The eighth volume of the new edition of Chambers's Encyclopmdia
brings the work down to " Roumelia." It contains a number of important biographical and other papers, including "Poetry," by Mr. Edmund Gosse ; "Rabelais," by Mr. Walter Besant ; "Pope," by Mr. H. D. Train ; " Psychology," by Professor Sorley ; "Religion," by Professor Flint ; and " Pitt," by Mr. Lecky. Even after Lord Rosebery's monograph, this last will bear to be read. Mr. Lecky's final word is :—" Pitt was a great peace-minister ; but in the latter part of his life an evil fate brought him face to face with problems which he never wholly understood, and with diffi- culties which he was very little fitted to encounter." The Life of a living man is a more difficult work of art to perform than the biography of a dead celebrity. Yet this feat has been accomplished in the case of M. Renan by Mr. Hume Brown. Mr. Brown accords ample justice to M. Renan, he accords him more than justice when, in the close of his sketch, he places him virtually on a platform of equality with Erasmus. But he says rather happily of the " Vie de J6sus " that " in Britain its precocity of sentiment and effeminate exquisiteness of manner, jarred even on those who were at one with the writer in the general point of view." Of the scientific, geographical, and "general" articles in this volume, it is enough to say that they are quite up to the level of corresponding articles in previous volumes.
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