and in our present great world-crisis, man discovers that he has a soul. "Common diversions divert us no longer; our habits and thoughts are searched by the glare of the conviction that man's life. is not the ease that a peace-loving generation has found it or thought to make it, but the awful conflict with evil which philosophers and saints have depicted; and it is in their abundant testimony to the good and beautiful that we find support for our faith, and distraction from a grief that is intolerable constantly to face, nay impossible to face without that trust in God which makes all things possible." In such fine terms does the Poet Laureate disclose the purpose and scope of his selection; and right nobly, we think, has he achieved his aim.

It would be an easy, but, we believe, a fruitless and mistaken task, to express wonder, or even regret, at the many striking partialities and rejections of our anthologists. Great poets must often yield place to humbler singers, and great spiritual leaders and philosophers keep silent while we listen to their lesser brethren. But, then, the great men are always accessible, and the gain is ours when a man of true taste and discernment brings forth and puts in circuFation the best things from second or third rate poets, especially of our own time. And so we are thankful that Mr. Bridges has a fondness for Darley and Dixon and Dolben and Hopkins and Yeats, for Rimbaud and Rivarol and Amiel, and above all, for Kabir. Were it not for these partialities of his, perhaps many a gem of purest ray serene would shed but little radiance in this darkling world. Besides, it would be a complete mistake to imgaine that the Laureate intended to make a collection of poetical specimens ; he does not even name his poets and philosophers except in the index. Each selection depicts a mood, and its fittingness is to be judged by its setting. If this be borne in mind, much unjust criticism will be avoided. We cannot approve Mr. Bridges' translation of the beginning of St. John's Gospel, "In the beginning was mind," for the object of the Gospel is to show that Christ was the eternal Word, or Image or Expression of God, revealed to men in time. And before taking leave of the book, we wish to note our further regret that the editor should use the term "myth" in reference to Our Lord's apocalypse of the Last Judgment, although, perhaps, he employs it in no heretical sense. We do him the honor of believing, too, that he will one day regret, when peace and quiet thoughts come home, the violent language he uses in reference to England's military enemies.

CHRIST'S EXPERIENCE OF GOD. By Frank H. Decker. Bos

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ton: The Pilgrim Press. $1.25 net.

It is hard to find a book in which truth and error are so commingled as in this volume from the pen of Mr. Decker, minister of the Church House in Providence, R. I. We gather the purpose and meaning of the work from the opening lines of the foreword, To my Book. In the name of Jesus Christ I send you to preach, to everyone who shall read your pages, his kingdom of God." With this idea in mind, the author bases his text on parables from the Gospels, and writes of the "religion" of Christ in its effects on Him and on His relation to God and men. The Kingdom of God is Christ's fellowship with God. From this "experience of God," or Christ's personal fellowship with the Almighty, Mr. Decker points the need of man's closer union with his Maker. This will be obtained when " Christ's experience of God is reproduced by men who in the process become themselves new Christs.” As a result man will reach a higher standard of perfection in his social relations, and be actuated by motives of true Christian Socialism.

The structure that Mr. Decker builds is deserving of much praise. The sweetness of life, the harmony of conscience and the peace of soul attendant upon "fellowship with Christ" are vividly brought before us. The whole work breathes of love of Christ and points toward that ideal.

But while the structure is built of many truths well stated, it is founded upon shifty sands of confusion and error. Christ's Experience of God is solely an appeal for a stronger Christianity, yet the writer by his conception and characterization of Christ, unmistakably denies the only real, substantial reason for it all— the only real foundation of Christianity—the Godhead and Divinity of Jesus Christ. He recognizes in Christ not the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity, but a great character who was raised to the "fellowship of God" by his love for his fellowmen. "Jesus was in the Father and the Father in him, only as he prayed that other men might be one in God and God in them." Again, Jesus passed "through the Kingdom of God to the perfection of God: that was the experience of the only man of our race who has sought and won a perfect character." These and other ideas show that the writer while professing Christianity has lost its spirit and substance, and like many other Protestant preachers has embraced Unitarianism.

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In this light that Christ was "a man plus God-a man whose union with God transformed him into the image of God," that "he would rebuke us sharply for our sin in making him equal with his Father," and that Christ's "motive for seeking him was that he might be qualified for larger usefulness in ministering to the world"-it is difficult to justify the plea which the book makes, for it casts aside the very essentials for Christian faith. And as a direct result of this the social service, for which Mr. Decker pleads so earnestly, is made empty and vain and becomes simply an aid toward pagan perfection.

It is a pity that such loftiness of purpose should be defeated by such looseness of thought and confusion of essentials. There is much that is good and inspiring in the book, but perhaps in that very thing lies the danger of the work, for many, moved emotionally by its high purpose, will fail to see where its false principles will lead them-away from, rather than towards, real Christianity.

