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NY one who is interested in such matters has long ago learned that the myths and folk-lore of many peoples contain among their constant factors a story of a primal error of mankind which caused retrogression or degeneracy, or at any rate defect. There has been a golden age, said the Romans; a perfect age of the culture hero Manco Capac, said the Peruvians. The Semitic form of the theory embedded in the Jewish sacred book is familiar. Is this event historical, say prehistorical, having occurred shortly after the Quaternary period, or shall we call it a soul-history or a psychical experience? Mr. Lang's "onliest own" pet theory is that primitive man had a high idea of God. In this guess we agree with Mr. Lang. The most ancient passages of the "Per-em-hru," commonly called the Egyptian Book of the Dead, show a transcendent idea of God. Later a materialistic degeneracy debased the Egyptian religion. The earlier portions of the "Mahabharata" are spiritual compared with later. Travelers agree that the unsophisticated savage is often found to have lofty and spiritual religious notions. Now Mr. Lang girds at Mr. Tylor because Mr. Tylor thinks that when primitive people have exalted religious ideas they must have borrowed them from Christian missionaries. Had Mr. Lang thought of the late Dr. D. G. Brinton's researches, he could have easily refuted Mr. Tylor's theory. Also the late Mr. Frank Cushing, who passed years among the Zuñi as a member of their tribe, gave me instances of Zuñi religious conceptions more lofty and more spiritual than those of the average American mechanic and merchant. It is quite true that among the Amuta of Australia, as among the Hindus and Pacific islanders to-day, the Supreme Being is often thought of as " otiose," like the gods of the lotus eaters as Tennyson described them, paraphrasing a little the beautiful description of Plutarch.

However, when Mr. Lang begins to extend his theory and to guess that the

I Magic and Religion. By Andrew Lang. Longmans, Green & Co., New York. 2 vols. $4.

original idea of God was superior, but that it degenerated, I must object. We lack data for this supposition. More likely the case is one of arrested development. No doubt there have been "Falls of Man." We do not join in the contest of those who cry "descent of man" against those whose war-cry is "ascent of man.” In its ethical and psychical aspects it may have been "a fall upward." Perhaps it may be, after all, only a matter of words. What I cannot accept from Lang is the anthropological fall-at any rate, till he affords some better guess. When he falls afoul of Mr. Frazer anent "The Golden Bough,” and the Sacæan King who was divine and was scourged and slain, we may blithely admit that Mr. Lang exposes all the weaknesses of his adversary's theory. Still, Mr. Frazer's strong points quite naturally are not mentioned by the critical Mr. Lang. The reader must consult "The Golden Bough" itself, for that work is not worthy of all the contempt that Mr. Lang pours upon it, even if some part of Mr. Frazer's theory is as bare of testimony as Mr. Lang's. Notably, Mr. Frazer thoughtlessly conjectures that religion arose because magic failed. All the facts of primitive religion are against this guess. Magic exists alongside religion, and sometimes outlasts religion, as in ancient Assyria. In our day unbelievers believe in luck. The irreligious on the turf and at the card-table are mostly given to superstition and magic. The American Indian of the Southwest dashed water upon those engaged in the corn-dance. That is an act of sympathetic magic intended to bring rain. The Pueblo woman, molding an animal-shaped water-vessel, when she comes to close the last orifice shuts her eyes in holy dread-her labor has been a liturgic religious function, and the duck-shaped vessel she has made has magic properties.

Mr. Stewart Culin has pretty conclusively shown that many games in their origin are divinatory and in their practice were for long time magical. The pack of cards may be traced back to the primitive ceremonial circuit and the four rivers of

paradise. The necromancers and magicians of the Middle Ages were wishful to have the sword with which they traced the mystic circle laid under the corporal at mass, or blessed by a genuine priest; and the devotees of modern satanism need to have a recreant priest (Chanoine Dôcre), a black mass, and the other hideous, mind-defiling objects described by Huysmann and others. Magic exists alongside of religion, as the case of Gilles de Ray, the original Bluebeard, proves. Mr. Walter Skeat discourses on Malay magic, and we find that magic to be founded upon the Malay's religious ideas. Here in York County we have the powwow doctors, nothing other than magicians; at the same time these powwow doctors do not dream that they are not good Christians and that the sixth book of Moses is not God-inspired. Any one can see in the museums of this country the Syriac charms worn by Christian descendants of those who saw Jesus. Further than this, many a Christian's conception of the sacraments is as of magical rites. Decidedly, then, Mr. Frazer's theory that where magic ends, there religion begins, will not hold water. Mr. Lang has put "magic" into the title of his book, but spends small space or mental strength discussing the topic. In reality, magic is a factor in human development, or in the retarding of religious evolution, very sinister and potent. Due to spiritual and intellectual inertia, magic has furtively entered and degraded most religions. When religions and philosophies went to seed at Alexandria, then magic, theosophy,

