The Kinship of Nature. By Bliss Carman. (John Murray. 6s.)—Mr.
Carman is not quite a second Emerson ; he has got to learn much in the way of reserve and restraint in style. But he takes a brave view of life, as becomes a Canadian, and perhaps we should add a pupil of Dr. Parkin, and there is a good deal of quite healthy poetry in this volume of his ; indeed, we should not be greatly surprised though the future should demonttrate that prose is a better medium than poetry for the expression by Mr. Carman of his nature and his "message." The title of this book, The Kinship of Nature, indicates with tolerable clearness the character of Mr. Carman'e philosophy, which comes practically to "living according to Nature," though not in the Rousseauist sense. He believes in the abolition of worry, in beauty in the application to one's life of the eternal
teaching of the seasons, in the "luxury of being poor." Occasion- ally he lapses into a kind of glorified commonplace, as when he says :—" The commonest work is ennobling when it provides any avenue of expression for the spirit, any exit for the heavy, struggling, ambitious human heart out of its prison-house of silence into the sunshine of fellowship. Set me a task in which I can put something of my very self, and it is a task no longer; it is joy ; it is art." But even when he repeats—as he cannot help doing—other writers, Mr. Carman is invigorating. In short, this volume is a good moral tonic, and as such deserves hearty recommendation.
OUR ROMAN HIGHWAYS.
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