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No other paper takes its place. It is unique, and is read by an increasing number of thoughtful people all over the world. The Manchester Guardian HISTORY OF THE WAR 7d. FORTNIGHTLY Parts. Part II. NOW OUT. 7d. The publication of Part I. of this History has taken it at one stride to the first position among war publications. The high quality of the paper, the excellence of the illustrations, and the lucidity and interest of the letterpress have combined to make it an unqualified popular success. The following Extracts voice a unanimous opinion : Daily Telegraph.—“ An exceedingly attractive History of the War. Achieves the purpose it had in view.” New Statesman.—“ This appears to us much the best of the numerous current chronicles of the war." Please deliver regularly the “Manchester Guardian" History of the War, beginning with the first number. Signature Address If any difficulty in supply is experienced, write to the Publishers, Messrs. JOHN HEYWOOD, Ltd., Deansgate, Manchester. 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PAGE THE ATHENÆUM 385 than EmersonHere, the sinquirer will Emerson is no Marcus Aurelius-above say with enthustingthe philosopher the plane of ordinary humanity. We find for me; here is the man who is human him, for instance, dwelling on the value and learned, a classicist and a naturalist. of convivial gifts. He even thinks it But system, alas! is soon found to be worth while to record the opinion of 385 lacking, and the disciple, delighted at the George R- (of Madison, Wis.), "who outset, rapidly finds himself lost in a mist. seems to be drunk," and "writes me that As Lowell sings:the secret of drunkenness is that it insulates us in thought, whilst it unites us in feeling.' He would have enjoyed, say the editors, Abraham Lincoln's saying: The Lord likes common people. That's the reason he makes so many of them." 386 387 388 All admire, and yet scarcely six converts he 's got To I don't (nor they either) exactly know what. Perhaps Emerson himself had the wit to see this, for he preserves a witty comment 389 by Mrs. Helen Bell, daughter of Rufus Choate, who was asked, it seems, STUDIES IN TAXATION UNDER JOHN AND HENRY III. 388 MACAULAY'S HISTORY OF ENGLAND 389 THE RELIGION OF ISRAEL GIOVANNI VENOSTA'S MEMORIES OF YOUTH ISAAC WATTS AND CONTEMPORARY HYMN-WRITERS PUBLISHERS' AUTUMN ANNOUNCEMENTS BOOKS PUBLISHED THIS WEEK 390 391 391 392 393-395 396-399 LAST JOURNALS OF EMERSON. THE Journals of Emerson have now been completed by the issue of the ninth and tenth volumes. As we remarked in 1910, when the series began, they are more like commonplace books than anything else full of notes about people, birds, and plants, as well as the virtues which make pretty themes for essayists. Emerson's range of knowledge was extraordinarily wide, and the lists of books and authors he quotes which are inserted from time to time might suggest that he was, like other frequent lecturers, an academic prig, eager to throw about book-knowledge even in his own diaries. That is not so. He was concerned with life as much as books. His clean, sweet mind revolted against the pedantry of colleges; and the most memorable pleasure for him was to enjoy Nature on a fine day. He was intimate with Thoreau, though not entirely satisfied with him; and he could detect great men whom "the world's coarse thumb" had not marked with the label of greatness. He had that high Puritan seriousness which, duly modified by art and the beauties of what used to be called paganism, produces rare flowers of thought and language. No one in single lines and sentences has been more effective Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, with Annotations. Edited by Edward Waldo Emerson and Waldo Emerson Forbes.Vol. IX. 1856-63. Vol. X. 1864-76. (Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Co.; London, Constable & Co., 6s. net each.) The diarist admits that he "tacks things "She [he tells us in 1857] has read much We think the prophecy is justified, and "A journal is an assuming to guide the the land, and to defy the public, if he is only All this shows pleasantly the ideals of "In the cars, we all read the same fool bulletin, and smile or scowl as one man; and they who come to ask my opinion, find me only one flat looking-glass more, when I ought to have stayed at home in my mind, and to have afforded them the quite inestimable element of a new native opinion or feeling,—of a new quality.” The uses of war are, he thinks, (1) diffusion of a taste for hardy habits, (2) appeal to the roots of strength. War employs to good purpose boys and men who are nuisances," and brings to light "truths we were once forbidden to speak." 