would support a family, the State is the poorer by the loss of so many citizens."

The London Daily News is opposed to emigration, and advises migration from the congested cities to the country, where "every rood of land" should maintain its man. In the words of the editorial:

"We fully appreciate the motives of men who, like General Booth, Mr. Carlile, of the Church Army, or the late Dr. Barnardo, have advocated the plan of sending able-bodied Englishmen to find a better chance in the colonies. But we believe that there ought to be a chance for every able-bodied Englishman in the home country. These men have just as much right to live in the land of their birth as have the peers and landlords who are rendering life so hard for the multitude. Under these circumstances we are not particularly concerned at the check which, judging by today's news, has retarded General Booth's latest scheme. After all, we have, staring us in the face, the object-lesson of Ireland, which has been ruined by this disastrous plan of substituting a system of emigration for a program of reform. For two and a half centuries the population of Ireland rose till, in 1841, it stood at the respectable figure of 8,196,000. To-day the population is under four and a half millions, solely because successive governments failed to secure the land for the people."

The London Times thinks that there is room for both the migration and emigration schemes as a remedy for the present condition of England and comments as follows:

"If 'General' Booth feels compelled to abandon his 5,000-families scheme, he is none the less intent upon carrying out his aims in other, if perhaps slower, ways. That is the important thing for the people whom he is helping to better conditions of existence. Nor does he seem to have entirely abandoned hope of carrying out the larger plan, altho he does not prosecute it for the moment. We can only hope that the obstacles, whatever they may be, will be removed from his path. Mr. Jesse Collings will not share that hope. He has long worked at planting men upon the land in this country, and that seems to him the only thing worth doing. There is abundance of room both for him and for 'General' Booth."

FRE

THE FRENCH OF CATHAY.

RENCH jurists, French naval specialists, French religionists, and French tailors all have become Japanese ideals, and have really been the founders of Japan's new national, political, naval, and sartorial life. So says a Japanese writer. For Japan is indebted for most of her recent progress to France. If the United States, to a very large extent, owed its independence to France, Japan literally and truly owes her entrance into the concert of nations to an illustrious Frenchman, announces Satori Kato, a Japanese lawyer, writing in La Revue (Paris). This illustrious Frenchman is Mr. Boissonade, whom the present writer calls" the Lafayette of Japan's history." He is indeed the father of the Japanese bench and bar, for all the most eminent lawyers of the country are his pupils. Moreover, he codified civil and criminal law in Japan on the basis of the Code Napoléon, and the courts of Tokyo are now counterparts of the courts at Paris, for the foundations of judiciary organizations are direct importations from France." Mr. Kato attributes the abolition of feudalism in Japan to the influence of Rousseau, and says:

"The 'Social Contract' of Rousseau was translated into Japanese a little later than 1870. The facts connected with the career of Robespierre and the drama of the Revolution are well known to the Japanese people, even to the lowest of them. And yet the people of Japan cherish toward the throne a profound feeling of loyalty in the true sense of the term. Nothing can impair their devotion to the reigning dynasty, altho they know how important is the liberty of the individual as it was defined by the French revolutionaries.

"The Restoration of 1868 resulted in the abolition of the feudal system, and established the political equality of the nobles, the Samurai, and the peasants. The abolition of the feudal system was in my belief a repetition of France's experience during the

revolutionary period. But the Japanese had no intention of changing the social foundations of their national life, altho in harmony with French ideas they have endeavored to keep within bounds the wealth and privileges of the feudal lords. I have no hesitation in saying that the New Japan was the creation of French influences." Japan also is the imitator of France in the matter of religious tolerance and the aversion to the idea of a State Church. She, however, has avoided our Edict of Nantes, a massacre of St. Bartholomew, and a revolutionary commune. Even by these France has taught her much. And in "questions still more vital to Japan," such as naval construction, France has been the teacher. In the words of Mr. Kato:

"It is true that we have organized our navy on an English. model, but it is to French engineers that we owe the construction of the fine arsenals which are a credit to the country."

