Our war-cry is 'Death or Victory.' We are confident of victory, we have faith in our coming triumph, and we appeal to all who, like ourselves, thirst for liberty; we invite them to come to our assistance in this hour of trial."

A CANADIAN ON AMERICAN IMMIGRATION INTO CANADA.

CANAD

ANADIANS are gratified that American farmers and yeomanry are taking possession of the Canadian Northwest. In this way, says Valancey E. Fuller, in The Canadian Magazine (Toronto), Canada is escaping the fate of the United States, which is being largely occupied, governed, and generally overrun with foreigners who corrupt the municipal administrations, set a bad example generally in the way of rural citizenship, and aim only at their own profit and advancement. The American immigrants to Canada, on the contrary, are of the same language, brought up under the same laws and entertain the same ideas and opinions as those subjects of Edward VII. who live north of the St. LawTo quote his words to his fellow countrymen :

rence.

'They are possessed of the requisites of success as pioneers in a new country. They will respect and obey your laws and customs, for they will soon learn that the former are made to be obeyed, and not to be evaded. . . . Last, and not by any means least, they will assimilate with your people. While they will never lose their love for their native, land, they will none the less learn to love the land of their adoption."

He goes on to contrast the condition of the United States with that of Canada. In New York and other cities, he says, the Americans do not rule. In his own words:

"It would take some seeking to find a round dozen Anglo-Saxon names on Broadway, the great retail street, from the Battery to Forty-second Street, a distance of five miles. It is said in this city that New York was 'settled by the Dutch, is run by the Irish, and owned by the Jews,' and it is a true saying. Get into a car anywhere in the five boroughs of the Greater City, and you will hear any language almost, but English. It is a distinct relief to cross the border to Canada, and hear our good mother tongue, instead of a gabble of Italian, German, Yiddish, Swedish, and half a dozen other languages. The same thing applies in other cities, altho New York is the most un-American of all, a veritable cosmopolis. America is no longer for the Americans."

The consequences of this are manifested in the unpatriotic greed and selfishness of the general municipal and government administration. Foreigners rush into the elective openings and eagerly seize upon political opportunities unknown to them until they came to this country, of which the writer says:

"

Its municipal and public offices are filled by foreigners, far too many of them being engaged in the pursuit of their own pecuniary benefit, rather than the general well-being of the city, State, or nation. They lack the patriotism which is developed only by love of one's own country; and, having forsworn their own country, this appeals to them by reason of its relation to their own advantage, and only so."

This imported corruption infects every department of the public service and sometimes even reaches to the judiciary. As he says: "The United States is no longer governed by the votes of Americans, but by foreigners, many of them illiterate, ignorant of the laws of the land, and lacking in sympathy with them even when they do know them. A vote is with the majority of them a marketable commodity, to be given to the highest bidder-not to put in office a man who will give the best service to his constituents, but the man who will see that those who vote for him get a return in the shape of a 'fat job' for themselves or their friends. The consequence is that votes are captured by the men with the greatest 'pull' and the heaviest purse, and 'graft' stalks abroad in bright daylight almost everywhere. It is in the police force; the municipal departments; in the legislature; and too often in the courts of justice."

Mr. Fuller does not think that the immigration of Americans into Canada is likely to result in the political unification of the two countries, as annexation would not benefit either. He concludes with a hope that none but those who, like the American immigrant, are worthy and desirable, will ever find a settlement in the Canadian Northwest provinces. His words in speaking of such immigrants are as follows:

"The American settler will find the economic conditions very similar to those of his own country; he will find the school system even more liberal; the laws more fairly and impartially adminis tered; the laws relating to the liquor question liberal, yet conserving temperance; a people of social habits, imbued with a sense of justice, a high regard for the laws of the land, and with so great a respect for them that they are not only prepared themselves to obey, but to see to it that others do likewise. . . . Canadians have a grand heritage in the great Northwest, and it is their duty to see to it that it is peopled by those worthy of it, those who, by association, will become their people, respecting their laws, and adding: to the prosperity and honor of the Dominion."

