twelve already specified being less than half the total number. One of the other fourteen is Thomas Cole's wood-engraving from Constable's •' The HayWain'1 and six of them are found, with many smaller ones, in the current instalment of Morley's "Cromwell." In an article on " The Commercial Ascendancy of the United States," the Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Commissioner of Labor, hazards the guess that in exports for the year ending March 31 last, America has at last surpassed her greatest rival, England. RICHARD HARDING DAVIS'S " The Relief of Ladysmith in the July Scriener's is probably the most brilliant piece of war correspondence since his famous story of the fight at Las Guásimas. He gives a vivid impression of the ways of living, the privations, suffering, and the constant danger in the besieged city, and of the fine spirit of endurance that enabled its defenders to hold out until the last. He shows, too, how difficult it was for the advanc ing column under General Buller to make its way through the surrounding hills that afforded the Boers an almost impregnable natural defence, and describes the stirring scenes attending the entrance into the city of the relief column. The illustrations are from photograghs of the city and of the country about. THE July "New Lippincoit" is primarily a summerstory number. The complete novel, called " An Anti-Climax," is a story of modern society in a swell suburb by Ellen Olney Kirk. Many remember "The Story of Margaret Kent," by the same pen, which achieved so great a success several years ago, and in this later work Mrs. Kirk bids fair to excel her earlier one. The first of five extraordinarily good short stories is notably Marion Harland's college tale " As a Dream when one Awaketh." This special graduation happens to be at Rutgers, but the incident might occur any day at any college, so it appeals to us all and is intensely interesting. " A Monk from the Ghetto," by a new writer of much originality, Martha Wolfenstein, may be considered an antithesis to Maarten Maartens's story, " The Little Christian," which appeared in "Lippincotfs" several months ago and stirred up quite a contro versy. The lifelong friendship between a Catholic priest and a Jew is the key-note of the plot. " Damnabilissimus Juvenis," by Beulah Marie Dix. is a thrilling tale of Roundhead times, with a hero who found that knowledge of Latin saved his neck in time of danger. " How Willett Wooed the Widow,1' by Samuel Minturn Peck, is a laughable story on the subject indicated by the title, and will serve as a warning—or an example— to those who are going to do likewise. " The Giant's Golf " is a clever
skit by Henry Wallace Phillips. This is a quite new treatment of a familiar subject.
WHAT SHALL WE READ? Everyone is asking for some reliable work on the crisis in China. About the only book yet issued on the subject is Reinsch's World Politics published last month by the Macmillan Company. Accord ing to a well-known American writer this gives the very best account of affairs in China he has seen. He says: "It couldn't have been better if it had been specially prepared for this crisis. The account of the present condition of the country is full, interesting and dispassionate; the report of the concessions to the Powers and their relative claims and privileges admirable. One gets a comprehensive view of the whole situation. There is a host of people who want such a book as this." That Mrs. Steel's Voices in the Night • is a faith ful picture of the condition of modern Indian life with its confused mingling of opposed civiliza tions, no one can doubt; but in portraying complex social conditions she has given us a rather complex and confused story. Her novel is merely a mirror in which there is no focusing of the diffused material of real life into the unity of a plot. The characters are strong and clearly drawn, and the descriptions of Indian society are vivid and con vincing, but character and episode alike are blurred and confused by a mass of unnecessary details. The background is uncertain and shifting and she is unable clearly to set over against it the actors in the foreground. They fade away and become merely part of a great changing disorganized spectacle, and yet the spectacle is in itself so inter esting and massive that the story, in spite of its defects, holds the attention and interest. At the beginning Mrs. Steel apologizes to the reader for attempting " to play the Chromatic Fantasia of India on a penny whistle." It would have been better if she had apologized for attempting to play it upon an orchestra too large for her control. The author of The Columbian and Venezuelan Republics ' had exceptional opportunities for study'VoiCES IN THE NIGHT, a Chromatic Fantasia. By Flora Annie Steel. The Macmillan Company, New York. 1900. Cloth. $1.50. •THE COLUMBIAN AND VENEZUELAN REPUBLICS with notes on other parts of Central and South America. By William L. Scruggs, late Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States to Colum bia and Venezuela. With maps and illustrations. 8vo. $2.50.
