CURRENT LITERATURE.
There is a good deal that is fairly readable, but almost nothing that is truly notable, in the fifth number of the New Century Review, which has yet to justify its second title as " An Inter- national Journal of Literature, Politics, Religion, and Society." `The internationality is to be found almost exclusively in Mr. Escott's chatty paper on " The Social Cult of the American Cousin —Lay and Clerical," in which is told once more the advent to this country of Cleveland Core, Samuel Ward, and the model for " Altiora Peto." Mr. Justin McCarthy's paper on Sir William Harcourt in the series of " Victorian Statesmen " is disappointing. Even as an eloge it comes to nothing more than that the leader of the Opposition in the House of Commons is a good fighter, and a master of familiar quotations. Mr. Percy Fitzgerald defends .himself with great vigour against Lord Dufferin and Mr. Fraser Rae in "The Real Sheridan." But as his onslaught—or apologia —is not yet complete, it would be premature to pass any judg- ment upon it. A symposium on "A School of Fiction" seems much ado about little. Havelock Ellis discourses pleasantly upon "The Men of Cornwall," and tells us among other things that "South Africa is especially the resort of the Cornish ; and the Cornishman at home pronounces with far more familiarity the name of Johannesburg than that of London."
The influence of the Diamond Jubilee is observable even in such a magazine as the Sunday at Home, and is no doubt mainly responsible for "A Centenary Series of Fifty-four Portraits of Representative Missionaries of the Nineteenth Century," which is given with biographical notes by the Rev. Richard Lovett. It cannot be said that those portraits have the photographic vividness of the sort that figure in the more modern magazines, but they are very interesting, and Mr. Lovett's notes have the great merit of succinctness. Otherwise the April number of the Sunday at Home is but an average one. There is genuine pathos in Leslie Keith's story of " Under one Roof," but it is deficient in genuine "movement ; " while the short stories are rather poor, although " The Green Bay Tree " illustrates very well the dangers that attend the amateur burglar. Of the miscellaneous articles the best are " The Dead Sea," by Mr. Henry A. Harper, and " A Day on Vesuvius," by Mr. A. R. Quinton ; but the subjects are familiar and treated in a rather conventional way. The " moral essays," too, are decidedly tacking in intellectual grip, although in " On Conventionality " Mrs. Lily Watson is ambitious enough to attempt the dialogue plan of inculcating opinions.
Sunday Hours is notable among the magazines which are essentially and didactically religious, and at the same time in- tended for boys and girls, by the genuine beauty of its illustra- tions and by the brevity and variety of its miscellaneous articles. Both brevity and variety, indeed, are perhaps carried too far. The May number is neither more nor less than a bewildering mass of snippets, from which, however, one or two, such as "The North London Collegiate School for Girls," by C. E. Rowe, giving a sketch of that most deserving and enthusiastic teacher and schoolmistress, Miss Buss, and "A Relic of the Knights Templars," by Mr. L. R. Badenoch, may be selected for com- mendation as being at once bright and instructive.
In these days, when antiquarianism of a not too minute or recondite order has a vogue and a clientele, the Genealogical Magazine, the immediate purpose of which is described in its second title, " A Journal of Family History, Heraldry, and Pedigrees," and which is published by Mr. Elliot Stock, ought to be able to make a place for itself. There is nothing very startling, it is true, in the present number. The most timely paper is Mr. J. L. Otter's on William Bradford's manuscript " History of the Plymouth Plantation," interest in which has been revived by the formal and graceful handing over of the precious relic to the custody of the United States authorities. Mr. Otter's article is carefully descriptive, and interest in it is enhanced by the reproduction of Bradford's neat handwriting. Mr. Otter is admittedly on dangerous ground in one part of his paper ; as he himself says, "To suggest that the ship which conveyed the Pilgrim Fathers was not called the 'Mayflower' seems as wantonly sceptical as to suggest that not Shakespeare but Bacon wrote the plays." But what is said on this point is a piece of clever argumentation. " The Sur- render of the Isle of Wight" is one of those useful historico- antiquarian papers for which Mr. J. H. Round has gained a reputation, and in "The Sobieski Stuarts" Mr. Henry Jenner reinvestigates a curious historical mystery or mixture of truth
and falsehood. Of the more purely genealogical papers the most notable are the first of two series on " Shakespeare's Family " and " Nelson and his Enchantress."
Among the innumerable serial publications for which the Diamond Jubilee is responsible one of the most interesting, valuable, and best illustrated is The Queen's Empire, which is to be issued in sixpenny monthly parts by Messrs. Cassell and Co., and which is to be "a pictorial record in which the modes of government, national institutions, forms of worship, methods of travel, sports, recreations, occupations, and home life of the in- habitants of the British Empire will be faithfully and vividly portrayed by means of artistic reproductions of photographic views." Each part deals with a special subject. Thus the first, which contains an introduction to the whole, written by Mr. H. 0. Arnold-Forster, M.P., deals with the " Government of the Empire." The executive acts of the great officers of State, from the Queen downwards, are reproduced, and the Legislative Assemblies of the Empire, from the House of Keys in the Isle of Man upwards, are represented in a really remarkable series of photographs. The letterpress accompanying and explaining the photographs deserves not a little commendation for its succinct- ness and brevity. Sometimes, however, an anecdote is introduced with some effect, as when in connection with the picture of the Government House, Melbourne, it is told how Lord Palmerston, on being consulted as to the kind of structure needed, sent for a book illustrating the country houses of England, and fixed on a picture of Osborne, saying, " That is the very thing we require." He was wrong, for "it is generally admitted that Government House, Melbourne, is neither beautiful nor con- venient."
The seventy-eighth number of Lean's Royal Navy List, which is published quarterly by Messrs. Witherby and Co., High Holborn, and is described as being " supported by the Admiralty," is as large as any of its predecessors, and has special features which are worthy of notice. A large addition has been made to the " Battles of the Ships," the late increase to the Navy having brought back the names of many famous ships to the Navy List. There is no doubt whatever as to the editorial zeal and general capacity of Colonel Lean, who has done his best, and with marked success, to make his work—now in the twentieth year of its existence—an exhaustive encyclopedia of the Navy.
The "Abbotsford Series of the Scottish Poets," edited by George Eyre-Todd (W. Hodge, Glasgow), is completed by the second volume of The Scottish Poetry of the Eighteenth Century. The volume contains specimens of some fifty writers, beginning with James Beattie (author of " The Minstrel") and ending with Richard Gall, who if he had lived longer would have rather belonged to the nineteenth century. Robert Burns has, of course, the biggest share in the selection (a little more than a fifth of the whole). The best known names after him are Lady Anne Lindsay and Mrs. Grant of Laggan.
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