HE new volume of Taine's correspondence, just published in Paris,

THE news van abundance of fresh light upon the great critic and his

torian whose writings have left such an ineffaceable stamp upon contemporaneous thought in France. The period covered extends from 1870 to 1875-the epoch of the Commune and of national humiliation. Taine was enabled to study history objectively in one of its most terrible phases.

HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE.

It is by no means a mere coincidence that his work as a historian opens at this period. Hitherto his knowledge of men and events had been gained mostly from books, and an erudition almost comparable to that of Rabelais in its immensity had already given a distinct character to his work. He now saw in the flesh and at close range what the human animal is capable of when, having slipped the leash of law, the primeval instincts reassert their sway. The terrible impressions made upon his sensitive and critical mind are graphically described in the letters of 1870-71. But the unexampled horrors of the année terrible, which gave rise to despair and intellectual impotence in others, had no such effect upon Taine. The idea seems to have occurred to him that the lesson of all this suffering, this unparalleled national degradation, might yet be fruitful for France. He determined to undertake a thorough scientific investigation of the causes and conditions which made such a cataclysm possible. One may trace clearly in his letters the dawn of this idea, afterward to be elaborated in his monumental work, "The Origins of Contemporary France." In all probability it is by this work and more particularly by its dominating feature, the titanic portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte, that Taine will be longest remembered. His claim to enduring fame will not rest upon his celebrated theories of "race, environment, and epoch," nor upon his original psychological study, "Intelligence," nor yet upon the incomparable "History of English Literature" by which he is most widely known. In creative literary power he was distanced by several of his contemporaries, for instance by Thierry, Michelet, and Renan. If the truth must be told, he was lacking in some of the essentials of a great writer, and it is not without reason that Saintsbury speaks of his "hard, brassy style." But Taine's achievement lies entirely outside the domain of literary art. His influence was political and more actual and effective than that of any writer since Voltaire. Voltarian also, in a sense, in its colossal magnitude, was the enterprise which he undertook to accomplish. This was nothing less than the extirpation, the destruction of the Napoleonic legend and of Bonapartism which he held directly accountable for the disasters of 1870. That he was never blinded to the reality of things by the splendors of the Napoleonic epopée is indicated in a letter in the new volume of his correspondence. Writing to his wife from Lagny on September 11, 1872,, he says, apropos of some of his studies: "I observe with sorrow that our soldiers in 1807 (Jena) were as great thieves as the Prussians, just as brutal, and even greater drunkards. They did not steal methodically, in order to economize and send the booty home, but they laid waste the country in horrible fashion and destroyed like gamins. In 1807, at Eylau, at Friedland, they robbed the wounded; they pillaged one another; brutal egotism triumphs. How horrible are the wars of the Empire seen at close range-both for victors and vanquished! It is only toward 1830 that they begin to awaken admiration, when details are lost to view, and the grand ensemble alone appears." Is the man who writes this likely to be hypnotized by Napoleon?

The passage just quoted gives the actual keynote of Taine's masterwork on the history of contemporaneous France. It is a sketch, slight but significant, of the terrible full-length portrait of Napoleon in drypoint which sent a shudder through France. It presents the national idol without any drapery of legend and under the white light of scientific criticism of which Taine may be said to be the inventor. Taine's remarkable historical insight had enabled him to attain a new and clearer view. One might almost say that he helped Napoleon in a sort of infernal transfiguration.

