everything solid is melting into a thinner element with which you also might blend, and in which you and the things of the earth might enter on some new mode of existence.

When you come home from your walk you will find that the woodman and keeper, the shepherd and waterman have found their own ways of turning the bad weather to account. They trouble not about speculation, but they know how to improve the hours that do not shine; and they generally have some corner where they can make a fire and do some repairs to their respective kinds of gear.

The Outlook.

"Mending their nets" is not a fisherman's job only; making a new handle or "stale" for an axe or rake, and doing it leisurely with much use of the pocket knife or spokeshave; sharpening the knives of the turnip-cutter, splicing a broken oar or punt pole, or refixing a damaged rowlock-all these and half a hundred more by-works are ready to hand to make up the charm of bad weather, and prove that to the wise man there is no such thing at all, but that everything is good in its season and it is merely a question of knowing how to use whatever weather the clerk of this department ordains.

Industry: a Study of Business Organization." The author traces throughout the past twenty-five years the modern movement towards industrial combination in all its forms. The book concludes with some general economic criticisms, and is in the main analytic and descriptive. An appendix of illustrative documents is included.

M. Francis Charmes, the successor of Ferdinand Brunetière as editor-in-chief of the Revue des Deux Mondes, is a native of Aurillac (Cantal), where he was born in 1848, and is a politician and journalist rather than a literary critic. He was for some years a leading member of the staff of the Journal des Débates, and, in addition to a number of public appointments, has been several times elected to the French Chamber of Deputies. In 1893 he published a volume of historical and other studies.

Messrs. Kegan Paul will publish this month a new and exhaustive work on the Egyptian Sudan, by Dr. Wallis Budge. He went on three missions to the Sudan on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, and was engaged in excavations there. The work is not only a history of the Sudan from the earliest times to the present day, but also gives full and interesting descriptions of its monuments and inhabitants. It is profusely illustrated with photographs, many of them taken by the author.

E. P. Dutton & Co. have just published in their "Library of Early English Novelists," "The Monk," by M. G. Lewis, edited, and with an Introduction by E. A. Baker, M.A.; in the same "Library" a volume of "Early English Prose Romances," edited by Wm. J. Thomas, with Introduction by Henry Morley. The volume contains, among others, "The History of Reynard the

Fox," "Robert the Deuyll," "The Pleasant History of Tom A. Lincoln," "The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faust"; in the "London Library," two volumes of "Letters of Literary Men," one from Sir Thomas More to Robert Burns, and the other "The Nineteenth Century."

St. Deiniol's Library at Hawarden was formally opened January 3d. The new wing, recently completed, has accommodation for seventeen visitors, as well as for a warden and his assistant. Here the bookishly inclined may retire for a season. And here, at a very moderate cost, he may enjoy the advantages of a fine library situated in a beautiful part of the country. About £60,000 has been devoted to this admirable scheme. £40,000 was provided by Mr. Gladstone himself, £10.000 by his sons and daughters, and £10,000 by the nation. It is a noble memorial to one who found his chief recreation in the study of literature. The Library numbers thirty-seven thousand vol

umes.

"The Malefactor" of E. Phillips Oppenheim's latest novel is an Englishman of good family and traditions who submits to a sentence of fifteen years' penal servitude for manslaughter without urging the extenuating circumstances which would have compromised the reputation of his victim's wife, and returns to freedom changed beyond the recognition of his friends, possessed of accumulated resources, and bent-somewhat inconsistentlyon revenging himself on society for its injustice. The working out of his purpose outlines the plot, which is as sensational as Mr. Oppenheim's public expects and some shades more unsavory. Pot- and caldron-boiling though such work may be, the literary critic need not take it seriously. Little, Brown & Co.

Some of the recent finds in Egypt are among the most important which it has fallen to the lot of excavators there to make. In one day nine texts were discovered. Several of these are entirely new, including new odes of Pindar, parts of the lost tragedy of Euripides on Hypsipyle, parts of a new Greek historian, and of a commentary on the second book of Thucydides, the second half of the Symposium, and portions of two manuscripts of the "Phædrus" of Plato, of the "Panegyricus" of Isocrates, and the speech of Demosthenes against Bootus. The Pindar manuscript was of about A.D. 100, and was written on the back of a census, which fortunately assisted in the assembling of detached fragments. The identity of the poet was disclosed by coincidences in other Pindaric fragments.

The London Publishers' Circular publishes as usual an analytical table of the output of books during 1906. The general result is stated as follows:"The total number of new books reported during 1906 is 6,985-only 168 more than in 1905. Theological books, in spite of an increase of fifty in November, show a decrease of eight on the year. Educational works are

over a hundred more, as also are political and commercial books and reprinted novels. New novels and juvenile works show an increase of 375. Law books, books on the arts and sciences, and new biographical and historical works, have not been quite so numerous as in 1905. In Belles Lettres our 1905 table showed an increase of more than a hundred; this one shows a decrease of seventy-four. A slight decrease is shown in books on travel and geography, also in poetical and dramatical works."

The fourth instalment-volumes 156 to 205 of "Everyman's Library" will be published by E. P. Dutton & Co.

in a few days. A peculiarly interesting volume is an edition of Lincoln's Speeches, edited by Mr. Bryce. This would have been a happy selection any way, in view of Mr. Bryce's studies of American institutions and acquaintance with American public men; but it is especially so now as Mr. Bryce succeeds Sir Mortimer Durand as England's representative at Washington. In the department of fiction "The Old Curiosity Shop" is added to the Dickens series and "Framley Parsonage" follows "Barchester Towers" in the re production of Trollope. Among weightier works are Dennis's "Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria," 2 vols.; Finlay's "Greece under the Romans"; Grote's "History of Greece," 12 vols., edited by a Fellow of Balliol; and Thierry's "Norman Conquest," 2 vols.

One of the early books in England this season will be Sir Hubert Jerningham's account of his travels from England to India, and thence to Japan. Manchuria, and Korea, which Mr. Murray is to publish under the title "From East to West: Notes by the Way." The author explains that the special objects of his journey were to study Japan "before it is wholly spoiled by success, as it might well be in the next generation," and to visit the scenes of the battles by land and sea in the war with Russia, especially Port Arthur. Sir Hubert Jerningham and his companions, who included Lord Leitrim, were received in most places by Japanese officers in high command, who had taken part in the fighting; and the Japanese Government provided for their transport throughout. The personal diary of a Japanese naval officer, "Before Port Arthur in a Destroyer," which has been translated from the Spanish edition by Captain R. Grant, D.S.O., is expected from Mr. Murray about the same time.

HYMN FOR THE HEALING OF
STRIFE.

[Written on the day of the declaration
of Peace after the South African War.]
Heroes of Hampden's race, and ye
The brave of Arteveldé's blood,
Twin nations of the Northern Sea,
Come bind the bonds of brotherhood.
O long we fought the feud of kin:
Shall pride perpetuate the score?
Who first forgive, they only win:

Let fall your arms, and fight no more!

Each would be master, both waxed wroth,

And hot for conquest flung the glove: Let none seek mastery now; but both Make haste to bind the bonds of love!

And build the realm for which they strove,

Rearing to praise the deathless dead
Sweet living monuments of love.

Scions of Wycliffe's race and ye
The heroes of Erasmus' blood,
Unite your land in liberty,
And bind the bonds of brotherhood!
Newman Howard.

The Spectator.

A SONG OF SELF.

From this most lonely place

I watch the great world go her careless way;

For me, I walk all day

As one that holds a mirror to his face,