most prominent personages there. Hence their books are informatively written, and are written from first-hand knowledge. As is fitting, these works appear in large, clear print, and rarely is there any evidence of hasty proof-reading. The illustrations and maps are many and excellent; they do not seem inserted here and there by way of adornment, but because they actually illustrate the text. One of these works has been written by the Rev. Dr. Smith, the Outlook's Commissioner in China, and deals with a recent period of intense political activity; the other, by the Rev. Dr. Martin, the venerable President of the Imperial University, deals with the Empire's intellectual life. As many of Dr. Smith's chapters appeared in The Outlook, our readers are well aware of his views. It must be admitted that, in terseness and vividness of phrase, "China in Convulsion" is a more immediately engaging work than is "The Lore of Cathay." Dr. Smith's vision is exact; his pictures are sketched with an apparently unerring touch, and are colored to a perfectly proper key. This is no news to the readers of "Chinese Characteristics" and "Village Life in China." the other hand, Dr. Martin's is perhaps the more scholarly achievement. It is an essential complement to his "Cycle of Cathay "a book picturing Chinese his tory in general, and, in particular, those strenuous periods of the Arrow War and the Taiping Rebellion. The Outlook has already said that, as an authoritative work, the "Cycle of Cathay" will take its place with Williams's "Middle Kingdom." Dr. Smith and Dr. Martin both hold that a clear knowledge of the past as related to recent occurrences, and also a comprehension of esoteric Chinese life, are necessary to the readjustment of relations between China and the Powers in other words, to intellectual interaction. No doubt exists of the necessity of this interaction. Never have a great people been more misunderstood, protests Dr. Martin. According to him the Chinese are not stolid, servile, or barbarous; it is we who do not understand them.

On

Both

authors admit that the recent atrocities have done more than anything in lowering the Chinese in our esteem; but both tell us that the outbreak was due to a sudden recoil from the Emperor's innovations-a

recoil instigated for political purposes by a usurping Regent and her Manchu agents. Yet the Chinese have always been latently hostile to their Manchu rulers, save the present Emperor. The real attitude of the Chinese mind is not shown by the Boxer craze, declares Dr. Martin, but rather by the Emperor's reform movement. Dr. Smith is hardly so positive: "A large minority of thinking men felt the necessity of a change, and would gladly have followed an Imperial leader." At all events, we have another proof of the fact insisted on, especially by Dr. Martin, that, throughout the ages, the Chinese have not maintained the castiron uniform character generally ascribed to them. A certain uniform stamp, however, which we note in every Chinaman, may be ascribed, not to ethnology, residence, climate, or diet, but to education. Only by informing ourselves in this department may we learn to know the real China which lies under and behind the commercial life of the treaty ports. To know China we must know about Chinese thought. Dr. Martin's chapters point out the incongruities of life in the Flowery Kingdom: the most determined foes of the Emperor's reforms were the literati themselves; China is a highly illiterate land, yet education there is well-nigh universal; the Government has been hopeless despite the rigidity and impartiality of civil service examinations; outside of Christianity, perhaps no teacher ever taught a higher morality than did Confucius, yet there is a strange lack of moral fiber in the Chinese. The present outlook, however, is a hopeful one. So far from extinguishing political reforms, Dr. Martin thinks that the effect of the recent convulsion will be to awaken them into fresh activity. He had already hinted this in his "Siege in Peking," as does Dr. Smith in his latest work, which, of course, includes as its main feature an account of the siege, of which he was an eye-witness. Unless China is essentially altered, however, warns Dr. Smith, she will continue to imperil the world's future. Other forces than Christianity, he concludes, are inadequate; it alone can give to China, intellectually, morally, and spiritually, a new life. (The F. H. Revell Company, New York.)

One can hardly avoid commenting first

on the superb external appearance, typography, and illustration of the two large volumes concerned with the Harriman Alaskan Expedition. It is safe to say that, with the exception of some éditions de luxe of great price, no more notable piece of book-making has come out of the hands of American publishers for many years. It will be remembered that Mr. E. H. Harriman nearly three years ago planned a summer cruise in Alaska for hunting, recreation, and travel, but his plans gradu ally enlarged until the Harriman Expedition in its own steamship carried about one hundred and twenty-five people. The personnel of the expedition included two artists of National fame, two professional photographers, such leading men of science as Professor Brewer, of the Yale Scientific School, and Professor C. H. Merriam, such famous writers on topics of natural science as John Burroughs and John Muir, two physicians, a chaplain, and a corps of assistants in all matters relating to science, art, and travel. The literary record of this expedition is supplemented by valuable special articles on the history, development, resources, geography, ethnology, and exploration of Alaska. The illustration of the book is truly extraordinary, including thirty-nine colored plates, some of which represent a very high form of color-printing, eightyfive admirable and beautiful photogravures, several maps, and many scores of wood engravings inserted in the text. When we turn from the sumptuous typography and pictorial beauty of the volumes to their literary contents, we find that the narrative told by Mr. John Burroughs is, as might be expected, lucid, picturesque, and popular, while Mr. John Muir's genuinely eloquent descriptions of glaciers and peaks would alone, with a few of the fine accompanying illustrations, make a worthy book. We can only add that Mr. George Bird Grinnell competently treats the racial traits of the natives and their rude mythology and folk-lore; that Mr. Charles Keeler writes of the Alaskan birds, with many charming pictures in colors; that Professor Brewer writes on the Alaskan atmosphere; while other hardly less noted naturalists and literary

