrate the houses centrally instead

of dispersing them around the circumference. Against the amenities of centralisation must be balanced the natural desire of the cultivator to live close to his steading and his land, and dispositions should be made that will give the highest common measure of both social and agricultural advantage. Under social advantages' are counted—Presence of near neighbours in cases of illness or other emergency ; possibility of central water supply, drainage and lighting ; possibility of co-opera tive read transport for produce, supplies and passengers ; postal, telephonic, shopping, and other facilities ; facilities for general social intercourse and the exchange of ideas ; greater accessibility to outside influence—e.g., by lecturers, agricultural and other ; lower first cost of building.

Where a new settlement is at such a distance from existing villages as to make it necessary to develop a new social centre, but yet the size does not warrant the building of a separate church, school and club, a suitable site should be reserved for a little general-utility hall which may fulfil all such functions quite adequately—in succession. It would be the social centre and General Headquarters of the settlement—church, school, cinema, lecture hall, assembly room, club and institute, all in one. When it is possible to tack on to an existing hamlet or

village a group or colony of new cottages it is desirable to do 50, almost always, for the sake of the amenities. Where this is

done, as much care and discretion must be exercised as when additions are made to an old country house ; the good architect will strive to enlarge its accommodation without detracting from its architectural unity and character.

Owing to the present general shortage of all the usual building materials, attention is being increasingly directed to the possi bilities of new materials and new methods of construction, and the revival and improvement of traditional expedients that had fallen into disuse. Several of these latter are worth careful consideration as being eminently suitable for both houses and farm buildings in localities where the necessary materials exist.

Amongst these are ways of building in chalk, cob, and pied— many examples of all these still remain sound and intact after centuries of weathering and continuous use. It was only improved transport and cheap bricks that restricted these ancient methods of building in late years to the least accessible parts of the country, and now that transport and brick pro duction have become two of the chief problems of all housing schemes, a general revival of interest in such regional materials and methods is inevitable. The Board are about to build experimental cottages in chalk, &c., on one of their Farm Settlements, and will notify Councils as soon as they are available for inspection. The fullest possible use and exploitation of all local materials is as desirable aesthetically as it is economically, and materials that are native to any locality usually suit it best in every way. In cases where bricks are still the cheapest available material. even though foreign to a district, and where new buildings of brick have to be erected amongst old ones of stone, chalk or plaster, the discord should be softened by a coating of roughcast or whitewash.

In roofing a permanent building, the choice lies between only two alternatives—slate and tile. Good reed thatch makes an excellent roof that may last sonic twenty to thirty years, but it cannot strictly be counted as permanent.' Here again, unless cost forbids, preference will be given to the material that is natural' to the district—either by reason of local production or long adoption. The British Isles might be readily

divided up into well-defined areas, coloured brown and grey respectively, marking the districts that are by nature or tradition the peculiar preserve of either tile or slate. Thus Wales would appear as a large unbroken grey patch ; there would be lesser irregular grey patches scattered up and down the English counties—larger and thicker in the industrial North, in Devon, Cornwall and the West, whilst the Home Counties, East Anglia, and the South would be an almost uniform brown, denoting the land of tilos. It is desirable that the now small-holder's cottage shall show a distinct advance in accommodation on the present standard of labourers' cottages. Plain, well-proportioned elevations, a simple roof, and straightforward planning are more suitable for a small-holder's house than any attempts at the picturesque by means of calculated irregularities. The Board will not approve any design which indicates that there has been any attempt to secure superficial elegance at the expense of utility."

These should prove comfortable words to those who assumed, not without cause, that Government interference with housing must inevitably spell muddle, waste, and the desecration of the countryside by the flaming eyesores with which the very word " Housing " had Become most lamentably associated. The Board of Agriculture Manual has at present been issued only in a provisional edition for official use. It is to be hoped that it will soon be made available for the general public.

