of Manitoba," and securing the appointment of government naturalist to that province. Then he came to New York, and worked upon drawings of animals and birds, and in 1890 went abroad remaining in London and Paris at the schools until within a year or two. He now lives He now lives in or near New York during the winter, but when "the four-way lodge is opened

-as soon as the "spring running" begins-he is off to the far west and his

beloved woods. He never paints when in the woods or on the plains, among the animals. "Then I am content to study them," he says. "But when I return to cities, where animals are not, I must paint them." Mr. Thompson is no pot-hunter, indeed he never shoots unless compelled to do so. He remarked one day: "People talk about its being impossible for an animal to look a man in the eye-I can tell you it's pretty hard for a man to look

an animal in the eye when he knows he's going to shoot that animal !"

Among the most important of Mr. Thompson's works is the superb "Art Anatomy of Animals," which consists of fifty large plates, with a hundred pages of text. Autograph letters from Lord Leighton, Rivière, Fremiet (the sculptor) and Gérôme testify with enthusiasm to the great value of the book. His paintings have been hung in the Salon, at the World's Fair, at the picture shows in New York, and at many semi-private exhibitions. He works constantly and with passionate fondness for his special subjects; his bird drawings are conceded to be by far the finest ever done in America, even remembering Audubon.

We take much pleasure in publishing, herewith, a portrait of Senator Hoar at his writing table, and a view in his library

at Worcester, Mass. Senator Hoar's public utterances on the subject of "expansion" have been a rallying cry of late opponents of that glittering vision, for the and his "Reminiscences," of which the first instalment is printed in the February number of Scribner's Magazine, will be found of absorbing interest to everybody who cares to recall the public men and measures who have combined to make the American Republic in the last halfcentury honored throughout the worldquite apart from its production and accumulation of material wealth.

Since Edouard Rod, the distinguished French critic and novelist, has accepted the invitation of the Cercle Français of Harvard, to lecture in Cambridge this winter, other American audiences may hope to meet him.

Although identified with the literary

life of Paris, Rod is Swiss, and was born at Nyon on Lake Geneva in 1857. After studying at Berne and Berlin, he became a journalist in Paris; and in 1884 was appointed editor of the Revue Contemporaine. He returned to Switzerland in 1887 as Professor of literature at the University of Geneva, but is now living again in Paris. Falling very early under the influence of Leopardi and Schopenhauer, he has remained a consistent pessimist, convinced of humanity's hopeless suffering, and that the more enlightened men become, the more they must suffer. At first a disciple of Zola's, aspiring to reform society through scientific exposition, he soon found abstract science too cold. In all his mature fiction he is an "intuitivist," translating life. through personal sympathy and ex

the war, will be found the last official word on the subject. And "The Porto Rico of To-day: Pen Pictures of Country and People," is a discursive and informing book by Mr. Albert Gardner Robinson, who is now in Cuba as correspondent for the New York Evening Post. The present book is founded on a series of articles written for the Post from Porto

Rico last summer and autumn. While supplying a great quantity of general information, with many photographs, the point of view is that of the practical, conservative travel

er, who deals in few generalities.

Leo

Professor Wiener, of Harvard, who made the English prose rendering of Rosenfeld's Yiddish poems which Dr. Richard Burton reviews elsewhere in this number of THE BOOK BUYER, has written a "History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century," which will soon be published by the Scribners. One chapter treats of several Yiddish writers now resident in the New York Ghetto, and another of the Jewish theatres in New York.

perience. Whether in thinly disguised autobiography, such as Le Sens de la Vie, or in critical essays, such as Les idées morales du temps present, or in his novels, Rod is absorbed by the moral significance of life. He is as interesting to English as to French readers, because he reflects so delicately yet poignantly the universal effort to find out what life means, and the universal bafflement.

Two books of timely interest are now in the Scribners' press. "In Cuba with Shafter," by Lieut.-Colonel J. D. Miley, who was on General Shafter's staff during

Courtney, of Charleston, S. C., is preparing for publication, through Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., a complete edition of Timrod's verse. The proceeds of its sale are to be devoted to the erection of a memorial to the poet, who died in 1867, at the age of thirty-eight. The accompanying photograph, for which we are indebted to Mr. Walter Malone, was taken about a year before his death. Another singer whose fame is not of the greatest, in spite of the excellence of much that he did, is Edward Rowland Sill. Of his poems also the same publishers are preparing a new complete edition, which is to be followed by the publication of his prose and letters.

