the last two generations. While the subject is further removed from American concerns than any other volume, with a single exception, edited by the Faculty of Political Science, the method of treatment is always from the standpoint of suggesting reforms in our own administration of municipal affairs. The author's principal thesis is not one we are inclined to indorse, but is most welcome at a time when the desirability of "home rule" is being assumed as an axiom of universal application. The author shows that as regards the supervision of the poor, the promotion of public health, and the broadening of popular education, the line of progress in England has been through the extension of State control, and his whole book is a plea for a centralized administration. While the author often does not seem to us to go to the bottom of the reasons for the inefficiency of the local administrations, his essay must convince every home ruler that the question of local control or State control is not to be settled by any hard universalization, but by the nature of the public service to be rendered, and the character of the State and local administrating bodies. (Columbia University, New York.) Beside Old Hearthstones, by Abram English Brown, is a volume of antiquarian studies in some of the towns of eastern Massachusetts and southern New HampIshire. It is full of trivial incidents connected with the families of those who took part in the Revolutionary struggles. Among other illustrations there is an exceptionally charming photograph of the Prescott homestead at Pepperell. The purpose of the book is so good that we could wish that more of the incidents had historical significance or interest. (Lee & Shepard, Boston.) The year 1897 not only commemorates the sixtieth anniversary of Queen Victoria's reign, but also the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of Newfoundland by John Cabot. In the present year, therefore, the appearance of a book by the Rev. Dr. M. Harvey, entitled Newfoundland in 1897, is appropriate enough, and the author gives us in a small compass a comprehensive account of the first British colony. The volume is especially noteworthy by reason of its description of the natural resources, capabilities, and scenery of the island. The illustrations are many and graphic; there is an excellent map, and an adequate index. (Sampson Low, Marston & Co., London.) NOVELS AND TALES Mr. Bertram Mitford has published, through R. F. Fenno & Co., New York, The King's Assegai, a Matabele story. Mr. Stanley Wood has illustrated this lurid tale with some even more lurid illustrations, but the volume may be of value in popularizing information about the Basutu kraals of South Africa. RELIGIOUS AND THEOLOGICAL through the A. D. F. Randolph Company, The Rev. Dr. J. A. Hodge has published, New York, a small book entitled The Ruling Elder at Work. The author personates a ruling elder under a pastor qualified to develop his efficiency. While the treatise was prepared for elders, it will probably be of equal aid to pastors. SCHOOL-BOOKS, ETC. A judicious selection of Emerson's Poems and Essays has been made for the Riverside School Library, and the introduction and notes are admirably done by George H. Browne. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.) -From the same publishers comes an edition of William Cullen Bryant's The Iliad of Homer, which, from its cheapness and convenience of form (two volumes in one), is particularly well adapted for school use, though it will doubtless meet with a large sale among the general reading public. Dr. Albert F. Blaisdell's Practical Physiol ogy is designed for the higher grades of public schools. It treats of hygiene as well as physiology, and fulfills the promise of its title by practical instruction about such matters as exercise, the sick-room, special emergencies, etc., etc. Its physiological teaching is clear and simple. (Ginn & Co., Boston.) A book that will be found useful by the librarians of Sunday-school libraries has just been published by Eaton & Mains, New York, entitled The Librarian of the Sunday-School. The Plant Baby and Its Friends is the attractive title of an attractive book by Kate Louise Brown (Silver, Burdett & Co., New York), intended for the lower primary grades. It is carefully illustrated, and the text is in the form of questions and answers. The children are taught to use the names of the parts of a plant, "radicle,” “plumule,” “cotyledons," etc., in the first lesson. The idea is not only that the children shall know flowers and plant life, but how to express themselves intelligently when speaking of them. The poetry interspersed is not equal to the prose. The number of kindergarten song-books is now legion. The difficulty that a kindergartner finds is that no one book is sufficient to meet the needs of her work; each book presents two or three favorites at the most, and the music of the kindergarten suffers because of this. Kindergarten music-books are expensive, and few kindergartners can indulge in a new book of songs to obtain one or two that appeal to her intelligence and her love of harmony. A second serious drawback is that most of the music is written in too high a key for children's voices. Where the kindergartner has had thorough musical instruction, she can transpose the music and keep it within the natural range of children's voices. The author of A Dozen and Two, Louise P. Warner (Oliver Ditson Company, New York), has recognized this difficulty and others, and has