men discuss such topics as the fur industry, the seal industry, and Alaska fauna and flora, the hunting exploits of the party (which included the killing of one specimen of the enormous Kadiak bear), the forest and timber resources of the country, the fishing industry, and a dozen other similar topics. The whole work is under the general editorship of Dr. Merriam. The entire expense of the expedition was borne by Mr. Harriman, and it is a pleasure to note that in equipping, organizing, and carrying out such an undertaking Mr. Harriman has found almost a new employment for great personal resources, and has set a delightful example for men of wealth to follow in other directions. (Doubleday, Page & Co., New York.)

The title of Mr. Charles W. Wood's "The Glories of Spain" is misleading. One might think that the glories of all Spain were described, but, as a matter of fact, Mr. Wood confines his attention to Catalonia and Aragon. Then there are many other glories than those architec tural; but Mr. Wood restricts himself to that department only. We hope that he will ultimately do for the other Spanish provinces what he has so well done for two of them. The great value of his latest work is that its readers will realize, as never before, the marvelous treasurehouse of architecture in the cathedral towns of Spain. Mr. Wood's delightful text is doubly enforced by reason of a great wealth of illustration. We would, however, distinguish a second value, and it is the same value which marked the author's "Rhone Valley," namely, his restful gregariousness. Does he reproduce in word and picture a glorious Spain in stone and mortar, he reproduces with equal exactness and graphicness the monks and soldiers, the priests and innkeepers, the criados and other servants. He spends quite as much time in recording his talks with them as in describing the architecture of Gerona, Lerida, Barcelona, Tarragona, and Saragossa (why does he use the Spanish Zaragoza and not the Anglicized name?)—incidental as all these conversations and characterizations seem to the main work in hand. (The Macmillan Company, New York.)

both in narrative and criticism selects and blends his material with the single purpose of making his portrait clear and of throwing the light strongly on all phases of the many-sided subject. The fragment of autobiography left by Stevenson, personal allusions scattered through his works, his diaries and even more the pathetically minute diaries of his mother, the letters not included in Mr. Colvin's volumes, material of various descriptions offered by the family and friends, personal recollections of many literary associates, all are combined and arranged with definite purpose. Mr. Balfour truly says: "In Stevenson's case, if anywhere, the rule holds that all biography would be autobiography if it could." It is no disparagement to Mr. Balfour's editorship to say that one best loves to hear what Stevenson himself has to say of the events of his life, and in these volumes Stevenson speaks a large proportion of the time. The Life is an inseparable complement to the Letters. One may hold that, if all were to do over, the two might well be combined into one completely satisfying whole, but under the actual conditions a Life was indispensable, and the lovers

of Stevenson's writing and character may congratulate themselves that the work has been done so competently and with such sympathetic judgment.

In point of style and expression there is much in this work to praise. Mr. Balfour keeps himself so modestly in the background in the narrative portion that it is only in the concluding pages of appreciation and analysis that one realizes that this author has a style worth noting, and that his literary discrimination is acute and nicely poised. Here, for instance, is a passage which puts a finger delicately but firmly on one of Stevenson's personal qualities:

There was this about him, that he was the only man I have ever known who possessed charm in a high degree, whose character did not suffer from the possession. The gift their best in its exercise. But a man requires comes naturally to women, and they are at to be of a very sound fiber before he can be entirely himself and keep his heart single, if he carries about with him a talisman to obtain from all men and all women the object of his heart's desire. Both gifts Stevenson possessed, not only the magic but also the strength of character to which it was safely intrusted. shall unfold its secret? He was all that I But who shall bring back that charm? Who have said; he was inexhaustible, he was

brilliant, he was romantic, he was fiery, he was tender, he was brave, he was kind. With all this there went something more. He always liked the people he was with, and found the best and brightest that was in them; he entered into all the thoughts and moods of his companions, and led them along pleasant ways, or raised them to a courage and a gayety like his own. If criticism or reminiscence has yielded any further elucidation of his spell, I do not know: it defies my analysis, nor have I ever heard it explained.

It may be noted that Mr. Balfour does not refrain from pointing out foibles and weaknesses. It was Stevenson's great gift of humor that made him often laugh

at himself, and he was the last of men to desire biographical coddling. The fact is that as a boy and young man he was eccentric, whimsically vain, and a puzzle in many ways. His biographer deals at some length with the early days, and with reason; not only because, as he says, the boyhood of the singer and interpreter of childhood has peculiar interest, but because Stevenson was in a beautiful and sweet sense a boy to the day of his death. His eccentricity mellowed into gentle humor; affectation and preciosity disappeared as the imagination strengthened;