Mr. Sidney Lee denies the widely-circulated statement that he is engaged in writing a life of George Eliot, and expresses a not unnatural curiosity as to how such a report found currency.

The Macmillans are soon to publish Alfred Austin's "The Poet's Diary: Edited by Lamia" which has been published serially without the acknowledgment of authorship, which, however, was an open secret.

Certain hitherto unpublished letters concerning Napoleon at St. Helena, which have found newspaper publication recently on both sides of the Atlantic, are to form a part of Mr. Clement Shorter's forthcoming book "The Six Years' Exile."

Mr. Henry Newbolt has withdrawn from the editorship of the Monthly Review, which he has conducted since the first number, but he will retain his other relations with the Murray house. Mr. Charles Hanbury-Williams will succeed Mr. Newbolt in his editorial work.

Madame Matilde Serao has written an account of her experiences during a journey through the Holy Land, which Mr. Heinemann will issue this month under the title of "The Country of Jesus." Another travel-book to come from the same publisher is from the pen of Mr. W. Somerset Maugham, who gives his impressions of Andalusia under the title of "The Land of the Blessed Virgin."

"My Memory of Gladstone," by Dr. Goldwin Smith, has been published in

London. To a certain degree Mr. Goldwin Smith's contribution to Gladstone biography may be regarded as supplementary to Mr. Morley's "Life." Though for the most part in accordance with Mr. Morley, there is a difference chiefly in regard to that part of Gladstone's career comprised in the last of Mr. Morley's three volumes, recounting Gladstone's conduct of the Irish question. Mr. Goldwin Smith comments also on Gladstone's literary work.

To their attractive "Gladstone Edition" of the poets, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co. add The Complete Poetical Works of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This volume follows the authorized version, edited by the poet's brother, William M. Rosetti, and contains his biographical preface and editorial annotations. The American reader is thus put in possession for the first time of an edition of Rossetti which is complete, satisfactory from the critical point of view, moderate in price and attractive in form. It may easily happen that the publication of this edition may lead many American readers to form the acquaintance of one of the most subtle and delicately imaginative poets of the Victorian era.

The death is announced of Dr. Samuel Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester, in his eighty-fifth year. The Athenæum describes him as a genial figure. He had a varied reputation as a capable preacher, a man of humor, and an authority on roses. He was for many years at once vicar and squire of Caunton, and it was here that he established himself as a great rose cultivator, writing in 1869 the "Book about

Roses," which has passed through at least fifteen editions. His "Book about the Garden" (1892) also had a big sale. As early as 1858 he had the advantage of Leech's illustrations for "A Little Tour in Ireland," and he was at one time a contributor to Punch. His various volumes of reminiscences, "Memories" (1892), "More Memories" (1894), and "Then and Now" (1901), are stores of good stories. Appointed in 1887 to Rochester, he improved both the fabric and the services of the cathedral.

Thomas Y. Crowell & Co., in response to a general demand, have published a new edition in a single volume of Edward Kirk Rawson's Twenty Famous Naval Battles. The compression has been brought about not by any abridgment, but by the use of slightly thinner paper. The edition contains all the text and all the illustrative material of the original. The author is the superintendent of naval war records of the United States Navy and he has made a painstaking study of all accounts of naval warfare, "from Salamis to Santiago" as the sub-title suggests. In a later edition, doubtless, after the smoke of Japanese and Russian guns has cleared away, he will add to the list of his battles some of those that have taken place in the present war in the Far East; but in the meantime the present volume affords an opportunity to compare the methods and achievements of sea fighting from the earliest times to the present.

Writing somewhat critically of a recent article by E. Mankivell on "Tennyson's English Insularity" the Academy remarks:

The writer fails to understand that Tennyson's greatness lay to a great extent in this very insularity of his. He sent forth no new message into the world, but he did, in felicitous and often inspired language, paint for us the quiet English countryside. Το

quote from this notice: "He is in his element in 'ordered gardens great,' peaceful, stately, and delightfully English quite after his own heart. He loved his flat, uninteresting East country, too, with its 'level waste' and 'rounding gray,' while the 'misty marches and illimitable reeds' had for him all the charm of home"-though there are a many of us who know that the East country is far from uninteresting and full of charm; indeed, is Nature ever uninteresting? Should we not be thankful that Tennyson realized his limitations? Should we not, in fact, be grateful for these limitations, which led him to paint such perfect English landscapes?

In

To their charming series which bears the general title "Our European Neighbors," G. P. Putnams' Sons have added a volume on Belgian Life in Town and Country by Demetrius C. Boulger. Mr. Boulger's name is not unfamiliar to the readers of the Living Age, who have enjoyed his articles on public affairs and international politics. the present, volume he gives us that admixture of solid information with gossip and vivid description which makes a volume of this type at once profitable and entertaining. Mr. Boulger writes of Belgian life of to-day from an intimate personal knowledge and with unfailing good humor and intelligence; and there is enough of history and of political and economic institutions to give his book perspective and proportion. There are a number of illustrations. The Putnams take this opportunity to present a new edition of the volume on Russian Life in Town and Country, which Mr. Francis H. E. Palmer wrote for the same series. This also is the fruit of personal observation and study. It is of modest proportions but comprehensive in scope, and it is particularly timely now when acute observers are beginning to realize that the future of Russia depends quite as much upon the working out of internal problems as upon the fortunes or misfortunes of war.

