"Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life," by her son, Charles Edward Stowe, and her grandson, Lyman Beecher Stowe, has the quality of an autobiography. It is largely composed of letters and other autobiographical material, collected, compared, and skillfully adjusted so as to make a continuous and coherent narrative. Mrs. Stowe's son and grandson have kept their own personalities in the background and might almost be said to be editors rather than authors. Mrs. Stowe was so dramatically successful as a reformer that her qualities as an artist have been obscured by her reputation as a reformer. Temperamentally she was both artist and reformer; and the temperaments were not inconsistent. For to see the truth and to portray it is the instinctive ambition of both. He who is in love with his own method of reform and can see nothing but evil in his adversaries is only a pseudoreformer; he who is ambitious to produce an effect on his readers and draws his picture with this purpose in view is only a pseudo-artist. The true artist and the true reformer are alike in this, that they have a passion for the truth and a desire to portray facts as they are the difference between them is that the artist has a passion only to portray; the reformer also desires to portray truly, but his prime desire is so to portray as to bring in a better day. That Mrs. Stowe was possessed by a passion for the truth of life this volume makes very clear. She made an unconscious study of slavery before she wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin." She wrote it to tell the truth about slavery, hoping to promote a kindlier feeling between North and South, and at first succeeded in producing that effect. She gave to her readers with equal fidelity the best and the worst that slavery could do. This willingness, nay, eagerness, to portray its better side separated her by an impassable gulf from those Abolitionists to whom slavery was only the sum of all villainies and the slaveholder only a manstealer. So, again, for "The Minister's Wooing," which is artistically a better book than "Uncle Tom's Cabin,” Mrs. Stowe had beforehand unconsciously prepared herself by studying the New England theology of the eighteenth century, and had experienced in her own soul some of its effects, and she portrayed with equal fidelity its virtues and its faults. This separated her from those polemical theologians who could see in Calvinism only a cruel paganism and who marched about the Puritan Jericho vainly expecting that its walls would fall at the blowing of their horns. To-day "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is an excellent book for the young person to read who wishes to get a true and at the same time a dramatic picture of slavery; and "The Minister's Wooing is an excellent book for him to read if be wishes to get a true and at the same time a dramatic picture of New England Puritanism; and this biography will give him an

intimate acquaintance with the author of both books. (Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. $1.50.)

Many intelligent women are at a loss to marshal arguments of fundamental value against equal suffrage. There are several reasons for this situation. Most of them have felt secure against any change in the electorate because only a minority favor it, and they have not given the subject real study. They have shrunk from the wordy contests invariably attending a difference of opinion on this question, and have relied upon their instinct, which is usually opposed to the change. The effect of this silence among women in general has been unfortunate, for it has given to the supporters of equal suffrage too clear a field for their activities. A sensible, witty, well-equipped champion of the majority has come forward in the author of "The Ladies' Battle," Miss Molly Elliot Seawell, an accomplished writer and a clear thinker She dedicates her effective little book to those of her country women who think for themselves, and she approaches her subject with the seriousness it demands. The two basic reasons against woman suffrage in the United States which she gives are these: First, no electorate has ever existed, or ever can exist, which cannot execute its own laws. Second, no voter has ever claimed, or ever can claim, maintenance from another voter. These points should be memorized, and with their accompanying thoughts will prove an effective defensive battery. It must be noted that these reasons are carefully limited for exactness to our own country, and cut off all useless talk of plural voting or property votes which exist in European countries. The fundamental truth that "force converts law into government" is one to attract thoughtful consideration among women who advocate equal suffrage. The second principle is simply another way of saying that all voters stand on the same level-a relentless bit of logic. "The right to maintenance is what a man gives up for his vote," says Miss Seawell, in concise phrase. She relies upon the dictum of the Supreme Court to dispose of the fallacy that voting is a natural right, it having been pronounced, not a right, but a privilege, by that authority. She makes a strong attack upon the suffragists as she points out their limited knowledge of the intricacies and vast relations of government, many of their accepted leaders springing suddenly into prominence with no equipment of knowledge. Circumscribed philanthropy is good in its place, but it is by no means all that is required in modern government. A significant omission is noted among the subjects brought up by the reforming suffragists. No pronouncement upon the evils of divorce has emanated from their councils. Miss Seawell finds in the suffragist cause a distinct foreshadowing of Socialism. It is impos

sible in a brief review to give in detail the many telling points of Miss Seawell's argument. It would also be unwise, for 66 every woman who thinks for herself" should read the little book, and not avoid it because she is a suffragist, as a believer in that doctrine said the other day. (The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.)

