years of toning down until they blend and run together like the faded tints of an Eastern rug. The author's rhapsody upon the color display of the desert seems to have its warrant in a hundred marvellous pictures that he describes. I think it was. the Rev. Mr. Haweis who once suggested the feasibility of writing symphonies in color-color notes instead of musical notes. Some of the concerts given for this author's benefit in the desert must have been worth seeing. A book by an artist, who is also a poet and a clever writer, with such a text cannot fail to find an appreciative audience.

Also dealing with interesting parts of our great West, but in more matter-of-fact fashion, is Our National Parks, by John Muir. Most, if not all, of these chapters describing the glories of the Yellowstone and the Yosemite have already appeared in the columns of the Atlantic Monthly, but they are none the less welcome in book form with the added advantage of maps and excellent illustrations. Probably the greatest service rendered to the nation by the organization of these parks is the possibility of saving some of the wonderful trees of the Sierras, which, unless protected from the rapacity of speculators, will soon be but a memory. It is notorious that every civilized nation can give us lessons on the management and care of forests. Our conduct toward our forests has been that of a rich spendthrift who has inherited a magnificent estate and left it to be plundered and wasted at will. Within the last few years it has become evident to the most careless that our forest wealth is by no means inexhaustible; of the so-called "big trees," the giant Sequoia, many of which were doubtless living when Christ was born, but a few groves remain, and these have to be guarded by troops of cavalry. Nothing that the author can say concerning the value of the

OUR NATIONAL PARKS. By John Muir. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Illustrated. 12mo, $1.75.

work done by our Government in establishing these public parks is half strong enough. Every traveller who visits them will be ready to say two words where this author says one.

The difficulties of travel in Tibet, the hardships and probable dangers to be encountered by anyone who ventures far into that forbidden land, seem to act as an incentive to countless travellers; hardly a year passes that we do not have a book of travel dealing more or less interestingly with this region. In Tibet and Chinese Turkestan, the record of three years' exploration, by Captain H. H. T. Deasy, a British officer, is so largely a technical account of the topography of the country rather than of its inhabitants, as to make this sumptuous volume rather dry reading. Captain Deasy, however, went for the purpose of making surveys, and probably accomplished much valuable work at large expenditure of personal inconvenience. His measurements from peak to peak often cost days of tedious labor-sometimes with the thermometer far below the freezing point. Upon one journey, which lasted several months, his caravan travelled seven hundred and seventy-six miles, of which distance he walked more than half. the sixty-six animals, ponies, donkeys, and sheep, the latter making excellent beasts of burden in that country, only six remained at the close. Every traveller in Tibet records his amazement at the height of the mountains and the bewildering array of peaks, and many readers may be inclined to incredulity when the giants they know

Of

such as Mont Blanc, for instance-are spoken of as pigmies compared with these Asiatic heights. Captain Deasy, however, made careful measurements of a number of peaks, and found that heights of 20,000 feet were so common as to excite no particular wonder among the natives, who are

IN TIBET AND CHINESE TURKESTAN, By Captain H. H. T. Deasy. Illustrated. Longmans, Green & Co., 8vo, $5.00 net.

good mountaineers and stand the climbing fairly well. Several peaks measured exceeded 24,000 feet.

Another book on Tibet, Archibald John Little's Mount Omi and Beyond, the record of a walking tour on the Tibetan border, with his wife as companion, is more interesting to the average reader because it tells more of the people met with. Upon the whole they are not very interesting and the reverse of hospitable. The villages are poverty-stricken; the people squalid, ignorant, superstitious, and ready to annoy the "foreign devil" at every opportunity. Both of these books upon Tibet are well illustrated from photographs taken often under most discouraging conditions; the Chinaman has an idea that every camera is inhabited by a demon who will bring misfortune to the neighborhood as a whole, and in particular to the person toward whom it is pointed. It is to be hoped that travellers in Tibet get more satisfaction out of their wanderings than such books as these might lead the reader to suppose. To be lost on trackless plains for weeks at a time, half-frozen in mountain-passes, half-starved, cheated and stoned by the people they meet, seems a large price to pay for the scraps of information thus gathered.

