bulky raw materials, are governed by rules of their own, and it is doubtful whether the most perfectly concerted action of all the railways of the country would avail to advance them universally and uniformly by as much as 10 per cent at one time. Railway managers, indeed, admit that a general and immediate advance in commodity rates is practically impossible.

How small a proportion of the individual's living expenses is assessed by the railways may be gathered from the following table of selling prices and typical Eastern freight rates on important commodities in common use. The figures in the last

When the advance in the classified freight rates comes, as it inevitably must unless some radical change in economic conditions that cannot now be even guessed at intervenes, there will be no lack of protest from manufacturers and jobbers, ostensibly on behalf of the oppressed "ultimate consumer." At that time it will be well to bear in mind these illustrations, which might be multiplied indefinitely. The point is, simply, that to grant the railways some increase in freight rates in partial compensation of the shrunken commodity value of their earnings would not mean oppression of the consumer, or even savor of it.

Mrs. Humphry Ward's new novel, "Lady Merton, Colonist," is a more agreeable story than its immediate predecessor, "Marriage à la Mode." It is, to be sure, as compared with the author's best-known and most carefully wrought novels, sketchy and slight, but it has several clearly drawn characters and is far more carefully written and less provocative of disagreement than the not altogether well-thought-out discussion through fiction of American divorce laws, which was the first fruit of Mrs. Ward's travels on this side the Atlantic. Here the scene and subject are Canada's great Northwest. Any one who has made the journey across the continent by the Canadian Pacific, or who means to do so, will find this story alive with interest, and that not of a merely descriptive kind. Mrs. Ward's impression of the vastness of the country, the rapidity of its growth, its opportunities, its wild beauty, the heroism of the patient pioneers—all seen through Lady Merton's sympathetic imagination-take a strong hold on the reader. Decidedly the book is worth reading, even if its appeal is quite different from that of such novels as "The Testing of Diana Mallory" or "The Marriage of William Ashe." (Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. $1.50.)

In "According to Maria" Mrs. John Lane has made a clever, amusing, and lifelike sketch of an English woman-snob. Maria is impervious to ridicule, totally without a saving sense of humor, insistent and laborious in her attempts to climb the social ladder. Failures only inspire her to new efforts, and in the end her husband and daughter have to subdue her by open rebel

lion. Maria is an extreme case of a common

type. Her doings and sayings constantly move to laughter, and the social moral of the book is sound. (John Lane Company, New York. $1.50.)

Octave Thanet's "By Inheritance," like all her books, has good character work and a cheerful and helpful spirit. The novel is largely a study of the race question in the South, and is interesting as a record of evidently first-hand observation of negro traits and white traditions. It does not attempt to solve the question, but it does show the need of subordinating theory to actual conditions. The plot has grim and horrid in cidents, which form an unpleasing contrast with the general tone of the story. (BobbsMerrill Company, Indianapolis. $1.50.)

A book like Mr. Robert Chambers's" The

Green Mouse is amusing or ridiculous according to the taste and mood of the reader. It is a little in the vein of his "Iole," but by no means as clever. It may be welcomed as a relief from purposeful fiction, a bit of irresponsible fun, fancy, and folly. (D. Appleton & Co., New York. $1.50.)

The reader who recalls Professor Münsterberg's interesting volume "On the Wit

ness Stand" will get in that the key to "The Achievements of Luther Trant," by Edwin Balmer and William MacHarg. They are the detective achievements of a 46 practical psychologist" who uses the methods of modern psychology to detect crime. Some of the stories are not convincing- "The Chalchiteritl Stone," for example; but in the main they are at least no more improbable than most detective stories; and if the statement in the preface is true, that the methods which Trant uses are based on physico-psychological principles which are recognized as established by modern psychologists, the stories are interesting and dramatic illustrations of the discoveries which have been made in that science re specting the physical effects in the human body of emotions, even in men who possess the most perfect apparent self-control. (Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. $1.50.)

Sir Harry Johnston has written a book of great interest about Africa. It is entitled "George Grenfell and the Congo." It is in two large volumes. The first is devoted largely to George Grenfell and his labors; the second, largely to the information about the Congo and its people which George Grenfell collected. As Sir Harry Johnston himself says, the popular mental picture of a missionary does not at all correspond to the actual missionary, and least of all to such a man as Grenfell. The missionary of the sort that he was is a man of the broadest knowledge, ability, and achievements. He surveys an unknown country, makes maps, ing, introduces industries, establishes govstudies languages and reduces them to writernment, banishes pain and sickness, studies the habits and customs of many peoples, studies animal and plant life, fights against the evils that civilization brings with it to a backward people as well as against the evils that are indigenous to the people themselves. The story of such a man is full of incident and activity, and the knowledge that such a man collects and records is of scientific and popular interest. Sir Harry Johnston himself knows this part of Africa, of course, at first hand. Out of the notes, journals, and memoranda left by George Grenfell, supplemented by his own personal knowledge, he has prepared a work of lasting value. It is worth while to note incidentally that the facts recorded, though they are told simply and without heat, and though they contradict certain popular notions unjust to the Belgian régime, do not allay one's indignation against the oppressive government of the Congo Independent State. (D. Appleton & Co., New York. $7.50.)

