appropriate quotation might have been this: "A man's best things are nearest him, lie close about his feet." On the "laughter of the fool" (Eccl. 7. 6) these lines are quoted from Dean Swift: "Dingley and Brent Wherever they went, Ne'er minded a word that was spoken; They ne'er troubled their head, But laughed at their own silly joking. "Should Solomon wise In majesty rise, And show them his wit and his learning; They never would hear. But turn the deaf ear, As a matter they had no concern in." and the following from William Watson: "I think the immortal servants of mankind, Who, from their graves, watch by how slow degrees Mourn most man's barren levity of mind, The ear to no grave harmonies inclined, The witless thirst for false wit's worthless lees, The laugh mistimed in tragic presences, Alongside Eccl. 11, 7, "Truly the light is sweet," Dr. Moffatt sets the conversation between Lavengro and Mr. Petulengro, the gipsy, in the twentyfifth chapter of Borrow's Lavengro: "Life is sweet, brother." "Do you think so?" "Think so!-There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon, and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die? Wish to die, indeed! A Romany gipsy would wish to live for ever." "In sickness, Jasper?" "There's the sun and stars, brother." "In blindness, Jasper?" "There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever." Also from Richard Jefferies this passage on Sunlight in a London Square: "The great sunlit square is silent-silent, that is, for the largest city on earth. A slumberous silence of abundant light, of the full summer day, of the high flood of summer hours whose tide can rise no higher. A time to linger and dream under the beautiful breast of heaven, heaven brooding and descending in pure light upon man's handiwork. If the light shall thus come in, and of its mere loveliness overcome every aspect of dreariness, why shall not the light of thought, and hope the light of the soul-overcome and sweep away the dust of our lives?" On the words, "Rejoice-but remember" (Eccl. 11. 9), the follow ing words of Johnson to Boswell are quoted: "When first I entered Ranelagh it gave a gay sensation to my mind such as I had never experienced anywhere else. But it went to my heart to consider that there was not one in all that brilliant circle that was not afraid to go home and think.” And this from C. H. Pearson, on the decay of home piety: "We have got a new family life, which is genial and charming and natural, which gives free vent to the feelings, and cares liberally for culture and advancement in life. Only the sense of obligation, of duty to God, of living forward into eternity, has disappeared." And best of all in connection with this text is quoted the testing-rule which the wise mother of the Wesleys gave her young people, a rule more portable, rememberable, comprehensive, and practical than any possible list of prohibited things: "Would you judge of the lawfulness or unlawfulness of pleasure take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off the relish of spiritual things-in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind-that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself." In the illustrations of the Book of Mark Thoreau is quoted anent the words of Jesus, "Come ye after me:" "There is hardly a house but is divided against itself, for our foe is the all but universal woodenness of both head and heart, the want of vitality in man, which is the effect of our vice; whence are begotten fear, superstition, bigotry, persecution, and slavery of all kinds. . . . The modern Christian is a man who has consented to say all the prayers in the Liturgy, provided you will but let him go straight to bed and sleep quietly afterward. All his prayers begin with 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and he is for ever looking forward to the time when he shall go to his 'long rest.' He has consented to perform certain old-established charities, too, after a fashion, but he does not wish to hear of any new-fangled ones; he doesn't wish to have any supplementary articles added to the contract, to fit it to the present time. The evil is not merely a stagnation of blood, but a stagnation of spirit." On Mark 3. 14, "He appointed twelve," the following is given from R. H. Hutton: "The chosen apostles themselves misunderstand and misinterpret their Master. Peter, after being told that his confession is the rock on which the church should be built, is spoken of as a tempter and an offense to his Master, as one who savors not of the things which are of God but of those which are of men. John is twice rebuked, once for his revengeful spirit, once for his short-sighted ambition. Judas's treachery is predicted. All the twelve are warned that they will fail at the hour of Christ's trial, and that warning, like the more individual prediction addressed to Peter, is certainly most unlikely to have been conceived after the event. In a word, from beginning to end of the gospels, we have evidence, which no one could have managed to forge, that Christ deliberately chose materials of which it would have been impossible for anyone to build a great or ganization unless he could otherwise provide, and continue to provide, the power by which that organization was to stand." On gaining the world and losing one's soul, this is quoted from Louis Stevenson: "An arctic torpor seizes upon men. Although built of nerves, and set adrift in a stimulating world, they develop a tendency to go bodily to sleep; consciousness becomes engrossed among the reflex and mechanical parts of life, and soon loses both the will and the power to look higher considerations in the face. This is ruin; this is the last failure in life; this is temporal damnation, damnation on the spot and without the form of judgment. What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose himself?" And this from Thoreau's answer to the critics of John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry: "But you say, 'He won't gain anything by it.' Well, no, I don't suppose he could get four-and-sixpence a day for being hung, take the year round; but then he stands a chance to save a considerable part of his soul-and such a soul!-when you do not. No doubt you can get more in your market for a quart of milk than for a quart of blood; but that is not the market that heroes carry their blood to." Also from Thoreau is quoted this on the pungent and searching character of New Testament teaching: "It is remarkable that notwithstanding the universal favor with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hospitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so few readers. There is none so truly strange and heretical and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbling-block. There are, indeed, some things in it which no man should read aloud more than once. Seek first the kingdom of heaven. Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth. If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Think of this, Yankees! ... Think of repeating these things to a New England audience! ... Who, without cant, can read them aloud? Who, without cant, can hear them and not go out of the meetinghouse? They never were read, they never were heard." On the saying of the Master, "My words shall not pass away," George J. Romanes is quoted: "One of the strongest pieces of objective evidence in favor of Christianity is not sufficiently enforced by apologists. Indeed, I am not aware that I have ever seen it mentioned. It is the absence from the biography of Christ of any doctrines which the subsequent growth of human knowledge -whether in natural science, ethics, political economy, or elsewhere-has had to discount. This negative argument is really almost as strong as is the positive one from what Christ did teach. For when we consider what a large number of sayings are recorded of him, it becomes most remarkable that in literal truth there is no reason why any of his words should ever pass away, in the sense of becoming obsolete. 'Not even now could it be easy,' says John Stuart Mill, 'even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.' Contrast Jesus Christ in this respect with other thinkers of like antiquity." Mr. G. J. Romanes, from whom these words are quoted, goes on to instance Plato, in whose dialogues there occur errors "reaching even to absurdity in respect of reason and to sayings shocking to the moral sense." Referring to the mocking and smiting of Jesus by his tormentors, Dr. Moffatt quotes Froude's account of a sermon delivered by Newman at Oxford in which the preacher "described closely some of the incidents of our Lord's passion; he then paused. For a few moments there was breathless silence. Then, in a low, clear voice, of which the faintest vibration was audible in the farthest corner of St. Mary's, he said, 'Now, I bid you recollect that he to whom these things were done was Almighty God.' It was as if an electric stroke had gone through the church, as if every person present understood for the first time the meaning of what he had all his life been saying. I suppose it was an epoch in the mental history of more than one of my Oxford contemporaries." From extracts here given it can be seen that these little books are made up of choice selections. The Makers of English Fiction. By W. J. DAWSON. 12mo. pp. 316. New York and Chicago: Fleming H. Revell Company. Price, cloth, $1.50, net. One critic thinks the most attractive chapter of this book is the one describing the "Characteristics of Thackeray." For our part we find more interest in other chapters, such as those which deal with George Meredith, Thomas Hardy, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Down from Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe and father of English fiction, to the gifted consumptive who laid the wasted remnant of his body to rest in the soil of Samoa, Dr. Dawson leads us through two hundred years of English story-tellers, and with rare insight and critical discrimination weighs, measures, and portrays their excellences and defects. His book is a fine study in comparative literature. He calls George Meredith the most intellectual of English novelists, appealing most to the ear of a discriminating culture; whose fame will come, if slowly, yet surely. Like Landor, he will dine late; but the dining room will be well lighted, the guests select even if few. Of Meredith's style Dr. Dawson says: "It is brilliant almost beyond example in his contemporaries; but it is at times willfully obscure in an almost equal degree. To those who love splendor, subtlety, and felicity of diction, combined with the most penetrating and suggestive thought, the writing of George Meredith is an unboundaried paradise. Roam where you will, a profusion of things dear to the delicate and discerning palate are found. Or, to change the figure, never was there so coruscating a style. The page perpetually breaks in star-sparkles; it flashes with all sorts of pyrotechnic displays, it is volcanic with eruptive radiance. Sometimes it is almost mischievously coruscating, as though a boy exploded crackers under you for the mere pleasure of seeing you jump. But one never knows how soon or suddenly the fire may go out, and you may find yourself plunged into the darkest by-ways of obscurity. Mr. Meredith has described Carlyle's style, and in doing so has partially described his own: A style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose and rough it seemed; a wind-in-the-orchard style, that tumbled down here and there an ' appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster; sentences without commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a seawall, learned dictionaries giving a hand to street-slang, and accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing a sort of electrical agitation in the mind and joints." The exquisite poetic beauty of some passages in Meredith's works is nowhere surpassed. His greatest moments, Dr. Dawson thinks, are in the interpretation of young love and of nature. In some passages of perfect charm and lyric rapture he blends together the beauty of nature and the sweet delirium of tender love. Take, for instance, his description of the first waking of love in young Richard Feverel, framing the lovers in a picture of the beauteous and delicious world: "The little skylark went up above her, all song, to the smooth southern cloud lying along the blue; from a dewy copse standing dark over her nodding hat the blackbird flitted, calling to her with thrice mellow note; the kingfisher flashed emerald out of the green oziers; a bow-winged heron traveled aloft seeking solitude; a boat came slipping across the water toward her, containing a dreaming youth. . . . To-morrow this place will have a memory -the river and the meadow and the white foaming weir. His heart will build a temple here, and the skylark will be its high-priest and the blackbird its glossy-gowned chorister, and there will be a sacramental repast of dewberries. For here is the home of enchantment; here, secluded like darkling nightingales, the lovers sit, and into eyes and ears pour everfresh treasures of their souls. . . . The hours pass unnoted. The tide of sunshine ebbs from the upper sky. In the west the sea of sunken fire draws back, and the stars leap forth, tremble, and then retire before the advancing moon. Its soft beams travel to the fern-covert where the lovers sit, her eyes gazing into his and her soul visible to him in her eyes. Their lips are locked. . . . Out in the world there, on the margin of the wood. land, a sheep boy pipes to meditative eve on a penny whistle. Love's musical instrument is as old, and as poor; it has but two stops, and yet you see the cunning musician does thus much with it. Pipe no more, love for a time! Pipe as you will you cannot express the lovers' kiss-nothing of its sweetness and of its sacredness nothing. St. Cecilia up aloft, before the silver organ-pipes of paradise, pressing fingers upon all the notes of which |