four, Lord Rosebery, Joseph Chamberlain, John Morley, Sir William Harcourt, and others of like importance. Writing of such leaders and their work, Justin McCarthy has every advantage of personal acquaintance and close and prolonged observation. His judgments have the tone of competence and fairness. Of necessity the history of modern English politics passes in review as the arena of the activities of the celebrities here characterized. Of Balfour at his first appearance in the House of Commons, McCarthy says: "He was tall, slender, graceful, and pale, with something of an almost feminine attractiveness in his bearing, although he was as ready, resolute, and stubborn a fighter as any one of his companions in arms. He had the appearance and the ways of a thoughtful student and scholar, and one would have associated him rather with a college professor's chair than with the rough and boisterous battling of that eager, vehement, and often uproarious assembly, the House of Commons. He was a fluent and ready speaker, but never declaimed, never attempted eloquence, and seldom raised his clear and musical voice much above the conversational pitch." Balfour does not debate for the sake of debating. He does not share that joy in strife which men like Palmerston, Disraeli, and Gladstone manifested. His shy and shrinking nature undertakes public speech only under a sense of duty. "There are some men," says McCarthy, "gifted with a genius for eloquent speech, who have no inclination for debate. John Bright said he would never make a speech unless duty imposed it. Yet Bright was a born orator, the greatest Parliamentary orator I have heard in England, not even excepting Gladstone. Another man who shrank from public speaking, though he had to spend, most of his manhood life making speeches inside and outside of the House of Commons, was Parnell. He never would have made a speech if he could have avoided it; he even felt a nervous dislike to the mere putting of a question in the House." Of Balfour's books, The Foundations of Belief, etc., McCarthy says that "the world did not take them very seriously, but, for the most part, regarded them as the attempts of a clever young man to show how much more clever he was than the ordinary run of believing mortals." Two public leaders most unlike are thus contrasted: "Balfour is an aristocrat of aristocrats; Chamberlain is essentially of the middle class-even the lower middle class. Balfour is a constant reader and student of many literatures; Chamberlain, to put it mildly, is not a bookworm. Balfour loves open-air sports and is a votary of athleticism; Chamberlain never takes any exercise, not even walking exercise, when he can possibly avoid the trouble. Balfour is by nature a modest and retiring man; Chamberlain is always 'Pushful Joe.'" Lord Salisbury is described as "the most interesting and picturesque figure in the British Parliament since Gladstone." In his early days in the House of Commons he was referred to by Disraeli as "a master of flouts and jeers." He was a brilliant speaker, thought

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ful and statesmanlike as well as brilliant; a maker of happy phrases, who yet convinced his hearers by sheer intellectual force of argument. In his young manhood, after graduating from Oxford, he went to Australia and actually worked as a digger in the gold mines. McCarthy thinks Salisbury might have been a really great Prime Minister, if there had not been in him too much of the thinker, the scholar, and the recluse to permit of his being a thoroughly effective leader of those who had to acknowledge his command. He had a bad memory for faces and names, took no delight in social life, and made no effort to conciliate men. Lord Salisbury was as well known to the general public as Mr. Gladstone. "He was a frequent walker in St. James Park and other places of common resort; and everybody knew the tall, broad, stooping figure, with the thick head of hair, bent brows, and careless, shabby costume. No statesman could be more indifferent to the dictates of fashion as regards dress and deportment. He was one of the worst-dressed men in respectable circles in London. In this he was a contrast to Disraeli, who, to the end of life, showed in his dress the instincts and vanity of a dandy." McCarthy says: "Great political orators seem to have passed out of existence. last great English orator died at Hawarden a few years ago. have, however, some brilliant and powerful Parliamentary debaters, foremost among whom is Lord Rosebery; who is also, for great ceremonial occasions, our very foremost speaker. Rosebery has been a darling favorite of fortune. From his birth all advantages have been showered upon him, and his public career has been proportionate. He has held various administrative offices; been twice Foreign Secretary and twice Chairman of the London County Council; Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party; President of the Social Science Congress; Lord Rector of two great universities. Yet the public feeling is that he has yet to do his greatest work." When Joseph Chamberlain, who now fills the public eye, first appeared in the House of Commons as democratic member for Birmingham the Tories in the House were apprehensive. The tone of his printed political speeches had made them expect to see a wild Republican, a rough and shaggy man, of uncouth appearance, and thunderous voice. Judge their surprise when a pale, slender, delicate-looking, closely shaven person, neatly dressed, with hair smoothly brushed, and wearing one dainty eyeglass constantly fixed in his eye, rose to address the House. "Looks like a ladies' doctor," muttered one stout Tory. "Seems like a head clerk at a West End draper's," commented another. The speech was delivered in a clear voice, with quietly modulated tones, and with no sign of the mob-orator. The Tories felt at once that a man of great ability, gifted with remarkable capacity for argument, and likely to hold his own against the strongest, had arrived in the House. A chief figure in English public life to-day is John Morley. Much interest is felt in the Life of Gladstone which he is writing. For that work

