Sharezer his sons smote him with the sword: and they escaped into the land of Armenia. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his stead."

characteristics?

What are these Clearly the passages cited haphazard out of hudreds of thousands like them bear a special stamp. When we consider them, we find that they have a particular appeal to the ear. And, in fact, we may take it that the first and most prominent characteristic is a special rhythm. It is of a simple type, but, as the least study will show, it is handled with extraordinary art. It is neither too fluent nor too slow, but it is both smooth and weighty. It is carefully balanced in the complementary members of a sentence, yet it never degenerates into metre. The rhythm of many English writers tends to be either dissipated among polysyllables or emphasized to monotony, iambic as in Blackmore, hexametric as in Ruskin. But the rhythm of the Bible, though built of the same elements as the verse of Shakespeare and Milton, is specifically a prose, not a verse, rhythm. The perfection of its technique is infallible, the type is only deserted when, if we may so put it, the inspired words are forced to accommodate themselves, as occasionally is inevitable, to the more commonplace details of a narrative. This rhythm, we submit, is unique in English literature, and to it our Bible owes the greater part of its literary appeal.

A second characteristic is the dividing or doubling of a thought. The Psalms supply the most familiar example. Here, it must be admitted, The Spectator.

we have to do with a specific quality of Hebrew poetry, though such "parallelism" is inherent in all verbal expression. It is too familiar to quote specimens, but how well it is adapted to the sentence-rhythm! A comparison of the A.V. version of the Psalms and the Prayer Book version is interesting in this connection. For it is a curious fact that the A.V. Psalter shows the characteristics of rhythm and of parallelism in their least perfect form, while the Prayer Book version shows them at their best. There is no doubt that the latter version is entirely the work of Coverdale. In it he surpassed himself.

Among minor qualities are the tendency to the use of weighty monosyllables and the almost entire absence of abstract ideas. It may be said that every idea, every concept, every image, is both concrete and vitalistic, a living organism. Even a phrase like "out of it are the issues of life" is no exception, for the older sense of "issue" is frankly concrete. Again, as in all great style, there is "the inevitable word."

The transmutations undergone by the Scriptures in their passage from Hebrew and Greek to English were various. Coverdale speaks of translating "out of Douche [German] and Latyn into Englishe," and also "out of fyve sundry interpreters." Of a perfect translation it may be said without paradox that its final merit is faithfulness, not to the original, but to the copy. The result in this instance is the greatest organic monument both of English genius and of English speech.

The latest volume in the "Wisdom of the East" series is a group of "Legends of Indian Buddhism" se

lected from Eugène Burnouf's "L'Introduction à l'Historie du Buddhisme Indien." The six legends included in

the volume are specially chosen as illustrating fundamental Buddhist doctrines, revealing the civilizing influence of Buddhism and telling the history of Asoka, the greatest of Buddhist kings. E. P. Dutton & Co.

To the "New Universal Library" has been added a volume containing "Early Essays on Social Philosophy" translated from the French of Auguste Comte, and furnished with notes and an introduction by Frederic Harrison. The first of the six essays included in the volume was written when the author was but twenty-one years old, and the last when he was thirty. They illustrate both the extraordinarily early development of Comte's mind, and the consistency of his scheme of scientific philosophy and social polity. So concentrated and unsparing was his devotion to study that it is not surprising that a course of seventy-two lectures on positive philosophy which he had planned for the year 1826, when he was 28 years old, was interrupted by a cerebral attack. Overwrought Nature will have her revenges. Dutton & Co.

E. P.

The view which Mr. H. W. C. Davis takes of "Medieval Europe" in the volume with that title which he contributes to the new Home University Library (Henry Holt & Co.), is quite different from that of Gibbon. To him the Middle Ages do not appear as a long night of ignorance and force. holds that we should not judge an age by its crimes and scandals; and that the medieval nations must be judged by their philosophy and law, by their poetry and architecture, by the examples which they afford of statesman

He

ship and saintship, and that the highest medieval achievements "are the fruit of deep reflection, of persevering and concentrated effort, of a self forgetting self in the service of humanity and God." He begins his history with a sketch of the fall of the Roman Empire and the causes which contributed to it, and passes in rapid review the history of the barbarian kingdoms, the relations of the Holy Roman Empire to the new monarchies, the characteristics of feudalism, the relations of the Papacy to the medieval state, and the expansion of Europe. Succinct, comprehensive, judicial and profoundly interesting, this modest treatise is a marvel at once of thoroughness and of condensation.

Those who already know and love "The Owls of St. Ursula's," by Jane Brewster Reid will find in its companion story "Carey of St. Ursula's," a sequel not at all disappointing. The episodes in the school life of a group of girls thoroughly interesting and well worth knowing, are just those which will appeal to "young people of all ages." But aside from being a charming story, the book is unusually interesting because of its very clever and intuitive drawing of the heroine, Carey Selden. A naturally timid girl, prone to dwell too much within herself, but with sterling qualities which win in the end, Carey passes through a series of experiences which force her at last to let the "half gods" go, and to awaken to her full possibilities. A number of delightful illustrations enhance the appeal which this genuinely good book cannot fail to make. The Baker and Taylor Co.