THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES This Edition of " Good Reading about many Books," on Japan Paper, is limited to TOO Copies. This is No. Signed ~73J; GOOD READING ABOUT MANY BOOKS MOSTLY BY THEIR AUTHORS LONDON T. FISHER INWIN PATER- NOSTER SQUARE - 1894-5 - YVI A If YJTCOM i &9\ Contents T. Fisher Unwin John Oliver Hobbes Eliza Brightwen S. R. Crockett Sir Gavan Duffy Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner W. Douglas Morrison- Hugh Haliburton augustus jessopp, d.d. .. Swift Mac Neill, m.p. .. T. A. Archer William Martin Conway Alethea Wiel Eva Knatchbui.l-Hi Kate. Freiligrath Kroeker F. 'Edmund Garrett Henhv Norman .. Arthur. G. L. Rogers The .pseudonym Library Ernest Radford 824291 Contents. Page The Autonym Library .. ..133 Henry Lazarus 137 Grant Allen 144 J. J. Jusserand 151 The cyclop/Edia of Names .. 161 Alfred Perceval Graves . . 165 napoleon Bonaparte .. ..169 e. j. hardy, m.a 175 A history of florenc . . . 181 Mary Mapes dodge .. .. 187 The Mark o' the Deil .. ..190 topsys and saahax >94 Under the Moon 197 The Brownie Man .. .. soi the climbers' guides .. ..205 louis becke 211 Lily Henkel 223 Captain Hayes .. .r .. 229 thomas seccombe 234 richard watson gilder .. 24s george r. sims 251 a. teixeira de mattos .. 255 John Muir . .. .. 259 a selected catalogue .. 265 ii, Paternoster Buildings, London, J12eto gears' Dap, 1895. TO THE BOOKSELLERS. Dear Sirs, Will you accept from me a copy of " Good Reading" ; and in doing so, its dedication to you, as the best friends of literature, and therefore the best friends of all those who love "good reading " ? I expect the phrase which I have used for the title of this brochure will be a very familiar one. Tou must often have heard it from your customers, and I have no doubt you have answered it by offering them the best of the ''good reading " you have on your shelves. I have frequently caught the phrase in railway carriages and in the streets; but on those occasions I fear it had more reference to the penny and halfpenny " Snips " and " Bits " so largely made up of choice extracts from Unwin. Good Reading. the books of good authors which we pub- lishers and booksellers try to get the British public to buy and read. It seems to me that possibly this brochure may help you and your clients to obtain some notion of the contents of a few good books, and by that means good reading may be disseminated. This is a consummation devoutly to be wished by both you and me, for I need not remind you, at the present critical time for literature, how important it is for us that merely " cheap reading " should not oust " good reading " from the home shelves. Thanking you very heartily for your kind aid in the past, and wishing you a successful New Year in our common interest, Believe me, Very sincerely yours, -S*^L -^ Q.tt U*^*/ JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.* MY first book was composed during many months of wear- ing illness and under the strain of domestic anxiety. The opening chapter was written in the summer of 1889, and the last words in the autumn of 1891. If I had any hope in the matter it was that I might after some twenty years of application invent something which would please me a little. Now I am older I have the same hope, but I have made the twenty years thirty. I do not find the enjoyment in writing which many * Works by John Oliver Hobbes. In 1 vol., with portrait of the author by Walter Spindler. Large crown 8vo, cloth boards, gilt top, 6s. Contains " Some Emotions and a Moral," " The Sinner's Comedy," " A Bundle of Life," " A Study in Temptations," all of which stories have been published in the Pseudonym Library. () Craigie. Good Heading. are fortunate enough to experience, nor do I write'with ease. I should like to say again, what I have already pointed out in my preface to the second edition of "A Study in Temptations," I have never yet called one of my sketches a novel. My long days and hours of in- valescence have allowed me the leisure to read more than many of those who mainly write, and I know the principles at least of literary art too well, and respect them too highly, to misname my own pro- ductions. The title in each case will be found to explain, so far as a title may, the character of the work. They are philosophical fantasias. I hesitate over the word philosophical, but after all I am a student, and I have earned the right by much hard labour to apply an occasional polysyllable to my efforts. They may not be valuable, but they were executed with a conscience. They do not contain one uncon- (12) Craigie. Good Heading. sidered line, and if I have ever had a quick thought I have expressed it with much caution with no idea that I was suffering from inspiration. The thinnest notion can be clothed in neat language, and so long as my little books are neither slatternly nor slip-shod, I may indeed regret, like a fond mother with plain children, that they are not handsome, but 1 am at least not ashamed to see them under the eye of a kind critic. John Oliver Hobbes. (3) MRS. BRIGHTWEN.* IT was not until late in life that it occurred to me to put down in literary form the observations which a long devotion to nature and a humble, persevering study of it had inspired. I have always had a singular love of animals and birds, and a certain skill, I suppose, in persuading their fluttering hearts to beat less and less wildly in response to affection. Success in taming wild creatures arises, I believe, not so much from inborn gift as from a carefully culti- vated habit of extreme gentleness and quietude. Almost every living thing will yield its affection to those who supply it with suitable food and treat it with unvarying kind- ness. * " Wild Nature Won by Kindness," 5th edition, in box, 5s. ; " More About Wild Nature," 2nd and cheaper edition, is. and 2s. (15) Brightwen. Good Heading. Desiring to secure for young people a portion of the deep hap- piness which I had gained by ob- taining the confidence and love of bird and beast, I began to jot down notes of my own experience, with no higher literary ambition than to be perfectly truthful in my narration. One after another desired to hear what I had seen and known ; many of my friends became anxious to emulate my little victories and essay my methods. Thus, by degrees the sheaf of my small chapters, the humble annals of my pets, attained the limits of a volume, and I was persuaded to make my first venture in authorship. T have already said, in the preface to a later work, and I can only repeat here, that no one in the world of letters can have been more surprised than I was at the response which my modest appeal received. But I have no illusions of vanity. I know that if my books have met (16) Brightwen. Good Mead in q. with thousands of readers it depends upon no merit of style or form in my simple writing, but is a conse- quence of a sincere appeal to that innate love of the animal world too often, alas ! obscured by ignorance which exists in almost even- human being. My chronicles of the life of birds and beasts have had but one feature to recommend them, their absolute fidelity to fact as it has come under my own observa- tion. Thus I came to write my first book ; and if I am to say where I wrote it, then, in a large rambling house, quite close to London, but buried in gardens and woods that themselves are surrounded by a wild and sequestered common. Under a tulip-tree upon my lawn, on the flowery meadows that descend to my little lilied lake, within a secret sanctum that the branches of my old fir-trees darken, under the yew- tree where my nuthatches flit and ('7) Brightwen. Good Reading. my squirrels chatter, in a home of deep peace, though its blue sky southwards is sometimes brownish with the nearness to London, these pages were written and tremulously sent forth to a world of unknown friends. Eliza Brightwen. (18) * * I I S. R. CROCKETT.