W ENGLAND IN THE NINETIES1 seem to be getting the personal portraiture of social and political England by decades. The sixties were so pictured by Mr. Justin McCarthy, the seventies by George Russell, the eighties by Horace Hutchinson, and now we have Mr. E. T. Raymond's discriminating talk about notable people in the nineties. It comes closer to the present day than the title suggests, because not a few of the famous persons described lived well into the present century-Kitchener and George Meredith, for instance, while a lew are living and still in the public ye, as John Morley and Arthur Balfour and Thomas Hardy. Thus the book Diographically bridges over the interval between the end of the Victorian epoch ind the beginning of the Great War. What is noteworthy about Mr. Raynond's book is that it contrasts grateully with the fluffy, irrepressible, and rresponsible flood of gossip and tittleattle of which we have had a little too nuch of late. Mrs. Asquith's writing nd that of the "Gentleman with a Duser" may serve as examples. This does lot mean that "Portraits of the Nineles" is not entertaining; on the con rary, it is all the more so because its necdotes and incidents have been skillully chosen to bring out salient traits f character and, combinedly, to offer a icture of the period's tendencies. Weakesses and foibles are freely presented, ut there is full recognition of abilities nd things accomplished. Literary and olitical criticisms are interspersed, lways keen and humorous but never itter. Here, for instance, is a bit about arlyle and Hardy: Somebody accused Carlyle of bringing a load of woe to one's doorstep and leaving it there. Mr. Hardy does not exactly leave it. He is far more thoughtful than that, He rings the bell, explains with perfect charm and lucidity every item in the pack of trouble, and carefully explains to the householder that, however mean he may feel, it is no good his trying to do anything. With this may be coupled the author's xplanation of the reason why George Meredith was not and could not be a ournalist: The highest merit of the journalist is to make complicated things clear, and dry things readable; Meredith's genius lay in the direction of making the simplest things obscure, and the most ordinary things out-of-the-way, The dread of being commonplace seems to have inclined him especially to verbal contortions when he was conscious of some thinness or ordinariness of thought. When he has really something to say he often says it strongly and naturally; there are deep things and true things in MerePortraits of the Nineties. By E. T. Raymond. Illustrated, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $4.50, dith which could hardly be better, Equally pungent, turning from the Rhodes belonged to that terrible order of men who conceive themselves, by virtue of the grandeur and purity of the visions that absorb and inspire them, released from the ordinary restraints appropriate to humbler people. "What have you been doing since I last saw you, Mr. Rhodes?" asked Queen Victoria once. "I have added," was the reply, "two provinces to your Majesty's dominions." Gladstone's career passed its culminating point early in the nineties-he died in 1898, at the age of eighty-nine; but he remained a great figure in the public mind, and it is interesting in this book to contrast the characterization of Gladstone, Salisbury, and Disraeli. The secret of Gladstone's power over those he met, says Mr. Raymond, was "massive seriousness, deriving from his intense sense of the eternal." Salisbury, he holds, was far from being what Bismarck sneeringly called him, "a lath painted like iron." But Mr. Raymond thinks "Lord Salisbury was in essence as pacific as Mr. Gladstone. In practice he was even more a man of peace, since. his caution took the form of guarding against war, while Mr. Gladstone inclined rather to the modern Pacifist' line of calling war 'unthinkable'-and not thinking about it till it came." It will surprise some readers that the dignified statesman of later days was in his youth a journalist and that "there was a considerable streak of Bohemianism in Lord Salisbury." Apropos of his Fleet Street days a pleasant anecdote is told: Many years after, a fellow-leaderwriter was presented to him at some official garden party. Lord Salisbury, who had a bad memory for names, and was very short-sighted, was saying the usual formal things when the sound of the journalist's voice suddenly brought a flood of old memories, "Hello, Billy," he said, shaking hands warmly, "whose turn is it to pay for the beer?" As to Disraeli, the author selects one of the innumerable anecdotes about him because it illustrates at the same time Disraeli's insincerity and Gladstone's lack of humor-or rather, refusal to see anything amusing in duplicity: Some one told Mr. Gladstone with great glee how Disraeli went to some picture show, and delighted the artists by most lavish praise. This work showed sublime genius; that recalled the grade of Gainsborough; this the somber power of Caravaggio; that the splendid color of Titian; that the severe purity of outline of Mantegna. And then, when Disraeli was well clear of the men he had flattered into frantic worship of him, he murmured to a friend: "What an ordeal; such fearful daubs I never saw!" To this story Mr. Gladstone listened with a steadily increasing frown, and at the end of it he struck