iron-foundries and Manchurian battlefields and leave him at the end possessed without effort of the essential features of one of the most important problems of the time. Messrs. Methuen are the publishers.

Dr. George M. Gould has published, through P. Blakiston's Son & Co. of Philadelphia, two more volumes of his "Biographic Clinics," in which he traces the connection between longcontinued eye-strain and various forms of disease, and illustrates his theme by studies of the cases of eminent men and women of letters and others whose lives have been shortened and made miserable by eyestrain and its consequences. The books are forcefully written, in a manner which appeals quite as much to laymen as to the profession, and the author's theory is buttressed by a large amount of convincing evidence. If Dr. Gould's vigorous preaching of this theory serves to direct attention to the close connection between visual defects and disease in many acute and distressing forms, he may be reckoned a benefactor.

M. Jean Finot's "Race Prejudice," which E. P. Dutton & Co. publish in a translation by Florence Wade-Evans, is a serious and scientific contribution to the discussion of a subject which is too often treated with unreasoning passion. The author examines with care the grounds upon which the theory of an enduring inequality of races rests, studies the distinctive characteristics which are based on the head, hair and color of the skin, considers the character and significance of physiological and pathological differences, traces the effects of cross-breeding, examines historically the origins of races, and, closing with a chapter upon the negro, gives an emphatic negative to the question "Are there peoples condemned to remain eternally inferior to

others?" The conclusion which he reaches is that the very term race i only a product of our mental activities. and that races as irreducible categories only exist as fictions in our brains. With whatever prejudices the reader may approach this book, he can scarcely fail to respect its scientific breadth and thoroughness and the temper in which it is written.

The

It is many a day since there has been published a book of travel so fresh, so vivacious and so well worth the reading as Miss Gertrude Lowthian Bell's "The Desert and the Sown" (E. P. Dutton & Co.) Every page has its interest, of description, of characterization or of incident. It tells the story of a recent Syrian journey, starting from Jerusalem, and leading through the country east of the Jordan to the Jebel-ed-Druz, and thence through Damascus, Homs, Hama, Aleppo, and Antioch to the coast at Iskenderun. route followed is shown upon a large folding map, and scattered through the book are perhaps one hundred and fifty illustrations from photographs, some of them full-page and others printed with the text. These pictures cover a wide range of subject and add both to the piquancy and the value of the book. The author must have had an adventurous spirit to attempt such a journey unattended save by Arab servants aud muleteers. That she has also a tolerance and a capacity for sympathy not common among Occidentals is shown by the vividness with which she de scribes native customs, habits of thought and political conditions. Her Arabs and Druzes are very much alive. and their talk, as she reproduces it. is unstrained and natural. There is a sufficient index. The book might have been made still more alluring by the use of page-headings or at least of chapter-headings, but that is a smal matter of detail.

FROM THE CAPE TO CAIRO.

From Capetown's mountain minster, from Durban's lake of sleep, The steeds of steel are hasting, their inland tryst to keep,

From Inyak and Algoa, from rock

barr'd Buffalo,

For wheresoe'er the white men fare those steeds of steel must go.

Their manes are thick with vapor, their breath with steam and fire,

Their feet are shod with iron-swift feet that never tireWith harness as of war-horse in metall'd mail they shine,

Yet may not cease on tasks of peace to tread their measured line.

Across the tawny desert that slender thread is flung,

O'er arch'd and column'd granite the bridge of bronze is hung, Beneath the Rainbow Forest 'tis washed with torrent spray. And thro' the sand, one burning band, sparkles the living way.

Scarce from the beaten pathway hath the lean lion fled;

Still the baboon stands barking on ridges overhead;

The savage, in dark gorges where

gaunt hyenas lurk,

With the set face of stoic race watches the wizard work.

All by the wild Hex River is hewn the upward track,

Where midnight from black basalt takes on a deeper black;

On the Karroo's wide reaches is stretched the ringing rail; And the wan day dawns faint and gray o'er grass-veld parched and pale.

Climb, climb, ye highland horses, the tryst is further yet!

The seal of boundless purpose upon your course is set:

With gold of greater Ophirs than Tyre

or Sheba knew,

Ye bear the spoil of wine and oil, till one great dream come true.

Then, when the ways lie open, and North and South are one,

Choose of your swiftest racers that new-built path to run;

Like plume above his forehead let the high torch be lit,

A sign to show what pilgrims go where the dark races sit.

By silent Tanganyika the thunderwheel shall beat,

By all the land-bound waters shall press those flaming feet. Shall pierce the central forests for many an endless mile, Burst with their freight thro' Egypt's gate and race beside the Nile.

The old gods lie in slumber, with lotus on their lids;

They couch beneath the shadow of purple pyramids.

The young god leaps among them, the god of wheels and links.

Who lives by speed and may not heed the riddle of the Sphinx.

The counterpart of Endor is not very difficult to find. Incantations, though of the mild modern sort, are now as common in the West as they were in the East in the days of King Saul; a singular fact arising from that greater knowledge which proves to be more dangerous than the little knowledge of antiquity and the Middle Ages. The marvels of X-rays and of wireless telegraphy are answerable for much of this paradoxical reaction; it seems to be taken for granted that these material wonders justify the wildest supernatural theories. Telepathy, as expounded by public and private professors, may be all so much rubbish (some of us think it is) but to many minds it is the natural sequence of Marconi's discovery; and so with all the rest. If we can see a penny through a purse, why should we not be able to see the departed come through the door? The reasoning is ridiculously faulty, but the inference is neverthless widely entertained by those who know no logic and could not use it if they did.

