NOTES.

Two valuable little volumes come to us from Small, Maynard & Co., Boston. They are "Washington's Farewell Address" edited by Worthington Chauncey Ford, and "The Memory of Lincoln," edited by M. A. De Wolfe Howe. Although we have of late been taught by some wise men that Washington's advice to our great-grandfathers is now out of date, we are inclined to believe that Mr. Ford is right when he says that the Farewell Address" is a document of interest, not for a century only, but for all time." We will go further, and say that in our opinion it will be regarded by future generations not merely as possessing permanent interest, but as summing up more of political wisdom than can be found in all the writings and speeches of all the public men living in America one century from the date of its composition.

With regard to Mr. Howe's little volume we can say only that if it contains more patriotism than poetry the quantity of the latter ingredient is by no means inconsiderable. The editor's own preface, which is the only piece of prose in the book, serves as an excellent introduction to such poems as Walt Whitman's "My Captain," Lowell's tribute in the "Harvard Commemoration Ode," and Whittier's "The Emancipation Group." There are fifteen other poems, some of them, we think, a little strained from the point of view of art, but all characterized by deep sincerity. The 'conquered South is represented by Maurice Thompson, the emancipated race by Paul Laurence Dunbar, our English kin by Tom Taylor, whose famous stanzas in Punch are hardly inferior to anything in the volume It is curious, by the way, that a poet like Richard Henry Stoddard should in his Horatian Ode" have so deliberately imitated the famous ode of Andrew Marvell. Stoddard and Lincoln did not need to owe anything, even to Marvell and Cromwell.

The Rev. Greenough White is the editor of a volume containing certain papers read in 1897 before the English Club of Sewanee, and entitled "Matthew Arnold and the Spirit of the Age" (New York, G. P. Putnam's Sons). Our notice has been unfortunately so long deferred that to attempt a detailed review of the separate articles would be superfluous; we are glad, however, to call attention to the work as a whole, believing it to be an indication of a promising outlook for general culture, especially in the South, and to prove that much valuable intellectual work can be done in any community of intelligent people who are fortunate enough to have a judicious guide to direct their energies.

The book is a tribute to Prof. White's labors in this direction. He began his work some years ago by interesting the members of this club in the study of English words, their derivation, definition, and pronunciation, leading them by means of lectures and other special instruction and a circulating library, maintained by the club, into more ambitious paths until their best work became worthy to find permanent shape in the present volume. A few of the contributions are by professors and advanced students, but a majority of them are the work of women and of undergraduates who have through training become capable of handling literary materials and of producing, through independent research, a series of essays both of value and of interest. We believe that the example set by Prof. White and the English Club is one worthy of imitation and that it promises well for the South in the years to come.

That admirable periodical, the Atlantic Monthly, which began its eighty-fourth volume in June, has just changed its editor. Mr. Walter H. Page, to whose energy much of the recent success of the magazine must be attributed, has resigned in order to take charge, we understand, of an important cyclopedia to be published by the new Harper-McClure combination. Mr. Page has made for himself a place in periodical literature that cannot easily be filled, but we feel confident that in inducing Prof. Bliss Perry to leave his

chair at Princeton in order to assume control of their magazine, the publishers of the Atlantic have, all things considered, acted very wisely. Mr. Perry knows good literature and produces it; we may be, therefore, quite certain that he will not allow the Atlantic to lose one whit of its reputation as the highest exponent of pure literature among our popular magazines.

The Rev. Dr. William Dudley Powers has just published through the B. F. Johnson Co., of Richmond, a volume of dialect poems entitled "Uncle Isaac." The book is marked by its psychological insight into negro character, by its humor and pathos, and by the fact that the dialect employed does not unnecessarily tax the patience of the reader. Many writers of dialect poetry and fiction seem to think that they must prove themselves to be philological specialists. As a matter of fact the only real service rendered by dialect is the production of illusion. An air of verisimilitude is given by it to the poem or tale, and thus the reader is impressed with the truthfulness of what he is reading, while, in consequence, its other qualities, beauty, pathos, and the like, take better hold upon him. Dialect, per se, is often very unlovely, and should be eschewed but for the reasons given above. Mr. Hardy has perceived this fact and has employed dialect in his stories merely to an amount sufficient to produce the desired illusion. Dr. Powers, too, seems to have borne this excellent rule in mind, and hence his verses are easily read. But after all the main cause of his success lies in the fact that he understands the negro as only those Southerners can do who knew him before the downfall of the Old South.