66 No great musician himself, he puts in a plea for music which may hearten some of our contemporaries to-day : "The war is a new glass to see all our old things through, how they look. Some of our trades stand the test well. Baking and butchering are good under all skies and times. Farming, haying, and wood-chopping don't go out of vogue. Meat and coal and shoes we must have. But coach painting and bronze match-holders we can postpone for awhile yet. Yet the music was heard with as much appetite as ever, and our StarQuintettes had only to put the spangled Banner into the programme, to gain a hurra beside; but the concert And so could have prospered well without. ruled Massachusetts, these flutes and fiddles if the Union were beaten, and Jeff Davis would have piped and scraped all the same, and no questions asked. It only shows that those fellows have hitched on their apple-cart to a star, and so it gets dragged by might celestial. They know that few have thoughts or benefits, but all have ears; that the blood rolls to pulse-beat and tune; that the babe rhymes and the boy whistles; and they throw themselves on a want so universal, and as long as birds sing, ballad singers will, and organ-grinders will grind out their bread." The portraits of persons included are choice and well selected, and the editing is adequate, though the translations of the Latin scraps are occasionally casual, if not inaccurate. The last volume has an excellent Index to the whole series, which adds much to its value. The Life and Times of Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt. By Arthur E. P. Brome Weigall. (Blackwood & Sons, 16s. net.) MR. WEIGALL has made himself a high reputation, not only as an explorer, but also as a writer on things Egyptian. He is probably one of the best living authorities on Upper Egypt, and his delightful travels in the deserts around it are justly admired. But now he attacks a far more serious task, where it is not merely necessary to be an explorer and observer, but where the qualities of an historian are taxed to the utmost. Of these we take the first to be imagination, for without ability to picture the past or the remote no man need expect his book to be read. But poetical insight is sure to be led astray, if not controlled by careful and candid weighing of all the available evidence. This is the dry research side of history, much lauded in modern days, when some insist that history is a science, and a science only. The ancients knew better, and classed it among the fine arts-a species of eloquence. A combination of both is, of course, the ideal. In the book before us there is plenty of imagination: in its local colour the author is perfectly at home, and has written many attractive and even brilliant pages, though his English is not beyond criticism. But, on the whole, he writes well. His analysis and explanation of the complicated action of the period is also able and generally convincing, and here his imagination stands him in good stead. We are not at all so sure about his judgment or intimacy with classical habits. He imagines, e.g., that people constantly looked out of windows on to the streets, or that people tapped at them as they passed by to attract the inmates' attention. He thinks that priceless wines were a prominent feature at a Hellenistic banquet. If he had said priceless unguents, he would have been nearer the mark. But these are trifles. What about his estimate of the great men and women who act upon that mighty stage which first Plutarch and then Shakespeare have made familiar? The fact is that he starts as a special pleader for Cleopatra, whom he seeks to rehabilitate as a very noble character, with flaws instead of vices. This is daring enough, but when we find that he makes out the great men around her much worse than the usual estimate, on the same kind of evidence, we refuse to go with him. The vices of the earlier Ptolemaic army), and who fell a victim to the seduction of Cæsar, having first spent a long night in conversation with him— all this is naive, and does credit to Mr. Weigall's estimate of human nature; but is it history? Is it even human nature? If, again, in this case he will attribute no evil on mere hearsay, how still worse of Octavian, where he seems can he defend his picture of Cæsar, and to have been led away by Signor Ferrero's journalistic brilliancy? After piling up all the accusations against Cæsar, which, if true, would have made him a mean and vain scoundrel whom nobody could admire, he confesses that he had a great hold on the affections, not only of women, but also of men. Is this possible? Or is it possible that, if Octavian had been a monster of hideous vices, selfishness, and cruelty in his youth, he could with a delicate constitution, have made and controlled the Roman Empire with brilliant success for over forty years? We refuse to believe it, even at the cost of not whitewashing Cleopatra. Regarding her, we still think that all her actions were calculated, and since she had "children at her desire," as the Psalmist says of other such people, her solitary child by