One can understand how this marvelous personality, baffling to all the canons of historical criticism, must have fascinated Taine. The antique beauty of Napoleon's character had, not escaped the notice of men. Stendhal, for instance, had remarked it. But the identification of

Bonaparte with the unique and masterful species enrooted originally in the soil of Italy had been merely fanciful. In the original mind of Taine the word was made flesh. It remained for this penetrating, critical intellect to perceive the astonishing tho natural enough fact that this son of Italian Corsica was the lineal descendant of the Cæsars and the Scipios, of the Sforzas, the Borgias and the mighty condottieri of the Renaissance. It became plain that there was nothing French in this idol of France whose mind and personality, cast in the antique mold, knew no brotherhood with modern democratic ideals. It was Taine with his scientific insight and marvelous apparatus of modern criticism who penetrated to the heart of the mystery. Focused in the reflecting telescope of Taine, the figure of the Titan emerges from its haze of legend. We are brought face to face with the last scion of the mother of empires: We recognize the latest descendant of the Mistress of the World. Suddenly there dawns upon us a new conception, startling and sinister. The real Napoleon is now before us-the modern incarnation of ferocious Italian egotism, ruthless, implacable, unfeeling, and pitiless, hard as flint, merciless as fate. We become aware for the first time of a unique species of the human animal, unparagoned in history and produced in one soil only-Italy. We recognize the characteristics of the mighty figure whose blood-red nimbus illumines the dark background of the Renaissance.

One is reminded strongly of this portentous historical portrait in glancing over some of the letters in the new Taine volume. One remembers also, in reading certain of these confidential utterances, how the writer was destined to change the current of political history in France. Thanks to Taine, the Napoleonic legend has lost its sorcery forever, and the blight of imperialism has been definitely removed from French statesmanship. He has literally drawn the fangs of Bonapartism, which up to his time was a perpetual menace to the peace of France.

In addition to elucidating Taine's famous historical study, the new volume of letters is highly interesting by reason of its characteristic sketches of famous personages-its daylight miniatures of such men as Hugo, Vigny, Musset, Lamartine, Sainte-Beuve, Renan, George Brandes, Swinburne, Jowett, Ruskin, and Arnold.

A SPURT OF MELODRAMA.

NEDRA. By George Barr McCutcheon. 343 pp. Price, $1.50. Dodd, Mead & Co., New York.

N "Nedra," Mr. McCutcheon "presents" a piece of work which will be recognized by his readers, and enjoyed-by them. It is a trifle raw and the invention drawn on for the construction of the story is within the line very much within it!-of the pronounced combination of startling events, more thrilling than likely, which fall at once into the category of the melodramatic. A young Chicago couple (here there is a sense of fitness!) who are to be married, disdaining the folderols of the conventional society wedding, con

ceive the brilliant idea of eloping as an escape from them. They draw lots to see what shall be the objective point of their eloping flight, and it is Manila. This leaves abundant margin for things to happen in. Love's young dream in the case of each of them suffers marked "sea change" as to its object, which is evidently Mr. McCutcheon's ruse for maintaining poetic justice. The alienation begins on the steamer that is bearing them to the Philippines, and just as each is finding a new affinity, a most theatrical storm wrecks everybody, and casts the hero and the usurping mistress of his heart, if one may employ so harsh a term, upon an island inhabited by savages, who accept them.

GEORGE BARR MCCUTCHEON.

as visiting divinities and kow-tow to them accordingly. Which is indeed felicitious, since otherwise they would have been served in the simple menu of these cannibals. There is a terrible fight between this tribe and that of another island which is neighboring but not neighborly. In the mean time, the man and woman have fallen in love with one another and confessed it, but with remorseful glances at their former mates, the lady's husband and the gentleman's fiancee, who may have been rescued from a watery grave like themselves. They are rescued, of course, and by a ship which carries them to Manila, equally of course. There to hissolace the hero finds that the heroine, or at least the girl billed as that at. the start, has pursued a course identical with his own and is on the eve of her marriage to the other man. Whereupon, as the author somewhat needlessly observes, the hero "lost no time on the way back to the hotel" where "Lady Tennys was in her room, strangely calm and resigned wondering whether he would ever come back to her." This last doesn't smack of resignation, but in Mr. McCutcheon's treatment of a

theme little jars of that sort are positively unfelt. Then she heartens him as he calls himself a cad, by saying "you are a man-a true, noble, enduring one. The year just gone has changed you from the easy, thoughtless boy into the strong man that you are, just as it has made of me a woman." After more consoling reflections of the same sort, the book concludes with Lady Tennys's handing out another equally brilliant reflection, "with the most entrancing smile," which probably redeemed it for Hugh Ridgway. Like most of Mr. McCutcheon's novels, "Nedra" is not matter for critical appreciation. One may say that it is "apart" from it rather than "beneath it."

