possible less than forty years ago for a person of Allen's independent-one might almost say obstinate-character to be worried out of his membership of a perfectly innocent society by the reports of friendly busy bodies as to remarks which had appeared in the Record and kindred publications. Nor is it less pleasing to find that among these friends was one whose faculty for interesting himself in other people's business is still unaffected by lapse of time.

If, however, in matters of theological toleration there has been a change, we have not yet severed all links which bind us to the past. Those much-enduring officials, Her Majesty's Inspectors, will read with a melancholy interest the memorandum, dated August 10th, 1844, in which Allen protests against the over-curious control of Whitehall. Then, as in later times, it was through the "diary" that this control was sought to be exercised; but, more fortunate or more pertinacious than his successors, Allen was able to obtain a modification in the obnoxious instructions.

The following anecdotes of Allen's parochial work are amusing:

"One old woman, not always easy to get on with, after she had left his parish said, in speaking of him to her new clergyman, Him and me were very great. When I came to the door, he'd always say, "May I come in?" The clergyman said, 'I'm afraid he was more polite than I am.' 'I reckon so.' After a pause, she added, 'He'd often say, But I'm afraid I shall make you angry." As the old woman in question did not go to church, it seems likely from the concluding remark that the visits were profitable as well as polite. He appeared to have the power of setting all, especially the poor, at their ease. Some time ago, a peasant, in the neighbourhood of Whitchurch, said to me on my mentioning his name, ‘Eh, dear, he was wonderful good company. 'I could tell him anything,' said one She then proceeded to relate how poor woman. one day the Archdeacon had found her in trouble, because some of the clothes hung to dry in the kitchen had caught fire. The Archdeacon, she continued, after expressing his sympathy with her on her loss, had said, 'Let us pray about it.'"

Not the least entertaining portion is a long letter of "reminiscences" contributed by Lord Grimthorpe. As the son-in-law of Bishop Lonsdale of Lichfield, Allen's early patron and subsequent diocesan, he was for many years intimately acquainted with the energetic archdeacon. It is, perhaps, a pity that while eulogizing one person he cannot refrain from characteristically letting his lash play over a good many others; but most readers will be prepared for this when they see his name, and we do not know that the persons affected will be "a penny the worse." It is amusing, by the way, to contrast his view of the Education Acts with those expressed by Bishop Thirlwall twenty years before, at a time when the Acts were only looming in the near future. Few persons, we think, will have much hesitation in deciding whether the prelate's prophecy or the lawyer's criticism is more in accordance with the actual state of things.

Allen came of a long-lived family. His elder brother is still vigorous and active as Dean of St. David's; and he himself continued his parish work to the age of seventythree, and performed, in no perfunctory way, his "archidiaconal functions" for nearly three years longer. He had been "oculus

The Republic of Plato. Books I.-V. Edited by T. H. Warren, M.A. (Macmillan & Co.)

episcopi" to three Bishops of Lichfield, and lators hitherto." It is true, however, had enjoyed the full esteem and confidence that both his principal oracles translate of all, men as they were of very different the passage very badly. There are types. His memoir, as we have said, will some places where, if he understands probably attract the interest of readers by what he is writing about, he does not the glimpses which it gives of more famous do himself justice. The note on διὰ men; but it will retain their interest by the avròs de ëλeyov avτyv σwτηpíav, K.T.λ., picture which it gives of the man himself. 429 C, leaves the reader under the impression (which can hardly be a true one) that the editor did not see at all the real difficulty of the words aury σornpíav, which is that the second aur must mean rv dóέav; αὐτὴν τὴν δόξαν; while the remarks about elồŋ on 476 A suggest that he knows nothing whatever about the theory of ideas. Again, in a note on 364 D about Plato's habits in quoting, which is otherwise a model of what a note ought not to be, we read, "Aristotle possessed a famous Homer, ỷ ék vápůnkos, though his many interests and mass of knowledge apparently prevented him from quoting correctly "; but as no authority is given, we can only surmise that Mr. Warren refers to Plutarch's statement that Alexander got a similarly named Iliad, critically edited by Aristotle-'Apuroréλovs StopwσavтOS v k τοῦ νάρθηκος καλοῦσιν—which he used to keep with his dagger under his pillow. But if this is so the latter part of the sentence loses whatever point it had. With reference to quotations, we should have thought it hardly necessary to quote Dr. Watts on Tπтóμενoι, 365 A; but Mr. Warren might at least have quoted correctly. That he has not done so is, no doubt, owing to his "many interests and mass of knowledge"