he has extraordnary gifts, especially he is a master of lucid and vigorous prose, but one wonders how Morley, who was once an aggressive agnostic and an associate of Positivists like Richard Congreve and Frederic Harrison, will deal with the religious side of Gladstone. That dealing may be expected to reveal something of the present views of John Morley himself. Morley is a rare combination of philosophical thinker, vivid biographer, Parliamentary debater, and practical administrator. He has already written masterful biographies of Cobden, Burke, Voltaire, and Rousseau. One of the most striking and forcible figures in England to-day is John Burns, the ablest representative of the working class which is becoming so strong a power in the organization of political and industrial life in Great Britain. He was born in poverty and his school days ended before he was ten years old, when he was set to earn his living in a candle factory. When he was twenty-one he went to Africa as engineer on an English steamer on the river Niger. There his adherence to total abstinence gained him the sobriquet of "Coffee-pot Burns." What other workmen spent in drink and dissipation he saved up. And when he left Africa his savings were enough to give him a tour of several months through Europe, which enlarged his knowledge, expanded his mental horizon, and gave him new ambitions. Settling down to work as an engineer in England he grew restless at seeing the workingmen "like dumb driven cattle," and felt willing to be "a hero in the strife" which might set them free. He became a political agitator for the rights of the working class. His powerful voice was heard by vast multitudes at open-air meetings in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. He was no ranting declaimer, but a man of rugged and incisive sense who argued his case with reason, intelligence, and common sense. In the course of time John Burns became a member of the House of Commons as the representative of his class, and England was compelled to give attention to their grievances and demands. He has commanded the respect, and even the admiration, of the House. He is a strong fighter for his principles and his cause, but there is no roughness in his manners, and his smile is sweet and winning. He is strong and wiry physically as well as mentally. He has been seen to take up in his arms a big elderly man, who had fainted in the crush of a public meeting, and carry him off to a quiet spot, with the ease and tenderness of a mother carrying her child. He is a useful and hard-working member of Parliamentary committees, and his Battersea constituents regard him with proud confidence as the most distinguished and influential champion and leader of the working class. James Bryce is universally recognized as an illuminating intellectual force in the House of Commons, indeed one of its most valuable instructors, altogether its best-read and most scholarly man. He is known everywhere by his great historical work, The Holy Roman Empire, and his other book, The American Commonwealth, which ranks with De Tocqueville's

Democracy in America. When James Bryce rises to speak in the House, the news goes out through lobbies and smoking room, “Bryce is on his legs;" and men of all parties are heard to say, "Bryce is up-I must go in and hear what he has to say." All men know that he will tell them something they did not know before, or will put the case in some new and significant fight. With all his knowledge he is never overbearing and oppressive, but attentive and deferential to others, seeming to share with Gladstone the belief that every man, however moderate his intellectual qualifications, has something to tell which the wisest may profit by listening to. The most amusing speaker in the House of Commons. is Henry Labouchere, proprietor and editor of that sprightliest and most independent of weeklies, Truth. No other important journal in the world is so completely the organ of so extraordinary or so influential a personality. Probably his keenest delight in life is the exposing of charlatans and shams. His paper is well named; it declares unflinchingly and mercilessly the Truth as Labouchere finds and feels it. Whoever studies Mr. McCarthy's British Political Portraits will have a somewhat comprehensive view of the public and Parliamentary life of contemporary England.