The French tailor has also become the vogue in Japan, and Paris fashions are the rage at Tokyo. The writer proceeds enthusiastically as follows:

"If imitation is, as the saying goes, the most sincere flattery,. the French may well be filled with joy and pride at the care with which the Japanese have copied their fashion and their fancies. The question of dress may be considered of slight importance, and. altho the business of state might be conducted with dignity in either Chinese or Dutch costume, the dress which our statesmen. and high functionaries always wear when they perform their administrative duties or appear in society plainly shows that the Japanese consider as most correct the code of the French tailor, just as they recognize the famous Code Napoléon as best adapted to realize their ideas of justice."

Finally, he declares that the Japanese resemble the French in every way; that they are in fact Frenchmen, "the Frenchmen of the Far East." This form of "sincere flattery" he thus finally enlarges upon :

"I have attempted to show that there are a great many points in common between French and Japanese peoples. When we come to study human nature we quickly perceive resemblances between people in the matter of taste, of temperament, of habits, and we are forced to admit that a well-dressed Japanese is the Frenchman of the Far East. The Frenchman may be, in many ways, excitable, but he loves the truth, and his heart is at once brave and tender, a real indication of social refinement. Above all, he takes. pride in his race and his country—and these qualities are singularly in harmony with the character of the Japanese people."-Trans-lation made for THE LITERARY DIGEST.

NOTABLE BOOKS OF THE DAY.

LE GALLIENNE'S RENDERING OF HAFIZ. ODES FROM THE DIVAN OF HAFIZ. By Richard Le Gallienne. Boards, pp. xxvii, 194. Price, $1.50. L. C. Page & Co., Boston.

LITTLE by little the poetry of Persia is becoming part and parcel of

English literature, and gradually the strange bond of affinity between the Land of the Lion and the Sun and the Anglo-Saxon race, Aryans both, is being welded more strongly. The recognition began, of .course, with Fitzgerald's "Omar Khayyam," when Persia's thought became to the Occident something more than "the shadow of a mighty name." Yet the Persians, as all now know, do not regard the Tent-maker as the greatest of their poets. This proud distinction is reserved for a bard of the fourteenth century, Hafiz, the sweet singer of Shirza.

A task of peculiar difficulty it is to bring to our own tongue the music of his verse, yet one that ever tempts, like some mirage, the lover of Iranian literature. Among Englishmen who have fallen under this spell, the names of Richardson, Jones, Ouseley, Hindley, Rousseau, Bicknell, McCarthy, Bell, Leaf, Payne, and Clarke at once recur to mind, and to their number Richard Le Gallienne has essayed to add himself by a dainty volume of selected odes. Of all the renderings we have, his is by all odds the best adapted to give the English reader an adequate idea of the poetry of Hafiz. Yet Mr. Le Gallienne's claim, as was the case with his paraphrase of "Omar Khayyam," is not a bold one. He is not a Persian scholar, and he confesses it. His version is based on the translations of Clarke and Payne, and from them he bas culled what poems and distichs seem to him best suited to form a homogeneous whole. The conceits, so attractive to the Persian, but often so bizarre to the Occidental, have been omitted. His work is frankly not a translation by a scholar, but a poet's version of another poet.

RICHARD LE GALLIENNE

The facile touch which distinguished the author of "The Quest of the Golden Girl" is ever present in his "Odes from the Divan of Hafiz." Too light it is at times, so that his very fluidity makes him perpetrate now and again such atrocities as "Into my foolish Zoroaster eyes." What, in the name of the Magian prophet, is a "Zoroaster eye"? Nietzsche has not revealed it unto us for all his madness, nor is aught written of it in Avesta or Pahlavi. Jarring notes like these are the more discordant when one thinks of the beauty of so much of his version, and remembers the undoubted ability of Mr. Le Gallienne.

The poems of Hafiz are songs of love:

O Love, the beauty of the moon is thine,
And on thy chin a little star doth shine,
The jewel-dimple of thy little chin;
O how my soul desires the sight of thee,
And rushes to the windows of my eyes,
And to and fro about my body flies,

Half out of doors and half constrained within;
Ears all atremble for some word of thine,
Tongue tip-toe on the threshold of the lip,
And my full heart is like a stormy sea.