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and materialism dominated. Thaumaturgy flourished. At the present day we are at a point of mental and spiritual transition in some ways resembling that of the Alexandrians during the first three centuries of our era. We are only becoming generally aware of subliminal consciousness, of telepathy and hypnotism, of influence from afar, and like phenomena to us mysterious. The danger is of a recrudescence of extinct magic rites. Crystals for gazing are now openly advertised, and divining-rods.

Madame Blavatsky is dead, but other thaumaturgists announce themselves, with or without spirit rappings. "It's a mad world, my masters!" All this anthropological investigation will one day be utilized for social and spiritual progress. It is for that reason that we call attention to the subject. Whether Mr. Lang's, Mr. Frazer's, or Professor Tylor's theories prevail matters much when the history of religious thought comes to be critically examined. We must avoid mistakes, and whatever be the truth, with that shall we be satisfied. At the same time let us keep in mind that

God fulfills himself in many ways,

Lest our good custom should corrupt the world. Even the enlightened Anglo-Saxon is not sufficiently educated, developed, or evolved in religion to be beyond the danger of retrograding into magic. The fall can again take place when the sibilant whisper is heard, "You shall be a god, knowing good and evil." Prone are we to relapse to savagery.

OME one has said that colonial architecture was the New England carpenter's conception of the classical. Certainly the effort to establish a highly developed civilization in the wilderness has been characteristic of America from the Latinity of the Pilgrims to the automobiles of Chilkoot Pass. That is why the "spread-eagle oration" is a distinctively American product. It is the Yankee version of Cicero.

The World's Orators. Comprising the Great Orations of the World's History, with Introductory Essays, Biographical Sketches, and Critical Notes. Guy Carleton Les Ph.D. Editor-in-Chief. With Illustrations. Vols.

But when the serious problems of commercial life have arisen, when the broad acres of a country estate have been exchanged for a city house lot, the American builder, dextrously abandoning tradition and even the principles of architecture, has reared his steel structure, a brand-new type of building. stress of war or political strife, when speech has had more serious business on hand than to amuse or enthrall an audience, the American orator has forgotten his Cicero, has abandoned his artificial rules of rhetoric, and has used his English

So in the

Suns, New York. 6x9 in. $3.50 per vol.

but once, then thrown away; and has used it with telling effect. It is the swaying between these two kinds of address, the ornate and the pungent, the artificial and the homely, that has marked the development of oratory in America. In what direction oratory should swing has been determined almost altogether by events. Before the Revolutionary period there was little oratory of any kind. In both North and South men were too much concerned with immediate problems of pioneer life to care to talk much. The autocratic methods of the colonial governors gave little chance for political discussion. The pulpit, which was the only place where oratory might have been expected, was too much given to theological analysis to foster eloquence.

With the tumult of the Revolutionary period, however, American oratory may be said to have begun. The two kinds of oratory appeared together: the incisive, spontaneous speech was the summons to the maintenance of liberty; the formal, elaborated speech was the forensic defense of the position taken by the colonies. The former was hardly more than the trumpet-blast, or the shout of the horseman rousing the minutemen; the latter was in all but substance more British than American. Of the former there was scarcely any possibility of record; of the latter there are a number of splendid examples preserved. Much of James Otis's speech on the Writs of Assistance could easily have been delivered in the English House of Commons. Such men as John Dickinson and Samuel Adams thought in the same terms that were used in the English Parliamentary Reports of their day. Yet, in spite of the nearness of such sound models, the bombastic element entered into American oratory even then.

