France, have been removed, but the Bretons themselves, perhaps speaking a language derived from their pre-Celtic ancestors of the later Stone and early Bronze Age, have preserved in a degree the probable features, the folk-lore, and some of the customs of the times when these monuments were erected.

Hence a journey to Morbihan with its weird, sombre landscape, its cider-drinking, superstitious, Celt-speaking peasants, clad in their sober, black garments, environed by the many mounds, tombs, and standing stones, rising as silent witnesses of the mysterious past, and becoming an integral part of the everyday life of the inhabitants-a journey among such scenes lias a strange fascination.

The Megalithic monuments are rude monoliths of the granite of the Breton coast, called menhirs, from two Breton or Celtic words men, a stone, and hir, long; they are also called peulvans. The menhirs are arranged in groups of from nine to thirteen rows, each row being called an alignment.

The tomb-like structures called dolmens are so named from men, a stone, and dol, table. They consist of a few large, broad, flat stones, set up on edge, so as to inclose a more or less oblong space; the larger ones are about six feet high, and covered by a single great slab (called table) or several flat stones. The smaller ones are said to resemble tables and altars. Many of those in the Morbihan are approached by covered galleries which are generally straight, but at times curved; the main structure or chamber is sometimes wider than it is long. They in nearly all cases face the east, and were places of sepulture or tombs, being the precursors of the old-fashioned tombs of our cemeteries, and were covered by mounds of earth called tumuli. A tumulus sometimes inclosed a cairn orgilgal, or heap of squarish stones six or eight inches, or a foot, in diameter, thrown or laid over the dolmen to protect it from wild beasts. A cromlech in France is a circle or semicircle of menhirs or upright stones. The stones composing a cromlech are usually smaller than in the majority of menhirs, and the stones touch each other; while in an alignment of menhirs the individual stones are from two to several feet apart. The word cromlech is from kroumen, curved, and lech, meaning sacred, or, according to some writers, smaller stones. There are in the single department of Morbihan 306 dolmens, and throughout France 3,410. Beginning at the most eastern point at which dolmens occur, archæologists have observed them in Western India, where they have been used to the present. They were found in Palestine, near the Dead Sea, in the land of the Moabites. They are found on the other side of the Caucasus, in Circassia and the Crimea. They occur in Central Europe, northeast of Dresden, from Mecklenburg through Denmark into southern Sweden, but none occur in Norway. They have been discovered in Hanover and the Low Country, in Belgium, in Luxembourg, and in Switzerland. They also occur in the Channel Islands, in Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Anglesey; some in western, and a few in the eastern, counties in England, while many occur in Scotland and Ireland. There are the ruins of dolmens in Corsica, in northern Spain, in Andalusia, in Portugal, while in northern Africa they are abundant from Morocco to Tripoli, especially in Algeria. Mortillet rejects the theory once held that the dolmens were constructed by a migratory race, maintaining that they were the work of a sedentary population, and not of one and the same race, as skeletons of very different races have been found in them. At the same time many facts tend to show that, in the first place, the dolmen builders came from the east. Mortillet also states that the dolmens were burial chambers used as places of sepulture by families or by tribes. The menhirs were also quarried and erected by the designers and builders of the dolmens, who roughly hewed and chipped the monoliths into their present shapes with small axes of polished flint, jade, and the harder varieties of serpentine.

Who were these stone axemen, these Neolithic stone masons who could, with their polished celts, quarry, and could trans

port monoliths weighing more than some of the obelisks of Egypt-the great monument of Laekmariaquer, being nearly 68 feet long and weghing 240 tons? Were they genuine Celts? Professor Gabriel de Mortillet says no. They are found in abundance in regions which never were occupied by Celts, as in Scandinavia, Spain and Algiers.

All archæologists however agree that these monuments were erected by the Neolithic race or group of races who used polished stone axes, and that this complex of races originated in the east, perhaps between the Caspian and Black seas, bringing with them the cereals, flax, and the domestic animals. To narrow down the problem, French archæologists are agreed that the megalithic monuments were of the same age as the pile dwellings at Robenhausen near Switzerland. At all events— and this is the great charm of such inquiries-the problem is still unsolved. The very people now inhabiting these plains, perhaps their remote descendants speak a semi-fossil language, and still cherish a few pagan, almost prehistoric superstitions. They could readily talk with Celtic, Irish, and Welsh,but French. is a foreign language to them, and in short, they are a link between the present and the age of stone.

