pose" the views of the author are skilfully veiled by many quotations from literary creations. A broad acquaintance with light literature is shown but the book is as dull and insipid as the society to which it so frequently turns.

THE ROMANCE OF PISCATOR. By Henry Wysham Lanier. Pp. 337. Henry Holt & Co., N. Y., 1904.

Of mediocre novels and stories there is no end; the world is flooded with books of this character. Some of these are more or less interesting, while others will not repay the time spent in their perusal. This little volume, while very light, is of some interest. While interesting to a degree, still the lack of strength is not apparent. The theme has in it so much more than the author has made use of, so much more than he has brought to light, that the reader is sorely disappointed. As the title suggests, the hero is a young fisherman. The story tells of his experiences, though none of these are very thrilling, both as a fisherman and as a lover of a certain young woman. As a fisherman his success is marked from the first; as a lover he has many trials and tribulations, but in the end he obtains his prize and reward.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE HUGUENOT SOCIETY OF SOUTH CAROLINA, NO. 11, 1904, pp. 47, paper, Charleston, S. C.

Happily more than a third of this number is given to original material in the publication of the wills, with translation, of South Carolina Huguenots. The remainder of the issue is given up to the report of the annual meeting on April 13 last, a brief memorial to Francis Marion, and essay on South Carolina Huguenots, and constitution and by-laws of the Society, with an index. The most important step taken by the organization is the determination to mark the sites of decayed Huguenot churches in South Carolina. The membership is two hundred sixty-four, a decline from pre

vious year although twenty-seven new members were recorded during the year. The loss is really only apparent as the officers heroically took the sensible business method of cutting off worthless dead heads with which nearly all learned organizations are cursed. Great knowledge often has a dull moral sense in financial matters, and the management of this society is to be warmly congratulated for bravely applying the knife to useless appendages.

Maynard Merrill & Co., of New York, have issued as No. 241 of their English Classic Series a booklet on The Southern Poets, edited by J. W. Abernethy, principal of the Berkeley Institute of Brooklyn. Lanier, Timrod and Hayne are taken as the representative poets; a few selections from each are given, with literary estimate and appreciation, original and quoted. There are a few notes and a two-page bibliography which indicates a rather shallow acquaintance with the steadily increasing literature of a subject which is attracting more and more of general interest. During the recent weeks the newspapers have been full of the saying that the South was coming into her own again politically. In pure literature her poets are commanding an attention which has never been given them before. (S. pp. 78, paper, mailing price 12 cents.)

The second annual Report of the Hon. Dunbar Rowland, director of the Department of Archives and History of Mississippi for the year ending Oct. 1, 1903, is an excellent presentation of what has been done in that State towards the official encouragement of history and is an earnest of what may be hoped for and expected in the future. The Report naturally has much to say on the coming publication by the U. S. Government of the Confederate Rosters of Mississippi and a list of such rosters now in the care of the State is printed. There is presented also a list of historical

portraits of public men recently acquired; a summary of the official journals of the various Governors, and many suggestions and outlines of future work for the Department, including an official and statistical Register and extended investigations for the history of the State in the archives of England, France and Spain. But with all this enthusiasm for manuscript sources the printed history is still treated officially with only contumely and neglect, for there are outside of official publications of the State "not over twenty books devoted to Mississippi matters in the State Library" (Nashville: 1904. O. pp. 61). Mr. Rowland has also recently published A Mississippi View of Race Relations in the South (Jackson, Miss., 1903. O. pp. 21).

In his Trans-Isthmian Canal Prof. C. H. Huberich, of the University of Texas, gives a scientific summary of treaties and diplomatic steps, with illustrations of public opinion, in our efforts towards building a canal across the narrow neck connecting the two Americas. He treats the subject from 1825 to 1904, basing his work largely on documentary material and other original sources. (Austin, Texas, pp. 31, boards.)

Perhaps another illustration of the connection between higher education and the racial suicide theory is The Spermatogenesis of Anax Junius by a woman, Caroline McGill, fellow in Zoology (volume 2, No. 5, July, 1904, University of Missouri Studies, pp. 15, with numerous illustrations, paper, 75 cts.). The paper is got up in the most approved form and is strewn with scientific terms, but how many men would like to marry a woman of so much zoological attainment?

Prof. W. L. Fleming of West Virginia University has issued a double number, four and five, of his reconstruction

documents with appropriate editing. He has four papers: public frauds in S. C., constitution of the Council of Safety (of S. C., 1870), local Ku Klux constitution (also of S. C.), and the '76 Association (in La., similar to Ku Klux). The first one consists of extracts from an investigation made by the state government after 1876.

Mrs. Jeannette Robinson Murphy, 361 West 55th street, New York City, has published an interesting folio entitled "Southern Thoughts for Northern Thinkers, and African Music in America." It contains several lectures or readings on the negro, some stories and anecdotes in negro dialect, two striking essays on negro music, and twenty-five or thirty slave "spirituals." The price of the book is $1.25 and it may be obtained from the author at the above address. It is well worth the price.

The Sunday News of Charleston, S. C., during the past summer, had a series of papers on the Gourdin family of that city. This was one of the families very active in social life there, and we have not so much a genealogy as a very interesting account of happenings during the early part of the nineteenth century.

PERIODICAL LITERATURE

WILLIAM AND MARY COLLEGE QUARTERLY, July, 1904, Vol. VIII, No. 1, pp. 72, $3.00 yearly, $1.00 singly, Williamsburg, Va.

Contents: 1. Correspondence of President John Tyler: Letter on religious freedom. 2 pp., of July 10, 1843, that the government had nothing to do with religion. Previously published by the American Jewish Historical Society.

2. Virginia Gazette (1752) Extracts from. (Continued.) 13 pp., chiefly advertisements of land and slaves.

3. Journal of the meetings of the President and masters of William and Mary College. (Continued.) 7 pp., of 1768-1769, administrative details, management of students even to ordering one to be whipped; from archives.

4. Marriage bonds at Oxford, Granville Co., N. C. 2 pp., the two decades before Revolution, official records.

5. Family records of the McAdam and Broun families of Northumberland Co., Va. 3 pp., from family Bibles, by Thos. L. Broun.

6. Will books at Annapolis. I pp., seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, abstracts.

7. Revolutionary soldiers of Berkeley Co., W. Va. 8 pp., official records bearing chiefly on commissions, pensions, and claims.

8. Meade family history by David Meade. (Continued.) 8 pp., chiefly biography of Andrew and David. No authorities given.

9. Diary of Col. Landon Carter. (Continued.) 8 pp., 1770-1771 daily events and planting matters, social life. Very interesting; history of manuscript.

10. Journal of Cuthbert Powell. (Continued.) 11 pp.,