Speeches were made and votes were taken. The event might have been described beforehand by one acquainted with the way in which such arguments are carried on. The only tangible result was to show that the Liberal Party in the House of Commons possesses a few members who have the courage of their convictions, and are willing that their votes should indicate this so long as the fate of the Government is not an immediate issue. The Liberal Party is to be congratulated on possessing ten men whose votes are not of the "slavish" character. Ten good men and true would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah.

*

The Dominion House was prorogued on July 18th. The chief measures of the session were some amendments to the Bank Act, which it is thought will strengthen the system which has given to Canada a world-wide reputation for strong banks and an elastic and stable currency; the increase from 25 to 33 1-3 per cent. of the preference given in import duties on goods coming from the United Kingdom and the other colonies; the legislation which in company with Imperial legislation will permit trustees in Great Britain

to invest in certain Canadian stocks; and the Conciliation Act, which aims to prevent labour disputes, and establishes a labour bureau and a labour journal. *

The agitation for Provincial autonomy is proceeding steadily in the Territories. Senator Perley, in a recent letter to the newspapers, declares himself opposed to four new Provinces. He believes that Assiniboia, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Athabasca have interests in common, and could well be governed by one legislature. Ontario covers a wide area, and different districts have unlike interests, yet no one suggests that Ontario is unwieldy as a Province. One strong Provincial Government would be better than two weak ones. The cost of one government and one legislature would be much less than the cost of two or more. Territories are an anomaly, and the substitution of one Province for these four districts would be a distinct gain from the standpoint of a simple geographical nomenclature and from a simple national structure. A strong Provincial Government would help very much in the development and settlement of these newer portions of our Dominion.

from Toronto to Georgian Bay," Board of Trade, Toronto; "On the Need of an Art Museum in Toronto," Ontario Society of Artists; "Total Eclipse of the Sun," from the transactions of the Astronomical and Physical Society, Toronto; "Secondary Education in Ontario," by W. J. Robertson, B.A., LL.B., of St. Catharines, author's edition; "Ad Multos Aunos," a tribute to Sir Charles Tupper, by Henry J. Morgan, William Briggs, Toronto; "The Spirit of the North and Other Poems," by A. Evelyn Gunne, Imrie, Graham & Co., Toronto ; "Canadian Forestry Association, First Annual Meeting," Government Printing Bureau, Ottawa; "Manual Training," by W. S. Ellis, Kingston, author's edition.

"North America Notes and Queries." Vol. 1., No. 1, is to hand. It is to be published monthly by Raoul Renault, Quebec, and is to be edited by E. T. D. Chambers, a well-known journalist and litterateur. The first number is very creditable.

Professor Adam Shortt continues his valuable contributions on "Canadian Currency, Banking and Exchange" in the Journal of the Canadian Bankers' Association (Toronto).

Mr. W. A. Fraser has just returned from England, where he has been placing his new animal-story book. It will be issued by Scribners in New York, and C. Arthur Pearson, in London. While in England, Mr. Fraser spent a few days with Mr. Robert Barr at Waldingham, in Surrey, this being the first meeting of these two famous Canadian story writers.

"A Gentleman in Khaki," by John Oakley, is published in paper cover by the W. J. Gage Co., Toronto. This story aims to give some idea of the experiences of the British soldiers in South Africa.

ONCE

CURRENT FICTION.

