CURRENT LITERATURE.
The Journal of the Royal Statislical Society is a storehouse of facts relating to all departments of the national life,—facts which ought to be of the highest value to the politician and the public writer. Of none of the quarterly parts of the Journal is this truer than of the latest. Thus it may be questioned if the statistics of elections were ever more elaborately or ingeniously treated than in a paper by Mr. J. H. Baines on "Parliamentary Representation in England, illustrated by the Elections of 1692 and 1895." Not less interesting, and from the practical point of view even more important, is Dr. Arthur Newsholme's "A National System of Notification and Registration of Sickness."
Harper's Magazine from December, 1895, to May, 1896, forms a delightful volume full of excellent stories and interesting mis- cellaneous articles. The former include " Briseis," the latest of Mr. William Black's almost innumerable stories, and also one of
his beat, being a very pretty compound of Deeside scenery London society, and the glory that still is Greece. Under the title of "A Previous Engagement," Mr. W. D. Howells contributes a pleasing study of a pretty and interesting girl and of her in, decisions, which are not quite the same as caprices. Among the more important of the miscellaneous papers are two series of articles, the one on the German struggle for liberty, the other on America in the days of Washington. The fun in the minor stories occasionally verges on the farcical, as in a skit in which there figure a number of girls whose names are borrowed from the terminology of golf. Altogether, however, this is one of those rare and fascinating volumes which can be taken up and dipped into at odd moments.
Previous page