Hand in hand with Love, walks Wine, and so, in another place, the poet sings:

O Love, thy hair! thy locks of night and musk!
The very Wind therein doth lose his way,
As in its perfumed darkness he would stray,
And my heart too is lost in scented dusk.

"Many of these odes," says The Outlook, "have the lyrical quality, and while they may not be in all points acceptable to oriental scholars, they give to the reader sufficiently well the effect of Persian imagery and the essence of the poet's feeling." And The Independent says: "Mr. Le Gallienne has not merely translated, he has transmuted the odes into true English poetry, and any one but an antiquarian will prefer to read them in this form rather than in the literal versions. The only fault we have to find with Mr. Le Gallienne is that he is inclined to make his task easy by diluting his poetry until it flows freely. With more pains he might have kept more of the terseness and spirit of the original."

A CHAMPION OF FREE THOUGHT. SCIENCE ET LIBRE PENSÉE. Par M. Berthelot. Price, $1.65. Calmann-Levy, Paris.

ERTHELOT is the magician of science, whose achievements in of the alchemists of old. He is the father of Synthetic Chemistry and his work has been of so original a character as completely to revolutionize the science. At the age of eighty, and with his brilliant faculties unimpaired, he is still hard at work upon those problems whose solution he regards as so important for the ultimate welfare of humanity. Tho, doubtless, he would have preferred that his whole life might be spent in the silent cloisters of science, his abilities have been of so striking and practical a nature that this wish has not been realized. In addition to all those distinctions coveted by men of learning in France, he has had the highest political honors conferred upon him. As Minister of War and Senator he has achieved a success as signal as that which has marked his scientific career.

Mr. Berthelot has just published a new book entitled "Science and Free Thought," which embodies his most recent scientific and philosophic beliefs. He announces it in a preface as "the fourth volume of letters and discourses which I publish under the common title of Science, as associated with Philosophy, Morals, Education, and Free Thoughtvariants which respond to successive phases of the work which I have undertaken in the social and scientific order."

This interesting compilation opens with Berthelot's address delivered at the dedication of the monument erected to Ernest Renan at Tréquier in 1903. Berthelot, as is well known, was the lifelong and intimate friend of Renan, and this address, ideally appropriate in the selection of the orator, presents some new aspects of the famous historian of religions. Referring to Renan's master-work, "The Origins of Christianity," Berthelot avers that "it is the work that should establish his authority among his contemporaries and his fame as one of the historians of the nineteenth century.' In connection with this work the scientist writes with a verve and originality worthy of Renan himself:

"Assuredly Plato and Aristotle would have been much surprised if a prophet of twenty centuries ago had announced to them that the messianic dream of a Syrian people was destined to inherit their civilization and to maintain for long generations the religious and philosophical direction of the world. I know not if, in a future of equal duration-I mean, after twenty or thirty centuries have passed-Christianity in its turn shall not have been forgotten, that is to say, have passed into the limbo of history, like the ancient religions, which have preceded it."

This passage gives the keynote of Berthelot's philosophy. He regards orthodoxy as the logical foe of science, and in his letter to the recent Congress of Freethinkers at Rome he lifts his voice against its dangers. There is a distinct note of bitterness in this address, which appears in the present volume. He avers that Rome has been the center of the oppression of science and thought for more than fifteen hundred years and calls it the "abyss announced in the Apocalypse whence issues the deadly smoke of superstition."

One of the most interesting chapters in this work is devoted to Berthelot's reply to the addresses delivered at his golden jubilee as a scientist which was held at the Sorbonne, November 24, 1901. This was one of the greatest testimonials ever rendered to a savant. It was attended by the President of the Republic, the members of the Government and by representatives from all the universities of Europe. The élite of learning from all parts of the world had assembled to honor the great French scientist who had rounded out a half-century of toil in the interest of humanity. The sage was deeply touched by this extraordinary homage. "Your sympathy," said he, "has caused a final flame to burst from the lamp so soon to be extinguished in eternal night."

