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to his manuscript copy. We have only to say that, in quoting our correspondent's letter, we did not in any way become responsible for its assertions, and we cheerfully record Mr. Fyles's protest

and denial.

We have a deep and sincere admiration for Miss Mary E. Wilkins's work, and were among the first to recognise its distinctive merit elsewhere, when A Humble Romance and Other Stories was published several years ago. Indeed, long before the stories had been gathered into book form the writer had come upon "A Humble Romance" in a Scot

byplay to the author's legitimate art; but our disappointment is keen after reading Miss Wilkins's new book. It is a thousand pities that after such work as Pembroke, so inferior a production as Madelon should have been published; and it has been with mature deliberation and clear discrimination that the review which appears on another page has been written. But we shall not yet lose faith in Miss Wilkins, and we wish her a speedy recovery from her recent illness and a fresh conquest in the field which is still her own.

66

The Contemporary Review has a charming collection of personal reminiscences of Cardinal Manning, contributed by Aubrey De Vere. The charge against the great Cardinal, that he was a coldhearted man, is said to be incompatible with the love which he is known to have had for children. One of his exclamations on one occasion, when he was deeply moved, is worthy of preservation: A child's needless tear is a bloodblot on the earth." In the same magazine Mr. G. W. E. Russell, under the heading "George Eliot Revisited," writes an estimate of her books, which is like all criticism of George Eliot that has yet appeared, inadequate and incomplete. The ground is still clear for a serious, competent criticism of George Eliot, which would be a valuable contribution to literature.

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tish weekly-where it had been copied, doubtless, from the American periodical in which it originally appeared-and although the author was then unknown, the remarkable power of the story was sufficient to mark one summer Saturday afternoon indelible in a life and to relegate the precious clipping to a scrapbook. Then came Pembroke, which, if we mistake not, Mr. Hamilton W. Mabie was the first to pronounce "the greatest piece of fiction in America since The Scarlet Letter." The Long Arm we viewed mainly as an experiment and a sort of

In the Daily Telegraph (London) Mr. Du Maurier was recently credited with having written and illustrated a book entitled Peter Robinson! Peter Ibbetson, of course, was meant, but to an indifferent printer one can easily see how the former would be more obvious. A more careless and exasperating blunder has been going the rounds of the press, in the statement that the Messrs. Scribner have offered Ian Maclaren fifty thousand dollars for his next novel, when the author in question is really Mr. J. M. Barrie. A notice to this effect (no sum was stated) appeared in the English BookMAN three months ago, which was copied by the Critic, and thence it was evidently transferred to some other paper by a careless copyist, who perhaps trusted to his memory and failed to verify the fact.

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ILLUSTRATION (REDUCED) BY ETHEL REED, FROM "FAIRY TALES," BY MABEL FULLER BLODGETT.

We have not yet read Mabel Fuller Blodgett's Fairy Tales, which appears as we go to press, but a glance at the twelve full-page illustrations assures us that the book will find a warm welcome, if only on account of Miss Ethel Reed's work. Those who refused to be convinced by Miss Reed's drawings in the

Arabella and Araminta Stories because of their intricacy and mystification will, we think, be won by her illustrations to the new book. They are charmingly fresh in conception, clear in outline, and wonderfully suggestive of the fairyland of childhood's dreams, while they have the advantage of being more intelligible to

the young people. We are able to give a reduced reproduction of one of the illustrations through the courtesy of the publishers, Messrs. Lamson, Wolffe and Company.

In connection with Mr. James Payn's recent retirement from the editorship of the Cornhill Magazine, it may not be generally known that one of the most spirited things done by the Cornhill was to purchase George Eliot's Romola. The sum paid was immense, but the circulation of the magazine was in consequence reduced about 10,000. The fact is, even then the general reader felt Romola to be rather heavy.

Messrs. Dodd, Mead and Company

announce a Scottish novel, entitled Redburn, by a new author, which, however, is not published because it is Scottish, though the elements of life which it portrays are the more tragic and impressive for belonging to the Celtic character. "In its pathos and humour," says one who has read the story, it is more searching and penetrating than anything we have read for a long time. Both for the fine human feeling it discovers in depicting farm life, and for the tragic force and reality of its central situation, one is inevitably reminded of certain passages in the Heart of Midlothian and Adam Bede."

The same firm is preparing beautiful illustrated editions of Mr. Barrie's A Window in Thrums and Ian Maclaren's Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush and Days of Auld Lang Syne, to be illustrated from photographs taken in " Thrums" and "Drumtochty," by Clifton Johnson. The project has been warmly approved by both authors. Mr. Johnson was fortunate in having Mr. Barrie's co-operation while visiting in Kirriemuir, and he has since written, "I like your pictures very much." These books, illusThese books, illustrated in this way, we believe, will meet with a hearty welcome.