THE 'Republic' is a work much studied at Oxford, and scholars were entitled to expect at least something interesting when they heard that the head of a prominent college was about to produce an edition. The result was about to produce an edition. The result is disappointing, and it is to be hoped that the President of Magdalen may not proceed to edit the second half of the dialogue "in the scanty leisure......of six or seven much preoccupied' years," unless indeed a great ," unless indeed a great deal of the "preoccupation " consists of considering how a commentary ought to be written; for the hapless beginner (for whom alone this edition can have been compiled) is to be pitied if he has to grope his way through the line and the cave and the other pitfalls of the rest of the dialogue with nothing to help him but the added darkness of such notes as these. Since, however, books vi.-x. are not read for Moderations, it may be hoped that they are fairly safe.

Without wishing to maintain the puerile view that Plato was a philosopher, we must express a conviction that the train of thought in the 'Republic,' however worthless, is not always perfectly clear at first sight to the student who has never read any of the other dialogues. Mr. Warren would appear to be of a different opinion; for with the exception of the remark that "Socrates' first objection (to Cephalus) seems rather quibbling," and a note on the definition of "justice" at the end of the fourth book, his annotations contain no attempt at any elucidation or illustration of Plato's argument, method, or doctrines; and the introduction cannot be said to be of much use in this respect. For instance, the comments on the passage (435 B foll.) about the tripartite division of the soul give no hint that any similar doctrine is to be found in the 'Phædrus' or 'Timæus,' or anywhere else in Plato. Instead of any such assistance the notes are filled with references to, and quotations from, Liddell and Scott's dictionary and Jowett's and Davies and Vaughan's translations; which works we should, on the whole, advise students to consult, if at all, before turning to Mr. Warren. Prof. Jowett is, however, we acknowledge with thankfulness, corrected in at least one place, 395 A.

When Mr. Warren forsakes the translations he is not always happy. For instance, on 347 A he calls the infinitive deiv "a slight Platonic looseness of writing," when it is, in fact, quite regularly constructed with Aeyov about six lines before. Again, he finds a splendid mare's nest in 411 B, un avín allà kn, where he fails to see what is the object of these verbs, and consequently meddles with the text. If he had looked back at the preceding sentence he would have seen that the object is rò Ovpoedés. Yet he is surprised that the difficulty should have " escaped commentators and trans

"almost

as, for instance, of chemistry, displayed in a note on pvμμáτov, 429 E. He does not, again, add materially to our knowledge of Greek when he says, with somewhat unnecessary dogmatism (on 330 E), "The fact is δ ̓ οὖν and γοῦν, γ ̓ οὖν, should be considered together," without telling us anything else about them, except that they are synonymous"; nor to our knowledge of Plato by the note on 379 C, "What the origin of evil is, or in what ways its existence may be reconciled with the governance of a beneficent Providence, Plato does not in this place consider," in which not the least hint is given as to whether he considers it elsewhere.

some are even worse.

The notes, especially in books iii. and iv., are, of course, not all so poor as these, but On the passage at 432 D, about people hunting for what they actually hold in their hands, Mr. Warren solemnly informs his readers that "Plato did not know the familiar instance of spectacles.' On the same page he gives as a separate note all by itself Dr. Jowett's translation of lov ioù, "Halloo!" On 361 D occurs the note "Baßai. Whe-ew!" of which Mr. Warren appears to be proud, for he refers to it again on 459 B. But the lowest depths of ineptithe tude are sounded by a note on 336 A, whole of which runs as follows: " Ξέρξης. Needs no comment.'