Cæsar suggests that here, too, she acted politically. No doubt she may have had generous instincts-no really clever human being is without them. In this she was like her much-abused father Auletes, whose last will and testament was that of an anxious and affectionate father, and a patriotic king. These are the larger questions on which we feel that the author's solutions are not convincing. We add some details which he might reconsider for his next edition. Alexandria was founded, not “in a remote corner of the Delta," but at the nearest point to Europe, and at the only good harbour along that inhospitable coast. We hold, too, with H. Thiersch, that the author is wrong about the site of the great lighthouse, of which the substructure under the present fort still exists. We also think it probable that the first Ptolemy brought the body of Alexander as far as Memphis, which was the only safe (though circuitous) route from Syria to Alexandria, and that it was the second who conveyed it in pomp to the new city which the deified hero had founded. We note also that the author (very naturally) hesitates between Ptolemy VIII. and IX. as the number of Euergetes II. It is new to us that ships of Tarshish should mean ships built at Tarsus in Cilicia, and not ships that went to Tartessus in Spain. "Comedies of Aristophanes and Plato" is, without further explanation, misleading to the ordinary reader, for the great Plato, of whom alone he knows, did not write plays. We prefer Asianic to "" Asiatic as the description of Antony's oratory. ladies are relentlessly scourged, as if Cleopatra VII. were not another Arsinoe II. or Cleopatra II. The evidence against Cleopatra VII. is surely far stronger than the tales of Justin or Athenæus about her forerunners. To represent this princess, who, at the age of 21, was carried in a carpet into Cæsar's quarters, and was assumed to be his mistress en titre next stimulating volume. morning, as an innocent virgin, who only came to plead her case against her brother (against whom she had raised an invading We conclude by recommending the work to our readers as an interesting and With Poor Immigrants to America. By Stephen Graham. (Macmillan & Co., 8s. 6d. net.) Ir would probably not be correct to describe this as an important work, but clever and interesting it certainly is. Mr. Graham presents pictures which have vividness and reality. But his moralizings. are not always so sound as such things should be, and his reasoning, even im matters which he has studied closely at. first hand, is not altogether to be trusted. His love of antithesis frequently betrays him; his inclination towards the arresting. phrase leads him sometimes to stretch truth almost to the point of distortion. But the reader feels all the time that his will is good; from deliberate choice he is on the side of the angels; his desire is for justice, and yet more for mercy, and for the protection and welfare of the weak. So he In a previous work Mr. Graham described his travels with Russian pilgrims to Jerusalem. Here he records his journey from Euston Station to New York with poor immigrants, and especially with a party of Russian emigrants whom he joined in London, and frequently served as an interpreter and in other ways. Steerage travel, even in these days, is not luxurious; but Mr. Graham is a student of humanity, and particularly of poor and humble humanity. made himself a comrade of these poor immigrants, and shared with them not alone the discomforts-they may scarcely be called hardships nowadays-of steerage travel on the Atlantic, but also the humiliating experience of 66 what is. almost an insult to Europe: the examination of Ellis Island." Then, after New York, Mr. Graham humped his swag," as Australians say, or tramped with his pack, all the way to Chicago. have made more records, many varied impressions. He Naturally, our author received, and has made that his business; and he discharges his task with ability—even with some distinction. The part of the itinerant. observer, the literary tramp, appears to suit him well. In this case he chose a well-beaten track, which many writers. Indeed, the road he travelled has already or less familiar. become a tradition, with its own classic and there, shed fresh light upon it; phrases. But Mr. Graham has, here less than the earnestness of his outlook. and his gifts as a picturesque writer, no tribution to what a Canadian has called' upon human problems, make his con'the Go West literature well worth 66 reading. Withal, it is a little surprising that Mr. Graham did not make his journey upon the road which is more typical of twentieth-century migration, and end his pilgrimage in Winnipeg, in place of Chicago, by way of Halifax or Quebec, instead of New York. Mr. Graham, though a lover of Russia and the Russians, writes not at all unsympathetically of America. But he does not hesitate to stab with his pen at many |