* THE " BOOK SEALED." I AM bidden by the Aladdin of the Lamps, whose Slave I am, and whom I take to be a pub- lisher, to discourse of my craft, and especially of my apprenticeship thereto. This, in the familiar speech of the Melican man, is "a tough row to hoe," and those who try it are commonly hard bested, as witness those who have been entrapped of the cunning hunter and made to stand and deliver in " My First Book." Now, we have it on authority, which I, at least, cannot disregard, that " in vain is the net spread in the sight of any bird." So with the Author of " The Haiders " 6s. ;" " The Lilac Sunbonnet," 6s. ; "The Stickit Minis- ter," 58. ;VMad Sir Uchtred," is. 6d. ; "The Playactress," is. 6d. Crockett. Good Heading. victims still transfixed and quivering before me, it is not likely that I shall immediately proceed to impale myself. Rather I would speak of a book which no publisher has paid royalty upon, that has not yet been confined in spidery lines upon any paper, a book that is nevertheless the Book of My Youth, of my Love, and of my Heart. There never was such a book, and in the chill of type certainly there never will be. It has, so far as I know, no title, this unpublished book of mine. For it would need the blood of rubies and the life of diamonds encrusted on ivory to set the title of this book. Mostly I see it in the late night watches, when the twilight verges to the cock-crowing and the universe is silent, stirless, windless, for about the space of one hour. Then the pages of the book are opened, and I see the idylls, the epics, the dramas of the life of man written in words (22) Crockett. Good JReadhuj. that thrill me as I read. Some are fiercely tender, some are yearning and unsatisfying, some are bitter in the mouth but afterward sweet in the belly. All are expressed in words so fit and chaste and noble, that each is an immortal poem which would give me deathless fame could I, alas ! but remember it. Then the morning comes, and with the first red I awake to a sense of utter loss and bottomless despair. Once more I have missed and for- gotten it. It is gone from me. Sometimes when a bird by pre- ference a mavis sings outside my window, for a little while after I wake it seems that I might possibly remember one stanza of the death- less words ; or even by chance re- capture, like the brown speckled thrush, that " first fine careless rapture." But when I arise and walk out in the dawn, as is my custom, winter and summer, I still have visions of (*3) Crockett. Good Beading. this book of mine, of which the mystic name is " The Book Sealed." Sometimes in the dreams of the morning, as I walk abroad, I find my hands on the clasps. I touch the binding wax. When the rosy fingers of the dawn point upward to the zenith with the sunlight behind them, sanguine like a maid's hand held before a lamp, I seem to get another glimpse of the hidden pages. Tales, not poems, are upon them now. So doubtless it must have ap- peared to many, though I have not met with their experiences. I hear the voices of " Them Ones," as Miss Barlow's Irish folk impressively say, telling me tales out of the " Book Sealed," tales which in the very hearing make me blush hot and thrill with hopes mysterious. Such stories as they are ! The romances of high young blood, of maiden's winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men that take their lives in their hands, and for an ideal hurl m) Crockett. Good Reading. themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens into a belief that one day I shall hear them all and tell these tales for my very own so that all the world must listen. But as the rosy fingers of the morn melt and the broad day fares forth, the vision fades, and I who saw and heard must go and sit down to tell my plain saltless tale. Once I wrote a book, every word of it, in the open air. It was full of the sweet things of the country as they seemed to me. I saw the hens nestle sleepily in the holes of the bank-side where the dry dust is, and so I wrote it down. I heard the rain drum on the broad leaves over my head, and I wrote that down also. Day after day I rose and wrote in the dawn, and sometimes I (25) B Crockett. Good Reading. seemed to recapture a leaf or a passing glance of a chapter-heading out of the "Book Sealed." It came back to me how the girls were kissed and love was made in the days when the Book Sealed was the Book Open, and I cared not a jot what was written therein. So as well as I could I wrote these things down in the red dawn. And so till the book was done. Then the day came when the book was printed and bound, and when the critics wrote of it after their kind, things good and things evil. But I that had gathered the fairy gold dared not for my life look within, lest it should be as they said, and I should find but withered leaves therein. For the sake of the breaking day and the incommuni- cable hope, I shall look no more upon it. But still with the eternal human hope, I rise and wait the morning and the opening of the " Book Sealed." S. R. Crockett. (26, SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY.* ON HIS FORTHCOMING MEMOIRS. " T DO not know how to tell you [ what my memoirs will contain, unless I say generally they will contain the experiences of a long lifetime never wanting in action or emotion. Nature I think intended me to love books and tranquil study, but I have lived the greater part of my life in as stormy an atmosphere as the Eddystone Lighthouse. I was born in Ireland at a time when I was forbidden by law to be so much as a municipal councillor in the town where I lived, still less a member of Parliament ; and where * "My life in Two Hemispheres," being the Memoirs of Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, written by himself. 2 vols., Demy 8vo (in prepara- tion). (29) Duffy. Good Readiny. rooted custom, coming to the aid of penal law, made it impossible tor me to occupy any position of official usefulness in my native country. I saw that system pass away, and a nation which had long striven "'Like sugar-loaf turned upside down, To stand upon its smaller end,' restored to its natural equilibrium. This is an experience which few men still living have shared. " My home was in Dublin when the national agitation which still beats on the ramparts of authority was organised, and T was not a passive spectator of that labour. My comrades of that day began a literary and educational movement of which it was said that it brought 'a new soul into Ireland.' "I was a member of the House of Commons when the intellectual duel between Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli began, and in that era (3o) Dujfy. Good fteadhif/. rich in gifted men made many memorable friends among the poli- tical and literary foster fathers of opinion. " In my thirty-ninth year I left Europe for Australia, when the first parliament of Victoria was about to be elected, and the critical experiment of working responsible government in combination with a democratic franchise was undertaken. I became a member of that parliament, and for five-and-twenty years after, in office ori opposition, I took an active part in all its proceedings. Many political changes which have since been adopted by the Imperial Parliament were first made in Australia; many changes which are still the subject of fierce conflict 'at home ' have been tried in Australia under conditions rich in political instruction. I preserved whatever was of permanent value in my official and personal correspondence for fifty years, and will use it in my (30 J>uffy. Good Rciidimj. memoirs as far as I may usefully and legitimately do so. " I send you this bald resume because you ask for it ; but I am conscious it is of little worth. The value of a book depends on a writer's fitness to make it worth reading ; wanting which he may travel from youth to old age among teeming adventures, and the record be barren." (3*) From a />hoto by the London Stereoscopic. CHARLES BRADLAUGH. MRS. BRADLAUGH BONNER.