Robley D. Evans, Rear-Admiral, is one of the best of story-tellers. The writer once witnessed an oratorical feat of an extraordinary character performed by him. Carnegie Hall was packed with an audience which filled it to

the most distant seat in the uppermost gallery. Coming to the platform on crutches, in a few simple words explaining why he could not stand during his address, then discarding his crutches and taking his seat, he held the audience for an hour and a quarter or more, in a close and quiet attention which the great orators rarely win continuously for so long a time, while in an apparently conversational tone, which nevertheless made itself heard by three thousand people, he told the story of the ocean trip of the American fleet from the Atlantic to the Pacific coast. This he did without gesture and without any of the tricks or artifices of either the orator or the rhetorician. He did it by the quiet simplicity, the unmistakable sincerity, the genuine humanity of his spirit, and by the clearness and vividness of his pictures of life. The same inartificial art characterizes "An Admiral's Log." The style is singularly lucid-so lucid that you scarcely realize that there is any style. The pen-pictures are more than photographs, but not colored; let us say that they are etchings-few lines, but full of significance. The convictions on public questions are expressed with a frankness entirely free from the restraints of officialism. We do not always agree with them; but we always know what they are and for what reasons they are held. In short, Admiral Evans talks with his readers as he talked with that audience in Carnegie Hall, with the same vitality and the same freedom with which he would talk with guests at a dinner-table. We say advisedly talks with his audience, not to his audience, for a charm of the book is the curious sense which it gives to the reader of the personal presence of the writer. He is essentially a conversationist, though his conversation is monologue. (D. Appleton & Co., New York. $2.) Professor Metchnikoff's work on the "Prolongation of Life" has now appeared in a popular edition. On such a subject none deserves more attention than this eminent zoologist, whose theory is supported by the results of experiment for some eight years on himself and his friends. A century is, in his view, the normal duration of human life, but life is shortened as the result of slow poisoning by microbes in the intestines. Against this a specific prophylactic is found in lactic acid, the familiar vehicle of which is buttermilk. Professor Metchnikoff's theory has obtained considerable recognition among physicians, and a variety of medical preparations possessing the virtue claimed for buttermilk are now recommended. What he offers is a method of nutrition which he believes will lessen the chance of old people being attacked by diseases to which they are specially liable. (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. $1.75.)

er" of a yarn about " American Buccaneers." It appeared in 1678, was translated into sev eral languages, and in its English form has long been a storehouse of exciting incident whence fiction writers have drawn. In its present shape it is furnished with terrific woodcut portraits of these famous heroesor pirates, whichever you like to call themand pictures of some of their exploits against the Spaniards, which for sheer physical intrepidity have never been outdone. Here, for instance, is the account given by the writer of the Introduction of a typical method of starting business:

A party, varying in number from twenty to fifty men, would meet to discuss ways and means to sign agreements, and to choose officers: this done, they would put to sea in canoes or small vessels, and cruise on the usual trade routes. If fortunate enough to discover a Spanish vessel. the pirates were not likely to be deterred from the attack by any disparity in force. however great, apparently trusting by superior seamanship and discipline to place themselves at least on an equality with the enemy. Their first approach was generally made with great judgment, their tiny craft being so steered as to avoid the direct fire of the heavy artillery, while their picked marksmen attempted to strike down the helmsman first, and next the men attending to the sails. This effected, they would get under the stern, or other part of the ship where the guns could not be sufficiently depressed to reach them, the crew of one of the boats would proceed to wedge up the rudder, while the others would keep up a fire of musketry directed at the portholes and bulwarks, so accurately aimed as to prevent any of the Spanish crew from showing themselves. When the guns had thus been silenced and the crew forced to seek shelter, the assailants would board from several quarters at once; the deck once reached, their personal dexterity in the use of their weapons and their activity and courage were so marked that they rarely failed to overpower their opponents.

For a combination of greed, courage, antiRomanism (the English buccaneers held divine service every Sunday), and the kind of patriotism which was chiefly hatred of Spain, these buccaneers were truly marvelOld Esquemeling's narrative is fascinating, even if one fancies that there might be a word or two said on the other side. (E. P. Dutton & Co., New York. $4.)

ous.

