ABRAHAM LINCOLN. By Ellis P. Oberholtzer. American Crisis Biographies. Jacobs & Co., Philadelphia, 1905.

"To gain an impartial twentieth century view of the greatest event in the life of the Nation in the nineteenth centuury" is the praiseworthy intention prescribed for "The American Crisis Biographies," a new series, which will be edited by Dr. E. P. Oberholtzer, with the counsel and advice of Professor J. B. McMaster. In this series, southern men will write of southern men, and the lives of northern leaders will be told by those who to-day represent that section; but all, if the editor's wish prevails, will write from the standpoint of the present, with the smoke of battle cleared by the passage of half a century. While we may wonder at the choice of authors in some cases, the results, to say the least, will be awaited with interest.

The first volume to appear is the life of Abraham Lincoln, written by the editor of the series. Biographies of Lincoln have not been few, and the end is not yet. Perhaps the end will never be, for the sudden close of Lincoln's life leaves room for endless speculation upon the might-have-been.

Throughout Dr. Oberholtzer writes candidly of Lincoln's career, without either hero-worship or a desire to parade human faults. Lincoln's fatalism, his kindliness, his self-depreciation, his political cleverness, his intrepidity in sticking to his principles and his use of very "practical" means to get what he wanted

these traits of the great President are clearly and simply told. The work does not pretend to great originality of scholarship. One omission seems to us unfortunate. Nothing is told of Lincoln's arbitrary extension of executive power in the case of Merriman, or of the consequent division between the President and Chief Jutsice Taney.

The style is usually clear and attractive; but one sentence at least, defies our attempts to comprehend it. We refer to this, which is found on page 16: "His wanton assassination at a time of public excitement raised up eulogists on every hand and years of groundless nonentity as an ex-president saved him from semioblivion and the possible detraction growing out of later movements, which sometimes neutralize the impression created by the most brilliant career."

THE ENCHANTED WOODS

THE ENCHANTED WOODS, and Other Essays on the Genius of Places. By Vernon Lee. John Lane: The Bodley Head, London & New York, 1905. It is no surprise that the English lady known as "Vernon Lee," self-expatriated and dwelling in Italy on Tuscan hill-side with the Apennines as a background, is haunted by the Genius of Places, and going in search, finds this anywhere that the spirit of man and of time and the working of Nature have concerted to create it. She does not care for the sea-great masses and stretches of water - not even for the wildest scenery and display of Nature on an overpowering scale: there must be some association of man, something congenial for a haunt of the nymphs and muses and presiding Genius. The spot must be capable of habitation by these deities of the wood who may talk to their sympathetic searchers. These places, therefore, where one divines the Genius Loci, are often little dells-spots with sacred, traditional, imaginary and even possible associations. These deities reveal themselves only to those who have the simple heart and faith to see them. "Enchanted woods are rare. But I suspect that where they exist, and seem so deep is their magicto march nowhere on reality, they are most often within a stone'sthrow of the dear homes of every day; nor is it needful to travel very far afield in order to find them."

Naturally the author's Enchanted Woods - where maybe she will meet the enchanter Merlin or the knights of Ariosto or Spenser or a pagan divinity from a still more classic past — lie for the most part in Italy, on Italian slopes and mountain-sides and in copses along rivulets, sometimes in Southern France, around. Paris and Fontainebleau, occasionally in a spot of Germany, like Heidelberg and the Neckar and once in a corner of Switzerland, and even in Granada. She feels and finds the genius of the place in the quiet corner of Pisa and the Campo Santo, or in Tuscan churches in summer. Nymphs have their hiding-place beyond Florence on a hill-side in the Valley of the Mugnone not far from the height of Fiesole, and in the vale of Clitumnus. There are ancient divinities in Trent and the cathedral where the great Council was; in the ilex-woods of the anchorites above Spoleto in Umbria at the meeting place of St. Anthony and St. Paul, the

earliest hermits. There was the search for the Forest of the Antonines did it ever exist? - in the heart of the Apennines; there were drives and walks in the low-lying sluggish Maremma -in comparison how choking and artificial the Villa Borghese outside Rome!-visits to the Cardinal's villa at Bagnaia near Viterbo, to Ravenna with its forest and memorials of Theodoric, and on All Souls Day to the island burial-ground of Venice.