* THIS is my first book ; probably it will be my last. I find it easier to criticise what others write than to write for others to criticise. If all were of the same mind there might be fewer books written. Not that I should neces- sarily always choose the easier task, but unless you have something to say, that, rightly or wrongly, you feel you can say better than any one else, or that others have not yet said, why write a book ? True, I have already written some trifles stories and short essays but they have been read only by a * "Charles Bradlaugh." A Record of his Life and Work. By his daughter, H. Brafl- laugh Bonner. With an account of his Parliamentary struggle, his opinions and his teachings, by J. M. Robertson. Demy 8vo, 2 vols., buckram gilt, 2 is. (35) Bonner. Good Heading. certain small section of the public who have be.en willing to look with an indulgent eye upon any little efforts of my father's daughter. My father encouraged my sister and mc to write, but he was our most ruth- less critic. In the matter of hand- writing he once told me that it was clear that I was cut out for a clever woman, I wrote so badly. It is but justice to myself to add that all my friends were not of his opinion. My first attempt at writing for the Press was, in a manner, humble, although the theme was large. Professor Beesly delivered a course of lectures one autumn in Com- mercial Road, E., upon " General History." These lectures, or some of them, I reported for The National Reformer, and although my "copy" was considerably overhauled before it went to press, I was much elated when I saw what was left of it in type. Some years later, yvhen I had written some lee- (36) Bonner. Good Reading. tures (my first) on Chemistry, the MS. passed through Mr. Bradlaugh's hands for criticism. I am bound to admit that chemistry does not allow great scope for flights of fancy, nevertheless I had indulged in a little "rhetoric " occasionally. But my father's pencil was merciless, and it left me nothing but the bare, dry bones of fact. One effect of such sweeping criticism was that I had no en- couragement to cultivate the art of " padding," and so far I feel that I was rather hardly dealt with, for facts nicely padded round lie easy in the mind, whilst my poor written lectures so overflowed with angular truths that before my audience had time to digest one, another was down their throats. But I have not done much lecturing : the physical wear and tear of such work soon proved too much for me, even had I been otherwise successful. My father liked all our work to be thorough : (37) Bonner. Gootl Reading. I remember asking him to refer me to some books on the subject of slavery in America, as I wished to write some papers upon it ; he looked me out some thirty volumes some very ponderous saying, "These will do to begin with." Like most people I have had my attempts at verse-writing, but these were seldom seen by more than four eyes ; most of them went into the fire ; the waste-paper basket was not a sufficiently certain end. The fire itself once failed me. A little song had much pleased my sister, but when she had read it I cast it on the fire and thought no more of it ; whether the fire was low or the paper rolled back into the hearth, 1 cannot say, but after my sister's death I found the scorched and torn paper smoothed out and preserved with other of her girlhood's treasures in a little box. There is much truth in the pro- verb that "the cracked pitcher goeth (38) Bonner. Good Beading. oftcnest to the well," and it is rather a curious confirmation of the saying that I who was looked upon as the most delicate and weakly member of our family should be the only one left to tell the story of the strongest. I had had the wish to do it during Mr. Bradlaugh's life-time, and I had jestingly told him that if he would only tell me "things," I believed I could put them together "better than any one else." How little we dreamed when I said this that six weeks later he would no longer be alive, and that whoever told the story of his life would have to do it with- out his help ! He had not been long dead before the inadequate biographical notices, the often unintentional misrepre- sentation of his acts and his opinions, brought our jesting talk to my mind, and what I should have been so proud to do at his side and under his guidance I resolved to attempt with- out his aid. Had I quite realised all (39) Bonner. ffood Heading. the difficulties of the task, constantly hampered as I have been by in- different health, 1 am not quite sure that I should have been so ready to undertake it. In any case I felt considerable diffidence in dealing with the complicated history of the Parliamentary struggle ; I also thought that it was desirable that a more skilful pen than mine should give a clear and concise view of Mr. Bradlaugh's opinions and teach- ings ; and when Mr. John M. Robert- son consented to help me in this part of the work I esteemed myself very fortunate. When the approaching publica- tion of this book was announced, a very "previous " critic commented that after me there would be plenty of room for the " literary artist." I make no pretensions for this book to be considered as an artistic compo- sition, although I would fondly hope that it will not be condemned as altogether inartistic. The one thing (f) Bonner. Good lieadhif/. I have most strenuously endeavoured to make it is a full, true, and faithful picture of my father's life as I see it. Matters that I do not know of my own knowledge, or have not docu- mentary evidence to prove, I have sought to verify in several directions ; if the verification has seemed to me insufficient I have preferred not to use the episode. I have striven to furnish the facts of his life : the " artist " will now have the opportu- nity to embellish them. During the writing my heart has often sank within me. I so feared to spoil the story in the telling. Many a time I have half wished that I had besought some one abler than myself to do, not only a part, but the whole. " Half wished," but not altogether, since I greatly de- sired to do this little service to my father's memory, and in some ways there seemed none quite so fit as I, since I necessarily knew more of his private life than any other person. (40 Bonner. Good Readiuf/. There have been some painful epi- sodes to relate which I would will- ingly have passed over in silence, but which it was absolutely impera- tive I should deal with if I desired Mr. Bradlaugh to be rightly under- stood. I have had much kindly advice as to what I ought to put in the book (but none as to what I should leave out), and had the wishes of several of my correspondents been followed a small fortune would have been spent on illustrations unhappily there was no fortune available for the purpose. I cannot too strongly urge my readers to remember that, throughout, my idea has been to write a record of the events of Mr. Bradlaugh's life, and not a criticism of them. An endeavour to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," has been my aim from the first page to the last. From a photo by Byrne r Co., of Richmond. WILLIAM DOUGLAS MORRISON.* WHAT we will venture to describe as social pathology is the study par excellence of the present hour. Purely political questions are slowly but surely re- ceding into the background. Our fathers were occupied with the merits or demerits of political insti- tutions and political machinery. The present generation has to a large extent lost faith in the value of these discussions ; its energies are engaged in examining the condi- tions which produce social miseries, and in seeking a remedy for them, * The Criminology Series. Post 8vo, cloth, 6s. each. I. " The Female Offender." By Professor Lombroso. Edited, with Intro- duction, by W. Douglas Morrison. II. "Our Juvenile Offenders." By W. Douglas Morri- son, Author of "Jews under the Romans," "Crime and its Causrs," &c. +5) 'A*- CESARE I.OMBROSO, Professor of Legal Medicine, University of Turin. Morrison. Good Reading. if such a remedy can be found. Social miseries may be briefly summed up as consisting of poverty, pauperism, and crime. These are the fundamental problems of social pathology, and it is with the last of them, the question of crime and the criminal population, that the forth- coming series of books on crimino- logy proposes to deal. The word criminology is a new term in the language, and unfortunately a hybrid term. But on the whole it is per- haps the best term for defining the scientific study of the