A QUAKER PHYSICIAN.*

" THE true life is a poem : there is rhythm in its duty, and euphony in its love, and in its joy every play of assonance." These words of the author occur in the final chapter of this charming book, the chapter devoted to summing up the character of his hero, Dr. John Fothergill. The life of this truly good man, so lovingly portrayed by that scholarly Quaker physician, Dr. Hingston Fox, is full of the poetry of high unselfish endeavour finally crowned with success. As he lay dying he said to his sister and faithful companion : " Sister, be content, do not hold me. i have been low. I have been doubtful whether it would be well with me or not, but now I am satisfied beyond a doubt—beyond a doubt, that I shall be everlastingly happy. My troubles are ended, therefore be content., and mayst thou be blest in time and in eternity." The spiritual life was of all. importance to this renowned Quaker physician of the eighteenth century, and in the light of present-day knowledge we may safely hazard the guess that not a little of his success in the art of healing was due to the spiritual forces acting within and radiating from him, endearing him to patients, whom his serious mien and quaint manners—for Fothergill maintained the Quaker custom of keeping his hat on when visiting—were at the first interview inclined to repel.

Our physician was, however, no faith-healer. He carefully

observed his cases, noting accurately the symptoms, so that his clinical records would compare not unfavourably with those of modern times. Sir James Mackenzie has never wearied of calling the medical profession's attention to the modern tendency to neglect symptoms and to place reliance on the findings of the laboratory experts. The study of symptoms, and perhaps still more the stress he laid on treatment, may expjain the wonderful success which attended Fothergill's practice, success not only for himself but for his patients, and this in spite of an almost complete ignorance of pathology as we at present under stand the term.

Although the use of medicines was undergoing a revolution

in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, yet the old formularies still lingered in the pharmacopoeias. The Theriaca Andrenwchi or Venice Treacle, containing sixty-five ingredients, including dried vipers, and the Mithriclatim, which as one of its fifty ingredients included the bellies of lizards, were still prescribed; and we are told by the author that these remedies were even prescribed by Fothergill, "but it was with a half apology." Commonly among the foremost in putting new and improved remedies to trial, his views on prescribing are clearly shown in his advice to a physician on remedies : " Quo simplicius eo melius " ; and in spite of the above-mentioned lapses he did much to bring about a simpler and more reasonable form of prescribing, introducing some new remedies such as Kinn, and personally investigating and improving the preparation of many others.

Bleeding at this time was considered a sovereign remedy for most of the ills afflicting mankind. Fothergill discountenanced its indiscriminate use and advocated less vigorous methods of treatment, being no doubt strengthened in his opinion by his

• Dr. John Fothergill and his Friends : Chmpptteerrs is Eighteenth-Century Life.

By it. HIngston Fos, M.D. London : . not.] recognition of the important:* of diet in treatment. He considered that excessive feeding caused more illness than immoderate drinking, although he was an advocate of tem perance and opposed drinking between meals. Without attempting to decide between the views of the abstainers and non-abstainers, one can have little doubt that the opinion here expressed was and still is correct, and that by a proper regulation of diet to bodily needs much preventable illness might be avoided.

Fothergill's contribution to the advancement of medical knowledge and practice was indeed considerable, and the sketch of these activities Dr. Fox is excellently drawn and full of interest ; but the general reader would hardly take up this volume to study medical progress. Let the reader not be discouraged ; the book is concerned with much of the very highest general interest to all, and with perusal wonder grows that any one man could be actively associated with so many beneficent spheres of work. Fothergill's interest in all that might benefit mankind was so wide as to include schemes for extending the canal system of England and plans for reconciling the American Colonies with the Mother Country, in which latter plans of great promise he took a leading and honourable part. Prison reform owes much to the efforts of this indefatigable physician, while he enriched his own community, the Society of Friends, by founding the Ackworth School for the children of indigent Friends, whereby not only was this community benefited, but also, by example, the rest of England. Even the foregoing does not exhaust the list of his activities, for Fothergill, stimulated by his friend Peter Collinson, took a great interest in gardening and was the means of introducing into this country many foreign plants—the author gives a list of nearly a hundred, most of which are still cultivated in England.

It has been well said: "Tell me his friends and I will tell you what manner of man he is." From a study of the list of Fother gill's friends, accounts of nearly all of whom are given by the author, one would indeed have no difficulty in estimating the worth of the man. Baron Dinisdale, who inoculated the Empress Catherine II. of Russia and her son against small-pox ; Dr.