When we remember the important part which the Scottish dominie of the old school plays in Mr. Barrie's books, the following tribute which he pays to Gabriel Setoun's new novel, Robert Urquhart, is all the more remarkable: At last a novel of Scottish life," writes

Mr. Barrie, "without the old dominie in it! The dominie had such a way of marching into the story as soon as he heard there was one on hand, that I think Mr. Setoun must have gone about the work on tiptoe. Well, if I meet the dominie this evening, I am sure to agree with him that it is a scandal; but between you and me, I have long wanted to meet the village schoolmaster of today in fiction, and Robert Urquhart proves that he can be made as interesting as any dominie of them all." Mr. Setoun, it may be added, is himself a School Board teacher in Edinburgh, and he has depicted the trials and depressing difficulties which the Board teacher has to encounter to the very life. In spite is not great enough to rise above the of its depressing tone-for Mr. Setoun tormenting style and bleak little pessimisms of youth-the story is a graphic and vivid piece of portraiture.

Two years ago there appeared from the press of the Putnams a remarkable Scottish story by Mr. D. Storiar Meldrum, entitled Margrèdel, which has passed into the list of undeserved neglected books. In the opinion of many critics of judgment it has been considered the best Scottish novel that has been written in the past decade. We are pleased to see Mr. Neil Munro, the author of The Lost Pibroch, and a new Celtic writer who has just appeared on the literary horizon, writing with fine appreciation of this work. He says: "It has a fine bloom of personal genius on it, and it will be read with satisfaction generations after some of the Scots' works that are boomed to-day are in the lumber-room of oblivion."

The new edition of Olive Schreiner's

Story of an African Farm, which Messrs. lished contains as a frontispiece a reHutchinson and Company have pubproduction in photogravure of a recently taken portrait of the author. It is to be hoped that Messrs. Roberts Brothers will reissue this new edition in America, as the present one is execrably printed and bound. Over 80,000 copies of this book have been sold in Great Britain alone. The first of a series of timely articles by Olive Schreiner on South Africa and the Boers commenced in the April number of the Fortnightly Review.

A correspondent who has studied at Andover mentions Mrs. Phelps Ward's recent novel, A Singular Life, as one of the best books descriptive of Andover life. Those who have read the story will understand that "Windover" is a thin disguise for the New England centre of conservative theology.

Another correspondent writes about Mrs. Phelps Ward as follows:

"In the March McClure's, Mrs. Phelps Ward, in her Chapters from a Life,' makes the remarkable statement that she practically rewrote three hundred and fifty pages of manuscript between after tea-time and three o'clock the next morning. This is at the rate of about thirty-nine pages an hour. Does this not break all previous records, and would not a typewriter be a hindrance to such a rapid writer?

In the same series of papers, she states in the May McClure's that The Gates Ajar was published in 1869, two years after its writing. A few lines below she says that in 1863 she was nineteen years old. She says elsewhere that she could not have been much over twenty, possibly approaching twenty-one, when she wrote the book. Should not some one jog her memory a little, sufficiently, at least, to make her own dates reconcilable? Later we read, in a style of rather subtle self-complacency, of the astonished girl' being overwhelmed with letters anent the book, 'from all quarters of the civilised globe, in its differing languages.' She must at that time, according to her own dates, have been twenty-five; and even in the cold, theological air of Andover, she must have been a woman in development at that age. With these facts in view, one can hardly enter fully into the spirit of the astonished girl's' 'terrified humility.'

We print herewith a letter from Mr. John Brisben Walker, of the Cosmopolitan Magazine, received too late for insertion in our last number:

To the Editors of THE BOOKMAN: Several months since, in company with a majority of my countrymen, I felt an anxiety lest bad statesmanship should draw us unnecessarily into a war with Great Britain. There was a period at which, it seemed to me, Mr. Gladstone's utterances in favour of International Arbitration would prove important to the cause of humanity. I cabled him asking for 1000 words in support of International Arbitration. I felt sure that if it was opportune for him to speak, he would be glad to do so without pay; but I also did not wish to seem to take advantage of a situation to secure a favour for The Cosmopolitan, without making suitable compensation, and so offered $1.00 per word for 1000 words. This, you will concede, is quite different from the general offer which THE BOOKMAN represents me as making. The publication in the newspapers of anything regarding the transaction was unsought by me. The handwriting of

Gladstone was seen by a gentleman who was formerly the representative of The Cosmopolitan in London, but is now connected with a leading journal, and permission to reproduce the handwriting in fac-simile was requested. Beyond that permission there was no action upon my part, and the publication of what you deemed an advertisement" was personally most annoying, as it placed me, as an editor, in the absurd position of being ready to expend money without even an approach to common sense.