A considerable portion of the work is devoted to the discussion of peace and international arbitration, a cause of which Mr. Berthelot has long been an ardent and powerful advocate. He expresses an eager hope that the United States may join in an effort to protect from aggression the smaller nations and to establish lasting world-peace.

A GOOD WORD FOR THE ITALIAN
IMMIGRANT.

THE ITALIAN IN AMERICA. By Eliot Lord,, A.M., Special Agent United States Tenth Census; John J. D. Trenor, Chairman of Immigration Committee, National Board of Trade, Annual Session, 1904; Samuel J. Barrows, Secretary of the Prison Association of New York. Cloth, 268 pp. Price, $1.50. B. F. Buck & Co., New York.

W

ITH this volume is begun a new undertaking that promises to be of real importance. It is proposed to issue a series of monographs, each devoted to a discussion of the merits and defects of one of the several nationalities which have contributed and are still contributing to the formation of the American race stock. Since 1895, and more especially since 1900, the current of immigration has been chiefly from South

ELIOT LORD.

ern and Southeastern Europe, instead of from the British Isles and the more northern European countries, a change that has given added momentum to the movement for the restriction of immigration, through fear that the immigrants from Italy and the Slav countries may prove unassimilable. Indeed, a bill for the restriction of immigration was under consideration by Congress at the last session and will probably be brought forward again this winter. Italians now enter the United States at the rate of about 200,000 per year, with a maximum to date of 230,622 in 1903.

That "The Italian in America" has attracted attention throughout the country, is, therefore, not surprising. Its writers, who know their subject thoroughly, are a unit in their belief that the Italian has been greatly misunderstood, and that the proposed measure would be not only extremely unjust to him, but mischievous to the country. This conclusion is reached after a detailed survey which includes (1) an examination of the contribution of Italy to European civilization; (2) the causes of Italian emigration; (3) its effect upon the standard and opportunities of American labor and the course of national development; (4) its alleged pauperizing and criminal tendencies; and (5) the achievements of Italian immigrants in the land of their adoption. At almost every point the findings of Mr. Lord and his associates, who are careful to support their statements by data and figures of evidential value, conflict with opinions commonly entertained, and, as a writer in The Outlook, expressing the consensus of critical conviction, puts it, "should go far toward bringing about a better understanding of the 'Italian question.'

No attempt is made to dény that a real problem is presented by the great mass of Italians now in the United States. But it is argued that the proper solution is better distribution, not more rigid restriction. There is reason for accepting the view that while the Italian is naturally gregarious, circumstances rather than choice impel him to the cities instead of to the rural districts where, being naturally adapted for agriculture, he could both improve his own condition and assist in developing the country's resources. The universal testimony seems to be that, given an opportunity to lead an agricultural life, he invariably prospers, the writers presenting glowing accounts of his success as a market-gardener, cottonplanter, fruit-grower, etc. Nor, it appears, does he fail to show progress in the cities, statistics being submitted to prove that, even under slum conditions, he is thrifty, energetic, and ambitious, and rates high in comparison with other foreigners in respect to crime, pauperism, and disease.

It being granted, however, that it is better for him and for the American people that he should settle outside the cities, the question of effecting the needed distribution at once arises. On this point Mr. Lord contributes a highly suggestive chapter, making several practical recommendations, particularly in respect to directing the Italian to the South and to the Pacific Slope, where there is an especially active demand for labor. That this suggestion is not unwelcome to the sections concerned is shown by the comments of their press. The Columbia (S. C.) State, for example, after indignantly denying the truth of a statement that the laws of the State exclude Italian immigrants, adds, "There is room here for many of them, and it would be a great benefit to this State if a good class of Italian farmers and gardeners could be induced to settle here." The San Francisco Chronicle observes: "With Californians, knowing as we do the gain in many lines which our Italian population and its descendants have been to this State, many of the facts brought out in this volume are not new or surprising. Many of the illustrations serve as object-lessons as to their accomplishments in the agricultural districts of the United States, . . . while one of them is a full-page photograph of our wellknown fellow-citizen, Andrea Sbarboro, one of the founders of the ItalianSwiss Colony at Asti, Madera, and other points in California."

