us of the distractions of his daily life; but its vastness of range and conception gives us the measure not only of the writer's genius, but of the force of the enemy to be overthrown. So far as the work is polemical, it is an assault, in the first place, upon the political view of the Roman religion, and, in the next, on the philosophical attempt to rehabilitate it.' In short, all through, whether dealing with Pagan or Christian writers, Mr. Dill is always critical, and does not let even his admiration for S. Jerome persuade him to put implicit confidence in the great Commentator's judgment as to the things that were transpiring in the parts of the empire so remote from Bethlehem as Italy or Gaul. In the first of the five books into which the volume is divided, Mr. Dill accounts for the obstinate attachment which prevailed, both among the vulgar and among the educated classes to the ancient paganism of Rome. That this attachment was obstinate Mr. Dill has no difficulty in showing; and points out that, notwithstanding the severity and even fierceness of the edicts against paganism at the close of the fourth century, the majority of the people were little touched by the Christian faith; that in the reign of Honorius, staunch adherents of paganism still held the Urban or Pretorian perfecture; and that a quarter of a century after the death of Theodosius, Rutilius Namatianus could pour contempt on the Christian profession, and rejoice at the sight of the villagers of Etruria gaily celebrating the rites of Osiris in the springtime. Similarly with magic and divination. These, in every form, had long been under the ban of the State, yet in the last years of the Western Empire, the diviners of Africa were practising their arts among the nominal Christians of Aquitaine. To suppose that this attachment to the old faith rested solely on ignorant superstition or on the hard formalism of the old Roman mythology, would, as Mr. Dill justly points out, be a grave mistake. Öther and more powerful causes were at work. Some of these are pointed out in the following:-For many generations,' Mr. Dill writes, the cults of Eastern origin, the worship of Isis, of the Great Mother, and Mithra, had satisfied devotional feelings which could find little nourishment in the cold abstractions of the old Roman religion or the brilliant anthropomorphism of Greece. The inscriptions of the fourth century reveal the enduring power of these Syrian or Egyptian worships. They cultivated an ecstatic devotion, and gave relief to remorse for sin. They had their mystic brotherhoods and guilds, with an initiatory baptismal rite. They had their rules and periods of fasting and abstinence from all the pleasures of sense. They had a priesthood set apart from the world, with the tonsure and a peculiar habit. And, in initiation to their mysteries, a profound impression was made on the imagination and feelings of the novice. The baptism of blood, of which many a stone record now remains, was the crowning rite of the later paganism, relieving the guilty conscience, and regarded as a new birth. It can hardly be doubted that, while these cults may not have supplied the moral tone and discipline which was the great want in all heathen systems, they stimulated a devotional feeling which was unknown to the native religions of Greece and Rome.' Mr. Dill also dwells upon the influence which the philosophy of the East had in deepening the attachment to the old faith, as well as upon a variety of other causes, which all worked for the same end, and points out that notwithstanding the antagonism of their faiths Pagans and Christians met on friendly, and sometimes intimate terms. His first book, indeed, is one that the student of the history of Christianity can no more neglect than the student of the social condition of the last days of the Western Empire can. The second book contains the literary sketches to which reference has been made already; but while giving an account of the literary men and literature of

the period, it contains sketches of the social and moral conditions among which the writers referred to moved. The failure of the Roman administration, and the ruin which this failure brought upon the middle class, is described in the following book. The picture which is given of Italy is particularly striking. Mr. Dill dwells also on the decay of commerce, upon the depressed condition of the merchant class, and upon the fact that, while a few grew immensely rich, the tendency among the rest, through the pressure of circumstances over which they had no control, was to become poor. The chapters treating of the barbarian invasion, and the relations between the Romans and the invaders, are among the freshest in the volume, and give more insight into the actual social condition of the period than any other. The indifference with which the aristocracy viewed the different invasions, and their sublime confidence in the stability of Rome and its empire, are among the most striking features of the times. The elaborate chapter on the culture of the fifth century is remarkable for its scholarship and critical insight, as, in fact, are the whole of the chapters. This last chapter forms a fitting conclusion to what cannot but be characterised as one of the most scholarly and valuable works that has appeared for some time. For anything comparable to it in English, treating of the same subject, the reader will look in vain.

