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1883, and whose aim is to counteract some of the apparently degenerating influences of the older fraternities, e. g., duelling, court of honor, etc. Besides this historical sketch, the characteristics of each class at the present time are also set forth, with statistical tables showing at what universities the various fraternities are represented, the colors, date of founding, and motto of each. Another chapter exhibits all the scientific societies connected with the universities; another is devoted to fraternities and societies of all kinds conuected with technical schools. A chapter on duelling shows how this practice has arisen in the universities, describes the instruments used, gives the regulations governing it, and demonstrates how little the laws have succeeded in restraining it. The drinking customs are explained somewhat in detail, and a number of student sports or games are elucidated. Final ly, a collection of students' songs makes the book serviceable for the "Commers."

After a very deliberate and careful piecemeal publication, Dr. Moriz Heyne's 'Deutsches Wörterbuch' has been brought to a conclusion (Leipzig: S. Hirzel; New York: Lemcke & Buechner). It is attractively print ed, and employs the Gothic letter for the editorial definition, etc., and the Roman (without substantive capitalization) for the illustrative quotations which lend the work its special distinction. The alphabetical se quence is interfered with by an arrangement of which the method is not clear, as witness these examples: Trauen introduces a paragraph, of nearly two columns, ending with Traualtar (which should have preceded not only Trauen, but Traube), Traugebühr . Trauzeuge, the next paragraph is introduced by Trauer. So Tropfen (sub.) must be sought under Tropfbar, together with a series of compounds closed by Tropfenweise; the next paragraph reverts to Tropfen (verb). The literary quotations are, as we have heretofore pointed out, very rich in drafts upon Goethe and Schiller, and also upon such recent sources as Ranke, Moltke, and Bismarck in particular. The first page of the final volume cites not less than sixteen authors; the last (and it is a short page) some twenty. About thirty-five quotations are found under Strom (to choose an instance at random). This feature, with the shades of meaning implied, makes Heyne a very desirable companion for students bent on something more than bare translation, and an interesting browsingground for those who have mastered the language. The etymologies are compact yet not stinted.

Lemcke & Buechner send us also the concluding parts of the eighth edition of Ritter's Geographisch-Statistisches Lexikon,' edited by J. Penzler. The two volumes number 1,064 and 1,202 pages respectively, in condensed but clear typography, displayed in double columns in the Roman letter. This gazetteer has a solid reputation for accuracy, and its range of inclusion is very great, especially for Germany, where every place having a hundred inhabitants is admitted; for Austria and Switzerland the lowest limit is 150, and for the rest of Europe, 300 to 500. Abundant details as to postal, telegraphic, railway, and industrial facilities are given, and the claim is not rashly made that for every place in the world of commercial significance this work is valuable for reference. It is finished just as an Eng. lish work of large dimensions, Longmans' Gazetteer of the World,' makes its appearance, and as Levasseur's 'Lexique Géographique du Monde Entier' is beginning to put out its

fascicules. But of gazetteers there cannot be too many, if good, and each will supplement all the rest by its peculiar copiousness.

From the same firm we have received the fifth issue of the Spruner-Sieglin Hand-Atlas for the history, of antiquity, the Middle Ages, and of modern times, in its first division, containing maps of the Persian Empire and of the Macedonians in Alexander's time, the Parthian dominions, the north African seacoast, and the Roman Empire in the second and third centuries A.D.

Dr. Harrison Allen's article, of forty pages and four plates, "On the Embryos of Bats," is No. 2 of vol. i. of the 'Contributions from the Zoological Laboratory of the University of Pennsylvania.' About a dozen genera are represented, in more than thirty figures. The material was not all that was desired, but, according to the author, it shows the differences between fœtal and adult stages in bats to be greater in kind and degree than in other mammals, and that the numerous contrasts between embryonic and adult forms may be accepted as evidence of the relatively low grade of the entire order, the high degree of specialization notwithstanding.

In a November extra from the American Journal of Science, vol. 1., Prof. O C. Marsh treats of "Restorations of some European Dinosaurs, with suggestions as to their place among the Reptilia." The plates contain restorations of Compsognathus, Scelidosaurus, Hypsilophodon, and Iguanodon. In a second paper from the same volume, December, he considers the "Affinities and Classification of the Dinosaurian Reptiles." On the plate, twelve restorations are figured for comparison. The Dinosaurs are placed as a sub-class of the Reptilia and distributed among three orders, Theropoda, Sauropoda, and Predentata, with twenty-six families and sixty-eight genera. The affinities of the exceptional genus Ceratosaurus on the one hand and Archæopteryx on the other bring these Saurians and the birds near together. Remoter affinities are traced through the Hallopoda, Zanclodon, Aëtosaurus and Belodon to the Crocodilia, by way of common ancestry. The same volume of the Jour. nal contains a notice, by Prof. J. B. Woodworth, of his discovery in the Newark Group, at Avondale, New Jersey, of foot-prints similar to those of the Dinosaurs of the Connecticut valley.