The War for Independence, which burnt into the American people a love of liberty, destroyed educational opportu nities for the rising generation. After the Revolutionary orators died, there were none prepared to take their places. John Quincy Adams and Fisher Ames remained as model orators to be admired and copied by an untutored generation. This year one could have heard in many New England villages on Memorial Day orations which could be recognized in their family

likeness to those of a century ago. We can almost hear the sound of the brass band and the voice of the peanut vender in such a sentence as this of John Quincy Adams: "Instead of returning the sentiments of fraternal affection which animated the Americans, they indulged their vanity with preposterous opinions of insulting superiority."

With the rise of political parties, however, came motives for genuineness. The national feeling aroused by resentment against Great Britain's course in impressing American seamen cultivated new powers of response in the people. Oratory swung toward the incisive and the homely. With Clay began a line of American orators who were trained to admire form and yet were irresistibly impelled to use every means to achieve persuasion--Wirt, Randolph, Clay, Pinkney, Benton, Hayne, Webster, Legaré, Calhoun-true orators, every one. They lived in a time when the significance of sectional feeling was becoming apparent, and when men resorted to such desperate measures as nullification and compromise in order to preserve the Union. Yet the tumult was not so great but that some degree of artificiality pervaded even the most genuine oratory. When the strain was tense, as in Hayne's challenge to Massachusetts, Webster replied with directness and even with a heavy sarcastic humor; but in his use of the word "mariner" in his opening sentence we can discover his self-conscious attempt to be literary. And when the strain was relaxed, as in the oration at the dedication of the Bunker Hill Monument, we find him just as pompous as his auditors expected him to be. Venerable men!... Heaven has bounteously lengthened out your lives. . . . Behold how altered!... Yonder proud ships by a felicity of position appropriately lying at the foot of this mount . . ." and so on to his own undoubted pleasure.

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During the truce of compromise that preceded the Civil War, Everett represented supremely the farthest swing of the pendulum toward the conscious imitation of the classic model. With the first threatenings of the renewal of the "irrepressible conflict" the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. Invective and ridicule common among the

people could not be met with turgid periods. With characteristic adaptiveness, America responded to the needs of the times by producing Wendell Phillips, William H. Seward (whose speech on Secession is a masterpiece of impromptu address), Robert Toombs, and Stephen A. Douglas. And when the war broke in all its fury, there was little of the artificial left in the oratory of America. The speeches of two such unlike men as Abraham Lincoln and Henry Ward Beecher resemble each other in this one respect: their use of plain language for immediate effect. In the volumes of "The World's Orators," including the best orations from the days of Greece and Rome to the days of Reconstruction in America, it is gratifying to the lover of America to find the American oration worthy to be compared with the best that the Old World has produced. If, as the editor of these volumes declares, oratory is a branch of literature, even then the comparison can bring pride to the American patriot. But if oratory is a distinctive art, with aims and methods of its own, as we believe, then it would be hard to prove that American oratory is not supreme. Nowhere else in the world have the three elements of oratory-the audience, the occasion, and the speakerbeen so well adjusted as in America. The American people from the first have been an oration-loving people. As Mr. Wendell in his "Literary History of Amer

ica" has pointed out, the early concerns of the English settlers of America were religion and the common law-two subjects that were specially adapted for treatment by the spoken word. Then, by their extreme Protestantism on the one hand, and by popular revolution, by severe practical tests of democratic experiments, and by self-established common schools on the other hand, they were trained to be intelligent, appreciative listeners. The same events that educated the audiences furnished occasions for oratory; and out of a people of declaimers (if not orators) arose the men adequate for the occasions and the audience.

All true art springs from the people. It is because the people of the United States have been a distinctively speechhearing and speech-making people that this Nation has made a more worthy contribution to the art of oratory than to any other art. What the future contribution will be will depend upon the future training of the people. In that, two elements must be recognized: first, the admiration of the classic model, which, in spite of its tendency to develop "spread-eagleism," has given to American oratory elements of permanence; second, free popular discussion, which in this country is synony mous with love of liberty itself. So long as these two elements are preserved American oratory will be both elegant and genuine.