CONF

THE ETHICS OF CONFUCIUS.
WARREN G. BENTON.

Popular Science Monthly, New York, October. NONFUCIUS laid no claim to having originated the philosophy of which he was the exponent, but simply to have undertaken to revive laws which the ancients had laid down, but which had become practically obsolete through non-observance. He undertook to induce his fellow-men to observe the essential laws of good government and good society, not because of attached penalties, but because it was necessary to good society and the promotion of virtue. He recognized with sorrow that political intrigue, infidelity to the trusts of men in all relations, and crime of all kinds prevailed in spite of the laws intended to regulate such things, and to the task of restoring the righteous rules of his ancestors he set himself. He knew that penal codes were powerless for good when there was not a moral sense to enforce them. Modern prohibitive legislation is a parallel case.

The Chinese statues, the so-called classics, set forth the means to virtue and morality, but neither the legal authorities nor the people recognized any need for enforcing or observing them. He sought by precept and example to revive the moral sense of the people, but at the end of a long life he died in poverty and disappointment, having apparently produced no impression.

To fully appreciate the great task he set out to accomplish, the reformation of China upon a strict ethical basis, it is necessary to picture the condition of his people at that time. From what he wrote of the condition of things, and also from the writings of Mencius, a century later, we must conclude that the China of twenty-five hundred years ago was, indeed, a dark picture for the idealist to complete. Mencius states that, in his time, men had reached a state of degradation in which they denied that there was any distinction between good and evil, vice and virtue. All moral restraints were thrown off, and public or private morality was unknown. But, notwithstanding the philosopher was dead, his name and writing still existed, and had their influence on a few minds. Among these was Mencius, who appears to have been an abler man than Confucius himself, and who espoused the cause of reform, and, as a chief measure, set to work to gather the writings of Confucius. Perhaps, but for this work, the very name of the Sage would have been forgotten long ago; for his writings were left in a fragmentary and scattered shape, and even do not take high rank in point of literary merit. The Confucian Analects, as compiled by Mencius, and with added comments by the latter, have been translated into English by Rev. Mr. Legge, an eminent Oriental scholar.

The gist of the teachings may be summed up in the one short sentence, "Walk in the old paths," and when we come to define the old paths we find what he called the Five Relations, under which he defines every known duty of man. These relations had been defined and enforced ages before, in the books called the Classics, perhaps for the reason that they were so old that there was no record of when or by whom written. It is these five propositions that have called forth dozens of folio volumes to elucidate and enforce. It is these that constitute what is known as Confucianism, although he never claimed to be other than a teacher of the faith of the ancients. These five relations have in them an entire code of social and political economy of the highest order. They are, first, the Relation between King and Subject; second, between Husband and Wife; third, between Parent and Child; fourth, between Brothers; fifth, between Man and Man.

In this last proposition is the province of ethics. It is a far wider field for the philanthropist and reformer to deal with than any of the foregoing. Here all ties of kinship and fear of authority are removed, and the question of the equality and rights of man comes in. The same sentiments in our Constitution are lauded as the climax of humanity and civilization. The same sentiments were promulgated by a Pagan philosopher, 500 years before the Christian era; and he founded his arguments upon what had been written so long before as to be ancient history.

The Confucian system has probably done much toward creating whatever of good is found in Chinese character and institutions; and what it has failed to accomplish is not due to any defects of the system, but rather in the inherent tendency in human nature to follow the more brutish instincts. Among the Chinese, Confucius is not in any sense worshipped, but he is venerated much as Washington is in the United States.

PREA

RELIGIOUS.

SOCIAL SCIENCE IN THE PULPIT.
JOHN HABBERTON.

Chautauquan, Meadville, November.