conditions which produce the criminal popu- lation, and of the means and methods which are calculated to diminish its formidable proportions. Other terms are also in use for defining this circle of studies such, for instance, as criminal politics, crimi- nal sociology, criminal anthropology, penal philosophy, and so on ; but criminology is perhaps the best term for expressing what is meant by the (47) Morrison. Good Heart i tiff. study of criminal problems in accordance with scientific method. It is said that we are indebted for the word to Professor Lombroso : whether this be so or not, we are at least indebted to this eminent man for the immense interest and advance which have taken place in criminal studies within the last twenty years. The publication of Lombroso's monumental work on the criminal is the landmark of a new era in the investigation of criminal problems. We are not here concerned with defending all Lombroso's theories with regard to the genesis and characteristics of the criminal offender. But it is only bare justice towards him to say that he has rejuvenated the subject to which he has dedicated a laborious life. He has succeeded in riveting the atten- tion of Europe and America on his labours, and has given an impulse to the examination of criminal pro- blems which is certain, sooner or (48) Morrison. Good Kradhif/. later, to produce most valuable results. Lombroso's method of investi- gation consists in examining the biological or, as he prefers to call it, the anthropological conditions which tend to produce the criminal. It is for this reason that he has called his studies criminal anthro- pology. In the volume with which this series begins we see the manner in which he applies the anthropo- logical method to the case of the female offender. He examines whether and to what extent the female criminal differs from the average woman in bodily and mental characteristics. As a result of this examination he arrives at many interesting conclusions as to the personal or individual conditions which are calculated to turn women into offenders against the criminal law. Another volume of the crimino- logy series entitled, "The Juvenile Offender," is intended to deal with (49) c Morrison. Good Readiny. the social as well as with the individual conditions which tend to turn the young into a criminal career. The author of this volume is of opinion that crime is a product of individual and social conditions acting together. In his view the interaction between society and the individual is so intimate and compre- hensive that it is impossible in any given instance to describe criminal conduct as the outcome of one set of conditions alone. He has the advantage of possessing a practical knowledge of the criminal popula- tion. He has also written on the subject in The Nineteenth Century, The Fortnightly Review, and other well-known periodicals. Among the volumes to follow is Professor Ferri's admirable work on Criminal Sociology. Professor Ferri is an Italian member of Parliament, and is re- cognised as one of the ablest of living writers on subjects relating to crime. (5o) HUGH HALIBURTON.* 1AM asked to say a few sentences about my book, such as may in- duce people to read it, or spare them the trouble of doing so ; some- thing about its contents, and how I came to write it the story, in short, of its composition. The task is not an easy one, nor a congenial one. It seems to me to belong to the same category as writing a preface, or finding a title. I am tempted to say with the immortal knife-grinder whose sphere was The Checkers " Story ? God bless you ! I have none to tell, sir." I have none that anybody, I should think, would care to hear. The book is made up of a collec- * " Furth in Field." A Volume of Scottish Essays. By Hugh Haliburton, author of " Horace in Homespun." Crown 8vo, buck- ram gilt, 5. (50 Haliburton. Good lleudhiy. tion of articles which I wrote during the last year or two for such periodi- cals as The Scotsman, The National (which I liked better when it was The Scots) Observer, and Good Words. I have roughly classified them under five heads : I. Of Fun and Feasting; 2. Of Old Words and Abandoned Ways; 3. OfLochleven and the Lands about it ; 4. Of the Poet of "The Seasons"; and 5. Of Burns in a New Light. But I may describe them generally as dealing with subjects more or less loosely connected with Scottish life and literature of a past tense. It is into this Jie/d that I have gone furth. It is not my first entrance. I had already made an appearance with crook and collie in " Horace in Homespun " " Horace in Hog- gers " was the familiar though not the font name ; and the Ochil Shep- herd's best reward and welcome was in certain northern bothies, the walls of which were papered with his (52) Haliburton. Good Reading. verses. The only other reward was the praise of the Press. But the Shepherd did not sing for money, and he did not impeticos even a six- penny gratillity for *his leman. I had also more recently published " In Scottish Fields," a prose collection similar to the present. I wrote on these subjects simply because I liked them, and believed they were in some danger of being lost sight of in the crowd of current interests. We are only too apt in these dreadfully modern times to part company with the past and the local ; it is, I think, good for our moral health to maintain touch with both. In any case it is surely a par- donable curiosity to see the rock out of which we were hewn. My knowledge of Scottish rural life was drawn from the Ochils a noble rampart of hills in the heart of Scotland which I have never failed to visit annually since I first left them in my eighteenth vear Ekeu! (53) Haliburton. Good Heading, I cannot imagine a Scotland without them. As Malvern hulles to mad Will, or the Tap o' Noth to A. my co-mate and brother in exile such is the lang Ochil raw to mc. Wi' coutliie farms an' faulds adorn'd, An' hirsels without number; Wi' hummelt kye and kyloes horn'd, Red, yellow, black, and umber. And, abune a', wi' bannet lairds, The cocks o' the creation Heaven bless their patriarchal beards An' speed their generation ! What hills are like the Ochil hills ? There's nane sae green, tho' grander ! What rills are like the Ochil rills ? Nane, nane on Earth that wander! In the literary papers I have, I hope, cleared up the obscurities of waik and wene, and skink and foy, and such odd sayings, as Launcelot would phrase it. The papers on Burns certainly do not present our poet (as I have been told with bovine bluntness) in the light of a plagiarist that would be a new light with a (54) Haliburton. Good Reading:. vengeance ! but as a writer singu- larly well read in English literature, and drawing no inconsiderable in- spiration from his tuneful feres. But I need not here repeat my de- fence which the reader, if he be concerned in the matter, will find on page 234. The chapters on Thomson I wrote, I think, with most pleasure. They were my excuse for several visits to the Land of Thomson, all of delight- ful memory especially one brief sojourn at Southdean, to which I refer in my Inscription. I cannot regret enough to think that the amiable Thomson's place in the development of English poetry is not sufficiently recognised in his own country. In Scotland especi- ally he suffers from having had no vices of an active character to com- pensate for his placid virtues. He was too much of the Joseph and too little of the David. But the Southron is not sackless either. An Aberdeen (55) Haliburton. Good Reading. correspondent informs me as I write that from a recent London his- tory of English Literature, Thom- son's name (as well as that of David Hume) is absent ! That absence makes them conspicuous is no con- solation to the jealousy of their countrymen. But France is hasten- ing to the rescue ! A disciple and doctor of the Sorbonne promises to set Thomson on a high pedestal before the year is out ! fch^f/* vi-^s0y\^iS*4 (56) REV. AUGUSTUS JESSOPP, D.D.