In a recent circular sent out by Prof. Pickering, we learn that an interesting examination of variable stars has been in progress. Prof. S. I. Bailey, in charge of the Harvard station at Arequipa, Peru, has made numerous photographs of globular clusters, which have proved, upon examination, to contain an extraordinary number of variable stars-not a general condition of stellar clusters. The photographs used in this discussion were taken at Arequipa with the 13-inch Boyden telescope. In one cluster (Canes Venatici), no less than eighty-seven stars have been found to be variable. That this is unmistakable is proved by an independent examination of the plates by Prof. Pickering and Mrs. Fleming as well as Prof. Bailey. Another cluster shows forty-six variables, while others show three, four, or five each. In general, no variables have been found within about one minute of the centre of the clusters, on account of the closeness of the stars; and none of those found are more than ten minutes distant from the centres of the clusters. Some of the variable stars have short periods, of not more than a few hours. The individual stars in close clusters can be readily found only from photographic or other

charts on which they are marked. The Harvard Observatory is preparing to publish charts of this kind, and meantime marked photographs will be sent to astronomers desiring to study them.

We learn from Science that a new star has been found by Mrs. Fleming in the constellation Centaurus, from a comparison with the Draper Memorial photographs. Its spectrum is monochromatic, and closely resembles that of the adjacent nebula. Like the new stars in Cygnus, Auriga, and Norma, it appears to have changed into a gaseous nebula. It is already beginning to fade.

As an indication of the recognition which women are beginning to receive in Germanspeaking countries, it may be mentioned that upon the occasion of the discussion of the bill for the admission of women to universities, a member of the Austrian Parliament said of Frau von Gizycki (whose husband was the wellknown writer on ethics and professor at the University of Berlin), referring to her recent speeches in Vienna, that she would be an honor to any parliament in the world, and that of the three hundred and fifty-three members then present there were not many who could measure themselves against her for eloquence, culture, or learning.

A significant enterprise has just been launched in Vienna by the Archæological Committee for the gymnasia in that capital. A series of permanent photographic prints from approved plaster casts of sculpture that has come down to us from antiquity, will be issued for school use in connection with Greek and Roman history and mythology, at a price averaging fifteen cents a folio plate. The first of six instalments is now before us (Vienna: Carl Graeser; New York: Westermann), consisting of the well-known Augustus from Prima Porta, Zeus from Otricoli, Laokoön group (Vatican), Pericles (British Museum), Homer Sanssouci), and a less familiar bas relief of Orpheus, Eurydice, and Hermes (Villa Albani). The prints share the inferiority of the material they counterfeit, but on the other hand it has been possible to control the lighting so as to bring out the details of the statuary. Though some retouching is inevitable in all these mechanical reproductions, the present series is on the whole very satisfactory as well as cheap. There would appear to be no limit to it. A text-book of moderate compass will accompany the complete portfolio.

Mr. Unwin's new venture, the monthly Cosmopolis (New York: International News Co.), is a handsome large octavo, and justifies its subtitle, "an international review," by printing three tiers of articles in as many languages, English, French, and German. Stevenson's posthumous "Weir of Hermiston" leads the table of contents, and is bracketed with articles by Sir Charles Dilke, Henry James, and Edmund Gosse. Paul Bourget ushers in the French section, followed by Anatole France, Édouard Rod, Georg Brandes, and Francisque Sarcey. Ernest von Wildenbruch, Mommsen, Erich Schmidt, Spielhagen, and Helferich form the German contingent, and these nationalities reappear among the editors of the concluding chronicles. This, as will be seen, is a brave showing of names, and it would be a narrow intellect that could not find interesting reading in each division. Perhaps a first number calls for no further remark.

The London music halls, to which we owe, if not the invention, the suggestion, of the substantive "Jingo," some time ago undertook to fix the pronunciation of “Rhodesia,” the name of the ambitious South African premier's vi

sionary domain, uncomfortably adjacent to the Transvaal. The mute e proving troublesome for geographic rhyming, it was boldly sounded, as follows:

"The boom, the boom, the boom, boys,

In fair Rhodesia.

Hurrah for Cecil Rhodes, boys,

The friend of Zambesia!

A cheer for Wille Regan, boys,
And one for Jameson!

But a t'ger for Barnato, boys,
And the lands of Livingstone."

A correspondent writes: "In two different editions of the one-volume edition of Lowell's Poems I find a singular misreading of a word. The verses To a Pine-Tree,' stanza four, read in the first line,

'To the slumberer asleep 'neath thy glooming'; certainly a 'damnable iteration.' The early editions have lumberer.'" The error has happily not been perpetuated in the ten volume Riverside Edition of Lowell's Works.

The Department of State has, as our readers know, hopefully begun a series of calendars which will help to extend the proper basing of American history on documents. An agency like the English Historical Manuscripts Commission, formed to deal with historical mate rials not possessed by the Department, was still needed, and the establishment of such a commission was, as we have already announced, the most important step taken by the American Historical Association at its late meeting in Washington. We are now able to report the Commission constituted, and ready to begin its inquiries. It consists of Prof. J. F. Jameson of Brown University as chairman; Dr. Douglas Brymner, archivist of the Dominion of Canada; Mr. Talcott Williams of Phi ladelphia; Prof. Wm. P. Trent of the University of the South; and Prof. Frederick J. Turner of the University of Wisconsin.

-We call attention to the communication, on another page, from British Guiana. It is from the pen of the Hon. N. Darnell Davis, C.M.G., Collector of the Port of Georgetown, and a well-known historical student and writer. Mr. Davis possesses a strong affection for the United States, and is unusually well-informed as to its earlier and later history. He has for many years been a contributor to the Nation.