...

All in all, despite the pessimistic opinion of the New York Evening Post that "the popular ignorance regarding the stranger within our gates

seems so ingrained that it is doubtful if even the mass of evidence gathered in this book will convert the unconvertible," there is room for believing that "The Italian in America" will be a potent instrument in molding a saner public opinion. We await its successors with interest.

BETTER PLANNED THAN EXECUTED. CLAIMS AND COUNTERCLAIMS. By Maud Wilder Goodwin. Cloth, 356 pp. Price, $1.50. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.

ONE can hardly help feeling that in "Claims and Counterclaims" Mrs.

Maud Wilder Goodwin has not done justice to a motif and scheme which were very good. An amateurish inefficiency in the treatment will surprise and annoy those who have read her "Four Roads to Paradise." That was a charming love-story, told with vivacious suavity. "Claims and Counterclaims" should have been both, to satisfy the expectations awakened by its predecessor. But one hears the honest artizan hammering and sawing in this, and failing, despite industry, to secure the desired effect. Nor do the characters appeal as they should. You can see what they are meant to be, altho they do not owe this to Mrs. Goodwin's development of them. They fail to impress themselves as vitally individual. The most impressive episodes are melodramatically, but crudely, set forth. In a word, the most complimentary remark to be made about "Claims and Counterclaims" is that it seems to be an earlier production of the author and shows the 'prentice hand.

Mrs. Goodwin botches her climaxes by improbability or cumbrous narration. For instance, when Brandyce is charged by the stranger with being a cheat, Dr. Dilke "sprang upon the Texan with uplifted arm." Brandyce waves him away, telling him not to make a scandal, and then lets his arm drop and "two cards were shaken out of his sleeve and lay upon the cabin floor. Each bore one accusing spot of scarlet on its face." Now the last thing that Brandyce would have done under the circumstances would have been to brandish his arm about and then flop it down, when he was keenly interested in still keeping those two aces "up his sleeve"! It is from the same lack of judgment and taste that Mrs. Goodwin makes copy-book annotations on the actions of people to elucidate what anybody who should read the book would at once grasp more satisfactorily without such aid.

Here is a sample of the style: Brandyce deliberately neglects a cold. and takes double pneumonia, apparently electing this unpleasing form of suicide. By a dramatic happening (?), Dr. Dilke is the physician whocomes to him. He was counting the pulse of the sick man, and saying to himself, as the passing stranger said of Keats, "There's death in that hand." Another historical allusion winds up the scene, after Brandyceis dead. As Dr. Dilke turned away, there shot across his mind the words. spoken by Napoleon's physician in closing the eyes of the great dead:. "Ainsi passe la gloire." "If glory," thought Dilke, "why not shame?" This is rather schoolgirl writing.

"Decided originality and epigrammatic literary polish" are conspicuous in this novel, in the opinion of the Boston Herald; and the New York Times Saturday Review thinks the plot "ingenious" and the style "full of both power and charm." It is "vivid, realistic, and altogether attractive, declares the Baltimore Herald. Most of the comments,. however, are less enthusiastic. The Chicago Inter Ocean says the book "has the elements of a really good novel in it"; and the Newark News thinks its faults "very evident." The New York Evening Post remarks the novel is "not bad" and goes on: "It is clever, and contains. a capital love story. But the bigger task-the analysis of the character of the young and conscientious physician, Anthony Dilke-has. 'stumped' the author. It is a temptation to say that a woman's attempt to get down into a man's character in so far as his relations toother men are concerned, must at best seem unsuccessful."

A ROMANCE OF THE HOUSE OF DOUGLAS.. MAY MARGARET. By S. R. Crockett. Cloth, 375 pp. Price, $1.50 net. Dodd,. Mead & Co., New York.