* THIS volume contains the ex- pression of my views on some problems which have been burning questions among us all for many years past. In the first two essays I have drawn attention to what I believe are the principal grievances of which the Country Parson has cause to com- plain the difficulties with which he has to contend and the trials, sometimes serious, sometimes ludic- rous, which he has to make the best of. The third essay might be almost regarded as a continuation of the second, in that it discusses the sub- jects of Church patronage, and of the parson's freehold, and throws out * "The Trials of a Country Parson." Crown 8vo, cloth gilt, 3s. 6d. (59) "Jessopp. Good Heading. some suggestions which sooner or later will have to be seriously con- sidered, if we are ever to carry out a comprehensive and rational mea- sure of Church Reform. In the fourth essay I have pointed out to my readers the anomalous state of the law with regard to the ownership of our Churches. I have up to this moment never been favoured with an answer to my question, " Whom do our Churches belong to ? " though surely it is a momentous question for us all. The fifth essay touches the edge of another great question but only the edge of it namely, how w r e may best utilise our cathedrals r That we are making the most of these grand institutions he would be a bold man who would venture to affirm. That there is huge waste in the mere space which the buildings themselves cover is, however, the only thesis which I have endeav- oured to support. (60) Jessopp. Good Heading. The sixth essay was written in one of those moods of" thankfulness and playfulness which come upon a man who realises profoundly how happy is his lot in life, and how bright and beautiful the world is in which it has pleased God to give him his sphere of labour ; where, too, he knows that he has not lived and is not living in vain. (61 J. G. SWIFT MAC NEILL, Q.C., M.P.* THE idea of my little book, " Titled Corruption," did not originate with me. Shortly after the rejection of the Home Rule Bill in September, 1893, by the House of Lords, the editor of a leading London Radical evening paper wrote to me inquiring whether I could contribute a series of articles on the origin of the Irish Peerages, which he " believed to be very corrupt." He, however, ex- pressed a wish that the length of * "Titled Corruption." The Sordid Origin of some Irish Peerages. By J. G. Swift Mac Neill. M.P.,M.A. Christ Church, Oxford, One of Her Majesty's Counsel in Ireland, and formerly Professor of Constitu- tional and Criminal Law in the Honourable Society of the King's Inns, Dublin. In " The Reformer's Bookshelf," cloth, 3s. 6d. (62) Mac Neill. Good Beading. each article should be limited to about thirty lines. J gladly accepted the invitation, and the short and concise character of* the earlier articles in my book proves that I endeavoured to keep within the bounds prescribed by "the tyranny of space." As I advanced in the work, however, the horizon of my interest in the sensational story I was relating became so enlarged that the editor, yielding to my request, removed the limitations as to space which so sorely tried me. These articles were written in intervals of recreation. My hora subseciva were devoted to them. They were the work of stray intervals of time, and occupied an attention which would otherwise have been overwhelmed by the terrible strain of deep and recent family affliction. They required no special study. The story in its main features of the infamy of the origin of these Peerages is known to every one ac- (63) Mac Neill. Good Beadiitf/. quainted with the outlines of Irish history. The date of the creation of an Irish Peerage will generally give a clue to the grounds on which the "honour" was conferred. I made no deliberate selection of the fifty- Peerages whose origin I have attemp- ted to describe. Much depended on the fancy of the moment, and the contemporary histories which were within my reach. The articles were written in various places in the House of Commons, the British Museum, the Libraries of the King's Inns and of the Royal Dublin Society, and my own home in Dublin. The materials were abun- dant even to embarrassment : my chief difficulty was the painful and necessary task of abridgment. To refrain from commenting on the atrocious transactions which led to the ennobling of persons who were to use an expression of Mr. Glad- stone's, "inaccessible to shame," was a severe exercise of self-restraint. (64) Mac Net 11. Good Jieadiiif/. I' determined, however, to tell the story in the words of contemporary records, and indeed as far as I could to adopt the language of the chief actors themselves. My aim was to make the reader an unconscious commentator, and I trusted to his intelligence to draw the inevitable inferences. I well remember many years ago observing to an eminent statesman then in Opposition, who was about to address a public meeting immediately after the revelation ot a huge Cabinet blunder : " You will, [ suppose, have a fling at the Government to-night ? " " No," he replied, " the facts are too strong for that." So, too, the Irish Peerages proclaim their own shame. They interpret their unredeemed infamy. The publication of this series of articles in book form was not origi- nally designed. It was suggested by correspondents in the columns of the paper in which it first appeared anonymouslv. An eminent man in (65) Mac Neill. Good Bead in a. high official position in Ireland, who knew me to be the writer, strongly urged me to place the story of these Irish Peerages which were, he said, a revelation even to the Irish public in a permanent form by publishing them in a handy book of reference. I accepted these suggestions, but the publication of this little volume would probably have been relegated to the limbo of pious resolves if the approach of the Conference at Newcastle last June had not induced me to take that opportunity of offering it to the public as a contribution to the literature affecting the House of Lords. It was printed in its present form in less than a week no mean feat in publishing and was issued without a revision of the proofs by the writer. One admires a man who wins reputation and success despite family antecedents little calculated to secure respect. A Peer is, however, in many (66) Mac Neill. Good Reading. cases invested with legislative power and dignity, not in spite of but because of the misconduct of his predecessors. Lord Salisbury, as Premier, when refusing Lord Rose- bery's motion for a Select Com- mittee to inquire into the state of the Peerage, said in the House of Lords on the 18th of March, 1888, that no Second Chamber is likely to answer so well in the long run as a Second Chamber based on the hereditary principle." I invite the public to buy and read my little book, and then to subscribe if they can Lord Salisbury's confession of faith in " a Second Chamber based on the hereditary principle." / / fuS0* ttu (67) 2^*N T. A. ARCHER.* THIS volume is an attempt to tell the story of the Crusades and the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, to which the first Crusade gave birth, directly from the pages of contemporary writers. During the last twenty years still more during the last fifty years the materials for the treatment of this subject have been considerably augmented ; and, what is perhaps of even greater importance, the old materials have been re-edited from better MSS. with an industry and scholarship that, in some cases, have been almost equivalent to the dis- covery of fresh authorities. The new era began with the publication of * "The Crusades." The Story of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. By T. A. Archer and C. L. Kingsford. Nation Series, vol. 39, 5s. (69) Archer. Good Mead hit/. the Old-French and Latin "William of Tyre " by the French Academy in 1844 ; and though some twenty other chroniclers have been pub- lished since in almost as many folio volumes, the series of authorities even for the First Crusade is by no means finished yet. In 1880 the " Societe de l'Orient Latin" took up a similar task, if possible in a still more scholarly way ; while individual Crusading chroniclers have been in- cidentally edited by other French, German, and English scholars in a manner that renders praise