Mexico as I Saw It, by Mrs. Alec Tweedie, the author of "Through Finland in Carts," a book which has had no little success, is a pleasant, gossipy account of our southern neighbor that anyone who contemplates a trip to the land of the Aztecs, especially if a woman, cannot do better than study. Mrs. Tweedie's account of the family and social life in Mexico-the love-making, church-going, housekeeping, etc.-is one of the most entertaining we have had, and would give opportunity for endless quotation did space.

MOUNT OMI AND BEYOND. By Archibald John Little. Illustrated. Heinemann, Svo, $3.50.

MEXICO AS I SAW IT. By Mrs. Alec Tweedie. Illustrated. The Macmillan Co.

but permit. The book is also full of excellent photographs. Another Mexican study upon a less pretentious scale, To the Pacific and Mexico, by the veteran journalist, A. K. McClure, is a capital sketch made up of letters to the Philadelphia Times. The author wonders, as will many of his readers, that so many travellers go to Europe to find mediæval scenes and people when they can find them right at our own door. There are few peasants so superstitious as those to be found in a country where every telegraph pole has to be decorated with a cross in order to prevent the natives from cutting it down for firewood.

Two books of African travel, the Sands of Sahara, by Maxwell Sommerville, and Abyssinia, by Herbert Vivian, do not tell us much that is not already known, but are fairly interesting to the general reader, especially the last named. Both are elaborately illustrated with excellent photographs that tell quite as much as the text. A far better written volume, although dealing with more familiar ground, is Dr. Henry Otis Dwight's Constantinople and Its Problems, one of the best recent sketches of life in the Sultan's capital. Upon the whole Constantinople is not so dreadful a city to live in as many travellers would have one believe. It is often the case that tourists return from the East saying that they gave a sigh of relief, as from some hidden danger, when the minarets of Stamboul faded behind them; they also found, as did Dr. Dwight, the city itself something of a whited sepulchre, a thing of beauty only when seen from a distance. Some of Dr. Dwight's stories of Turkish ignorance and conservatism are most amusing. amusing. For instance, he says that one

TO THE PACIFIC AND MEXICO. By A. K. McClure. Illustrated. J. B. Lippincott Co., 12mo, $1.00.

SANDS OF SAHARA. By Maxwell Sommerville. Illustrated. J. B. Lippincott Co., 8vo.

ABYSSINIA. By Herbert Vivian. Illustrated. Longmans, Green & Co., 8vo.

CONSTANTINOPLE AND ITS PROBLEMS. By Henry Otis Dwight. Illustrated. Fleming H. Revell Co., $1.25.]

night at a meeting of the members of a congregation held to welcome him, there was much talking, some music, and some complimentary addresses, which were applauded by vigorous clapping of hands. A day or two afterward he was called upon by an official with a message from the Pasha, who asked what the evening gathering had meant. The messenger said: "I know that you have some curious customs. You meet in the evening for prayer. I make no objection to that, although no other Christians do it. I know, too, that when you pray, you use a piano, and I make no objection to that, although I cannot see what a piano has to do with prayer. But it has been reported that on that evening you also had clapping of hands. The Sultan's orders are precise, to learn what that clapping of hands signified. The gathering must have been for a purpose hostile to the interests of the government, for people do not clap hands when they pray. We do not interfere with your religious freedom, with your meeting in the evening, with your praying, your singing or your piano-playing, but what was the clapping of the hands? I am bound to tell. I am bound to tell you that if it is repeated, we shall arrest every man, woman, and child who enters that house." Of course all necessary explanations were made with a grave countenance, for the affair was very grave. A similarly patient, courteous influence has to be exerted to remove the suspicions excited by the books of the missionaries. In publishing a hymn-book recently, the permit to issue the book was delayed for some weeks, while the Board of Turkish Censors had the music played over and analyzed in order to make sure that the hymn tunes were not of an heretical nature in politics. Not long ago a decorative cover was prepared for the Turkish version of Dr. Henry van Dyke's story of "The Other Wise Man." It represented a wise man gazing at the star of the east. The book-cover has been modified by the Turk

ish censor, who cut out the star in the picture, for a star symbolizes hope, and in Turkey hope is necessarily held to have political import. In one of the books published by the mission last year, in connection with remarks on sincerity, this verse was quoted: "If a man say, 'I love God,' and hateth his brother, he is a liar." The censor erased this verse. He said it was an insult to Mohammedanism, for the text might call to mind the massacres where Turks were charged with killing their Armenian brethren, and the verse would imply that they were liars because they also claimed to love God. Dr. Dwight insisted upon his right to quote scripture for legitimate ends. Then the censor proposed a compromise. He said that the words of St. John might be made unobjectionable by a very slight modification. "Let the verse read," said he, "If a man say, 'I love God,' and hateth his sister, he is a liar." Women do not count for much in oriental countries, and are not commonly killed in massacres.