"Chinese Immigration," by Mary Roberts Coolidge, Ph.D., formerly Associate Professor of Sociology, Stanford University (Henry Holt & Co., New York, $1.75), and "Chinese and Japanese in America: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September, 1909," are two volumes which will give any thoughtful reader a fairly comprehensive view of the Oriental immigration problem in the United States. The first volume is historical and scientific. The writer has resided in California, and is familiar with the public sentiment of the Pacific Coast, as well as with the aspects of the labor and immigration problems on that coast. But her courageous independence of local sentiment is sufficiently indicated by the title of one of her chapters, "The Coolie Fiction," and by the closing sentence of that chapter: "The persons who now assert that the Chinese came here as contract coolies,

bound to a term of service, as slaves or peons, either have no personal knowledge of the subject of coolie immigration or are deliberately repeating a false tradition in order to cater to anti-Chinese feeling." Her volume gives a history of the treatment of the Chinese; her conclusion is that the evils of Chinese immigration have been greatly exaggerated, and that the Chinese should be allowed to become naturalized citizens of the United States, in which case they would become valuable citizens. This is not the opinion of all the writers who have contributed to make the second volume referred to above, a pamphlet of two hundred pages, which consists of papers contributed to the American Academy of Political and Social Science both in favor of and against Oriental exclusion, and of other papers on National and international aspects of the exclusion movement, and on the problem of Oriental immigration outside of America. The second volume supplements the first, and taken together they give a comprehensive and fairly complete discussion of the problem in all of its aspects and from various points of view.

During the Reign of Terror," by Grace D. Elliott, is a journal of the experiences of a royalist in Paris during that awful episode. Her judgment of the active participants in this tragic drama are valueless. They are not judgments, they are prejudices. Her feminine morality was neither better nor worse than that of court society in that epoch. But, accepting the truthfulness of her narration of events, which is in general confirmed by the historical records of that time, she was a woman of great courage and great resource. She voluntarily went into the trap and braved the "terror" to rescue a friend who had neither courage nor resource. The story of her concealment of this not too brave gentleman behind her bed is as exciting as an incident in Dumas, and would have served the novelist well. Twice arrested, she escaped the guillotine rather by good luck than by good management. Danger seems to have had no terrors for her; perhaps to that fact she partly owed her escape. Her journal is an addition to the history of the French Revolution because it gives so dramatically the personal experience of one who suffered from it and barely escaped death from its grim tribunal. (The Sturgis & Walton Company, New York. $1.)

Lowell's "Fireside Travels," published first in 1864, appear again in a little volume with an introduction by E. V. Lucas. All the essays in this volume are to be found in the first volume of the Riverside Edition of Lowell's works. Mr. Lucas's introductory essay, however, gives this compact and attractive little book special value. Mr. Lucas has the knack of making intimate companions of the authors he enjoys reading and he has, too, the art of bringing others into his circle of friends on the same

intimate terms with himself. Some of those who like to walk into the woods of a summer day and read a bit will be slipping this volume into the pocket some time these coming months. (Henry Frowde, London.)

How did religion begin? Some students have said that it originated in man's reverence for his ancestors; some that it originated in wonder at the forces of nature. So we have the ghost theory of religion and the animistic theory of religion. And both theories seem little better than very unsatisfactory guesses. To say that religion is a revelation is not to answer the question, for that is only an attempt to tell whence it originated, not how. Dr. Irving King, of the State University of Iowa, has written a book in which he reports the results of his study of this question. That it is a volume of great importance seems to us beyond question. Like the scientist that he is, Dr. King first states the problem, then collects and classifies the facts that throw light on it. The value of his work, however, is due to the insight he shows in discerning great principles of human thought in these facts of human life. To put the substance of such a volume into a brief notice is clearly impossible, but it is possible perhaps to indicate baldly the way Dr. King has undertaken his task. He holds that religious experience is capable of scientific investigation because such experience is different from other experience not in kind but only in the ends which it serves. Religious consciousness is not an instinct; it is rather the product of certain kinds of action. In other words, people did not originally worship because they believed certain things; they have formulated beliefs because first they worshiped. It is not religious belief that is instinctive, but religious action, because it is instinctive with men to act, to respond to some stimulus. When that instinct to act was not sufficient to preserve the race, scious effort. So Dr. King first studies the then men began to supply the defect by conenvironment and activities of primitive man, or at least of those tribes of men that most

nearly approach the primitive. He tells of customs to be found among such peoples. He finds that the most primitive religion it is natural for warriors about to enter a arises out of social customs. For example, battle to rehearse in anticipation the act of fighting. They are stirred by imagining the conflict; they picture their own bravery and the rout of the enemy. Some of these anticipatory acts are outlets of pent-up emotions; some are efforts to emphasize the importance of future deeds; some are outcroppings of the play instinct. Now these customs are, in one way or another, means of expressing the primitive man's sense of the value of his experiences. As the world about him becomes greater and the significance of his life becomes wider, these customs become religions. As Dr. King puts it," Under certain circumstances, customs become religions, or acquire religious values.