Not for our author is the real Arcadia in Greece nor the voyage of Ulysses, nor a visit to Sicily, the island home of Theocritus' idyls. Let others find their enchanted woods there — and even at home! For we need undertake no long voyages and travels to meet the Genius Loci. "As to enchanted woods, why, they lie in many peaks and girdle many cities; only you must know them when you see them, and submit willingly to their beneficent magic." The motor-car may bring new votaries nearer the abode of these divinities, and enlarge the wayfarer's sense of "the whole real shape of the earth's surface, and the complexities of its ways," but the haunts of the divinities themselves are apt to recede from the subsequent trail of dust. "It is not good, I am afraid, dear friends, to scatter people along roads and cover them with the dust of our wheels; there is a corresponding scattering of our soul, and a covering of it with dust." Whoever has the heart of the wanderer and loves spots on this earth, may join in the concluding prayer: “O benign divinity of places, grant us, as thy highest boon, to wander every now and then in the Enchanted Woods, between the hour of rising from our solitary work and the hour of sitting down to meat with our dear friends!"

NOTES

A valuable volume, amply illustrated from old prints, has appeared on "Shakespeare's London" (Henry Holt) by Henry Thew Stephenson of the University of Indiana, author of the paper on "Hamlet's Mouse-trap" in the January SEWANEE. Picturesque London of Shakespeare's time is portrayed so as to throw light on the historical plays and on the dramatist's life and work. Old St. Paul's, the Water Front, the Tower, the Main Highway, Holborn and Smithfield, the Strand, the Theatres, the Taverns and Tavern Life, are some of the topics treated. Citations from contemporary and later documents throw light on the location, description, or use of any of these. Besant's large volumes on "London" served a different purpose; and the author is justified in saying that "no work of the present kind has yet appeared, if we except the contemporary 'Survey of London' by John Stow."

"The Story of Art Throughout the Ages" (Scribner's) by S. Reinach of the Institute of France, "from the French" by Florence Simmonds, and conveniently and profusely supplied with nearly six hundred small illustrations, will be found to be an admirably succinct and a very helpful summary of the principles and movements in the art of all ages with accompanying examples. After a short introduction on the origin of art and art in the East, the emphasis is put first on Greek Art, then, with a glance at Etruscan and Roman modifications, finally on Christian art in its many varieties and forms in architecture, sculpture and painting, in the several schools and lands. The brief concluding chapters on the art of the modern period in the last two centuries are less happy and satisfying.

The Belles-Lettres series (D. C. Heath & Co.) continues its attractive reproductions. Two late numbers are "Selected Poems of Swinburne," edited by Wililam Morton Payne of the Chicago

Dial and T. W. Robertson's "Society" and "Caste" edited by T. Edgar Pemberton. The latter volume has the sad added interest that the author has since died. These plays of Robertson are important historically, as representative of a period of depression or transition in the English drama, rather than in themselves. Mr. Swinburne has latterly published his poems in a collected edition of six volumes, and a volume wisely selected, with the wisdom Mr. Payne brings to bear, is of real service just now. The dramas are, of course, excluded. The selections, grouped under "Odes," "Poems of Paganism and Pantheism," "Songs before Sunrise," "Lyrics of Nature and Life," "Sonnets," "Personal and Memorial Poems" and "Metrical Experiments," represent the many sides of this versatile genius and his wonderful mastery over the mere instrument of language.

After ten years a new edition of Professor George P. Baker's "Principles of Argumentation" (Ginn) is worthy of comment. Professor Baker undertook this phase of English instruction at Harvard as an unpleasant task, grew fond and proud of his work, developed it, until this volume, embodying its principles and results, stands out distinct in the educational history of our country, other colleges using his text-book and adopting his methods. The subject is a difficult one to handle satisfactorily, to make vital; it is apt at first to be tedious to both teacher and pupil, it needs effort, but the effort is rewarding, and the reward is seen in a revival of the spirit of debate.

Professor Bronson of Brown edits a volume of "English Essays" from Bacon to Stevenson, and, in an Appendix, with earlier excerpts from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The notes are brief, but sufficient. The purpose, as with Professor Garnett's, Professor Pancoast's, and similar volumes, is to show the development of the English prose essay style from the earliest times.