Tennyson, Ruskin, Mill, and other Literary Estimates. By FREDERIC HARRISON. London: Macmillan & Co. 1899. From a note prefixed to these essays we learn that the series was planned, and in great part written some years ago, but has been kept back waiting for the re-issue of Tennyson's principal poems in a popular form. Why the essays should have been kept back on this account is a question that will puzzle most readers, since there is not a single remark made in reference to Tennyson and his poems, which might not have been made if the re-issue of the latter in a popular form had never occurred. The essays, if we count a couple of dialogues as such, are fourteen in all, and, besides those of the writers whose names are mentioned on the title page, pass in review the writings of Matthew Arnold, Addington Symonds, Lamb and Keats, Froude and Freeman, and the new Lives and Letters of Gibbon. On the whole they are disappointing. There is much that is attractive about them. Mr. Harrison is too clever a writer not to be attractive; but most of what he has to say reads like an echo of what has been said not once or twice but many times before, while as for the rest much of it is of little importance, though possibly of interest to examiners and to those who have to answer their questions. What strikes us most in some of the essays, in the one on Tennyson for instance, is the want of restraint. Where Mr. Harrison praises his language is tumid, often bordering on the extravagant, scarcely the cool, measured language of the dispassionate critic. One cannot help admiring the skill with which the adjectives are selected. Rhythm, phrasing, and articulation so entirely faultless, so exquisitely clear, melodious, and sure;' the winged epithets are often of astonishing brilliancy, extraordinarily beautiful and appropriate metre,'' a miracle of poignant music,'' the topmost empyrean of lyric,'' reaching in rapture the supreme bursts of lyric,' 'the mighty imagination of these immortal visions,' are a few of the flowers occurring within the space of four or five pages. The expressions are no doubt forcible, but they border on the extravagant. Another thing which strikes one is that the principal aim of the essays is not so much criticism as to preach the evangel of Positivism. Comte and his teaching meet us in almost all of them, and it is from the Positivist's point of view that the

ideas of the writers criticised are judged, and not always fairly. Freeman is blamed for not distinctly enunciating Comte's doctrine of the evolution of society. His arguments,' we are told, would have been both stronger and sounder if he had recognised, not merely continuity and unity in history, but organic evolution and the development of the present from the past.' That Freeman did not do this will be news to those who are acquainted with his writings, and those who are not will have some difficulty in recognising how one who recognises the continuity and unity in history' does not also recognise its 'organic evolution and the develop ment of the present from the past.' On the faults and failings of Freeman and Froude as historians, Mr. Harrison dwells at considerable length, and as it seems to us, needlessly. Sufficient has been written in this connection already. The one valuable piece in the two essays is the paragraphs on 'original sources' and the use of them. Here Mr. Harrison writes as one who knows. Rarely does original sources mean more than printed sources. As Mr. Harrison points out, the decipherment of actually' original sources' is a profession by itself; to those not in the profession it is the merest drudgery and generally of little profit. Turning back to the first essay, we doubt whether the estimate of Tennyson, except among the thoroughly uncritical, is really as high as Mr. Harrison would make out. There can be no doubt, however, that most of the defects he points out in his writings are there. But whether a poet is less a poet because he does not invent a better and deeper philosophy than the best and deepest which is current among his friends or in his age is a question on which much may be said on both sides. Dante did not invent a new theory of things. Nor did Milton or Shakespeare. It will probably be found that both these and the poets of Greece did no more than embody in splendid form the best ideas current around them. Mr. Harrison's essay on Mill is in part an attempt to revive an interest in the writings of that philosopher. The attempt will in all probability fail. Mill's day, like that of so many others, is past, and even his outspoken rejection of Positivism will fail to prevent his writings being overlooked.

Platonis Opera. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica

instruxit. IOANNES BURNET. Tomus I. Oxonii: E. Typographeo Clarendoniano. Cornelii Taciti. Recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit. HENRICUS FURNEAUX. Oxonii: E. Typographeo Clarendoniano.