-The Devil cannot complain that he has not his due in the current issue of the Oxford Eng. lish Dictionary (Development-Diffluency). Six pages, or eighteen columus, are allotted to him under his proper rubric, to say nothing of the derivatives from the Latin and French roots. His elusive and metamorphic character is evidenced by the long catalogue of spellings of his name, from diobul to del, and his alias the dickens; by his vacillating gender in Old High German and Old English-from masculine to neuter; and by the numerous shapes popularly ascribed to him over and above the conventional likeness to Pan and the satyrs. Even in the Scriptures, Jerome must needs restore the Hebrew Satan in place of the daßotos of the Septuagint and the diabolus of the Old Latin version. Wyclif, with his Sathan, followed the Vulgate except in one of the Psalms, where he let in "the deuell." The Devil's proverbial aversion to holy water was recognized as early as 1570; he was not so black as painted in 1596; he made his appearance when talked of in 1672; and he was "to pay " in 1711. A "poor devil" excited pity in 1698. Moxon, etymologizing in 1683, explained the name "printer's devil" by the fact that "these Boys . . . in a Printing House commonly black and Dawb them. selves." An unfeed junior-counsel, however, is a "devil" irrespective of color, like his brother

tional bandicap match of polyhistoric scholarship. The new Pauly, like the old, is without

fag the negre of the French art ateliers. Finally, to have done with his Majesty, we remark that deviltry, an Americanism for devilry, is sup-illustrations, although volume i. contains a map ported by dialectal English. Another vocable possessing an obvious interest, in this instal- | ment, is Dictionary, 'a repertory of dictiones, phrases or words.' The word is traced (circa 1225) to Joannes de Garlandia, a native of England, who adopted the form dictionarius, while Petrus Berchorius, who died in Paris in 1362, preferred dictionarium. Sir Thomas Elyot arrived with his dictionary in 1538, as, across the Channel, R. Estienne with dictionaire in 1539. The earliest works of this kind were bilingual or polyglot.

-Much curiosity attaches to the substantive devoir, which in Middle English was spelt dever, and stressed on the last syllable (de vair'), then on the penult (dev-ver), with the spellings devour, devor, deavour, and presently, by Caxton's powerful aid, devoir as in French, though retaining the penultimate stress. The English traditional form completely died out after 1600, and by degrees the French pronunciation got and retained the upper hand. The 'Song of Roland' (circa 1400) has: "Trist us neuer, If we in this mater do not our deuour"; and Tom Hood in 1845 revived this archaism for the sake of a pun-" He went to pay her his devours, When he'd devoured his pay." Dicker, too, has a singular history, as coming from the Latin decuria, 'a parcel of 10,' and being in vogue among our Teutonic ancestors in their skin tributes to the Roman conquer. ors, just as later in this country in our fur dealings with the Indians. The most Protean of all words in the present section, as respects meanings, is perhaps dicky, which denotes seven distinct articles of apparel, as, a detachable shirt-front, a collar, a bib, a petticoat, an apron, an oil-skin suit, besides a rag-bag, a driver's seat, and a naval officer. Diaper has nothing to do, etymologically, with "d'Ypres," in spite of all that town's napery. The verb dictate, we are told, is now usually accented on the last syllable in England, but Byron and Shelley consistently accented the first, as does certainly the best American usage. Pope, Thomson, Young, Cowper, Keats, and Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding, diamond tends to become trisyllabic, as Shakspere made it; but metrical license will doubtless keep the pronunciation from "crystallizing." With different "the usual construction is now with from; that with to (after unlike, dissimilar to) is found in writers of all ages, and is frequent colloquially, but is by many considered incorrect. The construction with than (after other than) is found in Fuller,” etc., to Dasent, as Dr. Fitzedward Hall has shown. A euphemistic American sense of difficulty, ‘a quarrel, assault, homicide,' is unnoticed under this word. Longfellow's "diapason of the cannonade" is, we venture to think, misapportioned under the strictly musical definition; it belongs rather under the "more or less vaguely extended, with the idea of all the tones or notes.'" The poet chose it for its polysyllabic dignity, heightened in effect by its infrequent use and consequent obscurity of meaningomne ignotum pro magnifico.

-The coincident progress towards completion of Pottier's Daremberg-Saglio and of Wissowa's rewritten edition of Pauly's classical encyclopædia in ten volumes (Stuttgart: Metzler), which has maintained its ascendency as the standard work of reference of classical philologians and antiquarians for more than half a century, wears the aspect of an interna

of the Lacus Albanus region, a plan of Alexandria, and a map of the Oropian Sanctuary of Amphiaraos. Unlike the old, it is printed in two-column large octavo pages in Latin type, and on good paper. Unlike Daremberg Saglio's 'Dictionnaire des antiquités grecques et romaines,' its strongest point is nomenclature, so that it conflicts neither with its French rival nor with Iwan von Müller's great 'Handbuch der philologischen Wissenschaften.' Its editor's reputation as a critical scholar in the do. main of Latinity, of Roman mythology and archæology is well established. He occupies the chair of classical philology in the University of Marburg, and is an industrious contributor to Roscher's uncompleted 'Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie.' A characteristic article of the first semi-volume, which stops in the middle of the article Alexandros, is the multiple one under Aelius. Including Aelia, it embraces no less than one hundred and eighty-four individual subjects, down to Aelia Verrina, wife of Emperor Leo I. The chief of all the Aelin is of course Emperor Hadrian, whose biography is given under No. 64. Nothing more convincingly proves the enormous setback in civilization which the Orient has labored under since the days of the Roman Empire than Von Rohden's rehearsal of Hadrian's journeyings from Rome to Athens, from Athens by way of Ephesus, Lycia, and Cilicia to Antioch, thence to Palmyra, Damascus, Gaza, and back from Antioch by way of Jerusalem and Arabia to Egypt, up and down the Nile with the Empress, thence into Libya, where he hunts lions, back to Antioch, north again to Adrianople, Moesia (now Bulgaria), and Dacia (now Rumania), through the Vale of Tempe to Dodona, swiftly again, at the news of the rebellion of Barcocheba, to Jerusalem, and home by sea to Rome for such is the abundantly verified itinerary of one of his fifteen-thousand-mile journeys. In his ascents of Mts. Casius and Aetna, "to see the sunrise," in his artistic dilettanteism, and in his constant professions of unselfish devotion to the good of his people, the first Reisekaiser is indeed quite up to the last.