One of the most important philosophical works that have recently come to our table is entited "Naturalism and Agnosticism" (Macmillan), being the Gifford lectures delivered before the University of Aberdeen, in the years 1896-98, by James Ward, Sc.D., Professor of Mental Philosophy and

Logic in the University of Cambridge. The two volumes are naturally not easy reading, but they contain as fair an analysis of the claims of the agnostic philosophy, if such a term be applicable, as we have ever read from the pen of a theist; for a consistent theist Prof. Ward is. Finding neither materialism nor dualism tenable, he considers a spiritualistic monism "the one stable position. It is only in terms of mind that we can understand the unity, activity, and regularity that nature presents. In so understanding we see that Nature is Spirit."

The work is divided into five parts, the first three of which are devoted to an examination of naturalism, and its refutation as a satisfying philosophical system. Thirteen lectures are thus employed. Part IV., containing four lectures, is similarly concerned with dualism. In the last part we have three constructive lectures, setting forth the claims of spiritualistic monism. Dr. Ward's style is singularly clear when the abstruse nature of his subject is considered, and we are sure that no one at all interested in metaphysics can read his stimulating introductory lecture without feeling impelled to undertake the task of finishing the voluminous work. The labor will be lightened not infrequently, strange to say, by a touch of humor, as, for example, that applied to Dr. Hicks and the equation of continuity. (Vol. I., p. 146.)

One of the best recent volumes of American verse is Mr. Arlo Bates's "Under the Beech Tree," which Houghton, Mifflin & Co. have just published. Mr. Bates has all the graces of style that we now expect even minor verse writers to possess, but he has also something that is quite rare at present: the power of doing well fairly sustained work. The long pieces in this volume are the best. They are three in number and are all in dramatic form. The last, which gives the volume its title, is full of romance and a quiet beauty, which we commend to our readers.

Oscar Wilde was known as a poet before he became notorious as a criminal. He has recently combined his two rôles

in a small volume entitled, "The Ballad of Reading Goal by C. 3, 3," the nom de plume being his prison number (New York, Benjamin R. Tucker). The subject of these verses is an unpleasant one, being no less than the feelings experienced by Wilde and his fellow-prisoners at the execution of a murderer, whose doom had been foreseen for weeks and whose newly made grave confronted them one morning in the prison yard. The style is occasionally quite powerful, though reminding us too often perhaps of Coleridge. But it is neither style nor subject that most concerns the reader, but rather his own feeling of horror at the brutality which even at the end of this humanitarian century still characterizes our treatment of prisoners.

A book so well known as the late John Addington Symonds's "An Introduction to the Study of Dante" needs no commendation twenty-eight years after its first publication. It is interesting to note, however, that a fourth edition has become necessary. This has been supplied by Messrs. Adam & Charles Black, for whom the Macmillan Company are the American agents. Mr. Horatio F. Brown, who has done so much for Symonds's posthumous fame, contributes a short prefatory note. It is needless to say that the volume is given us in a most attractive form.

We have on our table Hamlin Garland's "The Trail of the Gold Seekers," "Educational Aims and Values," by Prof. Paul H. Hanus; "John Milton," by W. P. Trent; Storr's the "Life of R. H. Quick," which we shall review in our next issue; and three new volumes of the Temple reprint of North's translation of Plutarch-all from the Macmillan Company. We have also Florida-Its History and Romance," by George R. Fairbanks, M.A. (Jacksonville: H. & W. B. Drew Company)-a book of which we shall endeavor to give an adequate notice later.

We take pleasure in publishing the following communica