"Just a pretty love story, marked by the trials that make all the sweeter the final triumph of affection," comments the Philadelphia Ledger. Judging "Nedra" as a fantastic extravaganza, "something to help obliterate the sense of time in a weary hour," it is a success, the Milwaukee Sentinel declares, but it adds that "the author can do better work than this."

THE ABODE OF THE FOOL'S HEART.

THE HOUSE OF MIRTH. By Edith Wharton. 533 pp. Price, $1.50. Charles Scribner's Sons, New York.

N whatever light Mrs. Wharton's "House of Mirth" may be regarded,

the "happy ending." They will feel doubly aggrieved should they realize that it might have ended pleasantly without nullifying its strength. For

EDITH WHARTON.

surely, peace and happiness should have a "strength" as great as wretchedness and tragedy. But Mrs. Wharton, after deliberately creating the drastic atmosphere of the Furies, invisibly knotting black threads to enmesh their victim back of the soft. bloom of Luxury's tapestry, may have felt it inartistic, to turn on them, or, perhaps, may have lapsed into bondage to the pitiless force she had evoked. After spelling ruin as far as R, U, I, one must write "Joy" very emphatically to efface their effect.

The force and value of "The House of Mirth" lie in the pitiless psychological dissection of a beautiful young woman, Lily Bart, and of the forces and tendencies of "Society." The picture is not one to inspire admiration for our self-styled "best people," and the moral teaching of the book is at best negative. That such a girl should retain her simple bed-rock sense of the value of things and enough wholesome genuineness to hold the reader's sympathy in such surroundings and circumstances is, perhaps, something of a strain on the reader's sense of verity. None but the rigidly correct can help pitying her. Here is an exquisite, clever, wellbred girl, who is mistress of all the arts that make such a woman a success in society, yet finds herself, relatively, a pauper in it. For her income does not even enable her to "dress the part." She craves the luxuries of society of New York society, which is a baser degree of aspiration-and to secure them has to "marry money," and to that, accordingly, Lily Bart deliberately bent herself. Deliberately, at least, when she had reached the ripe bloom of twenty-nine, and had been husband-hunting within the pale for a decade. It strikes an "outsider" as singular that she shouldn't have bagged her game before she reached a point where she had to "bolt" a disagreeable man to secure the money which meant the luxuries.

Lily certainly does things which accord poorly with her name. She decides to marry an enormously wealthy, negative little skinflint, and loses him. Then she sinks to considering "eligible" as a husband a most offensive and vulgar type of Jew, and even he gets away. She is a three months' guest on a yacht that she may divert the attentions of a husband from his wife and a man-guest cruising with them, who are "interested" in one another. She also goes twice to a bachelor's apartment unchaperoned, tho only for a sympathizing talk and a cigarette. This would appear to some as the kind of compromising step a girl of Lily Bart's stamp would have had the strength to deny herself. True, Mrs. Wharton represents her as of capricious turns, rebelling against the nauseating régime she has elected to. But a "creation" does not always ring

true.

Miss Bart is a blend of Becky Sharp and Gwendolen Harleth. She is not as compellingly human as the one, nor as uninspiring as the other. Frankly, Mrs. Wharton has surpassed George Eliot in this theme. Not only is Lily Bart more congenial and better, as a human variation, than Gwendolen or Becky, but Mrs. Wharton's style is more plastic and seductive than that of Mrs. Lewes. It would be banale to allude to its suggestion of Henry James. But whatever else is to be said about it, "The House of Mirth"-ironic title-stands as Mrs. Wharton's most

masterly achievement. This picture of the rank development of what are the dominant germs of New York Society and this strenuous study of one of its products and its victims is absorbingly interesting and makes its own appeal to human sympathy and pity. To approve it is a compliment the appreciative reader pays to his sense of literary perfection.