REACHER and pastor are the greatest individual influence in social science. In late years there has been talk of decay of the preacher's influence, but it is not well grounded. The institutions of which preachers are the head are rapidly multiplied and well supported. The pocket is the test, and it is doing a great deal for the preacher. That it is not doing enough is in keeping with the world's way in every department of moral effort. When society does its full duty by Church and preacher the Millennium will be here.

The preacher's influence is not decreasing. Many preachers think their usefulness is waning, but the fault can frequently be traced to themselves. They bemoan irregular attendance and sigh for old days when everybody came to church; but seem to forget that then mere church attendance was regarded as a sort of saving grace. Congregational numbers do not necessarily indicate the spiritual condition of the community; they are frequently a gauge of the pastor's popularity. The conscientious pastor is a very hard-worked man, and to demand from him two elaborate, original sermons each Sunday is both senseless and cruel.

We must look outside the pulpit for the preacher's most influential work. Even if weak in theology and halting in speech, he remains, if a man of conscientious earnestness, a social influence for good that observing unbelievers dare not belittle and Christians cannot overestimate. In many communities he is the only well educated man—the only man who keeps abreast of the tide of modern intelligence and endeavor. He reads and studies; this is his duty and in keeping with his nature and profession. The more active his pastoral work,

the more he is impressed with the importance of every question coming under the general designation of social science. Men who have any social reform in view, seek first to enlist the sympathies of the clergy. At one of the greatest meetings ever held in the interest of the poor of London, the venerable Cardinal Manning sat on the platform with some professed infidels-Bradlaugh among them. A public meeting for any but political purposes is almost unknown without preachers being by special invitation among its active participants; and even political conventions are opened with prayer.

The serious sense of responsibility upon a minister naturally produces times of depression and doubt as to his influence. The greatest personal influences in the world's history have felt this self-doubt. Even George Washington did not escape it, as is shown in one of the most pathetic passages among his collected letters.

Much that the preacher does is in the nature of sowing seed. The proper ground as well as proper seed is needed to insure a satisfactory harvest. Some sown seeds that seem to be dead are merely dormant, awaiting the circumstance and condition that shall quicken them to life. In a single "experience meeting" one man said he had been converted by the death of his child; another that it was a drunken debauch that brought him into the fold; but in each case the real cause proved to be the retention by the mind of great truths heard long before, but never applied until death and remorse recalled them. In the days when unyielding creeds forced Ralph Waldo Emerson to abjure his pulpit, he became classed with unbelievers. His blameless character and great influence for good were instanced as illustrations of what a man could be without acceptance of all that preachers taught. But those who thus talked ignored the fact that Emerson was a descendant of nine generations of preachers, and that his character was a direct result of the teachings and practice of this long line of ancesScoffers who cite the many social virtues and beneficent activities of that noted and aggressive unbeliever, Bob" Ingersoll, perhaps do not know that his father was a preacher who, despite his devotion to the letter of an iron-bound creed, was a man of wide sympathies and intense moral earnestness, and that the son owes many of the good points of his character to inheritance from, and the teachings of, his father.

tors.

The more a church or community depends upon its pastor, the more it should do to strengthen and uphold him. His participation in all the affairs of life should be encouraged, he should be drawn from his study and his thoughts into active communication with men and women besides those who draw upon the stores of his head and heart. The more men receive of him, the more it is their interest and duty to give to him from themselves. To expect the grace of God to supply all the preacher's needs, when all others are depending upon their fellows for some necessary help and cheer, is hypocritical as well as inhuman.

W

THE SABBATH DAY OF THE JEW.
AN ANSWER TO THE REV. DR. KOHLER.*
EUGENE COHN.

Menorah Monthly, New York, November.

HILE an ordinary individual may without blame change his opinion, religious or otherwise, a dozen times a year, a religious leader, assuming to guide others, should firmly and unalterably make up his mind before he calls upon others to act upon his utterances. The words of such a one are living forces, producing results that outgrow his control. Men's faith is of a delicate texture; a shock in even an unimportant part often destroys the entire fabric; and the discredited leader cannot hope to regain their confidence. Confessedly wrong in one particular, will he not be doubted in all?