Kaerst's account of Alexander the Great leaves something to be desired in the absence of any allusion to his physical appearance, or to his important relation to Greek art as a subject of portraiture; also in the manner in which the lasting effects of his conquests on the Indian frontier are ignored.

-Specialists cannot afford to ignore the data collected under Aberglaube by Dr. Ernst Riess, now a resident of Philadelphia, under Achaia by Brandis, who takes little note of the archæological evidence of the high civili. zation of the Achæans before the Dorian conquest, under Aera by Kubitschek, who gives a six-page synchronistic table of astronomical and Julian years compared with the Greek Olympiads and supplemented by the Byzantine indictions, and under Arithmetica by Hultsch. The latest and fullest information on Aphrodite has been collected by Gümpel, who favors a purely Hellenic origin of the cult and Kretschmer's etymology ȧøp-òdíry foam traveller, "an epithet deriv. ing from Greek hymnology," rather than Preller's from a hypothetical Phoenician aph'ru. det - the dove. The immense antiquity and the continuous use throughout Graeco-Italic antiquity of nude images not destitute of sexual significance, as the imagination of a Haw

thorne conceived the Venus of the Medici and her congeners to be, is clearly shown. In two long articles of the third semi-volume, on Apollo and Artemis, Wernicke takes the advanced ground of denying the primary connection of either deity with solar and lunar worship. His Apollo is an earth spirit, and his Artemis a sort of apsara, or dew fairy, out of which aspects the vegetal, pastoral, genital, tribal, purificatory, and other sides of the cult of both originally unconnected deities develop plausibly under his hands. The last semivolume is especially rich in important subjects pertaining to the history of Greek literature, criticism, and science: Archilochus, Archimedes, Aristarchus, Aristophanes, Aristotle. In Crusius's article on Archilochus and in Kaibel's on Aristophanes, as in Kaerst's on Alexander, no allusion is made to the extant antique portraits, or to the silver cup lately exhumed near Pompeii on which the skeleton of the Parian poet, with the inscription APXIAOXOZ, appears in company with those of the foremost other poets du temps jadis. The revised edition of Pauly, comprising 14,400 pages, will appear in twenty semi-volumes at the uniform price of 15 marks, and also in 150 numbers of 6 signatures at 2 marks each.

-The Journal of the Society of Arts (London: George Bell & Sons) of December 6 gives an account of a paper and discussion on a revival of the water-glass method of mural painting which has been used by Mrs. Lea Merritt in the decoration of the little church of St. Martin's, Wonersh. This method, which depends on the fixing of the colors by spraying with certain "soluble silicates and metallic oxides" (water-colors being used), was invented in Germany, and was in great favor at the

time of the decoration of the Houses of Parlia

ment. Maclise's enormous pictures of Waterloo and Trafalgar were painted in this manner, but he does not seem to have been much pleased with the process or its results, and we believe it has not been used since his time until now. Permanence and resistance to climate, even in exterior decoration, are the merits claimed for it. It seems characteristically English that the discussion should have brought out the expression of great hopes for the enlarged use of decorative painting in England based upon the revival of a process. Here, we should be likely to consider a process of little importance, and to think that a desire for painted decoration on the part of the public and an ability to design it on the part of the artists were the essentials. It may be doubted whether, in the epochs when art was really living, any one has cared much for permanence. The external walls of Venice were covered with frescoes by Titian and Giorgione as we cover ours with red paint and white "pointing"-because it suited the taste of the Venetians; and the work was as little expected to last for ever. The English sense of "commercial integrity," as Sizeranne calls it, places great stress upon permanence, and English painters make their work distressingly ugly with a glowing sense of virtue in the knowledge that it will always remain so. When we really want art we can have it even in so ephemeral a thing as the poster. Why should we not paint our walls in the same spirit, leaving our successors to treat theirs in their own way? The permanence of bad art and bad decoration is one of the melancholy things in this world, and for one lost masterpiece that we regret there are thousands of daubs that we cannot get rid of.

-An article in the International Journal of Ethics on "National Prejudices" is of a timely interest, which its author, an Englishman, could not have anticipated when he wrote it. Whatever the amount of slumbering dislike and misconception that may exist between European nations now, it is nothing like the brutal ignorance and the harsh hatred which the best of men felt only a few generations ago for people of a different race from themselves. The quotations which this writer gives are interesting landmarks, from which one can infer how much brotherly love between nations will surpass its present development fifty years from now. For instance, Coleridge writes that he had never met a German clergyman who was a Christian; the Russians he pronounced brutal; the Dutch, he said, were animals; and the Belgians, as impudent as they were iniquitous, consisted of four million restive asses. For the French he had this in reserve: "Frenchmen are like grains of gunpowder-each by itself smutty and contemptible, but mass them together and they are terrible indeed." Dr. Johnson said of the Ame ricans in 1769: "Sir, they are a race of convicts, and ought to be thankful for anything we allow them short of hanging." Of the French he says: "What do you expect, dear sir, from fellows that eat frogs?" When asked whether, after all, God had not made Scotland, he replied: "Certainly he did, but he made it for Scotchmen; and we must remember that God made hell." When in particularly good humor, he was willing to love all mankind, except an American. Swift wrote: "The greatest Inventions were produced in times of Ignorance; as the use of the Compass, Gunpowder, and Printing; and by the dullest Nation, as the Ger

mans."

