Punch.

Mr. Frederick Orin Bartlett already has a novel of mystery to his credit, and may, therefore, be held as having fulfilled one of the ends of existence for the present American writer of fiction, but in his "The Seventh Noon," the mystery, although good, is subordinate to an ethical problem just now under the consideration of doctors of divinity and doctors of medicine, the question as to whether suicide is justifiable in the case of a human being who seems equally valueless to his race and to himself. To these features a love story and a family curse are added, and the result is a book of uncommon power, and as far superior to "The Web of the Golden Spider" as that tale was superior to "Joan of the Alley." Mr. Bartlett has found his true plane. "The Seventh Noon" is a story that will probably live; that will certainly be successful in its day. Small, Maynard & Co.

The Rev. Dr. Charles Reynolds Brown has the advantage in writing "Faith and Healing" of knowing precisely what Christian Science is, as he studied it under Mrs. Eddy herself and he rejects its teachings; also, although a clergyman he has no sympathy with the Emmanuel movement, deprecating its committal of the sick to the care of the untrained howsoever pious in intention. His own theory is that the resources of the soul and mind properly used have great healing virtue but he by no means minimizes the beneficent power of religion properly exerted through the media by which its operations are legitimately conducted. Like Mr. Henry Wood, he values the influences of wise and consolatory texts privately repeated and he gives eight groups selected with great care and well tested for the use of those unable to select for themselves. The book seems in every way well adapted to

comfort and aid those who need it, and will stand high in a group daily growing larger. T. Y. Crowell & Co.

It is the good fortune of Mr. Jacques Futrelle that the newly discovered African diamond mines should have familiarized ordinary readers with the thought of the results of any accident which might flood the diamond market with choice stones, for his "The Diamond Master" tells of a man who suddenly sets the five principal diamond merchants of the United States face to face with the possibility of having a billion in gems flung upon the market at once. Prepared by the discussion as to the mines in German Africa, any reader will instantly perceive the gravity of the position, and gradually is brought to the point of accepting the belief that a diamond manufactory is possible. Then the reader takes Balzac from the shelf and notes the difference between the scientific theories of diamond manufacture, when "The Alchemist" was written, and the latest schemes evolved, and perceives that science has made long strides since the Frenchman's day. Between the two mysteries, the great diamonds and the murder, the "Diamond Master" is as amusing a romance as could be desired. Bobbs, Merrill Co.

Mrs. Fenollosa has written a Japanese story in which the heroine is the daughter of the American ambassador and is accompanied through its incidents by her father, and one of his secretaries. Mr. Hollis Godfrey has published a novel in which figures the inventor of a device giving a man power to destroy a battleship noiselessly and instantaneously. The woman who is willing to sacrifice honor and life for Japan has figured in more than one American and English book, and all of these details are included in Miss Hallie Erminie Rives's "The Kingdom of

Slender Swords," together with a “palpitant rail," the "aching beauty” of a landscape, many similar verbal gems, and a ruthless use of the physical aspect, and part of the life of the late Lafcadio Hearn to equip one of the personages. Still, although one would prefer a smaller quantity of familiar matter it must be owned that Miss Rives combines it amusingly, and the aeroplane battle of her hero is better than anything in "Virginia of the Air Lanes" and those who read but few novels will find hers remarkable. Bobbs-Merrill Company.

Ill-considered alms-giving has for some years been so seriously reprehended that the penurious can, if they so will, find excellent excuse for refraining from benefactions of every kind. Miss Mary Conyngton's "How to Help" furnishes some that are very good, even while it expounds the need of generosity and kindness, but its last word, like that of everything written by those who practise true philanthropy is "Give thyself." Once sure of fulfilling that precept one is steeled to endure the sorrows beheld and to tolerate the evil with meekness. Miss Conyngton's book was first published three years ago, and it has been revised and enlarged as experience and the adoption of new methods have seemed to recommend, and it remains one of the best if not the best of the manuals teaching the general principles of organized benevolence. The need of a manual to warn quite as much as to teach the would-be ministrant to poverty; to show him the exceeding complexity of a task which looks so simple in the light of the New Testament, so sweetly romantic in the English novel and so very becoming in the columns of the newspaper "special" can hardly be exaggerated, and the organizers and conductors of the scores of private philanthropies do not need to be told of

the excellences of Miss Conyngton's work. The Macmillan Company.