For years the Jewish faith has been struggling to free itself A digest of the Rev. Dr. Kohler's paper appeared in THE LITERARY DIGEST, Vol. III., No. 21, p. 576.

from the fetters of tradition—and letter-worship. The problem of modernization has engaged her leaders no less than those of the various Protestant sects. What revision means. to the latter, Sabbath reform means to the Jew. And one of its foremost advocates, for a lifetime almost, has been the Rev. Dr. Kohler, of Beth-El, New York. Nothing could have been a greater shock to the adherent of that reform than the recent announcement that he has abandoned it. He has, in his article in the September Menorah, defined his position, and it becomes possible to study carefully the reasons he gives for his apostasy and to determine their finality.

It was all a mistake! This confession runs through the entire article. There is no suggestion of changed conditions. The dangers that existed at the inception of the reform threaten Judaism to-day. The Sabbath is as much disregarded now as then, and all the evils that flow from its neglect are standing menaces to the Jewish faith. Intimidated by the austerity and inaccessibility of the synagogue, thousands of young people seek refuge in atheism and agnosticism, and nowhere is there to-day any greater reverence for the faith, or firmer purpose to adhere to it, than existed then.

This state of affairs the article admits; at least, it asserts nothing to the contrary. Indeed, it says that in a measure the institution of the Sunday services had some effect. "The ethical culture craze," the author remarks, was more or less paralyzed by the success of the Sunday services." But experience has shown him that his cherished opinions were delusions. The people did not rally to the support of the new Sabbath with the enthusiasm which characterized the Sabbath of old. He doubts now whether the Sunday, with its colorless cosmopolitanism, its form of devotion void of positive Jewish character, will awaken the dormant spark of religious fervor.

We venture to assert that the Reverend Doctor cannot point to a single individual whose tendency toward atheism or agnosticism has been strengthened by the Sunday lectures, nor give a solitary instance of harm that has come to Judaism from them. Was Temple Beth-El less åttended; was its Sunday-school less patronized, while the Sunday lectures were in vogue? Did not the congregation during that period steadily grow in wealth, membership, and influence? Dare the learned Rabbi say that the men under his administration were less good Jews, that their children were less good Jews, for these lectures? Did Beth-El not the members of continue prominent in all Jewish and charitable enterprises? We cannot imagine where the distinguished divine made his appalling observations. His congregation has just built what is probably the most splendid edifice owned by a Jewish congregation. In his dedication sermon he spoke of it as an incident in the onward march of Judaism, yet immediately after that great success he abandons the very policy to which we must attribute that success.

The truth seems to be that the learned Rabbi anticipated an immediate duplication in Sunday of the ancient Sabbath in all its glories. That was impossible in this age of reason. The ancient Sabbath was the creation of an age of faith, and the age of faith has fled. Men will believe only what they can justify, practice only what they understand. Reason, and all that it implies, dominates everything. The fact that your temples are crowded when you talk of live matters, and empty when you talk of Biblical subjects, is encouraging. incident in the conquest of religion by reason.

It is an

The attitude of the world, says Dr. Kohler, has changed toward the Jew. The world hates the Jew. So the Jews must, to preserve their faith from destruction, rally round their sacred Sabbath. This seems the weakest argument used. No answer is needed. Because Russia and Germany are cruel to the Jews, should the Jews of America refuse the toleration and equality offered them here?

Though deserted by her captain, the good ship of SabbathReform will not go to pieces on the rocks. Other and able hands will take the helm. Eyes as clear and courage as steadfast shall guide it yet, and bring it safe to port.

K

MISCELLANEOUS.

WILLIAM II., EMPEROR OF GERMANY.
W. T. STEAD.

Review of Reviews, London and New York, November. I. SOME ANALOGIES-FANCIFUL OR OTHERWISE. AISER WILHELM is not Kubla Khan, but there is about. them both something fantastic and unreal. The: Emperor may not have sed on honey dew and drunk the milk of Paradise, but to the average mortal he is almost as strange; and the memory of his visit [to England] is already becoming as a vision of Xanuda, where

'Mid the tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war.

Not that the Emperor paid much heed to these ancestral voices, save to drown them by asseverations of peace.