And the prototype for all this is the yet earlier proverbial saying, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" A FrancoEnglish alliance has been formed for the express purpose of removing the false views of the manners, customs, feelings, and history of each of those two nations which prevail in the other. Such an organization may easily become a powerful means for good.

-A bit of archæological news of some importance was announced on December 21 by M. Paul Delombre, in his report on the crédits supplémentaires asked for by the French Government. Among these is an item of 50,000 francs to pay for the exclusive privilege of making archæological diggings in Persia. M. Delombre gives the hitherto unpublished text of the agreement which has been made between the French Government and the Shah. The chief points in this agreement are these: On account of the scientific eminence of the French, and the friendly relations which for so long a time have happily existed between Iran and France, the Persian Government grants to the French the exclusive privilege of making diggings throughout the whole extent of the empire. All sacred places, like mosques and cemeteries, however, are to be exempt from disturbance; and the French excavating parties are held to respect the habits and customs of the country, and to do nothing to vex them. All expenses of whatsoever sort are to be at the charge of the Government of the Republic. If valuable objects in gold or silver are found, or if any jewels, these are to be the private property of the Persian Government; yet, in consideration of the cost and trouble of the diggings, one-half of such objects will be yielded to the French at a fair price; and, whenever the rest shall be sold, if ever, the French shall be given the first chance to pur

chase it. As to works of sculpture of all sorts, and inscriptions, they are to be divided evenly between the two Governments, but the French delegates are to have the right of making sketches or models of whatever may be found. Finally, "in recognition of the preference which the Persian Government accords to it, the Government of the Republic will make to his Majesty the Shah a present of 10,000 francs." It cannot be said that, as diggings go, the French have paid an undue price for their privilege. Everybody will wish them good luck in the exercise of it, and many discoveries in this relatively new and certainly most interesting and promising field.

SHERMAN'S RECOLLECTIONS. John Sherman's Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate, and Cabinet. An Autobiography. Two volumes, illustrated. Chicago: The Werner Co. 1895. MR. SHERMAN'S recollections derive interest from two sources-first, the importance of the events in which he has played a part; second, from their presenting a picture of the man himself. As a literary performance the book has no character whatever, but as the picture of a successful politician drawn by his own hand it is instructive. No doubt the success would have been more marked if the great ambition of Mr. Sherman's life, the Presidency, had been attained (we infer from these volumes that he has given it up); but, compared with that of most of his contemporaries, it has been very remarkable. In the world of politics success means remaining in office, and the question which has interested us in reading these volumes has been to make out the sort of character and mind required for the task during the past forty years. The answer is clearly that the first requisite has been a conviction that, no matter what one's party decides, the first duty of a statesman is to vote with it, and not set up his individual judgment against it; the second, that all differences of opinion, no matter whether they involve moral questions or not, can be compromised in some way; the third, that a public measure, no matter how good in itself, is worthless unless it satisfies the popular demand for the time being; the fourth, that when a statesman does not know in which of two opposite directions the popular current is moving, the thing for him to do is to "hedge"; the fifth, that speech is capable of many uses besides the bald and childish one of expressing one's thoughts. Mr. Sherman is a brilliant example of what would be called in France an opportunist," ," and that he does not mind at least being criticised as such, seems a fair deduction from his quoting in extenso (pp. 810, 811) an article, by Don Piatt, in which he is complimented on a symmetry of intellect which "leaves nothing to regret except the thought that its perfection excludes the blemish of a soul." We shall not attempt to review Mr. Sherman's career in detail, but shall merely endeavor to show how his "recollections" of some of the leading events in it illustrate his character.

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A marked feature of Mr. Sherman's personal recollections is their insipidity, and this is evidently due to his disinclination to recollect anything unpleasant or anything which might give offence. The stormy period of Grant's first term, for instance, ending in the revolt of 1872 and the nomination of Horace Greeley by the Democrats, is passed over almost in silence. We are told of the deposition of Mr. Sumner from the Foreign Relations Commit

tee; we are told that it was "a period of slander and scandal," and that in the course of it the author himself was falsely accused of having made money corruptly; also, that he went to California and saw the Yosemite and the big trees-but this is pretty much all. Of course, in the personal recollections of a financier, it is unfair to expect a full history of his times; and this may account for the fact that there seems to be no mention of the long controversy over the distribution of the Alabama claims money, as well as for the statement that the only reason for the defeat of Blaine's nomination in 1876 was "antagonisms" between him and Conkling (p. 550), and that in 1880 he was defeated because nine delegates from Ohio voted for him instead of for the author-this desertion preventing a subsequent unanimous transfer of the delegation from Sherman to Blaine (p. 773). The Belknap and Schenck affairs are not discussed, nor is the Crédit Mobilier scandal, which at the time convulsed the country.