Back to the Soil. By Bradley Gilman. L. C. Page & Co., Boston. 5x71⁄2 in. 242 pages. $1.25. This volume has so much good humor and good feeling, such a good philosophy back of it and such a good ideal ahead of it, that the reviewer regrets his inability to concur with Dr. Edward Everett Hale's judgment, expressed in a preface, that it is an important contribution to the work of "urbanizing the country." The narrative through which the thought of the book is expressed is a simple, lively, natural account of the way in which the parson author and his friends were driven into making the experiment commended to others as the way out from the slums to wholesome surroundings. The craving for companionship is recognized as the great present obstacle to the needed exodus, and the author plans to meet this craving by making the farms of the colony concentric, with the farmhouses all circling about an inner public plot, on which church, school, hall, etc., are located. The general plan is thus quite similar to that commended so forcibly by Mr. William E. Smythe in his articles upon co-operative experiments in the West. The colony is not to be socialistic, but to be based upon "co-operative individualism." Thus far all is clear sailing, and the author up to this point successfully avoids the objections to his plan which a sympathetic reader would be likely to suggest. When, however, he elaborates his plan still further, and makes a hundred lots abut upon his inner circle and widen into farms further back, and then proceeds to collect the city families to live in his philanthropically managed farm colony, the objections that present themselves both from the standpoint of economy and of human nature multiply until they overwhelm. The inner circle is nearly half a mile in diameter, the abutting portions of the farms but sixty feet in width, the larger farms a mile in length, and everything is done in approved ways for people who of themselves would do them quite differently. As a practical suggestion to philanthropists the book is not a success, but it has its value as an inspiration to co-operators who at some time in some way will of their own motion realize some of its ideals. The principal thing needed in the slums is the desire for the surroundings of "Circle City," and the intellectual and moral resources to make rural life attractive. The next thing needed is cheap transit to the suburbs for those who have the needed desires and resources. When these things are secured for the picked individuals, their voluntary cooperation may carry forward the collective activities commended in this volume. Backwoodsman (The). By H. A. Stanley. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. 5x8 in. 371 pages. $1.50.

A wholesome story of the Revolutionary

period, dealing with the camp life, battlefields, and scouting experiences of the Mohawk Valley. The incidents of the story cluster around that important achievement in early New York history, when General Sullivan led his small army through the interior of the State, and by masterly maneuvers and scouting surprises broke up the power of the Six Nations, rendering them unable to be longer allies to the English, and thereby materially hastening the end of the war. Of all this, very little concerning which has been used in fiction, the story gives a capital account. Bad Penny (A).

By John T. Wheelwright. Illustrated. L. C. Page & Co., Boston. 5x74 in. 162 pages. 50c.

A fine and spirited story to delight the hearts of boys. The scenes are laid in and around the period of the Revolutionary War, and the famous fight of the Chesapeake and Shannon in Massachusetts Bay, which resulted in the death of Lawrence, is one of the features of the story.

Bears of Blue River (The). By Charles Major. Illustrated. Doubleday & McClure Co., New York. 54x8 in. 277 pages. $1.25, net.

It will not be surprising if there are those to be found who prefer Mr. Major's book about bears to his enormously popular "When Knighthood was in Flower." These are stories about bears and boys, written for boys, and sure to hold them in breathless interest. The book is illustrated, the pictures varying considerably in merit.

Black Tortoise (The). By Fredrik Viller. Translated from the Norwegian by Gertrude Hughes Breakstad. Doubleday, Page & Co., New York. 5x8 in. 282 pages. $1.50.

Here is a Norwegian writer of detective stories who may make Dr. Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes" and Mr. Hornung's "Raffles " look to their laurels. A better tale of the kind we have not often read. The plot turns upon an interesting point in photography, and the mystery is exceedingly well maintained. The amateur photographer may feel some doubt as to the possibility of taking, even in Norway, a successful film snapshot at half-past six in the evening in a room which has a skylight but no windows.

Cant and the Canteen. By S. B. Dexter. The

Henneberry Co., Chicago. 4×6 in. 139 pages. 50c. In an editorial paragraph elsewhere some comment is made on this plea for the canteen. Captain Ravenshaw. By Robert Neilson Stephens. Illustrated. L. C. Page & Co., Boston. 5x7 in. 369 pages. $1.50.

Mr. Stephens's books have been well received by the reading public. This is particularly true of Philip Winwood," which was a welltold tale of the Revolution. The present novel has its scene and characters placed in the Elizabethan era, and its hero is a roaring