super- fluous. It is upon these and earlier editions of the great Crusading his- torians and chroniclers that the "Story of the Crusades" has been based ; though, at the same time, the greatest care has been taken to weave into the narrative all that seemed of real importance from the pages of the countless other con- temporary annalists who treated of detached Crusading incidents as in- (7o) Archer. Good Reading. terludes in the records of their own country or their own time. The use of these minor authorities has not merely served here and there to lend colour to a narrative ; it has also been useful in correcting dates or disentangling difficulties which could not have been resolved with- out their help. Most of the previous volumes in this series have been simply con- cerned with the history of a single race or a single realm. The "Story of the Crusades" differs from its pre- decessors in that it is at once the history of a small kingdom and the story of a great religious enthusiasm embracing many states and many nationalities. As it was impossible to treat both aspects of a complex subject with equal fulness in one short volume, the writers have not hesitated to lay special stress on those times and those matters that are in closest touch with the history of mediaeval Europe (especially me- (70 Archer. (iood Heading. diaeval England), and the mediaeval Church. Hence the comparatively- large space devoted to the First and Third Crusades subjects which have, it may be added, a particular interest for English readers, not merely because of their direct con- nection with English history, but also because they form the historic background to no less than four of Sir Walter Scott's romances. Apart from these limitations it has been the authors' aim to tell the story of each great incident in their main drama as far as possible in the words of those who were present on the occasion, or those who, living at the time, had special facilities for ar- riving at the truth. The illustra- tions have been chosen in a similar spirit, and consist of coins, seals, buildings, statues, and localities, that are more or less directly connected with the heroes, or the events cele- brated in the text. fi/%. W. M. CONWAY.* DEAR MR. UNWIN, You ask me for some information as to how I came to /write my Himalayan book a question easily asked, not so easy to answer, unless indeed you are satisfied to be told that I did it primarily for my own amusement. Tf any one had told me in 1890 that three years later I should have written a book of travel, his prophecy would have seemed to me foolishness, for nothing was ever further from my intention. In 1890 I had some idea of going to India to pursue those studies in the Evolution of Art which have occu- pied most of my time during the last fifteen years, and which are still my * "Climbing and Exploration in the Kara- koram-Himalayas." With 300 illustrations by A. D. McCormick. 31s. 6d. net. Scien- tific Reports and Map of Journey, 15s. net. (75) Conway. Good Heading, chief interest. It seems probable though my memory is here at fault that I never thought about India without the Himalayas appearing in the background of my mind ; but at what time, or how they came into the foreground, I have wholly for- gotten. Such transitions are often rapid and apparently accidental. The journey decided upon, the book was a foregone conclusion. Once the disease of authorship has taken firm hold of a man he must write about the thing that for the time forms his chief interest. So 1 had the book in my mind at every step of the journey, and regarded the scenery and every event that occurred with a literary eye. What seemed capable of description was noted almost at the moment of occurrence. Notes were taken on the spot of views and effects, of people and their talk in fact of any- thing and everything describable. Day by day these notes were fully (76) Conway Good Reading. written up in the journal, and that revised is the book you published. This is substantially stated in the preface, and that statement, I pre- sume, caused some of my reviewers kindly and generous as all of them were, so far as I have seen their criticisms to observe that the book was hastily written. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The length of time expended on my notes, the two hours or more daily given to the journals, and the five or six months devoted to their re- vision and completion at home add up to a total as great as has been ex- pended on most of the more care- fully written books of travel. To this must be added the time given to the map, which took me nearly four months to draw in England. Believe me, Very faithfully yours, W. M. Conway. (77) From a photo by Vianelli of Venice. (MZZhJL^ HON. ALETHEA WIEL.* MY earliest memories of Venice are associated with a writer to whom both England and Italy owe so large a debt in arousing and educating a love of beauty and of art. I allude to Mr. Ruskin, whom I was fortunate enough to meet some years ago in the City of the Doges. Some words he then let fall of the duty we owed as well as the pleasure we derived from a town whose charm is almost universal, strengthened a desire already forming in my mind to write a story of Venice, which, while relating her rise, her existence, and her fall, should also enlarge the knowledge and sympathy of all who visited her, and increase the respect * "Venice." By Hon. Alethea Wiel. Being Vol. 39 of the Nation Series. Large crown 8vo. Price 58. (79) Wiel. Good Heading, and admiration for so mighty a relic of the Past. The resolve for carry- ing out my intention could not, however, take actual form for some years. My wanderings led me to different parts of the world with only short visits at long intervals to Venice. These visits, though, did but increase my love for the place ; and when events led to its becoming my permanent home I resolved to put my long dreamt-of scheme into practice, even when the chances for launching it definitively into the world seemed remote and impro- bable. When, however, a road was opened to me in the valuable series of which my volume now forms the thirty-ninth number, I readily gave up my own ideas as to a kind of historical and art guide to Venice, which till then had possessed my brain, and endeavoured to conform to the rules laid on each writer of the Nation Series, and restrict my observations to the broad facts of (80) Wiel. Good Reading. history, administration, and politics, sooner than to descriptions of social and artistic life, or to the relation of scenes and stories where mysteryand romance struggle for pre-eminence. But while giving the history of Venice from the most authentic sources, whether in printed works by Italian or foreign writers, together with material drawn from original documents, I have brought in when- ever it was possible the legends and traditions that wait on many of the established facts. In this way I have tried by dashes of local colour- ing to give a vivacity and interest to the work which perhaps a stranger to Venice, or one unable to live actually in the city and among her citizens could not hope to obtain. Nor have I allowed my love for Venice to blind me as to her fail- ings or the shortcomings of her governments ; where, however, she has been calumniated I have striven to defend her, where the accusations (81) IViel. Good Heading, are just I have not declared her immaculate. I have tried, too, to give weight to the special points of importance during the eleven centuries of her "long life," such as the part she bore in the Fourth Crusade and capture of Constantinople ; the institution of the Council of Ten - r the acquisition of Cyprus ; the revival of arts and the introduction of printing ; the League of Cam- bray ; the opposition from early times down to modern ones offered by Venice to the Holy See ; the- war of Candia ; and the Fall of the Republic. With regard to the illustrations,, my object has been to give speci- mens that are not generally known,, and to introduce some that are not usually met with in most of the illustrated English works on Venice Alethea Wiel. Specimen of illustration from " The Children's Library:' EVA KNATCHBULL- HUGESSEN.