No one for a moment doubts that the Kaiser to-day sin cerely desires peace, any more than four years ago anyone doubted that he was sincerely devoted to the great Bismarckian legend. The Emperor is like those Orientals who one day bow in adoring worship before their favorite idol, and the next drag it through the filth of the gutter and fling it into the river. The god of his idolatry last year may be the object of his intensest aversion to-day.

Yet there is not a shadow of a pretext for believing that the Emperor means war. There is every reason to believe that he means peace, means it with his whole heart-to-day. But what he will mean to-morrow knoweth no man, least of all Kaiser Wilhelm II.

The mercurial mobility of the Kaiser's convictions renders it impossible for anyone to feel any confidence in the stability of his policy. With the Czar it is entirely different. Alexander the Second may not be a genius, but you know where he is. Like a great patient ox he stands in mid-furrow, while the Kaiser skips like a kangaroo about the plain. When you try to follow his course, it is like riding on a switch-back railway.. It is all ups and downs, violent alternations at a rattling speed, plenty of thrills, no doubt; but on the whole the ox-wagon is safer, although much more monotonous.

In England and Russia we have Governments which are like the old matchlock, whereas in the Kaiser we have a rifle with a hair-trigger, always ready to go off. No doubt the latter is more scientific, but for those who wish to get out of the way of the bullet the matchlock is preferable. In an English taproom, an angry brawl may end in bloody noses and much foul language; but the mortality is less than in the bar at which the Western miner empties his six-shooter before our country bumpkin can double his fist. It is always touch and go with the Kaiser.

Those who have ever seen a bull-fight, where a lively bull is turned loose in the arena, will understand exactly the impression produced on some observers by watching the actions of the Kaiser. There is such a lordy self-confidence in the good bull. At first he cannot quite conceive what his tormentors are after with their stinging little darts and their waving cloaks, so he begins by disdaining them. But when some matador, more daring than his fellows, forces upon the taurine mind that he means actually to insult him, then that bull goes for the matador, as the Kaiser went for Bismarck. But he does not insist in his pursuit.

He clears one off, and in another minute he is after another, now here, now there; he rushes to all parts of the arena in quick succession. Nor can anyone predict whether his next charge will be east, west, north, or south. All that the spectators know is that he will charge somewhere, and that each charge for the moment preoccupies the bull to the exclusion of all that has gone before or all that may follow after.

Bravo toro! bravo toro! is the cry as he makes the sand fly beneath his hoofs. It is magnificent, but it is not consecutive, and each fresh charge leaves everyone in as much doubt as ever as to what will come next.

The note which differentiates Wilhelm II. from all the other sovereigns of Europe, is that he is au fond, first and foremost, a sensational journalist born in the purple. He is not a sensation-monger. He is a sensationalist. He is par excellence the journalist. He is always endeavoring to impress his ideas upon his contemporaries, and he is never weary of trying new and striking effects. At first he blundered just like a young editor who, in order to arrest the attention of his readers, prints everything in capitals. To this day he has only imperfectly mastered the trick of being impressive without seeming to strain after effects.

He

He is full of the feverish restlessness of a press man. has as many ideas as a first-class newspaper editor. He cultivates a picturesque and journalistic style. He studies the great art of opportuneness, of seizing the right occasion when to launch his latest ideas, and in his straining after effect he indulges to

His mind darts hither and thither much as the Numidian horsemen careered round the march of the Roman legions. In another phase of his character the Emperor reminds us of General Gordon. Since Khartoum fell there has been no man of the first rank in Europe who referred constantly and publicly to God Almighty as a real factor in the affairs of this world. William the Second regards his Maker seriously. Like General Gordon he recognizes himself as a fellow-worker, in the Apostle's phrase, with the Lord of Hosts. The difference between them is chiefly one of temperament. General Gordon was humble, and full of self-abasing modesty, never forgetting that if he were a partner with the Eternal, he was the junior partner. The German Emperor, every now and then, seems to think that he is the senior.

THE PASSING OF THE REPORTER.
EUGENE DUBIEF.

Revue Bleue, Paris, October 10.

N this world everything wears out, everything passes away,

with the staid and reserved sovereigns who surround him, he is as the Pall Mall Gazette is to the Times, or the New York World is to the Philadelphia Ledger.