In the old times peoples knew less but were far more certain of the little they did know. We now drift rudderless on an ocean of knowledge, asking hope. lessly what is the meaning of it all, whence do we come and where do we go? But from king to peasant not a man asked such questions in the Middle Ages. They knew better. They were absolutely certain of three things of which we seem to know next to nothing now. There was this present life to begin with, not a maze of riddles and puzzles as it is to us, but an easily understood existence of hard blows, hard eating, and hard drinking, within the fifty miles or so which represented the world to them. Then followed the life to come in heaven or hell. It never occurred to them to ar

gue that last unpleasantness away; they would as soon have dreamt of doubting the iron they stood up in. The Devil's pitchfork was as absolute an entity to them as their own agricultural implements. When they saw the arch-enemy himself, as they frequently did, they were never astonished, for why should they not see him? He frightened them, that was all. He frightened them once to good purpose indeed, when against all rules and precedents he went to church, a risk which, to our knowledge, he never ran before or since. On Sunday, October 21st, 1638, he entered the parish church of Widdecombe in Devon and dragged therefrom a boy who was asleep, disappearing in a sudden and violent thunderstorm. Of his identity there could be no doubt, for, asking his way at a roadside inn, he drank a glass of ale which hissed and spluttered down his throat. Of all the discrepancies of this well-attested case the good folk of the seventeenth century took no heed; the only point in dispute was this: he evidently did not know his way to Widdecombe, and it could not therefore be his home, as was too often and too recklessly asserted by the enemies of Devon,-their neighbors of Cornwall, to wit.

As a properly complicated theological argument this contradiction held the field for a long time, on stormy nights and on desolate moors where even the Devil is better than nothing in the way of visitors from the outer world; but before laughing too much at such quaint survivals of ancient faith, we should first of all try to determine whether belief in the Devil can be rightly described as superstition. fundamental part of Christianity, the spirit of evil and its manifestations can never be ranked with pixies, fairies,

As a

hobgoblins, and the minor demons that lurk under ladders, between crossed knives, and in the salt that is spilt. There is all the difference in the world between an orthodox belief for which our ancestors would have gone to the stake, and local traditions for which old women were pricked with pins or ducked in the pond.

It is true that in the gospel according to Sir Oliver Lodge the Devil is completely ignored, but in the older gospels the doctrine of his material existence and appearance is explicitly taught, and though it is not probable that he would appear to-day, say in a newspaper office in Fleet Street, to fly away with some too wide-awake editor, we cannot disprove the possibil ity of such an event from a religious point of view. If doubt is born within us, it is not because we are inclined to disbelief; it is because certain editors are still in their editorial chairs.

We have to confess, however, that Sir Oliver is not the only man for whom the arch-fiend has no more terrors. In this London of ours with its six millions of people, fairly representative of civilized mankind, there are dozens and dozens of haunted houses still; but is there one of the six millions, man, woman, or child, who ever by any chance hits upon the possibility of the Devil haunting the house? In the country there is a vast number of ancient abbeys and granges haunted by white ladies, crooked ghosts, shadowy hounds, or what not; but even in the country the Devil is as dead as Pan, and we are not a whit the better for it. Indeed it is a real loss. There was something virile and vigor ous in the superstitions of the Middle Ages, widely differing from the mawkish pseudo-scientific faith of those who now sit round tables, attend séances, look sheepishly at one another and whisper that "there must be something in it." They were stronger men who

saw the Devil; Luther threw his inkpot at him, for one.

The ordinary or common ghost stood, and stands, on another footing altogether. For one thing his intentions are not necessarily unfriendly; if he frightens us it is not his fault, for there cannot be a more harmless thing on earth. All about Redruth, when the country people see a ghost they say "Numny Dumny" and it goes away. "It is not at all necessary," says a humorous native of the delectable duchy. "to know what is meant by those words of dread; the ghost knows, which is quite enough." If our fathers had not been so wofully ignorant of ponderables and imponderables, of electrons and dynamics, they would have known how pitifully helpless even the most vindictive ghost must be when he comes to try what he can do. Of this we are now so certain that we go to the other extreme and encourage them as much as we can. Curiously enough, if a census were possible, it might be found that we are quite as unanimous in believing in ghosts as our forefathers were in the sixteenth or seventeenth century, with a notable difference, however. The ghost of yesterday is not the ghost of to-day. Our predecessors fainted or ran away when they saw one; if a necessitous necromancer tried to raise one, for a paltry fee which no respectable conjurer would now look at, they promptly burned him or put him on the rack. Now we are most anxious to see them; we coax them in all sorts of ways to come and be investigated, to show what they are made of, or what they can do. A duly authenticated spirit holding the Psychological Society's certificate, a reasonable, reliable spirit in short, willing to appear before the most inquisitive committee, would, commercially speaking. be worth its weight,-in gold we were about to say, but that would not be much. He or she, for we do not know