This is a book of stories written, by of experienced Lady missionary. They are such stories as any experienced missionary might write "if he had 2 mind to." (Was it not Goldsmith who said be could have written Sbakespeare's plays. himself if he had a mind to?) But that is where the difficulty lies. Many men and women have had such experiences as the authoress of this book but the number who fare able to weave them into readable tales. is very small. Mrs. Lechmere Clift has an excellent mind. It is sensitive to all lovely things, tolerant and sympathetic to the foibles and faults. of others. she has, beside this, the pen of a writer and puts into simple, but excellent, language the short and simple annals of her fellow missionaries and the converts and non-christians known to her through her work amongst. them. If she fails anywhere it is-in depicting a Villain, John Opie said he his colours "with brains, si Mrs, Lechmere Clift seems to have Tittle black paint on her palette. The stories are all short, many of Tave story Tue Tou. oF te Marsis.—By Heanles. London: Ernest Bet Mr. Heanley's Latest book comprises four long stories dealing with the soulabasing Eastshire (Lincolnshire) marshes, and the people who live en them, and, who are eventually killed by them.—The usual objection to volumes of stories does not apply to "The Toll of the Marshes," because the stories are all linked together, the mier eharfacters of one tale becoming the principal characters of another. They ave tales that make one almost involuntarily shudder and then feel glad that one does not live within the districts about which the author writes.
Take for instance the chief character in the first tale, the Reverend Cecil Lawton. He had gone full of high ideals to Fieldthorpe, a parish inthe marshes, as the rector. A young man who had neither kith nor kin, part nor lot, in those breed. ing-grounds of ouncer and madness! In appearance he was plain, in spite of a really beautiful complexion and clear blue eyes; his neve was thi the shape of his head bad, and his cars protruded; his figures was of the slope papers, and his little mannerisms reminded one of a rather finicking old Indy. Indeed he was fly saved from being entirely ridiealous by his expression of absolute innocence, such an expression as is sometimes seen in pictures of young choristers.
And how, think you, did the marshes treat the Reverend Cecil Lawton? The benefice was a wretched one, the young man soon became hopelessly involved financially, even his own churchwarden never attended the church services because he found the chapel "so. much handier," and mest of the earth-bound parishioners seemed to be unaware that there was a church or a rector. The "choir" consisted of the schoolmistress, who played the harmonium, and the woman who cleaned the church; the congregation usually numbered fen, and the week-collection generally averaged threepence over and above what. Cecil himself contributed.
There were only two houses near the church, the rest, quite a little cluster of them, were ct the opposite 'end of the parish, two miles awa; near the "George," a fine old inn, which Fad been a coaching inn when George the Third was king. Need-jorge" was well girl of the dis with a full bust, heavy-lidded dark eyes, thick bronzed hair ard a wicked mouth, came into, or rather. was berately thrust into the life of victims live happily ever after.
The story that gives its title to the book is of a young student whose father was an excellent christian and who was blessed with 'a sensible girl, from a christian school, for a wife. To the station in South China where these people were, located came, one day, a Russian from Canton. He begged hospitality for the night; on the morrow he was to continue "his journey to Indo-China. If it wa inconvenient to have him in any of the missionary residences a bed in the hospital with the Chinese patients would suit him admirably He was a "white" Russian, not a red" and was willing to pay for accomodation. The mission Doctor did not like his looks and 1 was for Chinese jan would find equally good accomodation in any of the The father of Song Chang overheard the colloquy and, eager to help his friend the Doctor who, ko thought, was embarrassed by his lack of facilities to entertain a foreign guest. have" he said "a room with a brass bedstead, just like those foreigners sleep' in, and we are ians, we will treat you well.' The Russian leaped at the offer and used his opportunities inflame the mind of Song Chang. Your country is downtrodden" he said. "Those beastly foreigners; did they not go to war with you and force the unequal treaties upon you. Now if you have red in your yoing strike a blow for freedom.