Since he came to the throne he has spent most of his time in special commissioning and interviewing. He has rushed around Europe like a special correspondent, and he has left no device untried to increase his circulation.

When he was in London it was curious to note the way in which the journalistic craving for novelty and the picturesque found expression in his ceaseless change of his dress and uniform. The Emperor had no newspaper to bring out, so he brought out himself in a bewildering variety of new editions. In the course of a single day he came out as a hussar, as an admiral, and as an Emperor. On one famous occasion he changed his dress no fewer than five times in a single day. It was just like the specials and extra specials of the afternoon papers when there is anything of unusual interest, such as a Whitechapel murder or a railway collision.

If all the world's a stage, then the Emperor William is at present the most popular actor on the European boards. He excites the same kind of interest-immensely intensified-that was formerly excited by Lord Randolph Churchill, before that young man grew a beard and went to seed. Like Lord Randolph, he is full of ideas, of originality, and of energy. Like Lord Randolph, he fills all around him with a constant uneasiness, no one ever knowing exactly what he will do next, excepting that it would be something not conventional or to be expected.

If the Emperor reminds some people of Lord Randolph, minus the temptation to frivolity and wilful self-indulgence, he reminds others of the first Napoleon in more ways than one. There is no doubt at least one enormous difference between them. Napoleon was a man without a conscience. William II. has a highly developed moral sense. William is as much of an actor as Napoleon. In both, intense self-consciousness colors every action. Each is a poseur of the first rank. Their fundamental idea of government is identical. It is that which corresponds to the star system of the theatrical manager, where the whole programme is framed for the benefit of a single star.

The Emperor reminds me neither of Lord Randolph Churchill nor of Napoleon, so much as of General Gordon. There is, no doubt, an immense gulf dividing the somewhat theatrical, intensely self-conscious Kaiser from the simple, self-sacrificing hero who perished at Khartoum; but nevertheless they have much in common. In both there is the lack of deliberate study and consecutive thought. To talk to General Gordon was often like following a swallow in its flight. In this respect the Emperor is very much like General Gordon.

had their art modified by mechanism, the profession of reporter will be done away with by the new sciences. After stage-coaches, the locomotive; after gas, the voltaic arc. The journals printing dispatches will soon be a memory only. Make way for the phonographs! Make way for the telephones !

Already the telephone renders a thousand services. The editor-in-chief uses it to receive information or give orders, to chat with his colleagues. The Havas agency and the Dalziel agency send to the journals of Rheims, of Rouen, of Havre telephonic correspondence. Soon the telephone will extend from Paris to Bordeaux, from Marseilles to Birmingham. The Seine, the Danube, the Ganges will gossip together like neighbors.

Already, also, it is announced that Edison has undertaken to enlarge an idea already tried in France, the idea of a speaking journal! The deaf will, perhaps, object to it, but the blind will sing its praises.

Every subscriber, put by a wire in communication with his journal, will have nothing to do but turn a steel buckle and listen. Not only will he have the latest news collected, but he will hear, with or without commentary, the sermon of the preacher, the new opera, the speech of the cabinet minister; he will even know where, at a certain point, there was applause or murmurs of dissent; it will be impossible for the speaker to correct a stenographic report.

An indescribable network of electric conduits will enclose the globe. Through them, from everywhere, news will flow to the cabinet of the journalist, as by so many nervous threads; other nervous threads will transmit the news at the same instant to all the subscribers or will store it in phonographs. Then, who knows? our posterity having discovered the art of seeing at a distance, the likeness, the gestures, the play of actors, of actresses, of celebrated persons will follow the same road by which will be transmitted their acts or their words. By means of a very small subscription, the citizen of the twentieth century can call up before him, at will, a living diorama of the globe and be constantly in communication with the whole human race. No newspaper proprietor of our time knows so well, as will then be known, what takes place on the earth.

Then this will be so admirable, journalism will be so perfected, that there will be no more journalism. It will have ceased to be the indispensable tongue. The "this will kill that" of the poet will have found one application the more. The book has undermined the monument; the newspaper has taken the place of the book; the telephone and the phonograph will suppress the newspaper.

Books.

