subject, persists in maintaining the highest standards of criticism. A philosophic breadth of view-a quality eminently characteristic of the writer-is discernible in the treatment of different periods, the rise and decadence of the art in Greece and Italy, for instance. Especially noticeable is the chapter on gothic sculpture during the Middle Ages, a subject receiving scant

attention in works on sculpture, owing, most likely, to its connection with architecture. Form, sentiment, and monumental effect in recent sculpture, receive a due share of attention. The last chapter, in which recent art is compared with the Greek standard, adds no little to the interest of this valuable and instructive work. M. L.

A Romance of Byzantium*

"T

HEOPHANO" is

primarily and

really history, an attempt to relate authentic facts in deep color, not verifiable in every detail out of written documents, yet wholly true to the historic tones. No piece of dilettantism, it is the production of one, now long well known as an accomplished scholar, a traveler, a powerful writer, who has kept himself well abreast of the acquisitions of new learning and new culture, and who, in this case, has both thoroughly worked the contemporary records at first hand, and laboriously mastered the mass of elucidation and dissertation due to an army of specialists. * *

It was inevitable that a story of Byzantium in the tenth century should take a shape not so much of tragedy as of melodrama, and the author has thrown himself into the melodramatic elements of his tale with extraordinary force and spirit. He has not always resisted the temptation to overdo these elements, and to push animation to violence. Still, the temper of the age was in essence barbaric, and any narrative without a sort of violence would be untrue to local and historic color, just as it would be in a romance of Petersburg or Belgrade at certain moments of the nineteenth century. Every competent judge will admire the energy with which the high and strenuous pitch is from beginning to end swiftly and unfalteringly sustained.

Mr. Harrison is a recognized master of language; not always wholly free from excess, but direct, powerful, plain, with none

*THEOPHANO. By Frederic Harrison. Harper & Bros.

of our latter-day nonsense of mincing and posturing, of elliptic brevities, cryptic phrase, vapid trick, and the hundred affectations and devices of ambitious insincerity. He has the signal merit of looking his readers in the eye; his periods, even when we most dissent from their substance, are alive with the strong and manly pulse of the writer's own personality. From a review by the Hon. John Morley in "The Nineteenth Century."

IT

Paris and Its Story*

T would be well-nigh impossible to tell, the story of Paris without catching at least some reflection of its sparkle and charm. The word Paris has an almost magical sound, and even though the present-day chronicler of the city has no magician's wand, but wields only the commonplace pen, he must of necessity interest us somewhat. Mr. Okey has not written the story of Paris, but has given to us the history of the French Monarchy. Paris becomes the background of the picture instead of the foreground. When we are thirsting to know the intimate details of Parisian life, to refresh our memories with the history of her stones, we are treated to long, dull and unnecessary accounts of the foreign policy of a king or the love affairs of a queen. Mr. Okey has missed a great opportunity, for it does not fall to every man to sing the praises of Paris. Of any other great city could we better pardon the lifelessness and dullness of the picture, but of Paris-no. The writer who essays to tell us the story of Paris is con

*PARIS AND ITS STORY. By T. Okey. The Macmillan Co.

fronted not by any difficulty of obtaining material, but by the nice point of selection. "Think of the city of Paris, where all the best of the realms of nature and art in the whole earth are open to daily contemplation, a world-city where the crossing of every bridge or every square recalls a great past, and where at every street corner a piece of history has been unfolded." This is the city that it should have been Mr. Okey's joy to describe. The erudition, the research are here, but the spirit is lacking. Indeed, the author writes as a politician, and at that not an unprejudiced one. He is often carried away by his personal views, writing bitterly and heatedly on several points of policy and kingly attribute. Once he has disburdened himself of his duty toward the monarchy of France, the book toward the end becomes more interesting. The varied scenes of Paris flit before our eyes; we are taken to revisit old haunts and to revive dormant memories; we are regaled with pleasant gossip and old-time stories. The ghosts of notable men and women who trod and loved the streets of Paris-for every Frenchman is her lover-pass before us. -LONDON ACADEMY AND Literature.

I

History of Criticism*

N this stately volume Professor Saintsbury completes his 'History of Criticism" with a review of one of the most attractive periods which the historian of criticism has to record-the period of regeneration beginning simultaneously in several countries about the middle of the eighteenth century. Prof. Saintsbury is a fit person to write the history of this great movement of emancipation, as his own sympathies are entirely in favor of it. The awakening of sound taste and the overthrow of merely traditional dogmas are a pure delight to him, and he celebrates his theme with something of the glow of victory, as though he had himself fought under the banner of Lessing or Coleridge. If there is a defect in his execution, it is that this personal element becomes almost too

*A. HISTORY OF CRITICISM AND LITERARY TASTE IN EUROPE: FROM THE EARLIEST TEXTS TO THE PRESENT DAY. By George Saintsbury. In three volumes. Vol. III., Modern Criticism.

dominant. The historian is sometimes forgotten in the critic. We learn too little of what the writers under Professor Saintsbury's review actually said and thought, and too much of what Professor Saintsbury himself thinks ought to be said about them. This detracts little from the reader's pleasure; the critic in Professor Saintsbury is born, the historian merely made, and his most critical writing is his best.

His vigorous, almost pugnacious, handling of critical themes preserves his pages from the dullness incident to literary histories; while on the other hand the keenness of his interest frequently betrays him into discursiveness, almost into loquacity. If everything irrelevant to the theme were expunged, the volume would indeed lose in interest almost as much as in bulk, but would, with its associates, have some prospect of reaching posterity in another character than as a book of reference. The present volume might almost stand as a book by itself, so widely is the criticism of modern times separated from the period of lifeless rules which intervened between it and the great days of ancient criticism.

Professor Saintsbury's survey is most comprehensive; few critics of importance of any nation have escaped him. We are rather surprised to see but a cursory reference to Hegel, whose influence has been great, and whose æsthetics are as intelligible as his metaphysics are obscure. In general, however, the scales of comparative importance are most equitably adjusted; perhaps if some recent names had been entirely omitted more room might have been allotted to great but desultory critics like Schopenhauer, who, proceeding on no definite system, can only be illustrated by liberal quotation.-Richard Garnett in the LONDON ACADEMY AND LITERATURE.