That this is one of the strongest pieces of writing that has appeared in this country for many a day is pretty nearly the unanimous verdict of the newspaper critics. "A finished and beautiful example of the modern novelist's art," declares the New York Tribune, and the Providence Journal thinks it has the "essential quality of greatness." The Christian Work (New York) declares that "in tone, language, and dramatic force it stands unrivaled," and, in comparison with other recent books, The World To-day's critic thinks it "is a giant among pigmies." "It is admirably done," remarks the Springfield Republican, but "whether it is the stuff of which great novels are made is another matter." "The House of Mirth," according to the New York Times, "is a tragedy of our modern life, in which the relentlessness of what men used to call Fate, and esteem, in their ignorance, a power beyond their control, is as vividly set forth as it ever was by Aeschylus or Shakespeare." While the New York Evening Post and The Sunny South (Atlanta) think the work is admirably done, they add that they are disappointed in the story.

MR. HOPE IN SERIOUS VEIN.

A SERVANT OF THE PUBLIC. By Anthony Hope. 362 pp. Price, $1.50. Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York.

MR.

R. ANTHONY HOPE, in this book, is miles away from the careless, pungent palavering of the "Dolly Dialogues" and the fantastic charm of his romances. He takes himself very seriously now. In this latest work (one feels that Mr. Hawkins's novel was "work" to him) he takes a charming actress and a fine fellow, and makes the reader sincerely grieved for the young man, while he is inclined to hate the actress. Ora Pinsent is the histrionic heroine-"A Servant of the Public"-but mistress of hearts. She makes trouble for everybody, and enters into several lives only to make a devastating exit from them. For her the stage direction "Exit left" means, "Ora exit. Somebody left." She has no more rational soul than a butterfly, tho she is full of graceful moods, which do not seem quite natural to an actress lady. Ashley Mead is a very charming, if not very imposing, young man. He has several "good things" waiting for him—in fact, coming up and pushing their noses into his hand, as if pleading to be accepted; but he has fallen too deeply in love with Ora, and he lets the rest go. Ora has a husband -somewhere. She does not disguise

it, altho he doesn't "count" for very much, anyhow. It only makes Ashley's attentions more marked rather than hopeless. And the end of the story is that she turns him down, and he will never quite forget this episode in his life. That is about the whole story, but it is told very interestingly. Ora seems to be more of an actress off the stage than she is on it.

Two or three times one asks, with some wonder that the thought can occur, whether Mr. Hawkins is trying to handle a situation and characters rather a la Henry James. He is full of analysis. Tho Ora Pinsent is consistent with herself, she does not seem too much of a natural prod

uct.

Copyrighted by Davis & Sanford, New York. ANTHONY HOPE.

But Ashley Mead does ring true, and the reader is a little vexed that he should be so very nice. It is not gratifying to see a thoroughly charming human being treated like a dog, and lending himself like Job to the treatment. Altho the plot is a little tenuous, yet Mr. Hope treats it with much solidity. He takes himself seriously, and he gives an "impression" of the actress that is not bad. "A Servant of the Public" is not a great book, but that, of course, is too much to ask of a book nowadays, when greatness is not essential to a "good seller." But it is really worth while. Anthony Hope tragic is still Anthony Hope.

The Chicago Inter Ocean finds this book "clever, entertaining, and well written," and so, too, thinks the San Francisco Argonaut, and the San Francisco Chronicle declares it is a great story." The New York Evening Post thinks the book is a psychological study unfolded with the skill of Mrs. Humphry Ward at her best, and made convincing as well as attractive by dialogue which is often brilliant and humor which is never forced or unreal." "It is refined Laura Jean Libbeyish story," according to the Baltimore News, told with fluency. Ora Pinsent, the Chicago Dial says, "fails to encourage our sympathies, or to excite any considerable degree of interest." In other words, "the book is dull."

The Divine Comedy of Dante."- Edward Howard Griggs. (B. W. Huebsch, $0.25.)