Mr. Montagu Knight, a grandnephew of Jane Austen, has partial charge in England of the raising of a fund for placing in Winchester Cathedral a window to

May its increase be of profit to this good enterprise, concerning which Mr. Adams may be addressed at The Hermitage, Willow Street, Boston.

Mr. James Gibbons Huneker, whose musical essays and criticism are equally conspicuous for scholarship and vivacity of style, has collected some of his more

important work in a

volume called " Mezzotints in Music," which the Scribners will soon issue. The same publishers have in press the first volume of the "Music Lover's Library," called "The Orchestra and Orchestral Music," by Mr. W. J. Henderson. Succeeding volumes in the series will be "The Pianoforte and Its Music," by Mr. H. E. Krehbiel; "The Opera, Past and Present," by Mr. W. F. Apthorp, "Songs and Song Writers," by Mr. Henry T. Finck; and "Choir and Choir Music," by Mr. Arthur Mees, the leader of the Mendelssohn Glee Club.

the memory of the novelist who lies buried there. In Boston Mr. Oscar Fay Adams has announced that Mr. Knight has asked him to collect American subscriptions towards the same end. Three or six hundred pounds will accomplish the purpose, according to the place selected for the memorial, and £150 has already been subscribed. Mr. Adams remarks that "the number of sincere lovers of the genius of this unassuming Hampshire novelist is as great in America as in England, and if the multiplication of editions of her works may be considered as evidence, it is rapidly increasing."

Stevensonians know something of the amusing task which Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne once set themselves in DavosPlatz the making of a set of "Chapbooks," for which they themselves engraved the wood-cuts. The little books are extremely rare, and now a closely. restricted edition is printing in Edinburgh, by Constable & Co., on the condition that the engraved blocks, which are to be made over at once to a public institution, shall never be used again.

has thus favored, in recognition of her husband's special attachment to his Boston friends, is the Boston Public Library, and there the wood-cuts will be deposited within a short time.

We reproduce a good photograph of Pettie's portrait of William Black in armor as perhaps the best likeness of the man's face which we have seen. The fact that the head looks small seems to be due to the artificial enlargement which the steel coat gives to his body. The whole figure is certainly dignified and striking.

In comparison with the number of persons who declare biography to be their favorite form of reading, the number of readers of biographical books is small. Is it the fault of the books or of the readers? Probably a general lack of time for reading long books has much to do with it, and it is in part to remove this obstacle that Messrs. Small, Maynard & Co. of Boston, have entered upon the enterprise. of the " Beacon Biographies." These are to be short lives of eminent Americans, under the general editorship of Mr. M. A. De Wolfe Howe. The volumes are to be really small, of proportion not unlike those of the "Temple Classics," and are to be written usually by men of the younger generation, each possessing special qualifications for the task assigned him. The first group of volumes will be published in the spring. Daniel Webster will be treated by Mr. Norman Hapgood; James Russell Lowell, by Prof. Edward Everett Hale, Jr.; Robert E. Lee, by Prof. W. P. Trent; Farragut, by Mr. James Barnes, and Phillips Brooks, by the editor of the series. Later volumes will be lives of Franklin, by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, and of Aaron Burr, by Mr. H. C. Merwin. Mr. John Burroughs

other announcements of equal importance will follow rapidly. Mr. Bertram G. Goodhue is devising title page and cover for the volumes.

Another indication of the attitude the young firm of Small, Maynard & Co. is taking towards American subjects may be seen in the manner in which they propose to celebrate, indirectly, the birthdays of Lincoln and Washington. On the first of these February red-letter days they will bring out a small volume, "The Memory of Lincoln," made up of the few very best. poems, less than twenty in number, which have to do with Lincoln. They have been chosen by Mr. M. A. DeWolfe Howe, who supplies an introductory note for the volume, to which the one original contribution in verse comes from Mr. Paul Laurence Dunbar. Selections from Mr. Grave," set forth the later point of view Maurice Thompson's poem, "Lincoln's of one who fought in the Confederate Army. Indeed, there is hardly an aspect of Lincoln which does not receive some second of February the same house expoetic illumination. By the twentypects to have upon the market a small volume containing Washington's "Farewell Address," which, curiously enough, is not easily obtainable in separate form. In this Mr. Worthington E. Ford, who within a few months has assumed charge of the Boston Public Library's collection of documents, provides an introduction.

There has been recently published in Russia a full biography of Count Tolstoy, by one P. Sergyeenko, who has known the subject of his writing long and intimately, and has enriched his volume by many portraits of the Count at various periods of his life. One of them pictures him at the plough, and taken all together