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Now one word more. If you imagine that I am compelled to offer unusual prices for the best material, you have only to reflect for a moment upon the fact that The Cosmopolitan has to-day the largest clientèle of intelligent thinking readers possessed by any periodical in either Europe or America.

In no other publication can a writer be so sure of so vast an audience. There are, it is true, two other publications claiming a larger circulation, but they do not appeal to the class of readers with whom a literary department conducted by Sarcey, Zangwill, Andrew Lang, Agnes Repplier, and others has proven popular. The Cosmopolitan sold 335,000 copies of its April issue. That means nearly two millions of readers. Who is there who ought not to feel honoured in addressing so vast a constituency? Sincerely yours,

JOHN BRISBEN WALKER,

Editor Cosmopolitan Magazine.

In Sir Samuel Ferguson's Biography, written by his widow and recently published, there is a letter from Ian Maclaren, who was related to Ferguson by marriage, which contains the following story:

"The Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia were some years ago staying at St. Cloud with Napoleon, and took a walk one evening. They met an Englishman, who asked them to show him the way. They did so, and walked a little with him. On parting, he asked their names. 'I (bowing) am the Emperor of Russia ;' 'I am the King of Prussia ;' and 'I am the Emperor of the French.' And I,' said our compatriot, bowing lowest, am the Emperor of China.'

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IN

KATE CARNEGIE.*

CHAPTER XI.

BY IAN MACLAREN.

THE GLOAMING.

UGUST is our summer time in the north, and Carmichael found it pleasant walking from Lynedoch bridge to Kilbogie. The softness of the gloaming, and the freshness of the falling dew, and the scent of the honeysuckle in the hedge, and the smell of the cut corn in the fields for harvest is earlier down there than with us and the cattle chewing the cud, and the sheltering shadow of old beech trees, shed peace upon him and touched the young minister's imagination. Fancies he may have had in early youth, but he had never loved any woman except his mother and his aunt. There had been times when he and his set declared they would never marry, and one, whose heart was understood to be blighted, had drawn up the constitution of a celibate Union. It was never completed-and therefore never signed -because the brotherhood could not agree about the duration of the vowsthe draftsman, who has been twice married since then, standing stiffly for their perpetuity, while the others considered that a dispensing power might be lodged in the Moderator of Assembly.

This railing against marriage on the part of his friends was pure boyishness, and they all were engaged on the mere prospect of a kirk, but Carmichael had

more of a mind on the matter.

There

was in him an ascetic bent, inherited from some Catholic ancestor, and he was almost convinced that a minister would serve God with more abandonment in the celibate state. As an only

* Copyright, 1896, by John Watson.

child, and brought up by a mother given to noble thoughts, he had learned to set women in a place by themselves, and considered marriage for ordinary men. to flavour of sacrilege. His mother had bound it as a law upon him that he was never to exercise his tongue on a woman's failings, never to argue with a woman unto her embarrassment, never to regard her otherwise than as his superior. Women noticed that Carmichael bore himself to them as if each were a Madonna, and treated him in turn according to their nature. Some were abashed, and could not understand the lad's shyness; those were saints. Some were amused, and suspected him of sarcasm; those were less than saints. Some horrified him unto confusion of face because of the shameful things they said. One middle-aged female, whose conversation oscillated between physiology and rescue work, compelled Carmichael to sue for mercy on the ground that he had not been accustomed to speak about such details of life with a woman, and ever afterward described him as a prude. It seemed to Carmichael that he was disliked by women because he thought more highly of them than he ought to think.

Carmichael was much tried by the baser of his fellow-students, especially a certain class of smug, self-contented, unctuous men, who neither had endured work at college. They were described hardship to get to college, nor did any in reports as the "fruits of the revival," and had been taken from behind counters and sent to the University, not beDomsie's lads at Drumtochty, but because they had any love of letters, like

cause rich old ladies were much impressed by the young men's talk, and the young men were perfectly aware that they would be better off in the ministry than in any situation they could gain by their own merits. As Carmi

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charitable, he discovered with what grew older, and therefore more faulty tools the work of the world and even of kirks is carried on, and how there is a root of good in very coarse and common souls. When he was a young judge-from whom may the Eter

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