NCE let the reader or the theatregoer yield his senses to the charm of melodrama and he will read or sit on to the end. One lays down Mr. Goss's new novel* with the feeling that it is melodrama-not the cheap sort, to split the ears of the groundlings, but at best a series of strong situations in rather lurid colours. David is a young Quaker in the Ohio valley of half a century ago, who follows a travelling quack out into the world through love of the quack's beautiful gipsy wife. He falls very

low indeed. By means of fraud and crime he obtains possession of the girl. Their life is not happy, and they separate. The story of David's attempt to expiate his sin, the vain effort to obtain. forgiveness of the wretched man he has wronged, and his final re-union with the gipsy is the story of his "redemption." The sinner, like his illus trious namesake of old, is treated with considerable leniency as far as this world is concerned, and his sufferings and shame convey a wholesome moral. A good deal of dramatic power is displayed in more than one portion of the book, and its author has evidently read

ed a few weeks ago, the references to his qualities as a novelist nearly all united in praising "The Red Badge of Courage Badge of Courage" as the best product of his pen. A Canadian edition of this book,* hitherto little read in this country, is one of the timely publications of the month. It has been said in order to prove the highly imaginative powers of the author, that he wrote this novel without ever having witnessed a battle. Whether that be true or not, there can be no question that for strength, vividness, and a certain kind of bold confidence "The Red Badge of Courage" is a remarkable performance for so young and inexperienced a man. A lad on the verge of manhood joins the Army of the North in the American Civil War, full of expectancy, love of adventure, and, as he supposes, courage. The ordeal of battle grows nearer, and confidence begins to ooze slowly out of his halfdeveloped frame. He finds other doubters in the ranks. The life of the camp generates weariness, disgust, then fear. The battle comes-and the

hero runs away. But this retreat is not observed and he gets an opportunity to retrieve. The detailed description of the fighting strikes the reader as very real, and the emotions of the young soldier are related with a skill little short of marvellous.

The note of delicacy in Mr. James Lane Allen's writing is as conspicuous as the finish which generally characterizes his style. If his new book is not so striking in either of these respects as its predecessors, it is not lacking in

*The Red Badge of Courage. By Stephen Crane. Toronto: W. J. Gage & Co.

+The Reign of Law. By James Lane Allen. Toronto: The Copp, Clark Co.

qualities of its own. In delineation of character, in analysis of motive, and in depicting the gradual development of the human mind, rather than in the constructing of a telling plot, are to be found this author's strong points. The basis of the present story may briefly be summarized: a youth trained in primitive beliefs and of poor parentage, finds himself outside the pale of orthodox creeds at the end of a course for the ministry. This is not a startlingly new experience

either in fact or fiction, nor is the enlightened egotism of David a very impressive spectacle. But it is thrown into contrast by the character of the girl to whom he is engaged, a mystic in religion, as so many good women are. Two persons so diverse in all that goes to form the elements of happiness in these prosaic days should not marry, one would think. But these two do, and the author leaves us to imagine the result.

It is greatly to be feared that the young hopeful whom Miss Corelli has made to point a moral and adorn a tale* is, in his infancy, an idealized picture drawn by a lady who is not herself married. "Boy" in after years is exactly what we might expect from a home where the father is drunk when he is not profane, and profane when he is not drunk, and where the mother is so lazy that she only washes as a part of the debt due to society. The inherited qualities that ruined "Boy" were, in all probability, latent in him when his would-be god-mother thought him such a cooing cherub. Doubtless his education developed them more quickly. If he had remained under the good influences of sweet Miss Letty he might have escaped the tendency to lying and drink. But it is more than doubtful. It requires the most profound observation to determine in how many cases the forces of environment overcome the forces of heredity. The problem can

*Boy. By Marie Corelli. Toronto: W. J. Gage & Co.

not be dismissed in a paragraph, and there is much in "Boy's" career, from the nursery days when he thinks his blackguard father a sick, instead of a drunken man, to his ineffectual efforts to carve out a nobler life for himself, to make parents pause.