Christ's Experience of God will not bear analysis along lines of cogent reasoning. It is based solely upon the self-assertion of the writer, mingled with a personal effusiveness that is at times very distasteful. The whole work is a reflection of many present phases of Protestantism-vague, loosely constructed, floating in space and merely the outgrowth of the intellectual vagaries of various individuals.

A HISTORY OF AMERICAN LITERATURE SINCE 1870. By Fred Lewis Pattee. New York: The Century Co. $2.00 net. This is a book of exceptional merit. It is a study of the important period of American letters that began with the Civil War and ended approximately with the last century. As long ago as 1873 Edmund Clarence Steadman had noted the epochal effect on literary expressions of the strife between the States. Other critics, from divergent points of view, had likewise remarked the same altered aspect of things. But it was left for the author of these pages to give us the first adequate portrayal of the cataclysm, and the first full account of the forces at play. This he has done with signal success and with unusual art.

The literary era that followed hard upon the peace of 1865 is not inaptly styled by Professor Pattee "the National Period." When the battle-clouds drifted from sight, the soul of new America shone from the sky like a noonday sun. With the sulphurous vapors vanished an exotic, imitative spirit in letters and thought.

A decadent and effete sentimentality of theme and treatment gave place to a literary atmosphere, native, fresh and exhilarating. There was a quickening, a renaissance. The stimulus was the grim shock and experience of war. The awakening was to a vigorous national spirit that flowered luxuriantly in a literature, often homely and uncouth, it is true, but always independent and sturdy.

The harbinger of the new life about to spread through the land was a veritable gale of laughter that swept from the West. In this peculiarly American school of humor, the history discerns the first token of the "new birth." Thereafter the movement is studied in the three prominent literary forms, poetry, fiction and the essay. The principle of evolution is duly emphasized, because here, if anywhere, it is, to use Brunetière's distinction, not merely a working hypothesis as in natural history, but a universal rule and unbroken law of literary development. Yet each author concerned is treated, not alone relatively, as simply a type of well-defined stage in the growth of a class, but also individually, as in himself a separate and interesting subject. To harmonize thus the new and the old in criticism calls for no small praise.

The appreciation of the foremost writers of the era is acute and consistently just. The research and disinterestedness that bespeak the competent critic are everywhere in evidence. Indeed it is rather the historian than the critic that pronounces. Yet to a keen and penetrating insight into the worth of the writings examined is joined a strong and sincere feeling for beauty and pathos. There is nothing either merely captious or purely academic in the judgments handed down.

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The style is sprightly, often to the point of jauntiness. The ear catches, too, a distinctly modern note in some of the phrases. It is infrequent, however, that there are such undignified lapses as, The clock factory made haste to burn." On the contrary, the prevailing tone of the language is that of scholarly elegance. This genial grace of form, added to the natural interest of the subject, tends to make the work singularly engaging. In short, we have here something new in books, which is authoritative enough for the desk of the advanced student or the teacher, and readable enough for the armchair of the man of general culture.

THE SONG OF ROLAND. Translated into English Verse by Leonard Bacon. New York: Yale University Press. $1.50. More than eight centuries ago, when the Norman hosts first

conquered England the song their minstrels raised upon the very field of Hastings was the already immortal Chanson de Roland. It is interesting to welcome this new English version of the great Charlemagne epic now, when once again France stands before the world with unsheathed sword—and stands, curiously enough, beside her ancient enemy against a common foe.

The reason—as he modestly puts it, the apology—for a new translation is given by Leonard Bacon quite simply: the old French masterpiece was "capable of many interpretations." But the all sufficient excuse for each new edition is summed up in the comment of Gaston Paris upon the great feudal romance: "At the entrance of the Sacred Way where are arrayed the monuments of......our literature, the Song of Roland stands like an arch massively built and gigantic; it is narrow, perhaps, but great in conception, and we cannot påss beneath it without admiration, without respect, without pride." Lovers of the sources, alike human and heroic, of Old World literature, will welcome this admirable volume of a New World university.

THE BELFRY. By May Sinclair. New York: The Macmillan Co. $1.35.

From the time of The Lady of Lyons the low-born husband of the high-born wife has been a favorite with dramatists and novelists, nor was his popularity with the public injured by his being almost always as unreal a figure as his prototype, Claude Melnotte for with rare exceptions he has been represented as possessing such graces and attainments that those born of high degree suffered by comparison. In The Belfry Miss Sinclair has dared to present her principal as a man of talent, clean-hearted, magnanimous, of high resolution and ardently loving, but incorrigibly and absurdly underbred, with petty vulgarities of behavior and mental outlook. That at the end of the novel he is established in the reader's affection is a distinguished achievement of Miss Sinclair's art.

Viola Thesiger, a descendant of gentle-people, plunges headlong into marriage with a writer, Tasker Jevons, who is outside. her social orbit not alone by birth and experience, but also by disqualifications of taste and behavior. The story of the nine subsequent years develops with much skill and penetration the power of trivialities to mar and rasp the fabric of love. The narrative is wholly in the hands of one of the characters, Furnival, Viola's