Song Chang was carried away. He became a member of the revolutionary committee, only stipulating that the lives of the foreigners in this must respected. He knew them; they were not wicked like the others, they were his friends. But the mob wrecked the hospital and though the missionaries _exeaped when Song Chang's baby fell sick with diphtheria the precious serum that would have saved its life was smashed in the general wreck and the Doctor with the saving needle was lying unconscious from a blow received in the riot. Mrs. Song Chang expounded the folly of his conduct to her husband and, when the.dead baby lay cold on his cot, Song. Chang saw red.
The itinerant -Fussian agitator was a common vistor to inland cities in those days and wrecked hospitals and burned churches marked the trail he had left behind. Tt did not always end with as little damage as was done in Sene Ghang's eity—though the death of his son was a terrible grief to hi "AHlis repentance was sincere and may: hope that hapry and peace-this artless victim, and he. Became G 2¥ hope IMS INROD ter his quite ionccently entangled in & Sy' cay ghastly experience 3.0.
This little yolume—numbered 142 the series of he "Home University Library," affords the Japanese student of English a concise history of the Literature of Japan within the compass of some three hundred pages. One mentions Japanese students particularly because here are their old acquaintances set forth afresh from a new point of view.
Mr. Bryan takes up Japanese poetry, drama, and the novel, and analyse them from the European standpoint, nothing their vigour, their modern tendencies, unc their neglected possibilities.
From the' point of general reader, here, form, is the history of a li 'a most extraordinary literature—poetry with other laws than ours, differing fundamentally. "According to the author we are dealing with one of the lost tribes among human languages. Still as one reads one is relieved to find that here also,-in this language of the moon, $0 to speak—young authors lived in garrets, poets Starved, and married the daughters of hawkers, butchers, canal vendors, jand shoe-makers, and found it devilish hard to make a bare living without patrons. So anyhow the habit is world-wide, and whatever the-origin of their language, it seems that Marlow, Rare Ben,. Savage, Goldsmith, and Doctor Johnson, were not one whit better off than their distant comrades in Japan. After this, one is in no way surpriz~ ed to learn that the Japanese theatre of the past, and all connected with it, were regarded with an almost Elizabethan suspicion. There seems to be however no parallel to the Shakespeare—Bacon controversy to} enliven the Japanese stage.
Court-writers, flatterers, syeophants, and so forth there were in abundance, but for the rest, any promising' young fellows, of independent views, on showing the first glimmering of poetic fire, were cut off by the family with the pro-verbal shilling, retired to "low haunts, sang, diced, drank, and after 4 thoroughly' mis spent career, wrote their names with a final loctish on the walls of Time. The parallel is pretty through, The Japanese pact, I was here to learn, is restricted by the habit of thought, somewhat by the nature of the language, but mostly by popular demand, to express himself in a most confined form of verse. This seems a pity. The author, however, while regretting it, assures me that the beauty is one of mental i and that although the line be the ideas aroused linger for ever in 'a haunting, provoking manner. Alic Meynell in one of her critical essays wrote that Japanese art is the art of empty spaces. How remarkably accurate of their poetry, no less than of their pictures. Cramped and res tracted to a most. extraordinary degree, there is no chance whatever oft 'A needless Alexandrine ends he song.
Which like a wounded snake drags fits slow length along. where the sound is so perfectly an echo to. the. sense. The author nevertheless insists that nature pictured perfectly in Japanese Poetry, and gives as an example a gem from Tsurayuki—the Horac of the Golden Age "How the wave crests seem to be Tipped with snow far out to Sea." Yes, very striking, and vivid, but yet, allowing for the limitations imposed by translation, not tumult trious, like that particular "wood-note wild" picturing a precisely similar stormy scene in vhich the wind.
"Takes, the rufian billows by their heads, Hanging them, with deafeni clamour, on the slippery clouds. Of course, doubtless, the Japanese pet would require notice of anything in, the nature of a "slippery cloud," er he would more probably condemn the notion as utter; stark, Starting nonsense, while any notion of the wind "featuring" as a sort of capable, handy policeman "out of patience with the suffanly, hoary headed, old criminals—the billows—, this sort of thing would shock the Japanese' pact speechless. For he regards himself as wholly and solely.
jature's mirror—and takes liberties within a certain compass. But
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.