THE NATAL CAMPAIGN.*

To read Mr. Winston Churchill's narrative of experiences as a war correspondent in Natal and the Transvaal is to live over again those painful weeks when the whole British Empire thrilled in sympathy with each misfortune, blunder and tragedy that marked the path to Ladysmith. The correspondent's capture by the Boers furnished him with excellent 66 copy." We get inside the Boer lines. We catch the "tone" of their military spirit, their earnestness, their courage and their boastfulness. Well might this war be called the Great Misunderstanding. If the fighting lingers on at this late date it is because a section of the Boers are living up to the views which some of them poured so insultingly into the ears of the British captive as he was on his way to be herded with other brave Englishmen at Pretoria. The correspondent's escape is well told, and must make the writers of fiction despair. Mr. Churchill's sense of humour saves his narrative from an anti-climax when Durban is reached after his exciting journey. He records with equal philosophy the huzzas of the crowd, the warm congratulations of personal admirers, and the cabled message from the candid friend in London, begging him not to make "a further ass of himself." Then we are plunged into the thick of the fighting

tice is done to some one. It may be said, however, that Mr. Churchill generally defends the tactics of the generals. His book is early in the field, and deserves to be widely read.

ANGLO-AMERICAN DIPLOMACY,

1783-1872.

On this theme much has been written. But we do not remember to have seen before a complete record of the political relations of Great Britain and the United States cast in the narrative form. Mr. Edward Smith has composed, therefore, a volume* of considerable interest to Canadians. He understands the Canadian point of view well. He appears, luckily, to have no "object" in view: that is to say, no design of proving that on the altar of good relations with the States the sacrifice of most of our interests on this continent is desirable. We hear no word of a union of hearts, no whisper of an Anglo-Saxon alliance. There is, in short, within these pages no attempt either to excite the jingo spirit against the republic, or to prove that the "larger interests of civilization" demand the growth of a giant democracy in North America and an English peace with that democracy on any terms at any cost. As proof that Mr. Edward Smith is no jingo, there is the fact that he passes quietly over the exploits of Canada in the war of 1812-14, and that he comments with extraordinary moderation, considering the facts, upon the territorial, fisheries and other acquisitions of the States at our expense secured by means of a blustering diplomacy. That he is under no illusions as to the character of United States policy, on the other hand, and the absence of the magnanimity, mutual forbearance and generous recognition of the give-and-take basis which can alone ensure a lasting friendship between the two countries, is evident from the narrative. A Canadian would be disposed to add a good deal to the record. But Mr. Edward Smith seems

* England and America after Independence: a short examination of their international intercourse, 1783-1872. By Edward Smith. Westminster: Archibald Constable & Co.

not to be imbued with any strong colonial feeling. He presents himself in these pages, one infers, merely as a scholarly English gentleman who sees no harm in recording, for the benefit of those who want to know the truth, the whole story of United States diplomacy from the time when the imbecility of Oswald abandoned English rights in 1783 down to 1872, when the Alabama claims were over-paid to the extent of several millions. It is all very instructive, and really, after all, very amusing.

GRANT ALLEN.

If Grant Allen was not a Canadian, in the strict sense, the associations of his family with this country, and his own birth here, entitle us to a special interest in his personality. His memoirs have just appeared. His was a gifted and complex mind, and his character, as mirrored by Mr. Clodd, a very candid and lovable one. A boyhood spent among the Thousand Islands, where he fished, watched the habits of birds and animals, studied the flowers, and in the winter skated over the ice, seems to be his only personal link with Canada. He had, one may say, no nationality and no sympathy with Canadian aims, which, contracted as they may appear to a citizen of the world and a man of science, are real factors to six millions of people with definite material and political objects. He was asked two years ago to write a paper on the military defence of the Dominion. He recoiled with distaste from such a proposal. "I contribute gladly," he retorted, "to works designed to strengthen the bonds of amity between nations and to render war impossible, but I cannot contribute to one which aims at making peaceable Canadian citizens throw themselves into the devouring whirlpool of militarism." To be plain, Mr. Allen was a dreamer. His studies and writings as an investigator of science embodied his most practical efforts. The biography is daintily done, and the bibliography at the end is valuable.

*Grant Allen: a memoir. By Edward Clodd; with a bibliography. London: Grant Richards.