"The Poetry and Philosophy of Browning." -Edward Howard Griggs. (B. W. Huebsch, $0.25.)

"Mozart, the Man and the Artist, as Revealed in His Own Words."-F. Kerst. Translated by Henry Edward Krehbiel. (B. W. Huebsch, $1.)

"Beethoven."-F. Kerst, translated by Henry Edward Krehbiel. (B. W. Huebsch, $1.)

"Moscow - a Story of 1812." (Longmans, Green & Co., $1.50.)

Fred Whishaw.

"China and Her People."-Charles Denby. (L. C. Page & Co., 2 volumes.)

"A Memoir of Dr. James Jackson."-James Jackson Putnam. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.)

66 The Farce of Master Pierre Patelin."- Translated by Richard Holbrook. (Houghton, Mifflin Company, $2 net.)

"A Levantine Log-Book."-Jerome Hart. (Longmans, Green & Co., $2.)

"Life and Matter."- Sir Oliver Lodge. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)

Social Theories and Social Facts."-W, M. Grinnell. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)

"Illustrative Lesson Notes."-John T. McFarland. (Eaton & Main, $1.25.)

"Portraits of the Eighteenth Century-Historic and Literary." - C. A. Sainte-Beuve. (G. P. Putnam's Sons.)

"The Menace of Privilege." Henry George, Jr. (Macmillan Company, $1.50 net.)

"The Endless Life."-Samuel McChord Crothers. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $0.75 net.)

"A Romance of Two Lives."-Francis A. Bryant. (Mahew Publishing Company, Boston, $1.50.)

"The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut."- -M. Louise Green. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $2 net.)

แ A Short History of Italy."-Henry Dwight Sedgwick. (Hougnton, Mifflin & Co., $2 net.)

"The Hand."-L. D. Burdick. (The Irving Company, Oxford, N. Y., $1.50.)

"A Memoir of the First Treasurer of the United States."-Rev. M. R. Minnich. (Published by author Philadelphia.)

"The Gambler." Katherine Cecil Thurston. (Harper Brothers, $1.50.)

"Wild Wheat." IM. E. Francis. (Longmans, Green & Co., $1.50.)

"Four Portraits of the Lord Jesus Christ." George Soltau. (Charles C. Cook.)

"Finite and Infinite."-Thomas (J. B. Lippincott Company, $1.50.)

Curran Ryan.

"The Pardoner's Wallet." Samuel McChord Crothers. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.25 net.)

A Javelin of Fate." Jeanie Gould Lincoln. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.25.)

"The Blood of the Prophets."- Dexter Wallace. (Rooks Press, Chicago.)

"In the Days of Shakespeare."-Tudor Jenks. (A. S. Barnes & Co., $1 net.)

"A Tale of Lower New York, The Wisdom of the Simple."-Owen Kildare. (Fleming H. Revell Company.)

"The Poems of Trumbull Stickney." (Houghton, Mifflin & Co., $1.50.)

CURRENT POETRY.

Friend Soul.

BY ROBERT HAVEN SCHAUFFLER.

From the zest of the land of the living, From work and reflection and play, From the getting of love and the giving,

I hasten away.

For I have a friend from the highlands

Who's larked with me long on my plain; And now toward his glamourous sky-lands We're posting amain.

Up yonder his mansions are legion,

But he's snubbed on the street with a stare, Here where I'm lord of the region;

So turn about's fair.

We leave the snug inn on the highroad. I wave to my valley with pride.

Then we turn up the beckoning by-road

And swing into stride.

--From The Outlook.

To Pain.

The birth-pang of the race is thine,

And joy is suckled at thy breast.

Agents Wanted

Boody, McLellan & Co. Bankers

57 BROADWAY, NEW YORK Members of the New York Stock Exchange

BRANCH OFFICES Poughkeepsie New Haven Hartford, Bridgeport and Brooklyn

$12

to

$65

The Mehlbach Saddle Co., 104 Chambers St., New York Successors to THE WHITMAN SADDLE CO.