Worcester that I might have a chance to see the country, which proves that my conversion was genuine.

Mr. Waugh is one of those favored beings called artists. It is hardly fair to say "called artists," for many are that, without being favored by anything but their own conceit and other people's opinion. Mr. Waugh, however, is a real artist, alive to beauty and capable of expressing it beautifully in his chosen art. As must always be the case with any artist, or creator,-indeed the

terms

are synonomous,-Mr. Waugh considers his art to be the most important in the world.

"The lover of books cannot always live in a library; the lover of music cannot find anywhere a perpetual concert; the lover of painting cannot shut himself up in an art gallery; but the lover of landscape has his joy always with him. Even the hater of the landscape, if there could be such a man, could not escape it since it is always present. It does more for the aesthetic life of mankind than all the painting, sculpture, poetry and architecture in all the world taken together.

Probably Mr. Waugh's argument is right, but right or wrong, it is the proper frame of mind for an author on landscape gardening to be in. Nothing great can be accomplished with an ordinary, well-balanced out-look. If Columbus had been a perfectly normal man of a philosophic turn of mind, he probably would have said, "Yes, no doubt the world is round, but why make a fuss about it?"

This is not to imply that Mr. Waugh over-emphasizes the value. of a beautiful landscape,―merely

that he realizes that value more keenly than do most of us.

"Of course the student will visit the landscape-no, he will live with it-with an open mind and heart. He will be trying to see what the landscape has to offer, trying to hear what it has to tell. He will look long, quietly, silently, intently at the horizon, or at the distant valley, or at the mountains. And most of all, he will consciously seek their spiritual message. will know that as a man it is absolutely obligatory upon him to see something in the landscape more than the cow sees. Whatever he gets beyond what the cow gets is the spiritual harvest of the landscape. It is the only part which is of any human use.

He

It is important enough that any child should be attractive, but it seems almost necessary that twins should be so. The Natural Style in Landscape Gardening has an equally attractive twin in Outdoor Theaters (Richard G. Badger).

Mr. Waugh appears to have visited every outdoor theater in the world, and to have furnished pictures of all the most attractive ones. The little cuts at the beginning and end of this article were taken from the book. Outdoor Theaters is no idle table-book, for it contains very practical information on building, lighting, acoustics, and setting for outdoor auditoriums.

The problem of suitable productions is also considered. Too often outdoor theaters are treated after the manner of the bride's new silverware, to be used irrespective of whether it is intended. for the food served or not. There are enough entertainments appropriate for outdoor production

and Mr. Waugh should prove himself an international benefactor in discussing them.

Two more unusually beautiful books are, Rings by George Kunz and The Book of the Peony by Mrs. Edward Harding,-both Lippincott books. Mrs. Harding has undoubtedly compassed at least one of the requirements of an education, to know everything about something. Here I had been going along admiring peonies whenever I had the chance,which in our modern gardens is far too seldom,-without realizing that the peony had a history and a mythology, and any number of branches to its illustrious family. Of course I should have known that behind that high-bred beauty must have existed an old and honorable lineage.

once

Rings would make the famous fifty-seven varieties hide their heads, if they had any,-in shame. The countless countless illustrations are fairly bewildering.

No book-review section these days is complete without comment upon Lord Dunsany. Certainly any one of the Plays of the Gods and Men (Luce and Company) would prove that the comment was not out of place, for each play expresses life in terms of art.

In The Tents of the Arabs, we see the king longing for the life of the camel-driver and the camel-driver longing for the life of the king. That is life all right, but in the play each attains his ambition, which is sure-enough art.

The Laughter of the Gods portrays the power of woman's discontent, but by an epochal stroke of art, an earthquake swallows the nagging women and their suffering husbands.

Two other interesting volumes of plays are Masterpieces of Modern Spanish Drama (Duffield and Company) and Plays by Jacinto Benavente (Scribners).

Criticising a work of criticism may seem rather like gilding refined gold and painting the lily, but Present-Day American Poetry by H. Houston Peckham (Richard G. Badger) is no ordinary work of criticism. It is a volume of those crystalized bits of conversation known as essays. I do like a good essay and there is no danger of being surfeited with good ones,too few are written. I like a writer whose thoughts are interesting enough when he writes. them as they come without finding it necessary to let them issue from under the fierce mustachios of Duke Bombolasto or from the rosy lips of Maraschina. I can be impressed by ideas without their being written in futurist verse which one can be almost sure what it means after reading it a dozen times. Mr. Peckham has very interesting ideas and he expresses them in a very interesting way. In fact he possesses in a rare degree what Lowell called the great antiseptic,-style. To read the book is like listening to an appreciative and witty friend talk about his favorite authors and at the same time intersperse the conversation very freely with his own very original ideas.

To refrain from giving a very few quotations from a very quotable book is impossible.