THA

HAT S. R. Crockett's fancy is as nimble as of yore and that his good. pen has not lost its clever touch in fairly telling a fairy tale are both proved in his last romance- -"May Margaret"-"The Fair Maid. of Galloway." The Brooklyn Eagle gives a good summary of the general. aim of the story in saying "The author goes back to the wild days of Scotland of the fourteenth century or thereabouts when there was fierce strifebetween the Douglas and the Stewart as to who should rule in the land. May Margaret, the heroine, is supposed to tell the story in her old days.. She is a Galloway princess, for it must be remembered that Mr. Crockett's Scotch stories have his beloved Galloway for a setting. Into the

story he has woven both history and legend, but it is best to take it for what it is, a romance, pure and simple. It is vivid and stirring enough to satisfy any lover of a tale where things happen."

As the New York Globe says, "One can do much worse in the way of summer reading than to sit down to this vigorous Scotch tale of the buoy-ant Crockett. It is lively fiction." While not a masterpiece, the tale is strong in its appeal to the two elemental human passions, war and love,. viewed through the magic mirror of imagination and set in the enchantedì land of Long Ago.

BOOKS RECEIVED.

THE LITERARY DIGEST is in receipt of the following books:

"The Representative Men of the New Testament." -George Matheson, D.D. (A. C. Armstrong & Sons.)

"The House of Mirth."-Edith Wharton. (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.50.)

"The Children of the Night."- Edwin Arlington Robinson. (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1 net.)

"Visionaries."-James Huneker. (Charles Scribner's Sons, $1.50.)

"Government Regulation of Railway Rates.". Hugo Meyer. (Macmillan Company, $1.50 net.) "Part of a Man's Life."-Thomas Wentworth Higginson. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2.50.)

'Shocks from the Battery."-Rev. Levi White. (White & Sons, $1.50.)

"The Romance of the Milky Way?"- Lafcadio Hearn. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.25 net.)

"Paradise."-Alice Brown.. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.50.)

(Ve

66 'Democracy in the South before the Civil War."G. W. Duer. (Publishing Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Nashville, $1.)

"The Wheat Princess."-Jean Webster. (Century Company, $1.50.)

"Duck Lake."-E. 'Ryerson Young, Jr. (Eaton & Mains, $1.)

"Jules of the Great Heart." - Lawrence Mott. (Century Company, $1.50.)

"Ben Blair."-Will Lillbridge. (A. C. McClurg & Co., $1.50.)

"The Game and the Candle."-Frances Davidge. (D. Appleton & Co., $1.50.)

"Arizona Sketches."-Joseph A. Munk. (Grafton Press, $2 net.)

"The Life and Works of George Herbert."-George Herbert Palmer. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., vols. $6 net.)

"Bret Harte's Her Letter." Co., $2.)

(Houghton, Mifflin &

"The England and Holland of the Pilgrims."-H. M. Dexter. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $3.50 net.) "Laura in the Mountains."-Henrietta R. Eliot. (Lothrop Publishing Company, $0.50.)

"The Children of Bedford Court."-Grace Le Baron. (Lee & Shepard, $0.75.)

meyer. (Lee & Shepard, $1.25.)

"Cordelia's Pathway Out."-Edna A. Foster. (Lee .& Shepard, $1.)

"The Boy Pathfinder."-William C. Sprague. (Lee & Shepard, $1.50.)

"American Heroes and Heroines."- Pauline Carrington Bouvé. (Lothrop Publishing Company, $1.25.)

Some More Thusettes."-Eudorus C. Kennedy, (The Democrat Printery; Cortland, N. Y.)

"Dolly's Double."-Ethel Wood. (Lothrop Publishing Company.)

"The Gregory Guards."-A. Emma Lee Benedict. (Lee & Shepard, $1.25.).

"My Little Lady-in-Waiting."-Louise E. Catlin. (Lee & Shepard.)

"The Joys of Friendship."- Mary Allette Ayer. (Lee & Shepard, $1.)