Lettsom, the " volatile Creole," founder of the " Medical Society," which still flourishes ; and many other well-known doctors of the period, were all friends of the good physician,

and received inspiration from him. The first two were Quakers, as were some of the others. So also were Peter Collinson, the botanist, and David Barclay, Fothergill's most intimate friend, who was associated with him in his public benefactions, and assisted him and Benjamin Franklin in their protracted endeavour to find a basis of conciliation between England and her Colonies.

David Barclay's advice to the governess who was to take charge of his motherless daughters is well worth reading by those

who may have the care of young girls. " Teach them to abhor detraction, the sin of fallen angels, yet too often the companion of the tea-table," is one of his directions.

The author has obviously found in his task a labour of love.

A convinced Friend imbued with the principles of the Society, he seems to rejoice that in a period marked by much artificiality and spiritual deadness, a spiritual deadness which had not left the Society unaffected, Friends had nevertheless arisen ready and able to awaken the spiritual life of the nation, and, as he suggests at the conclusion of his Preface, the perusal of this volume may help us in meeting the problems of our day. May we meet them in the spirit of the good Dr. Fothergill, whose life this volume most beautifully portrays with pen and pencil!

FROM TI711, GREEK ANTHOLOGY.* Witax a translator of verse departs from the inglorious safety of the literal rendering he is beset at once with incompatible ideals. On the one hand, he wants to preserve the foreign turns of thought, and the original cadences and metrical effects ; on the other, he desires earnestly to produce a true poem. " We must try its effect as an English poem," said Dr. Johnson ; " that is the way to judge of the merit of a translation. Trans.. lations are, in general, for people who cannot read the original" The great lexicographer, however, had no vigorous belief in the possibility of such an achievement, for he remarked elsewhere : " As the beauties of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, we learn the language." Nevertheless the opposing claims have occasionally been reconciled and a verse translation produced which take:

• Love, Worship, and Death : Some Renderings from the Greek Anthotogy. Bs Sir H1iiell Eodd, London : Edward Arnold. [53. net.]

rank with its prototype. In the scanty momenteof leisure which his Ambassadorial cares at Rome allowed him during the war, Sir Rennell Rodd refreshed himself by endeavouring to emulate such successes, and to recapture for the English reader some of the naive charm of the Greek Anthology. He has brought to his task scholarship, unwearied diligence, and good taste ; something also of the genuine poetic fire ; and if he has not triumphed completely in all his attempts, his lapse from imaginable perfection is due partly to the inherent difficulties we have mentioned, and partly to an excessive leaning towards the side of exactness, which inclines him to sacrifice freedom of style to precision of rendering. We may quote one example. There is an epigram ascribed to Plato on Lais dedicating her looking glass to Venus, which has been translated by Lord Neaves fairly literally thus :

"Lais, who smiled at Greece with scornfulpride,

I, at whose doors a swarm of lovers sighed., This glass to Venus : since what I shall be

I would not, what I was, I cannot see."

This has the qualities of conciseness and strength ; but it almost needs a prose interpretation to accompany it. Sir Rennell Rodd's version is much more lyrical and lucid, but it has lost appreciably in epigrammatic sting :

" I that through the land of Hellas

Laughed in triumph and disdain, Lais, of whose open porches All the love-struck youth were fain, Bring the mirror once I gazed in, Cyprian, at thy shrine to vow, Since I see not there what once was, And I would not what is now."

To our mind, Prior, who made no effort to translate and was content with simple imitation, comes nearer to the spirit and

effect of the original :

" Venus take this votive glass, Since I am not what I was : What I shall hereafter be, Venus ! let me never see."

It is in the more melancholy and dignified verses that Sir Rennell Redd excels, and we may quote in illustration his version of the Simonides epitaph on the Spartans at Plataea, of which, as our readers may remember, Mr. Murray favoured us

with a rendering some months ago :

" Glory immortal shall their portion be Who died in battle at Thermopylae. Their lot was happy, memory their crown, Their tomb an alts and their death renown. Wherefore since here lie shrouded men so brave Corroding age and time that soon or late Subdueth all things shall forbear their grave ; And they will hold this precinct consecrate Who dwell in Hellas. That these words are true Let Sparta's king Leonidas proclaim, Whose virtue earned as heritage and due High honour and an everlasting name."