No book has yet appeared which better deserves reading by teachers of Old Testament history, and by ordinary Bible readers also, than the compact manual entitled "Egypt and Israel," by the eminent Egypt ologist Professor Petrie. Five ages of Egyptian civilization had passed before the westward migration of the Hebrew from the Euphrates began, about 2270 B.C. His contact with Egypt dates from Abram's entrance into Canaan, then dominated by Egypt, about 2110 B.C. The influence of Egypt upon Israel, both politically and in religion, runs forward, says Professor Petrie, into the Christian period, and still endures in paganized transformations of primitive Christianity. More conservatively than some critics, Professor Petrie regards Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob with his children as historical characters. He finds evidence that parts of the text of Joshua and Judges were in shape before 970 B.C. He clears up obscure points in the history, and devotes an interesting chapter to the little-known fact of the rise of a Jewish state and temple in Egypta New Jerusalem-in the second century B.C. In the excavations which recently brought this to light Professor Petrie was himself engaged. While this meaty little book is a summary review of a wide field for the general reader, questions of interest to those who are no novices in its subject are also discussed. Its statements, copiously illustrated, carry such weight as may be ascribed to a writer than whom none has done more to illuminate Biblical narratives by his excavations in Bible lands. (E. S. Gorham, New York. $1.)

A work of high merit and value is "The Book of the Prophet Isaiah" as edited by Dr. G. W. Wade, of St. David's College, Wales. Professor Walter Lock, of Oxford, general editor of the series of Westminster Commentaries, in which this volume is included, observes that "The Prophecies of Isaiah "is a title parallel to "The Laws of Moses" and "The Psalms of David;" it means the prophecies of Isaiah himself and of later writers writing in his spirit and adopting his teaching." Dr. Wade distinguishes at least three contributors to the canonical Isaiah, the second being the author of chapters xl.-lv., and the third of chapters lvi.-lxvi. But whether the third is an individual, or a group of writers, as Cheyne and Dillman hold, he regards as still an open question. The grounds for this division of the book, the historical setting of each section, and the theology pervading each, form a well-wrought Introduction to the text in the Revised Version and the

copious and illuminating commentary going with it. The editor finds frequent opportunity to improve upon the version given in the text, and is evidently mindful of the needs of the ordinary reader. A prominent feature of the work is its recognition of the entire compatibility of the requirements of sound scholarly criticism with Christian faith. The larger horizon of faith to which such criticism leads up is finely shown in the view taken of the Messianic passages of the second Isaiah, e.g., chapters lii. 13 and liii. Originally applied to the pious and suffering nucleus of Israel, then in the New Testa ment to Jesus, it now awaits complete fulfillment in the Messianic mission of the Church, as the body of which the Christ is the head. (Edwin S. Gorham, New York. $4.)

An Englishman, convicted of illegal pracobtaining business credit, tells us in “A tices ("window dressing," he calls it) in Holiday in Gaol" of his prison experiences. He really had a good time, excellent food, light work, good treatment. In fact, he thinks that in some of the English prisons the convict's lot is a good deal pleasanter than that of the prison warder. He writes a lively narrative, and his story has the ring of genuineness. (The Macmillan Company, New York. $1.25.)

If we were to select the most salient point in each of half a dozen novels before us, we should say of Dr. Weir Mitchell's "John Sherwood, Ironmaster" (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, $1.20) that it contains a uniquely exact study of dangerous insanity contrasted skillfully with the sane view of life attained in the Maine woods by an ironmaster who has ruled men and work but has to learn the art of living and the secret of health; in Mr. Mark Lee Luther's "The Sovereign Power" (The Macmillan Company, New York, $1.30) the striking thing is the plot use of aviation as an aid to love and rivalry; in "The Second Amendment" (The Hudson Publishing Company, New York, $1.40) we have a political story, told with considerable vigor and some sense of humor, by an author who has himself been a United States Senator; in "The Old Dance Master," by W. R. Patterson, who has written under the name of Benjamin Swift (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, $1.25), there are exaggerated but distinctly humorous pictures of life in the lower grades of society, while the character work is notably excellent; in "The Rose with a Thorn," by Priscilla Craven (D. Appleton & Co., New York, $1.25), there is unusual cleverness in the talk of the English women of society who form its chief characters, although the plot is conventional and the incidents are not always agreeable to one's taste; in "The Tennessee Shad" (The Baker & Taylor Company, New York, $1.20) Mr. Owen Johnson works a little extravagantly the vein he started so amusingly in "The Varmint," and presents the rollicking fun of American school-boys with all manner of queer incidents.