Congress in dealing with antiquated claims
against the Government." He mentions that
they were "referred to the Court of Claims,"
but seems to have wholly forgotten that this
court-the Government's own court-had the
whole case before it, and solemnly decided that
the Government ought to pay the claims, and
that the money thus far paid has been paid
under this decision.

Again, his account of the legal-tender acts is
most peculiar. In a speech made in 1876 we
find him laying down in the most positive
terms, as a "universal law of political econo-
my," that "whenever two metals or two mo-
neys are in circulation, the least valuable will
drive out the most valuable; the latter will be
exported" (p. 541). But when Mr. Sherman ex-
plains his action with regard to the law by
which Government notes were made legal-
tender (pp. 255, 288), he forgets all about this
"universal law," and lays down a quite differ-
ent one-that the disappearance of coin is "the
universal result of great wars long protracted,"
and that "gold and silver flee from a state of
war"; that consequently what had to be done
was to provide some currency in advance to
take its place when it should go. Hence it
was necessary to make the new currency a le.
gal-tender between individuals. But Mr. Sher-
man is altogether too cautious to state such a
non sequitur baldly; the legal tender act also
provided that the bonds should be paid in gold,
and that the customs revenue should, for this
purpose, be collected in gold. This of course
strengthened the public credit, and consequent-
ly the greenbacks; and Mr. Sherman is able to
say, "The legal-tender act, with its provision
for coin receipts to pay interest on bonds,
whatever may be said to the contrary by theo-
rists, was the only measure that could have
enabled the Government to carry on success-
fully the vast operations of the war." This
confuses a very simple question-Did the
Government's declaration that the greenback
should be a legal-tender for a dollar make it
worth a cent more in the market than if it had
been simply a promise to pay? On this point
Mr. Sherman brings forward no proof. It is
very significant that he makes no argument to
show that the legal tender quality of the silver
dollar increases its value in any way.

Mr. Sherman's first political contest of importance was that for Speaker of the House in 1859-60. His attitude in it was characteristic of the man. Helper's 'Impending Crisis' had appeared, and a pamphlet had been made from it by F. P. Blair. Mr. Sherman had been asked during the previous Congress by a friend of his, Mr. E. D. Morgan, to sign a recom mendation for the circulation of such a pamphlet. Mr. Sherman warily replied that he "had not time to examine the book," but that "if there was nothing offensive in it" he (Mr. Morgan) might use his name. So far from there being nothing offensive in it to the Southern half of the country, from which the "incendiary" work emanated, the moment Mr. Sherman was put in nomination for Speaker, a Missourian introduced a resolution denouncing the book, and declaring that no member of the House who had recommended it was fit to be Speaker (p. 169). The candidate was at once able to say that he had never read the book, nor the compendium founded upon it; that he had authorized his name to be used only in case there was nothing "offensive" in the book; that if there was anything offensive in it, he repudiated it, and that his attitude on the slavery question was a matter of record. His manly, straightforward speech on the subject brought him within three votes of an election. Strange to say, there are people to this day ill-natured enough to think that Mr. Sherman avoided reading the 'Impending Crisis' in order to be prepared to stand by his signa- | professions and calculated to produce the ture or repudiate all knowledge of the book, as the cat might jump. But the air at the time was full of suspicion and distrust. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr. Sherman tells us, said he would never vote for any other candidate until the crack of doom, and afterwards explained his change of mind by saying that he thought he "heard it cracking."

One great advantage of Recollections is that the author can recollect things pretty much as he pleases, provided, at least, that he has Mr. Sherman's caution of statement. For instance, what he recollects about Johnson's impeachment is that the latter was simply guilty of a plain violation of a penal statute, and that no substantial constitutional question was involved (pp. 430, 431); consequently he "felt bound" to vote guilty, but "was entirely satisfied with the result of the vote, brought about by the action of several Republican Senators." At page 144 he gives what he calls the "whole case " as to the French Spoliation Claims, and declares their payment to be "the most striking evidence of the improvidence of

It is the vice of a mind given to compromise that it generally ends in thinking that compromise is an end in itself; and men having this bent will generally plume themselves on advocating some evil at war with all their

the act was merely a sop to the free-silver men, and would no doubt have ultimately led to free coinage if the total collapse of the scheme to buoy up the price of silver by Government purchases had not brought the Government to the verge of bankruptcy. But, apart from this, how can a man with any real convictions on the subject advocate and father a bill which he holds to be radically vicious, because something worse is proposed by some one else? On this principle, the candid patriot may advocate anything be pleases, provided he announces that he is opposed to it. Suppose the majority of the House are in favor of an act for the immediate murder of all adult Chinamen or Indians, while the Senate is in favor of killing all the children as well. The first is obviously the lesser evil; but Mr. Sherman would hardly like to report it from a conference committee and favor its adoption. On these principles we might be called upon to listen to arguments in favor of an act legalizing burglary as a lesser evil than an act permitting murder, or of an act authorizing larceny as preferable on the whole to burglary. The matter is clear enough where acts universally recognized as wicked are concerned; but to an experienced financier (the whole book emphasizes this) inflation is only a disguised species of wickedness, designed to ena ble the debtor to cheat his creditor. And now mark the result. The " compromise," once made, immediately becomes a good and wise measure, and although now Mr. Sherman thinks that "the day it became a law" he was "ready to repeal it" (p. 1070), this is one of those points on which his recollection is at fault, for what he actually thought at the time, as appears by a prepared speech which he prints (p. 1112), was this:

"What we ought to do, and what we now do under the silver law of the last Congress, a conservative Republican measure, is to buy the entire product of silver mined in the United States at its market value, and, upon the security of that silver deposited in the Treasury, issue Treasury notes to the full amount of the cost of the bullion" (p. 1116).

