CURRENT LITERATURE.

Tales of South Africa. By H. A. Bryden. (Archibald Constable and Co.)—These admirably told tales give a better conception of the life of the wanderer in South Africa than any formal book of travels. But they are not all of them tales. " A Boer Pastoral," for example, and " The Great Secret," are rather sketches than tabu, but are vivid sketches, and for the most there is a lively and sometimes a very exciting story in these short narra- tives. The Boers are evidently great favourites with Mr. Bryden, and almost all the pictures presented of that unique people are as favourable as they are graphic. We can hardly speak too cordially of the little volume.

Although "Weir of Hermiston" is no longer running in Cos- mopolis, that magazine still continues attractive. It can hardly be said, indeed, that such a story as "'Tis an Ill Flight With- out Wings" by "John Oliver Hobbes," takes the place of Mr. Stevenson's masterpiece. It is, of course, fantastic, clever, and sub-cynical, and full of such "points " as " His whole appearance was so romantic that, on a hasty judgment, one would say that his destiny pointed to a commonplace career." But it is wanting in depth, and in human nature. The only fault to be found with both the British and the foreign element in the new number of Cosmopolis is that there are too many solid articles on solid subjects. Thus, while the jubilee of Free-trade deserved to have something said about it, three long papers are rather too much of a good thing ; a "symposium" would have been better. Altogether, the most attractive of the contents of this number are Vicomte Spoelberch de Lovenjoul's " La Veritable Histoire de ' Elle at Lai '" and Pro- fessor Dowden's " The Case Against Goethe." Vicomte de Loren joul supplies a number of curious letters and other documents

bearing on the famous Sand-Mtu3set quarrel which are worth reading, although they will probably not convert from their opinions convinced partisans on either side. Professor Dowden's paper, which is remarkably well written, is not calculated—and is not intended—to please frantic Goetheans. Its tone may be gathered from these sentences :—" Goethe helps to emancipate his disciple from all forms of bondage except one—the bondage of self. There have been other teachers who believed that the way to true freedom was to surrender one's inmost personality to something higher than the Ego, to obey an absolute summons, to live in the idea, to lose one's life for something better than life, and so to save it. And they have declared that this was not only the per- fect way for such a creature as man, but also the way of happi- ness. Such was not Goethe's teaching ; such was not Goethe's practice."

Scotland is, if one may use the language of athletics, " well to the front" in the June number of the Expositor. Of the six

articles which constitute its contents, four are written by Scotch- men,—the Rev. Dr. Stalker, Professor Bruce, Dr. James Denney, and Professor Marcus Dods. The most learned and also perhaps the most valuable from the expository standpoint is Dr. Stalker's on " Wendt's Untranslated Volume on the Teaching of Christ."

Wendt's book on the teaching of Jesus is well known ; but it is not quite so well known that "in true German fashion" Wendt began with a thorough investigation of the record of Christ's teaching in the Gospels, " proceeding on the maxim that you cannot be sure what ideas are to be attributed to any one until you have ascertained the amount of credit due to the documents in which they are contained." It is of this preliminary volume, amounting to about three hundred and fifty closely printed pages, and as an indication of where "advanced" criticism stands at the

present time from the standpoint of enlightened and progressive orthodoxy, that Dr. Stalker gives a sketch. It is a model of con- densed and lucid thinking. But all the articles in this number of the Expositor are good.

There is unquestionably a great deal of "up-to-date" bright- ness in The Ludgate—as it has now come to be styled—in the

shape both of illustrations and of " smart " letterpress. Occa- sionally the pictures are a trifle too impressionist, as in a fairly readable article on Edinburgh in the new number, in which Lord Rosebery is presented with his eyes almost starting out of his

head. The serial fiction, " Captain Jacobus," the chief scenes of which are laid in the days of Cromwell, is full of adven-

ture ; and of the minor stories at least two, " The Haunted Child" by Miss Arabella Kenealy, and "The Smart Lane Case" in which poisoning and murder are introduced as aids to financial swindling, are much above the magazine average. It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to say that the Army, the Navy, and the Stage have full justice done to them in a magazine the note of which is " actuality "—but may we not confess that we have had rather too much lately about Sir Henry Irving, Lord Charles Beresford, and Lord Wolseley ?

The June number of the Leisure Hour contains some really admirable miscellaneous articles. The sprightliest, if not posi-

tively the most informing, of these is one which bears the title " A Tutor in the Bush." Perhaps the tutor's opening paragraphs are rather conventional, and suggestive too much of Lindsay Gordon. But when he gets fairly settled to his work —which does not appear to have been too hard—ho becomes sufficiently lively. Mr. Herbert Rix sends a readable account of the rise of the Royal Society, and Mr. Basil Worsfield writes pleasantly of the

country of Khama and others in "The New South Africa : the Natives." The fiction in the Leisure Hour is rather disappointing

at present. The author of " Forestwyk" means well, but does not write equally well. Such a passage as this is Tennyson-and- water, recalling as it does too readily " 'Tis better to have loved and lost " :—" Alcie had not so loved. It was well. Then came one mortal pang ; she had longed to drain life's cup to the bottom —to drink deeply deep of all it had to give. Its best had touched her lips—enough for her to guess the sweetness in it—and was gone only tasted."

The new number of the Boy's Own Paper is most notable, per- haps, for the large number of really admirable stories which it contains. Mr. Manville Fenn has done nothing better than " Ydoll Gwyn," with its smuggling memories and its flood be- neath the sea, which is here begun. But there are other good stories, such as the Rev. A. N. Malan's school-story, "The Breve of Lonewoath Grange," and Mr. David Ker's " The Finder of the White Elephant," which gives the adventures of an English boy at the Court of Siam. The shorter tales and promiscuous articles are equally good. As specimens of the latter may be mentioned "The Common Lizard" and "Miss Mandoline and her Sisters," the latter an account of some popular musical instruments of the present day. The June number of this popular periodical is, all round, an excellent one. The two best papers in the new number of The Bookman are a pleasingly written one by Sir George Douglas on Leopardi's home, and a critical estimate of Mr. Henry James by Miss Annie Macdonell, the note of which is struck in the first sentence, "When Mr. James writes fiction you scent the critic, and when he writes criticism you feel the novelist underneath." The reviews of books in the Bookman are as a rule admirable. Take, as examples, Mr. D. Hay Fleming's estimate of Mr. Mackinnon's

book on "The Union of England and Scotland" and a notice of Stevenson's " Weir of Hermiston," although the latter is rather too full of what its author would probably term " vibrating emotion?'