* THIS little volume is the last from the pen of a writer who, during his lifetime, wrote much that was always eagerly looked for and joyfully welcomed by a very large and enthusiastic child- public. There could perhaps be no greater proof of his popularity than in the number of letters in round childish handwriting which were found, after his death, care- fully put away in one of his study drawers, and which expressed, in every variety of phraseology (and spelling !) the satisfaction which the writers had derived from his works. * " The Magic Oak-Tree, and other Fairy Stories." By Knatchbull-Hugessen (Lord Brabourne), Author of " Prince Marigold," "Queer Folk," &c. Vol. xix. of the Children's Library. (5) Huge s sen. Good Heading. " I am a lame boy," writes one from America. "I am collecting the autographs and photographs of ^5^?^^8egp^5>g^^?^ aHfipi*^:ii$^i^*|gi 'm&S^m 'fsms&sm &s3mm& if.t..:.M-r.ifi-.H-f^(-'^.i>*-(~; writers I like. Would you send me yours ? I enclose a stamp for the cost of postage." " The boys and I want to tell you (86) Hugessen. Good Reading* how much we like your books," writes a little girl, ' ; and as they are too shy, Fve got to do it." He always answered the letters of his child correspondents, and in writ- ing to, as well as for them, he found one of the principal relaxations of a very busy life. He was greatly pleased on one occasion by being told that his books were the chief favourites in a hospital for the blind, where there happened to be a good many Kentish patients, to whom his descriptions of Kentish scenery, and the humour of Kentish rustics real, though unconscious appeared to appeal with special force. These descriptions, though occurring in tales of pure fancy and imagination, will be found to be as accurate as. they are graphic, and the same applies to all that he wrote about the habits of birds and animals. True, in real life, neither birds nor animals employ human speech, nor adopt the dress and customs of (87) Hugessen. Good Heading. mortals, but, when these trifling ex- ceptions have been made, readers of Lord Brabourne's stories will find that he never makes a mistake, or puts in a touch of superficial or unveri- fiable description. What he knew he learnt, not as a student of natural history, but as a close observer and a lover of country ways and things from childhood, and far more scien- tific persons have been known to envy, for instance, his power of picking out and identifying each separate note in what, to most people, was a beautiful but indistinguishable chorus of joyful birds in springtime. His love of children, then, and his (88) Hugessen. Good Reading. love of nature, especially of nature as manifested in the familiar, well- loved scenery of peaceful, wooded Kent these were two chief factors in his literary work. A third was a luxuriant and unbridled imagina- tion in the whole region of the marvellous, the region inhabited by giants, witches, elves, fairies, and talking trees and animals. It may appear as a weakness to be confessed, but it is undoubtedly a fact, that he took as great an interest in these strange beings, for their own sake, when a man of fifty, as he can possibly have done when a child of five. This, of course, in itself, brought him at once in touch with the whole child world. It is one thing to write or tell a story to please a juvenile audience, and quite another to do it to please yourself. And he did do it to please himself. Many and many a dull debate in the House of Commons passed pleasantly and quickly enough to (89) Hugessen. Good Heading. Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen, while he wrote out one of the tales of which his head was always full, and which he could either write or tell with extraordinary facility. What a story-teller he was is best known, I suppose, to the four -children whom, day after day, week after week, year after year, he used to delight at their schoolroom tea from that inexhaustible mine-! One can, perhaps, hardly say more than that, while one was listening to him, one hardly knew whether one were eating bread and butter or bread and jam. And those who were present can surely never forget the sight of the most worthy, most dignified, most self-controlled of governesses in hopeless, helpless, almost hysterical fits of laughter while the master ot the house was, with incomparable gravity, relating the story of " The Man with the Nose." The children for whose benefit the stories were first told, and in letters to whom they (9) Hugessen. Good Reading. were first written down, can even now but seldom go to a fresh neigh- bourhood, or make fresh acquaint- ance, without being asked some such question as, " Are you any relation of the writer of Stories for my Children ' ? " or " Was it one of your family who wrote Moon- shine'?" It is surely no unenvi- able fate to be best remembered as the giver of much innocent pleasure to many children and child-hearted people the whole world over. (90 KATE FREILIGRATH KROEKER.* KELLERIANA, it would appear, are increasing apace in the Fatherland, and the Swiss novelist's rapid and spreading re- nown after death is in inverse ratio to its previous comparatively slow progress. Now, little traits and anecdotes crop up on all sides, stories of his taciturnity and rare genial expansion, of his dry sardonic humour, of his horror of being lionised ! From the life and letters of Gottfried Keller, recently pub- lished, it is not a little curious to learn that the author of " The People of Seldwyla," the master of the modern short story, should have * " Clothes Maketh Man." By Gottfried Keller. Translated, with a Critical Intro- duction, by K. F. Kroeker. Independent Novel Series. Price 3s. 6d. (93) Kroeker. Good Heading. thought that the drama was his especial vocation. Yet such was the case, and to this end he devoted much time, and made a serious study of the drama; wrote sketches and planned tragedies and comedies indeed, only to leave behind him one act of an unfinished play ! Fortunately this did not prevent him from writing his inimitable stories, which are acknowledged now to hold a perfectly unique place in German literature. Paul Heyse, himself a formidable rival in this field, is one of Keller's most enthusiastic admirers, and one of his later stories, "Das Meerweib," has as its motif a strange and beautiful poem of Keller's " Winter Night." It is not a little interesting to note how the fascination of one poet's poem reacts on and influences another poet's story. The poem is weird enough to inspire a Boeklin who, by the way, was an intimate friend of Keller's in his later years, (94) Kroeker. Good Heading. and who, indeed, was with him throughout the poet's last illness. It is a pity that he did not paint his friend's intellectual face ; but an excellent portrait of Keller was made by another artist friend, the highly-gifted and ill-fated Stauffer- Berne. It may be of interest to learn that this painter was the hero of Sudermann's much discussed play, " Sodom's Ende," and his tragic death has deprived the world of an artist of rare promise. Gradually, too, the charm and sweetness of many of Keller's poems is making itself felt, and recently several have been set to music, notably by Brahms, and thus in all directions the poet's influence may be said to permeate. The secret of this power is undoubtedly the truth underlying all he has written. Thus, it is almost startling to see from his own letters how many autobiographical traits are scattered throughout his works ; and, in all (95) Kroeker. Good Reading. moral characteristics, Keller himself is his own " Griine Heinrich " ; he too is " Pancratius the Striker " ; he is the whimsical "Landvogt von Greifensee " who asks all his old flames to visit him together; and no other than he is the delicious " Knight Zendelwald," with his clear rapidity of thought and his phlegma of action ! The jewel in his literary crown, however, will always remain his inimitable " People of Seldwyla," of which three characteristic stories have been chosen for the above selection. W) EDMUND GARRETT.