could be manufactured in a provincial town bodes well for literary America. It will to many seem like a numbering of Apollo's sons and daughters "out West;" and thus apart from entertainment and pleasure to the eye, Mr. Piatt has given us proof that in this age of peace congresses and highly explosive humanitarianism for export of capitalistic love of labor and laborious worship of capital, we live not wholly forsaken of the Muses even in the valley of the Ohio. W. N. GUTHRIE.

WATSON'S " STORY OF FRANCE."

After the history of the French Revolution had been written by Thiers, Mignet, Taine, Lamartine, Carlyle, and many other able historians, it seemed that nothing remained to be done save by diligent labor in the archives to throw light upon an obscure point here and there. Above all, it seemed presumptuous in a Georgia Populite to undertake to retell a story which had been told so often and so well. It was therefore with great misgivings that I took up Watson's "Story of France," and only as the result of repeated urgings. I do not hesitate to say, however, that it is the best history of the French Revolution to the fall of Robespierre that has appeared.

There are few things more difficult than to write an intelligible narrative of the Revolutionary movement. The actors are so numerous and they are striving for so many things, there are so many currents running in different directions, so many wheels revolving within wheels, that to present the subject in sufficient detail and yet with a masterful grasp of it as a whole is an extraordinary achievement. In this Mr. Watson has surpassed all his illustrious predecessors. In fullness of detail he approaches Thiers and Taine, in grasp of the subject as a whole he at least equals Mignet, in dramatic interest he is the rival of Lamartine.

The revolution has now been so thoroughly explored in all its ramifications that the time has come for a synthetic historian to seize all the separate threads, and weave them

together with a master hand. This Mr. Watson does in a way to startle the shades of the great men whose fame is so largely due to their efforts in the same field.

The chief characteristics of Mr. Watson's work are his comprehensive grasp of the subject, the sanity of his judgment, and the vigor of his style. Sanity of judgment is the last thing one looks for in a Populite; but in dealing with the men of the French Revolution Mr. Watson displays it in an unusual degree. His style would make Gibbon and Macaulay turn over in their graves and moan with anguish; but it is extraordinarily vigorous and graphic. It hurries the reader forward, and makes the great panorama pass before his eyes with an intense realism. Such a style was never before employed in historic composition, and there are those who will resent it, perhaps with justice; yet they must confess that it gives them a realizing sense of the actual occurrences such as they never had before.

While some will be offended at the unconventional style, others will be shocked at the numerous scandalous episodes. But he who would understand the history of France must not be squeamish. The intrigues of wanton females, which in the history of England and America are scarcely to be reckoned with, are at the bottom of half that has occurred in France. The historian who disregards them gains in dignity, but at the sacrifice of truth. An expurgated history of France is on a level with an expurgated edition of the "Decameron." We are forced to wonder what it is all about. Mr. Watson does not sin greatly in this way. The ladies come in for their full share of his attention.

I have called it a history of the French Revolution to the fall of Robespierre, and such it is, despite its title. I imagine that that is what Mr. Watson started out to write. But he perceived that the Revolution could not be understood without a knowledge of the conditions out of which it grew, and so he wrote the history of France from the beginning. But the introductory period is treated solely as throwing light upon the prodigious tragedy which was the natural outcome

of its follies and its crimes. And while Mr. Watson continues the story to Napoleon's accession to the consulate, it is evident that the mean and sordid spirit of the directorial régime has for him but slight interest, and his treatment of it is perfunctory. But in the real purpose of the book, in its exposition of events from the accession of Louis XVI. to Robespierre's fall, it is a masterpiece in its way.

G. B. ROSE.

FROM THE LAND OF ART AND ROMANCE.

BEATO ANGELICO, by I. B. Supino. BOTTICELLI, by the same. Florence: Fratelli Alinari.