On the whole, it is impossible to consider this book a credit to English scholarship. When Mr. Warren speaks of the late Dr. Badham as "one of those scholars who made a reputation by trenchant handling,' we cannot but feel that Badham's shade might use, mutatis mutandis, the retort made by Themistocles T Zepipi Aodopovμévy.

and a half on a religious basis is sufficiently remarkable; but the high pressure at which the first emigrants lived, and the discipline which implied that all the members of the church were animated by a spirit of devout aspiration and earnest loyalty to certain theological dogmas, which were sentimental rather than of the nature of intellectual convictions, could not be maintained. The world burst in upon them, the moral tone became lowered, love grew cold, and in the place of unity there were quarrels and divisions. Persecution, or something very like it, came, and the lukewarm began to ask whether it was worth while to make sacrifices to keep up a state of things which was no longer needed. All things have an end; and the French Church at Norwich died out quietly -it slept itself to death.

Mr. Moens's volumes are valuable primarily for the genealogist who wishes to trace the descent of the Huguenot families; but the student of our commercial cannot, any more than the student of our religious history, afford to neglect the new facts that they bring to our notice. The settlement of the Flemings in the midst of a population devoted to the fallacies of a protective policy in all matters of commerce and manu

factures marked an era in the history of

free trade.

The toleration and, much more, the inclusion-the comprehension-of a religious body with an ecclesiastical system of its own by the Church of England, and its recognition under a protectorate of the English episcopacy, mark no less an era in the history of free thought among us. We have gone far beyond the point which the Flemings helped us to arrive at in our economical creed. In our ecclesiastical polity we have fallen behind that conception of what true catholicity implies which our fathers had arrived at. Yet the view which Archbishop Parker, and others with him, acted upon may prove to be one to which we may yet return, and the point which to them appeared a sufficient terminus ad quem may in the sequel become only a terminus a quo.

We are so much indebted to Mr. Moens that we scarcely like pointing out any defects in his work. We all make mistakes, and accuracy is only a question of degree. The wider a writer's field the more impossible it becomes to avoid more or less erroneous statements or theories. But it is a little startling to be informed that "it was proved at the trial of Laud that his desire was to reconcile the English people to the Church of Rome." And we are at a loss to know what Mr. Moens means by directing our attention to such names as Clarke, Le Strange, Le Neve, Hobart, Kemp, and many others, as if he would have us believe they were in any sense representative of a foreign ancestry dating no further back than Huguenot times. The volumes are admirably got up, and if they are to be taken as fair specimens of the publications of the society, the subscribers will have cause to congratulate themselves on getting a great deal for their money.

2 vols.

THE life of the late Mr. Francis was so largely devoted to the service of this journal that his son is perfectly justified in adding to the brief autobiography which his father left behind him a history of the literary events of the fifty years he was a publisher. The son of pious parents attached to the Independent sect, John Francis was subject to religious influences from his earliest years, and the little world of Nonconformity in which he was brought up was essentially the same in spirit as it is now. Chapels are handsomer buildings, their congregations larger, yet the same religious feeling, the same seriousness of disposition that animated them then, animate them now. But the newspaper trade has been revolutionized since the days when Francis was an apprentice at Marlborough's. There were then no railways and no railway bookstalls, no great firm to spread newspapers throughout the kingdom. Newspapers were heavily taxed, and in consequence were dear. The trade of the newsvendor was scarcely separated from the trade of the publisher, and the Longmans,

for instance, were then among the chief distributors of journals to country customers. The sale of the daily papers was so limited by their high price that most people were content to learn the news from the weekly press, and even as late as 1841, when the Gardeners' Chronicle, one of the earliest of the class journals, was started, it was thought necessary to supply a summary of the political and other news of the week along with the horticultural matter, on the supposition that most of the readers would not see any other paper; and the practice was continued for several years. It was the day, too, of long hours, when work began early and continued late, and such a thing as a half holiday on Saturday was not dreamt of. It was also a time when people in trade very generally lived at the place where they carried on their business. Francis, who with all his zeal for reform had, like every one else, a touch of conservatism about him, continued to live in Wellington Street till 1862, and it was only on account of his wife's health that he migrated to the suburbs. Yet it was characteristic of him that he never regretted the changes that had taken place, that he spoke with approval of the shortening of the hours of labour, and that he declared he was the better for living at

a distance from the Strand.

