The sixth volume of the new edition of Chambers's Encyclopredia
brings us down to Malta. The biographies in it are not perhaps, so notable as some that have appeared in earlier volumes, although canon linger gives a delightful sketch of Charles Lamb, and Dr. Hutchison Stirling is seen at his best in his account of Kant- The scientific and economic articles, however, are very notable. The difficult subject of Ireland is treated by Mr. Justin McCarthy and Professors McKinnon and Stokes. Mr. McCarthy is charac- teristically moderate in his statements. Here is what he says of the formation of that party in Parliament of which he is
Qupposed by his own followers to be the true leader at the present moment :—" A Home-rule Party had been formed, and out of this party sprang a small but very determined body of Irish Nationalist Members who, under the leadership of. Mr. Charles Stewart Parnell, a descendant of the Sir John Parnell already mentioned, set itself to force the claim of Ireland. on the attention of the English Parliament and public by a system of persistent obstruc- tion of all business in the House of Commons." Hero, at all events, the real purpose of the original Parnellite obstruction is not concealed. There is, in.tho light of recent history, something very comical in the grammatical blunder by which either a body of Irish Members appears as "who," or the Irish Members are rendered " itself." In every respect—in the literary quality of the articles, and in the care with which they have been edited— this volume is quite the equal of its predecessors.
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