"An English station-porter, when asked once by an American traveller why British railways do not give checks instead of continuing the antiquated and stupid system of pasting labels upon

luggage, replied naively: 'Well, sir, it never 'as bean done.' Obviously, however, the fact that honoring the writers of one's own day is a thing which 'never 'as bean done' is no reason in the world why we should not be the first generation to break away from a foolish prejudice."

"We have been so long in the habit of supposing that good literature is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean and was ended with about the year 1892, that to voice a contrary opinion is heresy of the rankest sort."

"Poetry is the most despised of all the fine arts. That fact is so obvious, so patent, that nobody attempts to dispute it. We may view the fact with sorrow, or we may view it with indifference; but at all events we recognize it. In the comic weeklies the poet is invariably an unkempt, unshorn, unbalanced creature who has no business outside the lunatic asylum. 'Poetry,' remarked a wag a few years ago, 'is not a pursuit: it's a disease.' In the slang parlance of the vulgar, the poet is spoken of as an individual who has 'bats in his belfry' or who 'isn't all there.' In real life the poet may or may not be as thus depicted; but at any rate he is so much a persona non grata that he is kept busy apologizing for his art or complaining that he is not appreciated. A prominent British bard of our day writes of "The Muse in Exile,' and a prominent American contemporary, in querulous sonnet, 'every other Art considered more than

a

Song's high holiness.' Broadly speaking, nobody loves a poet." In speaking of the extreme realists' priding themselves on their portrayal of truth, Mr. Peckham says:

"But here let us pause and proceed to satisfy ourselves on one point. As regards this stern truth, is it, in the largest sense, truth at all? If I photograph Farmer Brown's pig-sty and label it a typical scene on Mr. Brown's farm, am I altogether just to the good farmer? If I publish a photograph of Whitechapel Houndsditch, and place under it the inscription, 'A representative London thoroughfare, am I more truthful than if I had done the same with Picadilly or Regent Street? Has an ash-pile or a garbage-heap necessarily artistic value, even in prose, than a lilac-bush or a pansy-bed?"

ог

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Present Day American Poetry is only one of the topics of literary interest which the author discusses. In fact the whole book goes far to prove as the author contends that literature is not dead and is not bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean.

Another new addition to Badger's Studies in Literature is A Study of Virgil's Descriptions of Nature by Mabel Louise Anderson. The work will prove invaluable to any teacher or student of Virgil.

Three very interesting books on the war are: With the French Flying Corps by Carroll Dana Winslow (Scribners), The Dangerman Plot Unmasked by Andre Cheradame (Scribners), and A German Deserter's War Experience (B. W. Huebsch).

Any work which helps in the mental classification of children is bound to be valuable. This handing out of an arbitrary educational diet to any and every child already is beginning to stop. Testing Juvenile Mentality by Norbert J. Melville (Lippincott) presents in a handy form, methods for classification of children by mental age.

A work of great interest is Hindu Mind Training (Longmans, Green & Company). It gives many examples of the Hindu method of training what we call the subconscious self, through the telling of stories and asking of questions. It is a method that can be very easily and successfully used because it is perfectly natural.

The educational world is finally reaching the startling realization that mental education is not entirely sufficient and that possibly a little attention to moral training may compass no really lasting harm. Many parents dread sending their sons to college just because they realize that temptations to be

good fellow and a regular guy are bound to come then, just as the home influence is cut off.

Bowdoin College has decided to do her bit towards raising college moral standards by giving a copy of Sex Hygiene by Frederic H. Gerrish, M. D. (Richard G. Badger) to every member of the entering class. The choice of book is a wise one for the author, as President Hyde said, has made his work "scientifically direct and ethically elevated."

A new addition to Badger's Human Personality Series is SocioAnthropometry by B. L. Stevenson. The work is a critique of the popu

lar fallacy that people inherit their mentality as they do their flesh and blood.

Prison reform should be of interest to any conscientious citizen. I believe it is the duty of everyone to visit a prison and see conditions for himself. I know this is true because I never have done it. But at any rate, we can all read The Offender by Burdette G. Lewis (Harpers) which is very much worth while.

One of the new novels, The Wheel of Destiny by Samuel H. Borofsky (Richard G. Badger) strongly suggests Disraeli's statement, "I do not want a wreath of flowers placed upon the head of the Jew, but I want you to know him as he is."

The book is not a dry treatise on the wrongs of the Jewish race contrasted with their admirable traits, for it is an exciting story of adventure from the mines of Siberia to the rubber plantations of Ecuador.

The story carried me back to the time when as a small child in Russia I had made a little Jewish boy's nose bleed. I cannot remember any offence he had given me, as a matter of fact I think he was a very well-behaved little boy. I must have looked upon the act as a deed of prowess called for by the requirements of polite society.

Although Russia is the by-word for mis-treatment of the Jews, she is far from having a corner on the market. It is really funny now that so few of us take our Christianity with any bigotry, that our prejudice against the Jews should have remained so strong as it has. I am not entirely convinced that people who