the invention

Mr. J. C. Francis in making his selections from our files has wisely given special attention to the advances of science which have marked the fifty years included in these volumes · such as of daguerreotypes, Faraday's researches, and Schönbein's discovery of ozone-and to changes like the reform of the Royal Society, the daily weather chart, the submarine cables, and the establishment of universities at Sidney and Melbourne. He has also drawn largely upon the obituary notices scattered through the journal, of which those of men notable in their generation, but now half forgotten, are more interesting than those of men of the highest eminence whose fame is still fresh. Mr. Francis has,

"M. Thackeray est venu aussi et avait les larmes aux yeux en partant. C'est peut-être la seule personne que j'aie vue réellement affectée à votre départ."

Mr. Francis has, in short, by care and judicious selection compiled two interesting volumes containing a great deal of information not easily accessible in a compendious form, and by adding two excellent indexes has made his book very easy of reference. In all he says of his father he shows undeniable taste and discretion, carefully abstaining from undue laudation, yet making evident to the reader the great and real merits of our lamented publisher.

NOVELS OF THE WEEK.

A Stiff necked Generation. By L. B. Walford. 3 vols. (Blackwood & Sons.) The Story of Helen Davenant. By Violet Fane. 3 vols. (Chapman & Hall.) Cressy. By Bret Harte. 2 vols. (MacThe Ghost of Dunboy Castle. By Huberto. millan & Co.)

2 vols. (Simpkin, Marshall & Co.) Mary Myles: a Study. By Mrs. Edmonds. 2 vols. (Remington & Co.) Reuben Sachs: a Sketch. By Amy Levy. (Macmillan & Co.)

Amos Kilbright, and other Stories. By Frank R. Stockton. (Fisher Unwin.) Ivan Ilyitch, and other Stories. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoï. Translated from the Russian by N. H. Dole. (Scott.) Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. (Vizetelly & Co.) MRS. WALFORD's new novel, 'A Stiff-necked Generation,' is amusing, especially the first two volumes; the third drags rather more than it should. The story, as might be expected of her, is not dependent on large interests and issues, but on the veriest trifles-trifles, perhaps, of too trivial and microscopic a sort to please even the finished student of the motives and manners school. Then, too, Mrs. Walford scarcely a perfect artist and ponent of this side of life. Her "county family of high degree" is surely a shade more punctilious and snobbish and fussy than is natural; and what sympathy or liking the reader may have to bestow will probably all along be given to the parvenu family in the duel between two different trainings which is the motif of the storyand this even before the manliness and real superiority of the low-born bridegroom over the feeble cross-grained grandees are made manifest.

seems to us

ex

Violet Fane's 'Helen Davenant' is yet another example of an agreeable novel "gone wrong." Truly the three-volume ideal has much to answer for! This one amongst its latest victims makes a promising start, and then goes quietly to seed, till, what with uncertainties, languors, longueurs, "harkings-back," and every form of procrastination generally, one is tired of the heroine and her self-told tale long before the end. She and the good, foolish lady her governess are inordinately fond of

mystery; the passion so gets hold of them that they get to passing themselves off under false names, to the detriment of their own and everybody else's interests. With the best intentions, too, they addict themselves to the suppression of all mention of births, deaths, marriages, and so forth, with the result that everything and everybody are at sixes and sevens around them. Mixed up with Helen's destinies in the wildest way are a mesmeric brother and sister, whom one finds it difficult to accept from any point of view. The book is, in fact, not brilliant nor even sustainedly clever.

