Essays in Puritanism. By Andrew Macphail. (T. Fisher Unwin. 6s.)—Mr.
Macphail is of an iconoclastic temper ; but it is not against idols that his hand is raised. Really groat things and men he reverences. His book has many attractions ; one of them is the pertinence with which he makes reflections, called forth in the first instance by the past, apply to the present. He enables us to see that the New England of three centuries ago was not essentially different from the New England of to-day. And he has a way of discerning the real greatness of the men whom he describes. His first subject is Jonathan Edwards. Edwards's theology and metaphysics are dead and gone; yet the influence of the man lives on. The second essay is on John Winthrop ; here it is the community over which Winthrop presided rather than the man himself that is the subject, though the man was well worthy of his post of rule. The third essay is on Margaret Fuller. We could wish that it wore away. If Margaret Fuller's friends "suffered worst of all [compared with `the Carlyles and Ittu3kins 1 because her friends were so highly endowed with folly," would it not have been better to leave her alone ? The day is past when the world was asked to believe her a genius, and there is no necessity for the iconoclastic hammer. The criticism on Walt Whitman shows acuteness and sanity ; and the appreciation of John Wesley is all that we could wish.
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