By

CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, AND HOW HE RECEIVED AND IMPARTED THE SPIRIT OF DISCOVERY. Justin Winsor. 8vo, pp. 674. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1891.

[The fourth centenary of the discovery of America by Columbus is not likely to have a worthier memorial than this work, the fruit of abundant research, containing all that, up to this time, is known about the Discoverer. Everything that can cast light on the character and career of the immortal navigator is weighed with scrupulous care and judicial impartiality. The falsity of a number of the stories which have been repeated by all the biographers of Columbus is demonstrated. The famous distich,

Á Castilla y á Leon

Nuevo Mundo dió Colon,

which, we have been told a thousand times, was inscribed on a monument to Columbus built seven years after his death by King Ferdinand, at Seville, it here appears was never thought of until Castellanos suggested it in his Elegias in 1588. The volume begins with a chapter on the Sources of information about the subject of the work and the Gatherers of them, a topic which so learned a bibliographer as Mr. Winsor is specially qualified to discuss. It appears that sixty-four memoirs, relations, or letters, written by the hand of Columbus are preserved in their entirety. There follows a chapter on the "Biographers and Portraitists" of Columbus, from which we learn how little reliance can be placed on the statements of most of the biographers; and that there is not an alleged portrait of him on which any reliance can be placed. In four subsequent chapters is demonstrated how uncertain is the place and time of birth of Columbus, how very little we know about his ancestry or his life until he left Portugal for Spain, in 1484, when, it is probable he was about forty years old. That Columbus ever visited Iceland, or that, if he did, anything he learned there influenced him in the least to make his voyage of discovery, Mr. Winsor thinks highly improbable. After Columbus took up his abode in Spain, his biographers are on somewhat firmer ground; though even in his subsequent history there is much confusion and a great lack of desirable information on important points. In successive chapters are depicted: "The First Voyage;" ;""Columbus in Spain Again: March to September, 1493; "The Second Voyage, 1494-1496; "Columbus in Spain Again: 1496-1498;" The Third Voyage: 1498-1500;" "The Degradation and Disheartenment of Columbus

(1500);' "Columbus Again in Spain: 1500-1502;" "The Fourth Voyage: 15021504;" "His Death in 1506." Welcome is a chapter on "The Descent of Columbus's Honors," and a Pedigree, tracing the descent from Columbus of his present representative, the Spanish Duke of Veragna, whose income-pitiful when we think of the boundless wealth which has been the result of his great ancestor's discoveries-is but from eight to ten thousand dollars a year. AnAppendix recounts at length "The Geographical Results" of the discovery of America. The volume is handsomely made, profusely and well illustrated, with an abundance of maps, fac-similes of the handwriting of Columbus and others, and of pages in the blackletter tomes which relate to him. Mr. Winsor's style is attractive, and the book, with all its learning and research, is eminently readable. We are obliged to content ourselves with giving the author's estimate of the characters of Ferdinand, Isabella, and Columbus.]

FER

ERDINAND and Isabella, the wearers of the crowns of Aragon and Castile, were linked in common interests, and their joint reign had augured a powerful, because united, Spain. The student of their characters, as he works among the documents of the time, cannot avoid the recognition of qualities little calculated to satisfy demands for nobleness and devotion which the world has learned to associate with royal obligations. It may be possibly too much to say that habitually, but not too much to assert that too often, these Spanish monarchs were more ready at perfidy and deceit than even an allowance for the teachings of their time would permit. Often the student will find himself forced to grant that the queen was more culpable in these respects than the king. An anxious inquirer into the queen's ways is not quite sure that she was able to distinguish between her own interests and those of God. The documentary researches of Bergenroth have decidedly lowered her in the judgment of those who have studied that investigator's results. We need to plead the times for her, and we need to push that plea very far.

The king, perhaps, was good enough for a king, as such personages went in the fifteenth century; but his smile and remorseless coldness were mixed as few could mix them, even in those days. The French would not trust him. The English watched his ambition. The Moors knew him as their conqueror. The Jews fled before his evil eye. The miserable saw him in his inquisitors. He made promises, and then got the Papal dispensation to break them. He juggled in State policy as his mind changed, and he worked his craft very readily. Machiavelli would have liked him, and, indeed, he was a good scholar in an existing school, which counted the art of outwitting better than the arts of honesty.