In Cressy' Mr. Bret Harte tells once again a story of Californian life, and places before his readers in his own vivid manner another picture of the early history of civilization as it might quite recently have been studied in the Far West, with its striking contrasts and its perplexing studies of character. Here the reader, whether rightly or wrongly, is forced into the conviction that he has before him the actual state of affairs and the real persons who take part in them, and that is to say that Mr. Bret Harte works as an accomplished artist. 'Cressy' is without the pathetic touches which he has so often dashed into his stories; but in its clear discrimination and in its completeness the book is among the best of Mr. Bret Harte's productions. In mere attractiveness the story is wanting, but what it lacks in charm is fully compensated by the vigour of its interest. Mr. Bret Harte fortunately does not write too much, and his work shows everywhere signs of careful finish and restraint. Each character adds something to the general effect, and that effect is left to make itself without the aid of explanation or digression. Lastly, Mr. Bret Harte's humour is as strong as ever, and of that kind which leaves him almost alone among American novelists.

'The Ghost of Dunboy Castle' has really no excuse for existing; and so preposterous a jumble of vulgarity and nonsense can be amusing or instructive only in so far as it proves how much naïveté and self-confidence are still to be found in human nature-and in "authors" particularly. More than this need not be said.

Mrs. Edmonds has followed in the steps of Anthony Trollope in one point-the number of proposals, described in full, which she gives us. There are, if we remember right, six of them, and all made to the same young lady! Unfortunately this is the only point in which Mrs. Edmonds has thought Trollope worth imitating, except perhaps the thinness of his plots. The characters are weak, and, in spite of an interval of ten years or so, grow not a minute older throughout the story. They are all emphatically young and mostly foolish, and this last is the only trait they have in common with humanity. Mrs. Edmonds is not happy in her fancy names. Chippenham is a harmless Wiltshire town, not a manufacturing centre of the North; and to habitual novelreaders the name "Marion Crawford scarcely suggests a young girl. For the rest, 'Mary Myles' is an admirable book to add to the library of a girls' school.

Miss Levy has lost little time since the appearance of her 'Romance of a Shop'; indeed, her admirers must needs regret that more time, more care, and more thought

were not bestowed upon so promising a vein as she has struck in Reuben Sachs.' Halfhearted or hasty workmanship, and trains of thought but superficially followed out, cannot take literary rank under the title of "A Sketch"; a sketch proper admits of no such failings. Miss Levy is a writer of real promise and originality; but unless she faces the fact that a novelist must submit to as rigorous a course of intellectual discipline and conscientious work as a musician or a painter, she will not produce books which would pass muster as works of art anywhere but in England at the present day-a deplorable standard indeed! Her future is largely in her own hands. The plot of 'Reuben Sachs is laid amongst the orthodox Jewish community in London-a mine of literary interest, though it is doubtful whether the members of it will duly appreciate this unsparing portrait of their less agreeable characteristics. The actors are crowded upon the stage, but all are unusual, and would be interesting if they had the chance. The hero himself suffers from vagueness of outline; but when the writer warms to her work, as she appears to do suddenly about half way through the book, the situation between himself and Judith Quixano becomes vitalized and strong. The story ends in an outburst of genuine and passionate emotion, and would do well from the dramatic point of view to stop short of the somewhat cold-water consolations of the concluding paragraph.

Mr. Stockton's versatility in the invention of stories is remarkable. In 'Amos Kilbright' he relates the experiences of the materialized spirit of a man who was drowned a century ago at the age of thirty, and makes plenty of fun out of the absurdities of his relationships. Nothing surprised the materialized spirit-not even the fact that he found himself the grandfather of an old gentleman of eighty-nothing except the information that in his country "honor had come to be spelt without a u. But the most amusing part of the volume is in the studies of "Dusky Philosophy," where it appears that there is still something to be done with negro humour. The negro preacher's proof of his assertion that every woman has seven devils is told with excellent comicality. The solution must be given at the risk of spoiling the story:

"De Bible tells how our Lor' when he was on

dis yearth cas' seben debbils out o' Mary Magdelum......But did enny ob you ebber read, or hab read to you, dat he ebber cas' 'em out o' enny udder woman?...... Well, den, all de udder women got 'em yit."