written and composed the music of the kindergarten songs to which she has given the above title with this in view. A book full of interest to the lay reader as well as to the student is Professor A. E. Dol His editions were widely used. Though only fifty-three years old, Dr. Allen had filled the chair of classical philology at Harvard for seventeen years. A copyright performance of the play which Mr. Hall Caine has founded on his last novel, "The Christian," has just taken place at Douglass, Isle of Man. Mr. Hall Caine took the part of John Storm, Miss Hall Caine was Glory Quayle, Mrs. Hall Caine was Polly Love, Master Ralph Caine was Brother Andrew, and Mr. William Heinemann enacted the Father Superior. -"Shortly before his death," says the London "Chronicle," " Edmond de Goncourt, the French novelist, met at a dinner M. Raymond Poincaré, the well-known advocate and politician. M. Poincaré was thinking at the bear's Modes of Motion. (Lee & Shepard, Literary Notes -General James Grant Wilson has been editing "General Grant's Letters to a Friend," and they will shortly be published. The volume will contain a number of letters in addition to those which have appeared in the "North American Review." -The London " Academy informs us that an interesting experiment in the illustration of Dickens is being made by Mr. C. D. Gibson and Mr. Phil May. Mr. Gibson is now at work on "Martin Chuzzlewit," Mr. May on "David Copperfield." "The result is certain to be interesting, although it is difficult to think of Mr. Gibson's presentment of Sairey Gamp." -The writings of the late Professor Frederick De Forest Allen, of Harvard, included a revised edition of Hadley's Greek Grammar, a work on Greek Versification in Inscriptions, published in 1884, and a large number of editions of the ancient classics. ing your time!' The irony of fate has willed it that it should be M. Poincaré who has defended Edmond de Goncourt's will in court Books Received For the week ending August 20 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK OLIVER DITSON CO., NEW YORK EATON & MAINS, NEW YORK R. F. FENNO & CO., NEW YORK GINN & CO., BOSTON Blaisdell, Albert F., M.D. A Practical Physiology. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Selected Poems. (The River- Browning, Robert. The Pied Piper of Hamelin and Other Poems. (The Riverside Literature Series.) 15 cts. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Poems and Essays. Dolbear, A. E. Modes of Motion. 75 cts. A. D. F. RANDOLPH CO., NEW YORK SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO., FETTER LANE, Improved Methods of Sunday-School Teaching By Ellen Kenyon Warner An interesting address on the above subject was given at one of the Sunday sessions of the Martha's Vineyard Summer Institute by its President, Dr. William A. Mowry. Dr. Mowry's recommendations were substantially as follows: Its The Sunday-school has for its object to teach a high morality and a true religion. Its text-book is the Bible. The Bible is a history of the best development of the race. concrete moral teachings are always of interest to the young. About twenty-five years ago a uniform plan for Bible study in the Sunday-schools originated in this country and spread to Canada and England. The advantages that have been realized in the use of this plan can hardly be overestimated. But the scheme should be broadened, so as to take in practical subjects; and the methods of teaching in the Sunday-school should follow true pedagogic principles. The laws of psychology, too, should be observed in the government of the Sunday-school. The kindergarten system, where once introduced under competent teachers, is never abandoned. It should have a place in every Sunday-school where there are five or six children of the right age. This lowest class should have the best teacher in the school. A large class with a superior teacher is better than smaller classes with poor teachers. This primary class should not follow the International Lessons. They should have placed before them in a graphic manner the stories of the Bible, especially those of the New Testament. The Golden Rule should be so paraphrased for them as to bring it within their easy comprehension, and then should be learned. Suitable memory gems should be studied and learned. Children of the ages between five or six and nine or ten should constitute a junior department. These classes should take up the International Lessons. The classes should be small, and the question of discipline should receive careful attention. The most tactful teachers available should be secured, and the classes should have separate rooms. This is provided for in some Sunday-schools by having the class-rooms ranged around the assem bly-room and cut off from it by rolling doors, which can be slid back, throwing all the rooms into one for general purposes. A senior department, corresponding with the high school, and composed of the pupils from fourteen to eighteen years of age, should also pursue the International course, but upon a higher plane of study. The personality of the pupils should be studied. Above this grade a great change is needed. A variety of subjects adapting the Sunday-school instruction to adults of all ages, tastes, and interests should be compassed. A critical study of the life of Christ by all authors should be made. Particular books and chapters of the Bible may receive the same critical study. The literature of the Bible; recent Oriental explorations; a comparative study of sacred and