It must not be supposed that we have the slightest desire to belittle the reputation which Mr. Sherman gained by means of the operations that led to the resumption of specie payments. His career as Secretary of the Treasury is the brilliant page in his life. His country no doubt owes him a debt of gratitude on that score, while for cleverness, ingenuity, tact, and adroitness there is probably not his equal in Washington; but his passion for arrangement of difficulties by way of compromise has unfortunately ended in connecting his name with the measure just referred to, passed by inflationists, and which has ever since made the possibility of the honest payment of its debts by the Government an open question. His whole discussion of the currency question shows that he wishes to persuade us that it may be settled by means of a perfectly honest compromise between those who want to cheat the creditors of the Government and their own, and those who want Government and private debts honestly paid. He is consequently opposed to all contraction of the currency and retirement of the greenbacks, and even thinks that the volume of the currency may be increased as the volume of business increases (pp. 755-756). To the fact that a Government currency keeps alive a per

greatest public disasters, because, as they
maintain, they have by this means averted
some other evil, which they of course insist
would have been far worse. They do not
seem to perceive that, though they may
acquiesce in and submit to such evils, they ad-
vocate them at the risk of their reputation not
only for consistency but for sincerity. Mr.
Sherman's attitude with regard to the "Sher-
man silver law" of 1890 is an illustration of
this. Mr. Sherman is opposed to inflation,
and yet reported this bill authorizing the pur-
chase of 4,500,000 ounces of silver every month;
how does he reconcile his action with his pro-
fessions? By showing that a large majority
of the Senate favored free coinage, that it was
feared that the House might yield and agree
to it, that if a bill for free coinage should have
passed both houses, Harrison might have
signed it, and that free coinage was a worse
evil than the silver-purchase scheme. Conse-petual political agitation for dishonest infla-
quently, Mr. Sherman did what he could to
pass the latter. The difficulty with this view
is that instead of being a genuine compromise,

tion Mr. Sherman seems totally blind, though for thirty years, in one form or other, such an agitation has existed.

get better ones. Mr. Sherman's notion of giv-
ing satisfaction, as already explained, is, rough-
ly, in all cases of division of opinion within the
party, to arrange some compromise on which
the Democrats can be voted down; this, if it
involves a sacrifice of conviction, makes it all
the more creditable. The great advantage of
this view of political duty is that under it the
successful retention of place becomes proof of
devotion to the good cause; it is only selfish or
obstinate or dull people who think themselves
called upon to set up their "conscience"
against their party.

When Augustus was about to die, he asked
those about him whether he had "played his
part well"; and on their replying that he had,
asked them to give him their applause. It is
becoming the fashion for modern statesmen to
anticipate a deathbed or posthumous verdict
by the aid of a contemporary publisher. When
the statesman feels that the fiat has gone
forth; that the great Prize for which he has so
long struggled is not to be his; that the time is
rapidly drawing nigh when all place must be
given up, he displays no emotion, but prepares
himself calmly to meet the inevitable end.
Wrapping his toga about him, with a firm voice
and unruffled front he dictates his Recollec-
tions to his typewriter. The plan has much to
recommend it, though from what we have
said, it will be seen that we hardly think that
in the long run the Recollections of Mr. Sher-
man will-if we may venture upon a financial
metaphor-pass current at their face value.
All the more reason, he would reply, that he
should do what he could to keep them at par
now by declaring that they are to be received
and circulated by everybody with full faith
and credit. This helps to float them, and
though there is no Gresham's law under which
they will drive more accurate and honest recol-

One thing we miss sadly in these volumes, and that is some account of the actual means by which, through all the difficulties which have surrounded him, Mr. Sherman has managed to retain his foothold at Washington for forty years. In any country it would be an enormously long term of service-in America especially so-(he mentions with pride that his Senatorial career is the longest on record); and behind his action on the public stage which exhibits him rather as an adroit manipulator of legislation than anything else, there must have been forty years of management of the local politics of Ohio no less adroit, to prevent his younger and bolder rivals from ousting him. In this sort of manoeuvring Mr. Sherman is no doubt a master, but of himself as a manager he does not give us a fair view, for he generally represents himself as avoiding as far as possible all dealings with the offices. An anecdote of the impression which his arts made upon Lincoln is curious. It seems that Mr. Sherman wished to dissuade Lincoln from making too many Whig appointments in Ohio, and requested an interview. He found the President in excellent humor, but when he began to complain about appointments, the expression of Lincoln's face "changed to one of extreme sadness." He did not say a word, but placed his feet on the table and began to look the "picture of despair." Mr. Sherman "took" at once. He began to reproach himself for bringing up so unimportant a subject as local offices when the country was in the throes of revolution, and finally he apologized for it, and declared that "he would not bother him again with them." Mr. Lincoln's face brightened, "his whole manner changed, until finally he almost embraced me" (p. 269). It appears that in 1888 Mr. Sherman lost the nomination for the Presidency through a "corrupt New York bargain," and he gives a pic-lection out of the minds of the author's conture of "bossism" in Hamilton County, Ohio, which shows that offices play the same part there that they do here in New York; but he declares that no Secretary of the Treasury was ever "so utterly indifferent to the distribution of patronage" (p. 769); and perhaps as an illustration of this he mentions that he "severed all connection between his duties in the Treasury" and the business of getting himself nominated for President, by setting up his Presidential "headquarters" in another building (p. 767).