There is a second story about a negro's arguments with regard to different kinds of truth; and the rest of the book consists of two amusing pieces, called 'A Reversible Landscape' and 'Plain Fishing.'

Much as the Russians may love Tolstoi, it is doubtful whether his slow analytical method and occasionally obscure style will ever find favour with the sensation-loving British public. At any rate, Mr. Dole's translation is but little calculated to increase the author's popularity. Strange and weird as is the story of Ivan Ilyitch,' the history of a death-bed, its effect is much marred by the peculiarities of the translator's English, which is scarcely so good as we must presume his knowledge of Russian to be.

Even in this language, however, Mr. Dole does not apparently excel; or should we blame the printer for the perversity of the accents? Some Russian words Mr. Dole has simply declined to translate, and has reproduced without even an explanation. Many people may know that shuba is Russian for fur coat, others may guess it; but we fear that the majority will remain in a bewildered state of ignorance. Mr. Dole's style, when unfettered by the trammels of a Russian original, may be judged from the following passage in his preface: "These stories will be regarded both seriously and as curiosities, for it is impossible not to read between the lines." In many parts of this translation, unless we read between the lines, it is, indeed, impossible to make any sense out of them. We cheerfully admit that the Russian language is peculiarly difficult, and no one will dispute that sometimes Tolstoi is a peculiarly idiomatic writer; but we fail to see why this need interfere with the English of the translation. The translation of a literary masterpiece should not be literal. The aim of a translation, we take it, is to render in one language idiomatically, correctly, and readably what has been written in another. Unfortunately Mr. Dole either did not understand his task or was unequal to it. Nevertheless, he has made accessible to the English public some exceedingly difficult and very remarkable stories of Tolstoi's, one of which, Where Love is there God is also,' is infinitely preferable to O. K.'s translation of the same story under the enigmatical title of 'What makes People to Live.'

'Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth' is a charming collection of autobiographical reminiscences, full of interest and very well rendered in English.

OUR LIBRARY TABLE.

LOVERS of folk-lore and of Elizabethan literature must alike be indebted to the editor and the publisher of the dainty volume, The Earliest

English Version of the Fables of Bidpai, the Morall Philosophie of Doni by Sir Thos. North, edited by Joseph Jacobs (D. Nutt's "Bibliothèque de Carabas," vol. iii.). The translation of Doni's La Moral Philosophia' by Sir Thos. North, of whose labours on Amyot's 'Plutarch' Shakspeare made such ample use, has come to be an extremely rare book, fully justifying as such its selection for reprinting in the present series. The editor's introduction gives a readable résumé of the now somewhat voluminous Bidpai literature, fairly well brought up to date. The remarks on the early illustrations, of which the book contains a good selection and well executed, are fresh and valuable. The chief groundwork of the introduction as to pure folk lore is, of course, the monumental 'Einleitung zum Pantschatantra' of Benfey as well as Keith-Falconer's more recent study. Mr. Jacobs, however, thinks it worth while to warn ultimately Indian origin of our folk-tales. For his readers against an excessive bias towards the story-telling gratifies 66 an instinct as universal as any craving of mankind. Indeed," he amusingly adds, "I wonder that some one has not defined man as a tale-telling animal (with the corollary of woman as a tale-bearing one).' Mr. Jacobs, however, himself supplies a most interesting parallel to an Indian Jataka story Fausboll, vol. i. No. 55) from the American negro tales called 'Uncle Remus.' As he puts it: "The Jataka......must have passed from

India to Africa with Hindoo merchants or Arab

slave-traders, must then have crossed Equatorial