the table emphatically with his fist. "I call thatdevilish," was his comment. One of the most notable chapters of this volume deals with the singular personality of Herbert Spencer. Philosophically speaking, the author agrees with those who think that the Spencerian philosophy long ago reached the stage of being much quoted and little read. "To Spencer," Huxley said, "tragedy is represented by a deduction spoiled by a fact." "You have such a passion for generalizing," said George Eliot, "that you even fish with a generalization." Physically Spencer was an old bachelor valetudinarian. "On the whole," he wrote a friend at thirty-one, "I am quite decided not to be a drudge, and as I see no probability of being able to marry without being a drudge, why, I have pretty well given up the idea." How far in singularity Spencer's hypochondriacism carried him is told in amusing detail: The mind revealed in the printed page as disdainfully careless of any consideration but truth, which could face without a shudder the dread emptiness of eternity as Spencer imagined it, was in private occupied with all kinds of old-maidish whims. His bed "had to be made with a hard bolster beneath the mattress, raising a hump for the small of his back, while the clothes had a pleat down the center, so that they never strained but fell in folds around him." He devoted an enormous amount of thought to his ear-stoppers; at that time he could not live out of London, and yet he could not bear the noise of London; so that he "corked" himself, after the manner of Miss Betsy Trotwood, whether at the club or at his lodgings. He liked whiting for breakfast, and disliked haddock, and if haddock were served he was full of complaints about the "gross defects of integration, co-ordination, or whatelse the attendant molecular shortcoming might be." ever Numerous are the anecdotes about the energetic Bishop Creighton, of London. One sample of his quick-wittedness will suffice: When Mandell Creighton was Bishop of London it fell to him to admonish an earnest High Church Vicar, working in the East End, on the subject of incense. The Vicar, pleading hard for his point, appealed to his record as a parish priest. "Dr. Creighton," he said solemnly, "for twenty-five years I have held here a cure of souls, and-" Before he could finish the sentence, Creighton cut in with a joke, "Cure them, certainly," he said, "but surely you need not smoke them." Looking at the nineties as a completed period, Mr. Raymond finds that it was significant for what it wasn't as much 400 as for what it was-"what we are and suffer was in the main decided for us a quarter of a century ago." He enlarges this idea in a chapter of sweeping social survey, from which we select a passage: The nineties were essentially a time of transition. They resembled that point in the life of a caterpillar when a change of skin is almost due. The thing is at once lethargic and uneasy; its qualms and its inertia alike suggest coming dissolution. But beneath its rusty coat the essential activities are going in, and presently the old constrictive covering will split, and a quite new-looking creature emerge. What may be called a sort of fatigued shabbiness was observable in the upper strata of society during the nineties. The split in the caterpillar's coat had begun, but had not pro FICTION cecded far; patches of dead skin, of skin not quite dead, and of new skin thrusting its way through the ancient envelope gave a mottled and unsatisfactory appearance. The old society was visibly finishing; the new society had only arrived in spots; and cach was not quite sure of itself. . . . The old aristocracy seemed conscious that the new pace would kill-the pace of the petrol age just then opening up. They were right. The twentieth century had not much more than dawned before the old caterpillar skin definitely gave way, and something quite new appeared, vigorous and sym. metrical, with a keen appetite and a the aristocracy of sure objective; what may be called dynamic wealth, the wealth that reproduces itself by a sort of geometrical progression. THE NEW BOOKS HERMIT OF TURKEY HOLLOW (THE). By Arthur Train. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $1.65. It is always a pleasure to read a crime and mystery story written by some one who knows criminal law and the practice of the courts-full half of such stories have ludicrous blunders from sheer ignorance. Mr. Train's experience in the District Attorney's office guarantees this point. We are glad to meet again that human and wily lawyer, Tutt-we hope that the little book will grow into a second volume of "Tutt and Mr. Tutt" stories. The murder mystery in this tale is a queer one, and there are well-sketched characters, particularly the villainous and grasping prosecuting attorney. MARTIN CONISBY'S VENGEANCE. By Jeffery Farnol. Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $2. A tale of pirates (including a girl pirate), slavery, vengeance, buried treasure, and adventure. Those who liked Mr. Farnol's "Black Bartlemy's Treasure" will enjoy this story also, as it is in a measure a continuation of that romance. PRIDE OF PALOMAR (THE). By Peter B. Kync. Illustrated. The Cosmopolitan Book Corporation, New York. $2. A story of southern California by the author of "Kindred of the Dust." It is largely occupied with a repetition of the familiar extreme anti-Japanese arguments. It has also, however, considerable plot interest and a pleasing picture of life on an old Spanish hacienda. In places the writing and dialogue are emotional and sentimental. SPORT SPORT OF OUR ANCESTORS (THE). Being a Collection of Prose and Verse Setting Forth the Sport of Fox-Hunting as They Knew It. By Lord Willoughby de Broke. Illustrated by G. D. Armour. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $10. Any one who may think, on reading the title of this book, that it is a kind of morgue containing remains which are destined to unhonored but deserved oblivion, will be agreeably disappointed. The descriptions of English country life and the changes that motor cars and the R. D. TOWNSEND. FOCH; THE WINNER OF THE WAR. By Raymond Recouly. Translated by Mary Cadwalader Jones. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. $3. PRECEPTS AND JUDGMENTS. By Ferdinand Foch. Translated by Hilaire Belloc. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $1. PRINCIPLES OF WAR. By Ferdinand Foch. Illustrated. Translated by Hilaire Belloc. Henry Holt & Co., New York. $7.50. The first of these volumes gives us information concerning Germany's willingness to surrender. Germany wanted an immediate cessation of hostilities, because her armies, she feared, had become a prey to Bolshevism, and because her forces had become insufficient in number and inferior in quality, and, most important of all, because there was to be a great new Entente offensive. This Marshal Foch planned to launch on November 14, 1918. The news of this offensive was the determining point in bringing about the surrender. The book is written by one convinced, as he says, that the Entente Allies were victorious, not only because of their loftier muraie, but because they had the advantage of co-ordinated military talent in their leaders, which found its highest expression in their Generalissimo-Foch. The second of the volumes also gives us interesting information concerning the Marshal in the sketch of him contributed by Major Grasset. The main matter in hand in this volume and the entire matter of the third volume should challenge the notice of all students of military history. These two volumes certainly constitute a classic on warfare. They explain in Foch's own words how it was that he could guide the fighting of 1918 to a successful issue. They show how and why the war was won. By PUNCTUATION AND CAPITALIZATION. Frank H. Vizetelly, Litt.D., LL.D. The Funk & Wagnalls Company, New York. A compendium of sensible, brief sug gestions about subjects that often puzzle writers and printers. BOOKS RECEIVED BALLAD-MAKER'S PACK (A). By Arthur Guiterman. Harper & Brothers, New York $2. LYRICS OF THE LINKS. Compiled by Henry thony. $1.50. RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY FOLLOWERS OF THE MARKED TRAIL Teacher's Manual. By Nannie Lee Frayser. The Abingdon Press, New York. 90c. FOOTPRINTS OF FAITH. By David Paulson. The Life Boat Publishing Company, Chicago. IN TUNE WITH THE INFINITE. By Ralph Waldo Trine. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $1.75. MY PHILOSOPHY AND MY RELIGION. By Ralph Waldo Trine. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York. $1.50. BOOKS AND HABITS. By Lafcadio Hearn tion. RISK, SEX. By Houghton Mifflin Leland Stowell, M.D. By William The Illustrated. Macmillan Company, New York. $3. T O BE WELL INFORMED you must be in contact with the best minds of today. The daily paper will give you the background of events, but the mature judgment of events can only come from the best minds who have time to consider them carefully. It has been for a generation the aim of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE to put its readers in contact with the leaders of thought and literature. Statesmen, scientists, philosophers, men of action, men of adventure, practical men of business, all write for SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE. It has things told, not through interviewers, but at first-hand by the men who do them. The Fiction Is a Feature of Scribner's Among established Scribner favorites whose stories will appear this year are Henry van Dyke, Katharine Holland Brown, Mary Synon, Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews, Louis Dodge, Edward C. Venable, Abbie Carter Goodloe, Charles Belmont Davis. Stories by a group of new writers will appear, among them James Boyd, Alexander Hull, Dorothy Livingston, Walter Gilkyson, W. Edson Smith, Arthur Tuckerman, Camilla Kenyon, Rebecca Hooper Eastman, Rebecca N. 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In those days, before the era of motor transportation, the greater part of the Nation was dependent absolutely upon the railways for every necessity of life, water carriers being relatively unimportant and their zone of influence limited. For many years previously the railways had played an extremely large part in the rapid development of the whole country-in fact, it is impossible to imagine any extensive development anywhere it without adequate means of transportation, both of raw materials and of finished products. pp cap Only in the early pioneer days, when the problem of living was practically reduced to its fundamental factors of food, clothing, and shelter, was it possible for each family or com s munity to exist and prosper independently of its neighbors. 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