To the student of art, photography is the greatest of all blessings. Until its discovery satisfactory art study was impossible. No man, however powerful his memory, could intelligently compare a picture attributed to Titian or Raphael at Madrid with another at London or St. Petersburg. Nor did engravings materially assist in the comparison. Into them the personality of the engraver enters too largely. But when the late Prince Consort made his collection of photographs of all the pictures attributed to Raphael, the scientific study of art began. Then it was possible to compare them, to determine the characteristics of the master's style, to recognize the true and reject the false.

Substantially all the great pictures of the world have now. been photographed with a perfection that would have been impossible in the days of the Prince Consort; the scientific system of Morelli has revolutionized art study, and the student who is a few years behind is behind indeed.

Of all the workers in the field, the great photographic house of Alinari Brothers at Florence are easily the first. They have brought photography to an unsurpassed perfection, and the diligence with which they have sought out masterpieces in the remotest parts of Italy and reproduced them regardless of expense and trouble can never be sufficiently commended.

They have now turned their extraordinary proficiency to the reproduction of pictures by process work for the illustration of books, and the two before us are marvels of the bookmaker's art. Each contains numerous reproductions of the works of the illustrious painters with whom they deal, executed in a style that is at present unsurpassable, combining softness, clearness, accuracy, and beauty in equal degree. And all this for ten francs, a sum for which you could not have bought a single plate a few years ago.

And the text is worthy of the illustrations. Sig. Supino is one of the most accomplished of art critics, thoroughly conversant with his subject, and master of a style that makes reading a delight.

The work on Fra Angelico can be had either in French or Italian, and that on Botticelli will no doubt soon be translated into French. Would that there were a sufficient demand in English-speaking countries to justify the issue of the books in our own tongue! Every one who contemplated a journey to Florence, where alone these great masters can be seen in their perfection, could prepare himself by a study of these books; every one who had gazed upon their masterpieces in the Uffizi, the Academy, and San Marco could turn to the books and see visions of grace and beauty rising again before his eyes; and the many to whom a pilgrimage to art's great center is an impossibility could have some idea of the glories that they are never to see.

IL FUOCO. By Gabriele D'Annunzio.

The publication of a work by D'Annunzio is always an event in Italy, for he is easily the foremost among Italian men of letters. For some years he has devoted himself to the drama, and has produced several morbid but intense and powerful works. When it was announced that he had returned to the novel, expectation was on tiptoe; but when his new work appeared, it was greeted with a universal chorus of hisses, in which every reader has joined.

In the first place, its indiscretion is gross and unpardon

able. The characters portrayed are unmistakably himself and Signora Duse, the great actress. It is an obvious account of their liaison; and for a man so to expose the woman who has loved him is an offense that death only could atone.

Then the colossal vanity of the man is revolting. He writes of himself in a way that would be extravagant if applied to a Shakespeare or a Homer. In reading such ravings one can only wonder if he is not going to follow Guy de Maupassant, the brilliant young Frenchman whom in some ways he resembles, into the gulf of insanity. It makes us suspect that the old fashion of starving children of genius to death was better than the modern one of turning their heads with adulation.

And, finally, the book is dull. In his search for fine phrases he has fost the vigor and directness of his style, and has become précieux to an exasperating degree.

If Sig. D'Annunzio has nothing better to write, he would best devote himself to politics, upon which he has entered, and which is perhaps responsible for his decline. But it is to be hoped that the universal chorus of hisses which has greeted his latest venture will bring him to his senses, and restore him to literature with a contrite heart.

G. B. ROSE.

A POSITIVIST CRITIC. TENNYSON, RUSKIN, AND MILL, AND OTHER LitERARY ESTIMATES. By Frederic Harrison. The Macmillan Co. 1900. It is always pleasant to read what one who has known and appreciated great men has to say of them. This is not only pleasant, but valuable also, when the person writing is sure to have some one writing an appreciation of himself after he has gone to his fathers. Mr. Frederic Harrison has in this volume essays on Tennyson, Ruskin, Arnold, Symonds, Froude, Freeman, and Mill, among his contemporaries; an address on Lamb and Keats; one on English prose; two reviews on Gibbon; and a dialogue poking fun at a book trotter" 66 —an Oxford man who can defend him