Mr. Sherman is fond of a phrase with which one is more familiar in the mouths of domestic than of public servants. The highest commendation that he can accord any measure is that it "gives satisfaction." What he plumes himself upon in his political career is that he has himself given satisfaction. There is every proof that he has done so. He has seen and deeply pondered the terrible fate of those in public life who do not give satisfaction, and he has steered clear of the pitfalls which beset those who try to be independent of party, or to determine their action by considerations of public interest solely. Not that he avows any. thing of the kind; the whole book is written on the theory that all the legislation of the past generation is the result of the deliberations of true representatives of the people (excepting, of course, the Democrats in Congress, for when Mr. Sherman speaks of the People, what he has in mind is always his own party)-a most convenient theory, for it enables the author to overlook the fact that in all important crises public opinion has been in advance of legislative opinion, and that what most of the members of Congress and the Senate have been trying to do has been to keep their places or to

temporaries or successors, he will probably
always feel, as in the case of the legal-tenders,
that there was really no other way to accom-
plish what he had in view, while the public at
large will have the satisfaction of knowing
that these last Sherman Notes will in the end
be taken everywhere for exactly what they
are worth.

THREE BOOKS ABOUT IRELAND.
Pagan Ireland. By W. G. Wood-Martin.
Longmans. 1895.

A Letter by Capt. Cuellar of the Spanish Ar-
mada to Philip the Second. Translated by
H. D. Sedgwick, Jr. G. H. Richmond & Co.
1895.

The Life of Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan.
By John Todhunter. London: T. Fisher
Unwin; New York: Putnams.

THE first of the above trio is by a well-known
antiquarian and author of other similar
works. It is an exhaustive account of the
prehistoric antiquities of Ireland, copiously
illustrated, and its compilation must have
been the work of many years. There is no fail-
ing to which antiquarian observers are more
liable than seeing too much; but the ordinary
observer sees too little, and needs to have his
attention drawn to mounds, heaps of stones,
and rock-scribings, all of which have neither
interest nor meaning for him unless they are
interpreted by a skilled antiquarian. We can
only conjecture what manner of men the
dwellers in Irish caves, mounds, and cran-
nogs" were; they left no remains except bones
of animals which served for food, rude
crockery, primitive stone implements, and

64

canoes, usually hollowed from a single tree.
In the primitive stage of his existence man
was scarcely distinguishable from the brute
creation, and in Ireland very little advance
Mr.
was made until after the Christian era.
Wood-Martin finds it impossible not to accuse
the aboriginal inhabitants of habitual canni-
balism, and thinks that a careful analysis of
obscure customs still extant in Ireland throws
some light on this subject. Regarding the
fabled early civilization of the island he re-
marks:

"We possess many assertions as to the past
glories of the land, but these assertions are not
supported by material remains. It is clear
that when the East was at the height of its
civilization our ancestors were mere savages,
and were but little better in later times, when
Rome was at the zenith of her glory.
The description of the ancient glories of Erin,
as given by enthusiastic historians, may be
compared to the mirage of the desert, the mere
reflection of distant scenes and the phantasma-
goria of Roman and Eastern civilization, which
the writers, imagining it ought to have exist-
ed, finally depicted as if actually existing."

Our author does not agree with the few antiquarians who hold that the Ogham inscriptions indicated "alphabetical knowledge." For this, as for other moot topics, one may consult the bibliography at the end of the volume. The number of authorities quoted and referred to in the text is enormous. Although Irish archæology has been at a standstill for years, there is a vast amount of material to be found in the journals of learned societies, pamphlets, and uncollected notes and letters, and this handbook, certainly one of the best in Irish antiquities, can hardly fail to give a fresh impetus to research.

The first of the Spanish Armada tracts contains a graphic account of Capt. Cuellar's misadventures after the dispersion of the Spanish fleet. Wrecked on the coast of Ireland, he spent seven months "in mountains and woods amongst savages, for in that part of Ireland where we were wrecked they are all such." He wrote to justify himself with the King, for he had been condemned to death when off Calais for some dereliction of duty. He hopes that his Majesty may occupy himself "a little by way of amusement after dinner by reading this letter." There was not much amusement for the Spaniards, for the greater number (about one thousand) who were wrecked with Cuellar were killed as they came ashore, or wherever they were found by the English troops and their adherents. The native Catholics plundered but sheltered them. At that time Ireland was but partly subdued; and, after many hairbreadth escapes, Cuellar reached some mountains "behind which lay a friendly country that belonged to a great lord who was a good friend to the King of Spain." On his way he was sheltered by a young man who "knew Latin," and with whom he conversed. Stripped of his clothes and wrapped in straw, he at last reached the house of the friendly lord, by name "de Ruerge," evidently "O'Rorke." "Although he is a savage," wrote Cuellar, "he is a very good Christian." Here he made himself acceptable to his hosts by telling their fortunes, becoming, he says, a "gipsy among the savages." Here is his account of the natives, who were always at war with the English:

"They live in huts made of straw. The men have big bodies, their features and limbs are well made, and they are as agile as deer. They eat but one meal a day, and their ordinary food is oaten bread and butter. They drink sour milk, as they have no other beverage, but no water, although it is the best in the world. They dress in tight breeches and goatskin jack

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