profane history—these and other subjects are suitable for adult attendants upon the Sunday-school, and would interest and draw in great numbers of those who now leave its classes because the instruction falls below their level of study. This department for general higher study might be called the collegiate department. There should also be a theological department. Each of these departments should be found in every Sunday-school that has five or six persons for each. The Sunday-school should give a course in the Christian doctrine, teaching the technical and fundamental principles of the Christian religion. It should take up a study of ethics, dwelling upon those virtues that especially belong to the teachings of Christ. The development of religion from a world standpoint; the history of the Jewish Church; the founding and subsequent history of the Christian Church-some one at least of these or kindred subjects might be taken up in almost any Sunday-school. In larger towns more than one of these subjects might be followed. There is no lack of literature. Teachers may be found among the townsmen and women who have read in these several lines until they have developed enthusiasm for special subjects or characters within the proper scope of Sunday-school work. Here a lawyer may be found who has made a special study of the Book of Job; there a doctor who believes that no other such man ever lived as Paul. Enlist these people in the work of the Sunday-school. The present system drives them out. Every Sunday-school should have courses of lectures on how to control and interest children. All the Sunday-schools in one place should have classes in pedagogy, under the teaching of a paid expert. These classes should make a special study of discipline. Expulsion of British Missionaries from The latest outcome of the French war of conquest, which was described in The Outlook two years ago as "The Crime Against Madagascar," is the rooting out from the capital city of Antananarivo of the schools of the London Missionary Society, to whose work whatever of Christianity or civilization there is in that country is largely due. Foreseeing that missionary work there must, in future, be in French hands, the directors of the London Missionary Society had come to an understanding with the Paris Missionary Society to hand the work over to them so soon as The they were prepared to undertake it. Paris Missionary Society has already ten missionaries either on the way thither or on the ground, and more are to follow. But the French Governor, being in no mind to wait, forced the London Missionary Society to give up their College and Normal School at a price barely one-half their valuation. On the arrival of the first party of the French missionaries, he presented them with the school on the condition that no Englishman should ever enter it, saying, "Their influence is so great it is necessary to crush it." The dispossessed British teachers, looking unselfishly upon their French Protestant brethren as the hope of Christianizing Madagascar, promptly yielded to ejectment, and joined in removing, as required, everything from the school that was in the proscribed English tongue. This summary expulsion is due to the belief on the part of the French that the British missionary will somehow promote British interests in French territory. The London Missionary Society is the first to suffer, because of its great influence earned by past success. Other societies have not yet been interfered with. But the intense Anglophobia which animates the French army of occupation is illustrated by numerous petty acts of animosity. A little girl was reading a New Testament bearing the imprint of the British Bible Society, when a sergeant seized and destroyed it. A pair of spectacles belong ing to a native pastor were destroyed by a French officer because they were English, etc. Between the British and French missionaries, however, there is said to be cordial sympathy. The French Protestants are so cordially responding to the call of the Paris Missionary Society for men and means to take up the work which the British are forced to leave that the latter do not think that Christian interests in Madagascar will ultimately suffer by the enforced change. on Missions in Asia The Young People's Christian Union Convention of the United Presbyterian Church at Indianapolis listened to a strong speech "The Christian Conquest of Asia," by Dr. John H. Barrows, who on that subject can speak from personal observation better than most men. Referring to the disparaging terms in which some speak of missionary work in Asia, Dr. Barrows declared it to be due either to ignorance of the facts or to dis belief in the superiority of Christianity to the religions of Asia. After a vigorous exposure of the baselessness of many false reports, he said: I have seen enough of the practical workings of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam to crystallize into adamantine firmness my previous conviction of their futility to give the soul peace with God, to remove the weight of guilt and grief, to lay the foundation of a vigorous individual and national morality, and to brighten The notion that Asia does not need the Gospel earth with the light of a blessed immortality. of Christ because of the refined and lofty moral sentiments in the sacred books of the East, or because Oriental speakers trained in Christian schools and shaped by Christian environments are able to make an agreeable impression expounding their