ments for I believe it is only by a holy dissatisfaction that real progress is assured. UNIVERSITY OF MAINE ROBERT J. ALEY A PROBLEM AND AN OPPORTUNITY We hear much in the educational world of the problem of the new American, the immigrant, and it is indeed a vital problem; this work we should not leave undone. Yet there is another, perhaps too little discust, which we must do for our own national safety; we should do it with greater speed than at present. This is the bringing up to date of Americans already with us, of Americans whose ancestors stood shoulder to shoulder with ours (if indeed ours were then in America) in the first struggles with nature and with man's oppression. These Americans do not need to be taught our traditions, they possess them in their primitive form, they need merely to be led out of their 17th or 18th century world into that in which we now live. These are people perhaps best designated as the Southern Highlanders a name used as the title of the work of Horace Kephart,' which has done much to spread the knowledge of these American mountaineers. They should not be confounded with the shiftless "poor whites who are found" all over the South, but in the lowlands. Albert Bushnell Hart says in his Southern South (p. 30 and 31): "Nowhere else in the United States is there a distinct mountain people. The New England mountaineers live nowhere higher than 1,500 feet above the sea, and have no traits which mark them from their neighbors in the lower lands; in the Rocky Mountains the population is chiefly made up of miners; the Sierra Nevadas are little peopled; in the South alone, where some elevated valleys have been settled for two hundred years, is there an American mountain folk, with a local dialect and social system and character." These people have been, from the advent of Charles Egbert Craddock on, a rich field for the writer, more re1 Outing Co., 1913. cently the investigator has seen the value of their lore and their ballad literature. Educators have not altogether neglected them, the many worthy institutions such as Berea College, Maryville College, Maryville, Tenn., the Berry School, Mount Berry, Floyd Co., Ga., and others, have done good work. But the cry of each and all of these, as the cry of the distinctively mission schools, is for more financial aid. This need has not been taken into consideration by our great educational foundations. Only now is a great effort being inaugurated, by a group of Southern women, to gather a large sum of money for the purpose of supporting schools, colleges, groups of persons willing to go into the mountains with an aim akin to that of our city settlement workers. The Ellen Wilson Memorial Fund for the Christian Education of Mountain Youth represents a movement deserving of the hearty cooperation of all. We educators are not commonly so wealthy as to be able to give largely, but let us in other ways support this effort, let us spread abroad knowledge of the need. According to the pamphlet of Mr. Norman Frost, the average mountaineer twenty years of age has somewhat less than the equivalent of the training given in the first four grades of a city school, the older generation being much less well off. And the numbers of these highlanders are variously estimated at from three to five millions! Articles on the projected work of the Memorial Fund have appeared in various places, as in the Ladies' Home Journal for July, and information may be obtained of the chairman of the administrative board, Mrs. W. S. Elkin, Georgian Terrace, Atlanta, Ga., or of the treasurer, Mrs. Archibald David, 1220 Peachtree St., Atlanta. If all will work together the stigma which our neglect of these fellow-citizens has left on our educational system may be removed in this generation, otherwise the matter may drag on indefinitely. MOUNT HOLYOKE COLLEGE MARY VANCE YOUNG 2 Bulletin, No 11, 1915, whole number 636, U. S. Bureau of Education. X A Middle English Reader—By Oliver Farrar EMERSON, of Western Reserve University. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915. cxxviii + 478 p. $2.00. A Literary Middle English Reader By ALbert Stanburrough Cook, of Yale University. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1915. xxviii+ 554 P. Professor Emerson's Middle English Reader, which was first published some ten years ago, now appears in a new and revised edition. The revision is made on the basis of the errors pointed out by the reviewers of the first edition. Tho the plates have been scratched here and there, the introduction and the body of the text remain practically the same. The glossary has been re-set, but even in the glossary the revision has not been exhaustive. A thoro revision of the whole work would have made a better book of it, but it continues to be, in the new as in the older form, a useful collection of texts and comments, especially for the student of the language of the Middle English period. The Literary Middle English Reader of Professor Cook is the realization of an experiment of a different kind. Professor Cook has long been convinced that Middle English literature can be made intelligible in its original forms to modern English readers who have not, or who do not care to employ, the traditional linguistic methods of approach. His purpose in this book has been to present Middle English literature for readers who are interested in it primarily from the point of view of understanding and enjoyment. He has consequently made his selection of texts broad and inclusive. The selections have been grouped to illustrate the various types of Middle English literature, but the sequence of the selections in the groups is chronological. They cover romances, tales, chronicles, stories of travel, religions and didactic literature, illustrations of life and manners, translations, lyrics and plays. The size of the book has per mitted the editor to include extracts of sufficient length adequately to represent the texts which are not printed as wholes. Each text is preceded by a brief introduction which gives such information concerning authors, manuscripts and literary history as is available or significant. A brief chapter of eight pages outlines the barest essentials of grammatical equipment necessary for the reading of the texts. The only other editorial machinery in the book consists of glosses to words placed at the bottom of the pages. Each page is therefore self-contained, and the reader is not required to turn back and forth the pages of the book in reading it. The number of words which call for glossing is naturally large, but not so large as one might have expected. On a six inch page of text they never occupy more than one-third of the page, to use a rough and ready measure, and seldom more than one-fourth or one-fifth. As they are printed in columns and amply spaced they are easy of reference. It is true that these glosses are not intended to supply a maximum, but a minimum of information. The texts are not predigested, and the reader is expected to exert some degree of observation and judgment. It does not seem, however, that any intelligent reader, who really wants to read the texts and will take some pains in doing so, should have any great difficulty in arriving at an adequate understanding of them. Certainly what he gets would be something infinitely better than the reading of modernizations could give him. Even the more special student will find some relief in reading texts which are not tail-heavy, as in the ordinary doctored Middle English editions and readers, with textual readings, notes, quantity marks, cedillas and italics. It was worth while preparing a book like this in which Middle English literature may be read primarily as literature, and it may safely be prophesied that the reader who goes to it only for literature will soon find himself developing into something of a grammarian and acquiring a considerable body of first-hand information concerning the language of the period. GEORGE PHILIP KRAPP COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 1916] Reviews Cor. The European war has already produced an extensive literature of its own. Mr. Laurie Magnus has made a book entitled The third great war, 1914-1915, out of the material which he assembled from a course of lectures delivered at Bristol before the Workers' Educational Association. He interprets the present war as a campaign against the Hohenzollerns just as two great campaigns were conducted earlier by European allies against the Bourbons and the Buonapartes. The result is a highly interesting, and in some respects, a brilliant little book. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. 194 p. $1.00.) Another war book which is an assembling of contributions of various authors who write from different points of view is Why Europe is at war. This question is answered from the viewpoint of France, England, Germany, Japan and the United States by Frederic R. Coudert, Frederick W. Whitridge, Edmund von Mach, Toyokichi Iyenaga and General Francis V. Greene, respectively. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. 170 p. $1.35.) Rear Admiral Stockton issued his Outlines of international law at the very moment when the European war was proving that much of his admirable work will have to be done over again. His treatment of the subject is clear, simple and readable. (New York: Charles (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1915. 615 p. $2.50.) been active even while In America and the new Mr. Norman Angell's pen has the great war is raging about him. world state he appeals to the people of the United States for leadership in the task of world organization. It goes without saying that his knowledge of the field which his book covers is complete and accurate and that his writing is very lucid and persuasive. (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1915. 305 p. $1.25.) A useful book for college teachers of ethics and for mature readers in that field is provided by Professor De Laguna of Bryn Mawr College, in his Introduction to the |