Dr. James Stalker's little volume on "The Atonement" presents three lectures which were delivered some months ago at Inverness. Modest as the book is in size-containing but a little more than 100 pages-it is marked by the same thoroughness of scholarship and reverent spirit which characterize the author's more extended works "Imago Christi" and "The Ethic of Jesus." It treats a difficult and much-disputed subject with admirable clearness and force, and the conclusions which it reaches are presented not as subjects of controversy, but as grounds of faith. The author's method is characteristic, for, instead of taking the subject chronologically by considering first the Old Testament prophecies, he begins with "The New Testament Situation" considering the place there given to the death of Christ in the presentation of Christianity, and then passes to a review of the Old Testament foreshadowings of that death because these had helped to form the beliefs of the contemporaries of Jesus; and concludes with "The Modern Justi

fication" of the doctrine which he finds taught in the New and foreshadowed in the Old Testament. A. C. Armstrong & Son, publishers.

The life of an Englishwoman belonging to one of the great political families, to whom concern with public affairs is as natural an inheritance as influence upon the passing mode, cannot fail to furnish the material for fascinating reminiscence, no matter how unassuming the individual may be. "The Correspondence of Priscilla, Countess of Westmorland, 1813-1870". fulfils the promise of the volume of her letters published in 1893, with an array of correspondents fairly dazzling. De Stael, Metternich, Talleyrand, the princess who was to become the Em

queens, royal duchesses, emperors, English and Continental notabilities follow one another in bewildering array, each with a story to tell to the quiet wife and mother. The book abounds in piquancy, and the explanation of little details which every page spontaneously reveals throws new light on many a half-understood passage of history. E. P. Dutton & Co.

Subtlety is seldom the note of a book written in English, and E. L. Voynich's "An Interrupted Friendship" will have extraordinary novelty for those unfamiliar with the author's former novels. For those acquainted with them, the newcomer will seem unusual, inasmuch as the physical suffering with which it abounds is chiefly borne by the blameless, instead of by persons to whose pain the natural man was at best indifferent. The general effect of those stories was to leave one cynically calm, and perfectly willing that any or all of the characters should undergo "something painful in boiling oil." The chief characters of "An Interrupted Friendship" are a French Marquis upon whom

the Revolution has left its mark in memories of terror; his daughter, crippled in babyhood by the carelessness of a stupid servant, and a conspirator with his body transformed into an engine of torture by the ingenuity of various police and military officials. About these tragic figures are grouped the son of the marquis, a delicately honorable, exquisitely sensitive young man, reared in England in ignorance of his sister's misfortune but devoted to her from the moment of its revelation to him, and silently spending the best years of his life in the endeavor to give her proper medical treatment, and a multitude of utterly innocent virtuous marplots whose piety is entirely ineffective in this world, and no one of these hapless creatures understands

the others. The tale begins quietly enough and slowly submerges the reader in quicksands of calamity whence there is no rescue, and above which broods an unlifting fog of mystery; and not once does the author's hold relax, not once is a character inconsistent, or weakly characterized, although not one is described completely, much less in minute details. Only Mrs. Voynich can produce this effect, which is much more powerful than that of Count Tolstoy's angry complaints against fate and faithful policemen. Mrs. Voynich does not implore the wrath of Heaven against those who cause the suffering; she simply exhibits the immense field of its ramifications. The reader makes the invocation to relieve his mind. The Macmillan Company.

The revival of the morris-dance, carefully adorned with a capital initial, for the confusion of counsel, has turned the attention of the casual antiquary to the days of Elizabeth, and Mr. Henry Thew Stevenson's "The Elizabethan People" will be more widely and intelligently read than it would have been had it appeared earlier, but, in any case, it could hardly have been neglected. No man with an imagination refrains from commending such a book to his neighbors, and one commendation suffices for such a volume. Naturally, the book abounds in descriptions of customs, but the author's purpose is to show the temperament in which those customs were bred; the rough, coarsely jesting, spendthrift, brave, not too industrious Elizabethan holiday keeper and breaker of fasts, to whom everyday and all day brought amusement and material for good talk from the crowd of other moving specks in the stream of life. It must be owned that while reading this descriptive work one perceives that one is more nearly akin in spirit to the least

of the little ones among the newly civilized races than to this impressive ancestral figure and this is not a little humiliating. In this illuminating humiliation lies the very great value of the work to simple folk who, without being scholars, love knowledge and reverence wisdom. The shock of being compelled to see that instead of affeetion for Amyas Leigh, Francis Drake, Salvation Yeo, scorn of Leicester, and pity for Amy Robsart one has been cherishing a sentimental attachment for one's own twentieth century self, disguised in Elizabethan clothes, is a good lesson. After accepting it, one reads Mr. Stephenson again. "The Elizabethan People" is ilustrated by many portraits in which the author carefully indicates marked features of costume; and by pictures of games, curious buildings and interiors, and in almost every one examination will disclose interesting details bearing upon subjects quite remote from the point which the picture is especially intended to illuminate. Indeed, the pictures repay long study. The author modestly says that his book is intended to be no more than a foot note to the great Elizabethan writings, but it is a warrant of admission to a new world, and moreover it will thoroughly cure any mistaken soul who has vaguely regretted that he was not born into the England of those great writings. All the magnificence of the Elizabethan intellectual product would be but poor compensation for the hourly discomforts, the almost incessant shocks to charity and decency. One sees not only her subjects and her realm but Elizabeth herself in a new light when one closes the volume and turns his back forever on the merry England of his uninstructed fancy and criticism of Elizabethan work. He does not deny its merriment but he prefers to meet only the select company of his favorite authors in future. Henry Holt & Co.