* " \T O. This is the first thing |^\j between covers which has borne my name but it is not exactly my ' first book.' When I was at Cambridge I was re- sponsible for the greater half of a little volume of undergraduate verse called Rhymes and Render- ings.' This was the outcome of a rhyming club of some half-dozen undergraduates, mostly Trinity men, one of whom is now a Don and a Professor, and an editor of strange and learned texts. That was really my first book, and much of it, like ' Brand,' represented exercises in the art of verse translation. Besides the classics, Oriental and most modern languages were laid * " Ibsen's Brand." Translated into English Verse by F. E. Garrett, 3s. 6d. and 10s. 6d. net. (97) Garrett. Good Reading". under contribution in these ; but my own versions were mainly from the Greek and Latin, and this led to an amusing epigram at my expense by a Don who did not con- sider my application to my proper studies sufficient. ' Garrett ah yes,' quoth he, ' isn't that the man who translates the classics ? Pity he doesn't read 'em.' I fear my tripos justified him, for I did but take a third. However, The Spec- tator and Saturday and the rest of them were kinder to our adolescent muse ; though I fancy I am the only one of the club who has kept up the bad habit of rhyming. And I, you see, am a journalist, and so past praying for. " ' You have published another book more in your journalistic capacity, have you not ? ' " Yes, ' In Afrikanderland,' the outcome of a trip to South Africa as Special Correspondent of The Pall Mall. Out of all the mass (98) Garrett. Good Readin' (IO4) By Hall and Lowe, of Victoria, British Columbia. HENRY NORMAN, HENRY NORMAN.* m TV /I Y book owes its origin to the 1V1 conviction that the Far East is to. be the scene of our most important Imperial interests for the next quarter of" a century. I went to the East for a kind of superior holiday, making arrange- ments which left me master of my own movements while not cutting me off from my newspaper at home, with the intention of spend- ing about four months there. I stayed nearly four years. For I found that the Far East was not a concrete part of the world which one could sum up in a few general ideas and appreciate by generalising * " The_ Peoples and Politics of the Far East." By Henry Norman, B.A. (Harv.), F.R.G.S., author of "The Real Japan," &c. 60 illustrations from photographs by the author and two maps. Demv 8vo, cloth, 1 6s. Norman. Good Reading. upon a few personal experiences, but that it was a little world by itself; that its nationalities were all quite distinct, its problems of the most varied and puzzling character, its prospects of the most fascinating uncertainty, and moreover that these things were not at all realised in Europe. Besides politics, my hobbies happen to be sport and photography, and for each of these there was a most inviting field. Therefore I deliberately severed my- self from home and got to work in the first country in which I found myself, with the determination to go through them all in the Far East one by one, till I should have acquired the right to express an opinion upon them as a whole. The first country was Japan, and there I found so much that almost without going outside the capital I collected the material for the book which you published in 1891, called "The Real Japan: Studies in (108) Norman. Good Reading. Japanese Manners, Morals, Admini- stration and Politics." Then I went to Siberia, and examined Vladivostok and the prospects of the coming Trans-Siberian Railway, the greatest enterprise of the kind that has ever been attempted. My description ot the famous Russian fortress-town will be the first to be published, so far as I know. Then I landed on one side of Korea and made my way, with a few natives and a Japanese interpreter, across the Peninsula. Next I spent a considerable time going up and down in China, from the Great Wall, on the frontier of Mon- golia, to the Franco-Chinese frontier in the extreme south. Then I made several visits to all the French colonies Tongking, Annam, Cochin-China. Thence it was only a step to Siam, and there the newest field of all opened itself. I soon discovered that the Europeans in Bangkok knew comparatively little of the " true inwardness " of Siamese affairs, (109) Norman. Good Reading. so I cut myself off from the European quarter and for three months hardly set foot in it. In consequence, 1 think my chapters on Siam contain not a little that will be equally new and surprising to British readers. Siam is a wonder- fully fresh and interesting place, and its future trembles at this moment in the balance between England and France. To one or the other it must inevitably go. After flying visits to the Philippine Islands, the only Spanish colony in the Far East ; to Macao, the solitary remnant of the past greatness of Portugal there; and many to Hongkong, the most wonderful colony in the world, I reached the Malay Peninsula, with its "outpost of Empire," its "school of Empire," and its "anomalies of Empire." There I had my happiest and newest experiences. Most people do not like the Malays, and describe them as cruel and treacherous. I, on the other hand, took an immediate (no) Norman. Good Heading. liking to them. Half-a-dozen shoot- ing expeditions enabled me to learn the language, which is very easy, and thus to dispense with an in- terpreter, and at last I started from Perak, on the west coast, made my way north into the native States, and finally came out at the east side, having followed a route which no other traveller had taken. The great native State of Kelantan has hitherto been as "forbidden" as Korea used to be before Japan opened it for us. It is by far the largest and most powerful of the native States, and is therefore re- garded by the natives as the bulwark against foreign influence, and the Sultan was a savage and unscrupulous potentate whose chief aim in life was to keep out all Europeans. One of his precautions to this end was the pleasant habit of cutting off the hands of any of his subjects who gave any aid to a white man, con- fiscating their property and making (in) Norman. Good Reading. concubines of their wives and daughters. There was therefore no help of any kind to be looked for in crossing his dominions. During the year before my journey several white travellers had been turned back at various points on his frontier. So it was clear that to get through Kelantan one would have to be quite independent of the Kelantan natives for both food and transport. So I engaged in Perak a dozen skilful boatmen, took them the whole way with me, doing nothing except walking behind the elephants and building a sleeping-place in camp at nights, till I reached a little river which flows into the headwaters of the Kelantan River. There I set them down to make a couple of rafts. They disappeared into the jungle, returned laden with bamboos of every kind and shape, and in a few days had constructed a couple of elegant and comfortable floating- houses, upon which we all sailed (112) Norman. Good Headin) A uthor of Mademoiselle Ixe. ^>t^y - 6 THOMAS SECCOMBE.* THERE was absolutely nothing Mephistophelian about the conception of this volume, black as it is. It originated in a * " Lives of Twelve Bad Men : Original Studies of Eminent Scoundrels." By Various Hands. Edited by Thomas Seccombe, M.A. (Balliol College, Oxford). Fully illustrated. Demy 8 vo, cloth, price 16s. Contents. Pre- face. I. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell (i 536-1 578), by G. Gregory Smith. 2. Sir Edward Kelley, Necromancer (1555-1595), by A. F. Pollard. 3. Matthew Hopkins, Witchfinder (1 599-1647), by J. O. Jones. 4. George Jeffreys, Unjust Judge (1648-1689), by W. A. J. Archbold. 5. Titus Oates, Perjurer ( 1 649-1 705), by Thomas Seccombe. 6. Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat (1667-1747), by J. W. Allen. 7. Col. Francis Charteris, Libertine (1675-1732), by Arthur Vincent. -8. Jonathan Wild, Thieftaker (1682-1725), by Arthur Vincent. 9. James Maclaine, The Gentleman Highwayman (1724-1750), by G. Thorn Drury. 10. George Robert Fitz- gerald, Fighting Fitzgerald (1748-1786), by