These are the first volumes of the new series of Greek and Latin texts to be issued by the Clarendon Press. They are evidently intended for the use of students or for those who wish to have reliable texts of the writings of the chief authors of Greece and Rome in a handy and portable form. Judging by the two volumes before us, the series is likely to meet the requirements of both the classes referred to. The price is moderate, the paper good, the type clear and remarkably legible, and the binding, in limp cloth, is light and durable. So far as external workmanship is concerned, indeed, the volumes are excellent in every respect. The editors have evidently taken great pains with their texts, as the numerous footnotes, dealing with various and conjectural readings, abundantly prove. The prefaces are brief and to the point, treating chiefly of MS. and printed editions. M. Furneanx is well known as the author of an excellent edition of the Agricola, and Mr. Burnet, as Professor of Greek in the University of St. Andrews and author of a work on Greek Philosophy and of a recently published edition of Aristotle's Ethics.

Stephen's arrangement of the dialogues is not followed. The present volume contains the following in the order they are named :-Enthyphro, the Apologion, Crito, Phædo, Cratylus, Theaetetus, Sophista, and Politicus. A New English Dictionary on Historical Principles. Edited by Dr. JAMES A. H. MURRAY. In-Infer. (Vol. V.) Oxford: At the Clarendon Press. April, 1900. The great majority of the words registered in this Part of Dr. Murray's great work are of Latin origin. Very few of them are of Old English origin, and comparatively few of them present much difficulty as to their etymology. Some of them, however, present problems by no means easy of solution, and have afforded abundant scope for that research into the history, meaning, and origin of words of which the Oxford Dictionary now contains so many splendid illustrations. It is scarcely possible, indeed, to open the present part without coming across some interesting item of information. Take, for instance, the article under 'incubus,' which we have just lighted upon, or the article under incumbent' or 'incunabula.’ From the second of these we learn that it is in English only that the word signifies the holder of an ecclesiastical benefice or of any office. Among book buyers 'incunabula' stands for books printed before 1500, but its original meaning has as little to do with books and their printing as a cradle or swaddling-clothes have. But perhaps the most instructive, at any rate from one point of view the most admirable article in the section is that under the word 'index.' Probably not one in a thousand can give the history of Index Expurgatorius and Index librorum prohibitorum. Yet the history of each is here traced with an abundance of illustration up to its origin. Another interesting article is that on indenture,' and one preceding it on 'indent.' So again are those under ‘indigo,' ' individual,’ and India' and its derivatives. Lowland Scotch words are, as might be expected in this section, somewhat rare. A few, however, are to be met with, as, e.g., inborrow,' inbye,' 'inch' (an island), income,' a morbid affection, 'inding,' unworthy, 'indite,' the act or faculty of inditing, and the old terms 'infang' and 'infangthief,' which latter, however, is as much English as Scottish. Those who have an affection for long words will find in this section 'incircumscriptibleness,' which is quite as long as 'honorificabilitudinity.' It may be interesting to theologians to know that in the Nicene Creed the word 'incomprehensible' retains its original

sense.

I. A SCOT ABROAD. BY ROBERT S. RAIT.
II.—THE HUDSON BAY COMPANY.

III.-WAYLAND THE SMITH. BY KARL BLIND.

IV.—THE LITERARY INSPIRATION OF IMPERIALISM.
V. SIR WILLIAM HENRY FLOWER, K.C.B., Erc. By
PROFESSOR M'INTOSH, LL.D.

VI.

-JULIAN AND JERUSALEM, A.D. 363. By Sir J. M.
CAMPBELL.

VII. THE NEGOTIATIONS WHICH PRECEDED THE WAR
IN SOUTH AFRICA. BY J. EDWARD GRAHAM.

VIII-COLOURS IN DANTE. By J. L. BEVIS.

IX. THE SONS OF DOM JOHN. BY C. J. WILLDEY.
X. THE SECOND CHAPTER OF THE WAR. BY COLONEL
U. U.

XI.

XII.

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