The publication, in one season, and within a few weeks of each other, of two books so nearly identical in title as Dr. Stalker's "The Ethic of Jesus" and President Henry C. King's "The Ethics of Jesus" cannot fail to be a little confusing both to booksellers and bookbuyers; but it serves to show the increasing attention which is being given to this subject, and it affords an interesting opportunity for a comparison of views. Dr. Stalker's work was reviewed in The Living Age for January 8th. President King's book, which is published by the Macmillan Company, is less comprehensive than Dr. Stalker's and is different in form, but agrees with it in its general conclusions. It was given, in substance, in six lectures last year upon the William Belden Noble foundation at Harvard University, and is somewhat marred for the general reader by the close analysis, skeleton outlines, text-groupings and occasional repetitions incident to its original presentation. President King confines his survey even more strictly than Dr. Stalker to the synoptic gospels, but his method of analysis is different. He passes under review, first, the twelve passages which Schmiedel describes as "the foundation pillars" of a really scientific life of Jesus; next the "doubly-attested sayings" which Burkitt catalogues, which inIclude the words of Christ found in the common source of Matthew and Luke as well as in Mark; and then, in order, the ethical passages found in the two oldest sources, those peculiar to either Matthew or Luke and those contained in the sermon on the mount. The volume appears in Professor Shailer's series of "New Testament Handbooks."

Mr. William Lyon Phelps in his "Essays on Modern Novelists" (The Mac

of

millan Co.) writes with gravity and no sentimentalism except possibly in the case of Mark Twain, whose position in American letters he rates somewhat higher than the critics are disposed to set it, calling him "our foremost American writer." То consider Mark Twain's work as a novelist is to assume unnecessary trouble. Of the other authors of whom Mr. Phelps writes, Mr. Howells is the only American, and in his case the critic's vision is undimmed by the glare of publicity cast upon his author in recent years, and he estimates and compares his earlier and later work with entire indifference to the mandate proclaiming the superiority of his later manner to that by which he won his early readers. Bjornsterne Bjornson, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Herman Sudermann are so generally read in translation as to be forces in American life but Mr. Phelps estimates them as one familiar with European literature, some which he incidentally criticizes, and here again one finds him quietly unmoved by loud proclamations as to the amazing merit of foreign gentlemen with a mission to reform American morals, and to inform the American mind. Mr. De Morgan, Mr. Hardy, Mr. Ollivant, Mr. Kipling and Mrs. Ward, with Blackmore and Stevenson are his English subjects and the last two are by no means left undisturbed in their niches as popular idols. In Mr. De Morgan he recognizes the one novelist in that group of contemporary writers who have recently begun to produce work evidently the effect of deep religious feeling, and he compares the various characters of his group of novels. The spontaneous freshness and liveliness of the work will give it additional influence among the undergraduates whom it would naturally attract, and will be agreeable to older readers. It is to be hoped that the book will not be neglected in any of the educational

institutions in which the novel is regarded as a matter in which the young have a right to guidance. The complete lists of books written by the authors discussed is an excellent feature, and one cannot but trust that future critics will imitate Mr. Phelps in introducing similar lists into their books.

Mr. Hartley Burr Alexander's "Odes on the Generations of Man" is announced as "marked by dignity of theme, splendor of imagery, and varied music in rhythm and phrase," and the statement is perfectly true. The poem has nine divisions, a Prelude, a Postlude, five Odes and two Interludes. The genesis and development of man and his approach to his high destiny are the subjects. How they are treated is best shown by the citation of this passage describing the resurrection of the heathen gods:

They arise

From the dark burials of the nations: From plain and mountain, from desert

and from field

Like ghostly monarchs from a tomb long sealed,

They arise

These living dead, mid echoing sound Of olden supplications:

Isis and her lord Osiris bound

In mummying cerements;

Thoth, of the hawklike head,
Bearing the mystic Book that read
Unto the living the secrets of the dead;
And out of the Orient, the azure queen,
Astarte of the skies, serene

Above her horned altars, with the

sweet

Of myrrh and frankincense.

And the multitudinous bleat

Of bullocks honored, she of Ind,

Kali, the black passing like a wind
With blight and pestilence;

And the giant ape, red Hanuman her mate,

In might immortal and immortal hate Ormazd and Ahriman warring light with night;

And Mithras, the conqueror who gave
The blood baptism of the cave
Men's souls to save.

They arise

Mid echoing supplications;
Prayers and cries

Of men in strait of battle, ecstasies
Of saints, and the deeptoned call
Of prophets prophesying over all
The devastation of a kingdom's fall."

An occasional mannerism mars the perfection of the verse, but how often does one meet odes like these? And of whom does this remind one, if not of the word master who left the world the poorer for his loss last year?

"Awake! for the white pillared porches
Of dawn are flung open to-day!
And the jubilant voices of morning
With laughter and boisterous warning,
On, on through the azuring arches
Summon away!"

The spirit of Arnold and Swinburne, the Greek tranquility of one, the Greek keenness of the other are not Mr. Alexander's however. He is of to-day, of the age which tries to gather all the past, and to bring it into a perspective, with reference to understanding the present. Yet he sings of the spirit as it nears its time for release from the "too mortal sense,"

The leaven

Of beauty within the spirit burning
Summons. her ever higher,-
Yea as the stars inspire

The plangent waves that leap with ceaseless yearning

Sonorously to heaven."

This is poetry. Baker & Taylor Company.