It would have been well for Columbus if he had died when his master work was done. With his great aim certified by its results, though they were far from being what he thought, he was unfortunately left in the end to be laid bare on trial, a common mortal after all, the

creature of buffeting circumstances, and a weakling in every element of command. His imagination had availed him in his upward course when a serene habit in his waiting days could obscure his defects. Later, the problems he encountered were those that required an eye to command, with tact to persuade, and skill to coerce, and he had none of them.

Columbus was a pitiable man who met a pitiable death. Hardly another character in profane history is more august than his. Hardly another character in the world's record has made so little of its opportunities. His discovery was a blunder; his blunder was a New World; the New World is his monument! Its discoverer might have been its father; he proved to be its despoiler. He might have given its young days such a benignity as the world likes to associate with a maker; he left it a legacy of devastation and crime. He might have been an unselfish promoter of geographical science; he proved a rabid seeker for gold and a viceroyalty. He might have won converts to the fold of Christ by the kindness of his spirit; he gained the execrations of the good angels. He might, like Las Casas, have rebuked the fiendishness of his contemporaries; he set them an example of perverted belief. The triumph of Barcelona led down to the ignominy of Valladolid, with every step in the degradation palpable and resultant.

STATE REGULATION OF WAGES. By Conrad Reno. Pp. 39. Boston: B. Wilkins & Co. 1891.

[In this pamphlet the author states and explains a plan which seems to deserve careful consideration, as presenting a feasible means of harmonizing labor and capital. As the interests of employer and employed are to a certain extent conflicting-in that it is the pecuniary interest of the employer to obtain labor at a low cost, and of the wage-carner to sell his labor at a high price-the relation must necessarily lead to disputes between the two parties. At present there is no peaceful means of settling these disputes, which is open to the side which thinks itself aggrieved. The result is that disputes regarding the amount of wages and the hours of work are quickly and frequently followed by strikes, violence, and destruction of property. These evil. consequences would not attend disputes if there were a disinterested tribunal, which could be appealed to by either side, for the purpose of deciding the dispute according to the principles of justice and right. It is upon this theory that the State acts when it establishes and maintains courts of justice for the peaceful settlement of disputes between its citizens. Courts being composed of disinterested persons are more apt to decide disputes fairly and correctly than are either of the disputants. The experience of centuries has demonstrated the soundness and the practicability of this view. Acting upon this analogy of courts of justice, the author advocates the establishment of "Labor-Boards" in each State for the peaceful settlement of disputes between employers and wage-earners.]

WHEN

HEN a dispute arises as to the amount of wages that should be paid in certain classes of employment in which an oversupply of labor exists (which classes of employment should be determined beforehand by the legislature), and a certain proportion (one-third) of either side appeals in writing to the Labor-Board for its decision, the Board is given the power to hear and decide the question in substantially the same way that a court now hears and decides questions. If, in the judgment of the Labor-Board, wages be too low they would be raised; and if they be too high they would be lowered. Wages once fixed by the Board should remain the same for at least one year, unless a change be requested by one-third of both employers and employed. The guide for determining wages is not the iron law" of supply and demand which now controls, but the "golden rule of wages" by which labor is entitled to a fair and just proportion of the wealth created by labor and capital, irrespective of the demand for and the supply of labor.

""

Justice to the laborer requires that the State should provide some tribunal, with power to prevent the employing class from taking advantage of the necessities of the working class to depress wages below their fair value. In many departments of labor the supply of labor far exceeds the demand, and the wage-earners are forced by their necessities to underbid one another for work. When two or more equally good workmen want the same situation or job, the employer will naturally select the one who offers to work for the least wages. In fact he must do so; for, under the present systemi,

a few avaricious employers have the power to fix the rate of wages for all employed in the same business. As they grind their help down to the starvation point, other employers are obliged to do likewise or quit the business; for the latter must compete with the former in the price of commodities sold, and higher wages would eat up all profit. Hence a few dishonost and grasping employers can and do depress wages, not only to the injury of their own help, but also to the injury of all others' help. This is the inevitable result