million." Even in its present form the new army makes nonsense of half the theories on which the West has hitherto based its conviction that the Chinese were incurably peaceful and destitute of the military spirit. Again, China is feeling her way towards a handier and more efficient system of government, and a greater unity and centralization in her administrative framework. There is something arising, too, that might almost be called a cult of the Young Man. With only one or two exceptions the leading viceroys are men in the prime of vigor, and nearly all the important secretaryships are in the hands of young Chinamen who have lived and studied abroad, and who return home full of zeal, if not always of practicality, and keenly alive to the defects of the Chinese polity.

We have had already in the boycott of American goods, in the affair at the Shanghai Mixed Courts, and in the persistency with which China pressed her claim to be represented at the Portsmouth Peace Conference, a foreshadowing of the international effects of this rational, self-assertive and independent spirit. When "China for the Chinese" was muttered by China in her sleep or in her bow-and-arrow stage of development, it was a policy pour rire. But "China for the Chinese" proclaimed by an awakened Empire and reinforced by the resources of Western science and Western materialism, is a policy that cannot be so easily dismissed. We may expect to find it taking shape in many forms. There will probably from now onwards be an epidemic of anti-foreign disturbances, perhaps of massacres. Exclusive conces

The Outlook.

The

sions to foreigners of mining rights and railway franchises are likely to grow rarer. Having realized the advantages of rapid communications the Chinese are resolved to keep them as much as possible to themselves. Missionaries henceforward may find it increasingly difficult to secure for their converts any special civil or legal privileges. near future may see the extra-territorial grievances sharply raised and Chinese sovereignty asserted over ports and waterways and settlements now under foreign control. If new ports are thrown open to the world's trade, China will insist upon policing them herself. We should say that the ultimate and conscious aim of the transformation that is in progress is to make China mistress in her own household. There may be some who think that China is copying Western methods and studying Western learning because she prefers them to her own. There may be others who see in this sudden ferment the seed of the "Yellow Peril." We share neither opinion. If it seems that China is becoming more Western to-day it is only that she may become still more Eastern to-morrow. Her application to the science of the Occident is no more than the confession and the cure of her agelong helplessness. And she is applying herself to it, so far as we can judge, in no spirit of aggression or of universal conquest; but to recover those rights and privileges which her weakness alone has led her to forfeit, and to secure herself in the future against the insolence and rapacity of the West. It is a mighty risorgimento that we are witnessing, as mighty as it will be slow and painful.

The Cambridge University Press is soon to publish "Primitive Athens as Described by Thucydides," by Miss J. E. Harrison.

A new biography of Robert Owen is announced. It is the work of Frank Podmore, who has had access to many unpublished letters and family papers.

Mrs. Treveylan, daughter of Mrs. Humphry Ward, is the translator of Professor Bousset's work on Jesus, which has just been published in England.

Blackwood's Magazine is entering upon the unusual enterprise of the serial publication, in twelve instalments, of an epic poem by Alfred Noyes about the great English seaman, Sir Francis Drake.

Mr. Neil Munro is about publishing a new story under the same pseudonym which he employed two years ago to conceal his authorship of "Airchie," Hugh Foulis. The title of the new book is "The Vital Spark."

Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co., are about to publish an English translation of Eugene Aubin's "Morocco of To-day." The book is of special timeliness in view of the prominence of the Moroccan question in international politics.

The new and attractive series of reprints, "Everyman's Library," to which reference was made in this column last week, as projected by the London house of Dent & Co. will be published in this country by E. P. Dutton & Co. As was intimated in the announcement last week, this series promises to be

one of the most comprehensive and attractive of its kind.

The resignation of Sir Francis Burnand from the editorship of Punch, after forty-four years' association with that periodical, is an interesting event. The resignation is due to advancing age. Sir Francis Burnand first gained wide recognition by the delightful humor of his "Happy Thoughts." Since he was appointed editor of Punch in 1883, after being for some years one of the leading contributors to it, he has well sustained the traditions of that unique periodical. His successor is Owen Seaman, who has been for some time assistant editor and who is endowed with a happy knack for humorous versification.

The little volumes of The Popular Library of Art, of which Mr. Edward Garnett is the general editor and E. P. Dutton & Co. the American publishers, are not, as so many series of condensed biographies are, the hasty work of second-rate writers. The separate volumes are written painstakingly by competent critics, with some regard to proportion and literary style, and are illustrated with numerous reproductions of the most characteristic works of the artists considered. The latest volume is on Hans Holbein the younger, and is the work of Ford Madox Hueffer.

Houghton, Mifflin & Co. publish a slender volume, containing Professor Wilhelm Ostwald's lecture on "Individuality and Immortality," which was delivered at Harvard on the Ingersoll foundation a few weeks ago. This is the eighth lecture on that foundation which has been delivered and pub

lished, and it is far removed in spirit and conclusions from its immediate predecessor, Dr. Crothers's lecture on "The Endless Life." For Professor Ostwald's view does not admit any prospect of an endless life for the individual. The most that can be hoped for is an impression and influence upon one's contemporaries, becoming vaguer and more faint the more widely they are diffused and vanishing altogether in the general progress of the race.

Dr. Paget Toynbee's book on "Dante in English Literature" will be published during the spring by Messrs. Methuen. It covers the period of 464 years from the date of Chaucer's second visit to Italy in 1380 to the death of Cary in 1844, in which year also appeared the last revised edition of Cary's translation of the "Divina Commedia." Dr. Toynbee traces nearly 300 English authors, who, during this period, made mention of Dante or quote his works. Rather more than forty of these writers belong to the sixteenth century, about thirty to the seventeenth, and nearly one hundred to the eighteenth, the remainder falling for the most part within the first forty years of the nineteenth century. A brief biography is given of each of the writers represented.

Five topics of momentous importance form the subjects of the familiar talks to students, by President Pritchett of the Institute of Technology, which are grouped under the general title "What is Religion?" in a small volume published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. They are: What is Truth? What is Religion? The Science of Religion; The Significance of Prayer; and Ought a Religious Man to Join the Church? The views that President Pritchett presents and the answers that he makes to the questions which he suggests, if

they are not in all respects such as would be given by an avowed preacher of religion are characterized by a sincerity and a robust and manly morality which give them weight and value. With such audiences as those to which they were addressed they may well have been more effective than if they were more deeply pervaded with personal religious pre-possessions. They are by no means the final word, but so far as they go, they are healthful and helpful.

For reasons which it is impossible to explain and which do not greatly matter, an interval of more than half a century has elapsed between the publication of the second volume of Lord Holland's "Memoirs of the Whig Party," edited by his son, and the appearance of "Further Memoirs of the Whig Party," edited by Lord Stavordale and published in this country by E. P. Dutton & Co. The period covered in the present volume lies between 1807 and 1821, and is by no means the least interesting of those embraced within Lord Holland's reminiscences. In England and on the continent those were eventful years, and Lord Holland was not only a keen observer of national and international politics, but, so far as Whig participation in public affairs was concerned he was an influential factor in them. His memoirs are written with the candor and fulness natural to one who was writing with the intention of posthumous publication, and they present not a few points of comparison with the Creevey Papers. In a supplementary chapter, Lord Holland included personal reminiscences of some of the literary and scientific celebrities of his day, which constitute one of the most interesting sections of the book. There are eight portraits,-that of Lord Holland himself forming the frontispiece.