SEVENTH SERIES VOLUME XXV.

FROM BEGINNING Vol. CCXLII

In an article in the June Nineteenth Century Sir Harry Johnston points out that, as regards the colonization of Africa, the unhealthiness of the wellwatered regions and the aridity of the desert tracts need not prove to be absolute disabilities. "Deserts, to be made habitable and cultivable, only need irrigation, and apparently there is a subterranean water-supply underlying most African deserts which can be tapped by artesian wells"; and he adds, "The extreme unhealthiness of the wellwatered parts of Africa is due not so much to climate as to the presence of malaria," and this the draining of marshes and the sterilization of pools will probably in time obviate.

This being so, it is with no unprophetic instinct, perhaps, that the imagination of England, as well as of some other European nations, finds itself engrossed by the immense and almost undeveloped interior of Africa. In those deserts vast and antres idle the

millions of Europe are destined, it may be, in the future, to find breathingspace and elbow-room. Looked at from this point of view, the opening up of the great southern continent becomes an affair of almost international importance, a task that Europe as a whole has been set, the carrying out of which, whether by this nation or that, is matter of congratulation to all. Space in this new field of enterprise is almost unlimited. There is room for all our efforts. On the other hand, the difficulties in the way of advance are everywhere formidable. There is, indeed, something redoubtable in the way in which Africa, confident in her natural inaccessibility, confident in her long, bare coast-line, almost destitute of ports and navigable rivers, in her tracts of desert sand, her dense forests and malarial swamps, advances her great bull-head into the affairs of Europe. "Here I am: now make what you can of me," seems to be her un

3. "A Travers les Oasis Sahariennes." Par Guillaume de Champeaux. Paris: Chapelot & Cie, 1903.

4. "Old Quebec." By Gilbert Parker and Claude G. Bryan. Macmillan, 1903.

Cie, 1904.

spoken challenge; and it must be confessed that Europe as yet, considering the energy, the money, and the blood expended, has not made very much of Africa.

Practically, the only two Powers whose civilization is vital to-day in Africa-which, that is to say, have effected a settlement which would continue if the support of the mother country were withdrawn-are France and England. France has made her entrance from the extreme north, England from the extreme south. The vast bulk of Africa lies almost evenly balanced on the Equator, and between the opposite extremities there are close resemblances. Cape Town lies in latitude 34.20° south; Algiers, in latitude 36.47° north. The former has an annual rainfall of twenty-four inches, and a mean temperature of sixty-two degrees; the latter an average rainfall of twenty-nine inches, and a mean temperature of sixty-six degrees: Algiers is therefore slightly warmer and damper than Cape Town, but the difference is inconsiderable. The physical features of the two regions are also much alike. What is called the Tell district in the north-that is, the fertile strip of land along the coast-is balanced by a similar margin of fertility in the south. The fruit gardens of Natal are reproduced along the shore of the Mediterranean, and the traveller who walks through the loaded vines of the Metidjeh valley in Algeria can quite well fancy himself to be strolling among the famous Constantia vineyards of the colony.

Inland of this again, and at about the same distance, the great Drakensberg range in the south echoes the Atlas in the north; while further inland still the vast expanse of almost barren veldt in general appearance corresponds to the Sahara. Perhaps this general resemblance is nowhere more striking than in these latter regions.

The writer cannot but recall many days' march through the Tunisian plains, extending from the borders of the desert to Kairwan, during which the aspect of the country, the sparse and scanty herbage, the color of the soil, the endless level flats, and the occasional abrupt and regularly constructed hills that rise from the plain like masses of architecture, and with their uninhabited air add so poignant a touch to the melancholy and grave desolation of the scene-when these, and other suggestions, the air, the light, the bars of color morning and evening along the horizon, combine to produce on his mind the impression, amounting almost to an absolute illusion, that he was riding once more across the interminable plains of the southern colonies.

Such likenesses result naturally in a similar likeness between the problems which each nation has to confront. The Sahara has produced in the Arab a type of manhood far less civilized, no doubt, but not less proud and independent than the children of the veldt, and the difficulty of effecting a reconciliation between invaders and invaded, and including both in the same scheme of progress, is the main obstacle in the way of French colonization as it is in the way of ours. Second to it comes the difficulty of irrigating the great waterless spaces of the interior, a difficulty on the solution of which the success of both schemes in great measure depends, and upon which the French have carried out some interesting and successful experiments. A large army of occupation is a necessity to them as to us, and in regard to the uses such an army may be put to, and the part it may play in the opening up of the country, they have some valuable suggestions to make. Means of transport and intercommunication throughout these vast territories is another of the problems we both have to solve, and we find that our dream