Life of Isabella Thoburn. By Bishop JAMES M. THOBURN. 12mo, pp. 373. Cincinnati: Jennings & Pye. New York: Eaton & Mains, Price, cloth, $1.25.

Never was the gist of a notable life put in a few choice words that so admirably told the whole story more completely than the striking sentence from the pen of Bishop Moore on the front page of the Life of Isabella Thoburn. He writes: "Isabella Thoburn stood for a host bannered and resistless. She filled the eye of our young womanhood; she was the pick and flower of our chivalry. She united in herself the limitless receptivity of Mary with Martha's ceaseless activity. She made godliness plain to the aged and attractive to the young. She illustrated the whole circle of Christian virtues. Speak of woman's work and the saintly form of Isabella Thoburn rises to thought, aureoled in love. Her life glorified the missionary work; her death enshrines it in the Church's heart forever." With so noble a foreword one looks eagerly to see what manner of woman this is whose life is chronicled by Bishop J. M. Thoburn, her brother. The volume of 373 pages 16mo tells in "meager outline" the remarkable story. Two notable things stand out in this storyMiss Thoburn's close relation to the beginnings of two great movements that are practically transforming the plans and methods of the Christian Church and are setting free for the service of the human family in new and larger ways all the wealth of faculty that lies in womanhood. These two movements in each of which she was a pioneer were the beginning by the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of woman's work for women in foreign lands, and the "deaconess movement," whereby women are definitely trained, enrolled, and set to work as a distinct and recognized part of the

Church's forces in the service of mankind along all lines of remedial and cultured ministry in all lands. In the former movement she was one of the two first unmarried women sent to the foreign mission field in India, and in the sending of her there was practically forced into existence.a society of women for the support of unmarried women in foreign lands. She was also a very great help in the early days of the "deaconess movement," bringing the prestige of her Indian leadership ard. her balanced mind with welldigested opinions to bear upon its difficulties. In telling the story of her missionary life abroad Bishop Thoburn gives the reader such an insight into the actual work of the mission field, such a picture of its lights and its shades, and, above all, so clear a statement of the social conditions that call distinctively for woman's work as make the volume, beyond any we have seen, a necessity to anyone who would understand the basal facts of woman's mission to the heathen world. Trained through a wider range than most women, Miss Thoburn was teaching in Ohio when her brother wrote her from India describing the difficulties of heathen womanhood, and suggesting that only the thorough training of a number of picked girls could ever introduce a change in Hindu society. “The letter closed with the question, written thoughtlessly, 'How would you like to come and take charge of such a school if we decide to make the attempt?' By the first steamer that could bring a reply came the ready and swift response that she would come as soon as a way was opened for her to do so." That in the opening of this "way” Providence would thrust into existence a great organization which is now one of the mighty evangelizing agencies of the Church was not then in the mind of either of these correspondents. But so it ever is in the inner history of the Church. What a few seeing souls, moved upon by the Spirit of God, faintly discern as a coming beam of light across unexplored and untraveled territory to-day is tomorrow the well-marked and lighted path for myriads of feet. In India the range of Miss Thoburn's activities and her perfect response to the varying needs of each day take one into the intimacy of a large, hospitable nature so placed as to find abundant room for its fullest development. What a seer she was! How easily and how accurately she looked into the heart of social problems and various conditions so utterly unlike any with which she had been acquainted! And how skillfully she used her resources of strength and means and influence to meet the needs she saw. Her strength lay particularly in her keen power of analysis. She saw straight, and saw to the bottom. And when she saw she immediately got to work to right the wrong basally and to build a future which should not hold the fundamental defects of the past. She was not a radical-she was certainly not a conservative. She saw the facts, and when time-honored ways called for mending she immediately tried to mend them. And when time-honored ways for mending the evil did not mend she did not hesitate to change them. That a