Dr. Dwight admits that some Christians, especially of the Greek type, and European civilization, have not helped the reputation of Christianity in Constantinople. A most interesting chapter is devoted to schools and school-teachers. One of the great needs is of better text-books, those in use being simply versions of European books translated or adapted without reference to oriental conditions, and, consequently, often unintelligible to the students.

Mr. Rider Haggard deserted his English farm long enough last year to make a trip through Palestine, Italy, and Cyprus, which he now describes in a pleasant volume entitled, A Winter Pilgrimage. Like all travellers, Mr. Haggard went to see the Jews wail at the wall of the Temple. The scene is often described as touching. He found it grotesque even to

A WINTER PILGRIMAGE IN PALESTINE, ITALY, AND CYPRUS. By H. Rider Haggard. Illustrated. Longmans, Green & Co., 8vo, $4.00.

sadness. He says: "Facing the wall about a score of Jews-men and women of all ages were engaged in wailing.' The women really wept with intervals for repose, but the men, as strange a collection of human beings as ever I saw, did not give way to their feelings to that extent. They rubbed their faces against the huge blocks, which occasionally they kissed, or read from the scripture, or muttered prayers. One tall, pale man attracted my particular attention. He was clad in what looked like a dirty night-gown, surmounted by a very greasy fur cap. Thrusting his nose literally into a crack in the wall, he rocked his body backward and forward, pecking at the cavity like a nut-hatch at the bark of a tree, while he repeated prayers with the utmost fervor. When we arrived he was thus employed, nor had he ceased from his devotions as we departed. Nothing disturbed him. Even when a visitor walked up, held a camera to his head as though it were a pistol, touched the button and returned, remarking, 'Got him,' he showed neither surprise nor anger. In looking at these Jews, many of whom, I am told, live upon charity, there arose

in my practical western mind the words of the old saying: God helps those who help themselves.' If it pleases them to say their prayers in public, by all means let them do so. But surely they might add to them other more practical attempts to recover the heritage of their race. For instance, they might persuade their wealthier brethren to buy out the Turk. There are a dozen gentlemen on the London Stock Exchange who could do this. without much individual inconvenience. It is inconceivable to me that people so earnest as these poor Jews doubtless are can carry on their devotions with a mind undisturbed by such surroundings as I saw. All about the principal actors, and mixed up with them, was a motley crowd-beggars, halt, maimed, and disease-stricken. Men with tins the size of a half-gallon pot, which they shook before you, howling for baksheesh. Then to complete the picture in the background a small crowd of European and American sightseers, with their dragomen, some seated on boxes or rough benches, others standing in groups laughing, smoking, and photographing the more noteworthy characters."

Philip G. Hubert, Jr.

IN the annals of book illustration the

name of Daniel Nicolaus Chodowiecki holds a prominent place. He was not a great artist, but he was a talented and exceedingly interesting one, whose quiet grace and facility cause one to overlook his lack of power. It is the spirit in which his etchings are executed which, together with the charming artistic qualities of the work, have caused them to preserve their interest to this day. This Prussian artist, mainly self-taught, was an acute observer of the life about him, and rendered it with a sure eye for character, good and bad, and with a faithful adherence to facts in his delineation of what he saw, with a re

sultant realism which is apt to strike one as a little unsophisticated, or, better, injudicious. We get bald statements, but not arrangements of facts. That, undoubtedly, is why some have found most satisfaction in his simplest compositions, with least figures, such as the costume plates. The satirical vein in which he at times pictures the follies of the day (as in his contrasts of real and affected virtues) in one or two instances breaks forth into a spirit of caricature which appears like a very weak reflection of Gillray or Rowlandson. But it is generally well-tempered and subdued, though telling, and leads one to question the appropriateness