faith on Christian platforms, is born of ignorance. After refuting the allegation that Christianity gains no converts from Brahminism, and sketching the great variety of educational and philanthropic work of missionaries in India, Dr. Barrows said: Let one renew his acquaintance with the monstrous usages which prevailed eighty years ago, and which Christian civilization in India has swept away; let him note the hundred signs that the old Hinduism is decadent and doomed; let him study the reformatory movements which the presence and power of Christianity have started into life; let him remember that, with all the forces which keep people back from open confession, the membership of native churches in India has increased more rapidly during the last twenty years than has the population, and he will have seen and learned enough to dispel the error contained in the remark that Indian missions are a failure. A collection of $4,000 was taken up on this occasion. The meeting of the International Missionary Alliance at Old Orchard, Maine, was attended by a multitude variously reported as from ten to twenty thousand people. A collection of $70,000 is said to have been raised for the work. A Historic Church Threatened There are tears in Boston lest the Park Street Church, endeared as it is by historical associations, may not stand much longer on a site so valuable to investors for business purposes. It was founded in the outbreak of the schism, in the early part of the century, which divided Massachusetts Congregation alists into Trinitarians and Unitarians, and was from the outset a rallying-point for the orthodox party. Sulphur matches, it is said, were strewn on the stone steps in derision after Dr. Griffin's strong presentations of "the terror of the Lord," and the nickname then given to it of "Brimstone Corner" is not yet obsolete in Boston. The theological acrimony of that day is a thing of the past, and Unitarians now join with Trinitarians in wishing that this stately, old-fashioned meeting-house may be preserved. But it proved a difficult task to preserve the Old South Meeting-House from demolition, consecrated though it was by memories of the Revolution, and it is doubtful if a similar endeavor can save its less ancient neighbor. Black Mountain Retreat The International Christian Workers' Association lately held a pleasant and profitable series of special meetings on the grounds of the Mountain Retreat Association at Black Mountain, N. C. Hundreds of Christian people from various parts of the South seaboard States were in attendance at this assembly, which was intended for all persons interested in Bible study and special phases of Christian work. The intelligent and tireless efforts of the Rev. Floyd W. Tompkins, Jr., rector of Grace Episcopal Church, Providence, R. I., President of International Christian Workers' Association, the Rev. John C. Collins, of New Haven, Conn., Secretary, and Mr. E. C. Ingersoll, Assistant Manager, did much to make the Convention a success. The Retreat is about three miles to the northeast of the Black sea. Mountain station on the Southern Railway, and one mile west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, and is 2,600 feet above the level of the The Mountain Retreat Association has purchased a tract here on the mountain consisting of 4,324 acres of land. This tract is to be sold in lots on which cottages will be erected. Speculation in lots will be forbidden. The location is an ideal one for summer and winter alike. The objects of the Association are: (1) It is designed as a health resort for all sections of the country. (2) For the intermingling of all denominations and workers from all parts of the country, in order to ascertain the best methods of Christian work in the church, the Sunday-school, the family, and the secular schools of the country in both the primary and the higher grades. (3) The genof Appalachian America, and especially for eral moral, educational, and religious benefit the good of the sections immediately around the Mountain Retreat. In order to carry out these ends, lectures, concerts, talks, and services of various kinds-religious and otherwise—will be conducted by the best available men in the country. It is the purpose of the Association to employ specialists in each line. The Missouri Christian Lectureship The Missouri Christian Lectureship is an institution among the three hundred Disciple preachers of that State, which meets annually for the free and friendly discussion of many of the current questions agitating the Church at large. It met this year in July at Centralia, and was one of the largest and best in the history of the association. President J. B. Jones, of Fulton, delivered a thoughtful lecture on "Christ the Disturber and the Harmonizer of Society," showing that man cannot be reconciled to man or to God in selfishness and sin. Christ had to break in upon the wickedness of the age, which he could not do without being a disturber. Jesus could not leave sin alone and save the world. But in making peace by the cross he gave beautiful harmony and rest through his truth. Dr. D. R. Lucas, of Indianapolis, delivered one of the chief lectures of the course on "The Purposes of the Disciples of Christ." He said the Disciples plead for: (1) The unity of all God's people; (2) the restoration of the Scriptures to their lawful authority; (3) the correct translation and interpretation of the Bible; (4) a vigorous defense of the Scriptures against all kinds of infidel attacks; |