It may be said that religious practices are social habits specialized in a certain direction." After a while the primitive man tries to explain these customs, and so formulates in a vague way a religious belief. Thus in almost all primitive peoples there prevails a belief in a mysterious pervasive power. In the Algonkin tongue this is termed manitou; among the Sioux, wakonda. It forms a bond between man and his world. This belief becomes religious. Dr. King, by the way, distinguishes magic and religion among primitive peoples by saying that magic is individualistic and secret, religion social and public. Tracing the growth of religion out of these primitive customs, he follows it as it involves conceptions of deity and reaches the ethical stage. In particular he devotes special attention to the monotheism of the Hebrews. In all this Dr. King makes it clear that he is not considering the worth or truth of religion, but simply its natural history. As he says in his final chapter, the value of religion lies not in the mode by which it is communicated but in relation to actual experience. The reader should keep in mind the fact that this is not an attempt to explain religion, much less to explain it away. It is a history of its processes as a human force. One might liken it to a history of music. A writer who shows how the art of music has de

veloped from inchoate sound, through primitive song, mediæval plain-song, later polyphony and modern harmony, does not explain music; much less does he explain away the musical genius of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Bach, Beethoven, Wagner, Brahms. A Beethoven symphony loses nothing of its musical qualities because we can trace its ancestry back to the crudest beginnings; so religious experience loses none of its validity because its prototype is primitive. Dr. King's "Development of Religion" is a book of first importance in the scientific study of religion. One hardly knows whether it should be classed under psychology, or anthropology, or sociology. The fact is, in spite of an unnecessary abundance of technical terms, it is very human. It is hard reading, but it amply repays study. It is a noteworthy contribution to the literature dealing with the evolution of religion. It is, indeed, more than that; it is a comprehensive and illuminating statement of what might be called the religious biography of the race. (The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.75.)

We Americans are by turns indulgently amused and frankly irritated by the ordinary Englishman's complacent ignorance concerning the United States. When, for instance, a supposedly well-informed Englishman, in writing of Columbia University, as one did the other day, adds, "wherever that may

be," newspapers in the United States print paragraphs of frigid scorn and torrid rejoinder. At the same time we Americans are just as complacent in our ignorance of things Australian. We know little of its size, less of its resources, and least of its people. We have to a very large extent, it is true, heard of legislative experiments which have been tried in Australia, and have adopted very generally what is known as the Australian ballot. We are not, however, at all well acquainted with the character of the people for whose needs these experiments were made. "The Commonwealth of Australia," by B. R. Wise, deprives us of an excuse for our ignorance. It tells something of life in Australia, the spirit of the Australian people, their sports, their varying manners, their government, and their legislation. There is a great deal in the democracy of Australia, and a great deal in the social and political problems that that democracy has to meet, which ought to interest us Americans greatly and which might bring us some answers to the questions we are asking of ourselves. (Little, Brown & Co., Boston. $3.)

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Nothing can take the place of Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians." Those, however, who want something of the sort that is much more compact will find sicians," edited by L. J. de Bekker, very Stokes's "Encyclopedia of Music and Muserviceable. In such a book space cannot always be assigned in proportion to importance of subject-matter. It does seem rather. odd, however, to find Converse's" Pipe of Desire," the first opera by a native American composer to be performed at the Metropolitan Opera-House, New York (as it was than is devoted to Brahms. This is partly this season), occupying actually more space due to the fact that a special feature of this book is rather full outlines of the plots of operas. (Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York. $3.)

In these days, when every one seems to feel the constant pressure of some duty, some work, some engagement, it may be even for an hour's recreation, at each waking moment, there is danger not merely of nervous but also of moral exhaustion. Mere rest or change of occupation may renew nervous energy; but for the renewal of moral energy there is need of the tonic of moral ideas. Such tonic one can find in a little book called "The Fighting Saint," by James M. Stifler. To read one of its chapters is like taking a short, brisk walk in the open air. The author makes no effort after distinction of style or originality of ideas; he succeeds in reaching something even better-common sense. (Fleming H. Revell Company, New York. 75c.)