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tain Thomas Masterman Hardy, is, perhaps, the most interesting of recent contributions to the life of Nelson. It contains a valuable collection of hitherto unknown Hardy letters, and, The Speaker.

amongst other documents of interest, a complete and accurate muster roll of the Victory on October 31, 1805, compiled from the stamped receipts of officers and men.

BOOKS AND AUTHORS.

A London publishing-firm is preparing a new edition of the works of the standard poets, Wordsworth, Scott, Spenser, Coleridge, Herrick, Browning and others, newly edited by competent critics, and illustrated with photogravures and colored pictures. last feature of the announcement is enough to awaken grave forebodings.

This

The purchase of “Public Opinion” by Funk, Wagnalls & Co. and the merging of it in "The Literary Digest" will surprise no one. Although both publications were of excellent quality, they were so closely alike that there has seemed no occasion for both of them. "Public Opinion" was the older of the two, and it has been extremely well edited.

The Dean of Canterbury has written an introduction to a volume entitled "The Problem of the Pentateuch: An Examination of the Results of the Higher Criticism," by Dr. Randolph H. McKim, rector of the Church of the Epiphany, Washington, U.S.A., who argues "that the alleged results of the Higher Criticism of the Old Testament are, on certain points, unsound, and, as an inevitable consequence, injurious to the Christian faith." The Dean of Canterbury endorses his views.

A number of interesting books and MSS. have recently been arranged for temporary exhibition in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. Among these are

the MSS. of "Marmion" and of "Waverley"; autographs of James V. of Scotland, Mary of Lorraine, Mary, Queen of Scots, James VI., and Queen Elizabeth; the Scots Covenants of 1580 and 1638; a Mazarin Bible; and the volume containing the Library's unique set of the earliest productions of the press of Chepman and Myllar, the first Scottish printers.

A somewhat unusual periodical is about to make its appearance at Madras under the title of Gossip. It claims to be devoted to the interests of the Indian sepoy, and the prospectus states that, while all other classes of the Indian community have organs to ventilate their opinions and call attention to their grievances, the native soldier has no such mouthpiece. The attitude of the military authorities in India towards this publication must arouse some curiosity, more especially as Gossip proclaims its intention to become an Indian Truth.

A selected edition of the poems of the late Mrs. Nora Chesson is in preparation, and will be published almost immediately by Mr. Alston Rivers. Mrs. Chesson, better known as Nora Hopper, left a young family almost entirely unprovided for; and the proceeds of this publication, to which Mr. Ford Madox Hueffer contributes an introduction, will be devoted to the fund now being raised for their benefit. Mr. Hueffer (90 Brook Green, W.) would be glad to

hear in advance from intending subscribers to this edition, the price of which will be 5s. net. American readers who have enjoyed Mrs. Chesson's verse should avail themselves of this opportunity to express their appreciation of them. The Living Age will take pleasure in forwarding the names of intending subscribers.

Mr. Arthur Symons figures conspicuously in the autumn announcements of the London publishers. One house is to publish his collected "Poems" in two volumes, and a new volume "The Fool of the World and Other Poems": and another is to bring out a volume named "Studies in Seven Arts" which has been in preparation for many years, and will contain essays on Rodin, Whistler, Watts, Moreau, Wagner, Strauss, Duse, and other typically modern artists. Mr. Symons has in preparation for the same publishers a book on William Blake, which will contain a complete study of the man, the poet, and the painter, together with various unpublished and little-known documents giving contemporary accounts of Blake. Among these will be a transcript of all the references to Blake in the Diary, Reminiscences, and Letters of Crabb Robinson, made for the first time from the original manuscript, which has never been printed in full.

Among the books announced by E. P. Dutton & Co. for immediate publication are "A Child's Recollections of Tennyson," by Edith Nicholl Ellison; "Court Life in the Dutch Republic, 1638-1689," by the Baroness Suzette Van Zalen Van Nyvelt; "Sigismonde Malatesta," by Edward Hutton; "The Memoirs of the Lord of Joinville," a new English

version by Ethel Wedgwood; "Garden Graith, or Talks Among My Flowers" (a tenth edition), by Sarah F. Smiley; "A Benedick in Arcady," by Halliwell Sutcliffe; "Dearlove: The History of Her Summer's Make-Believe," by Frances Campbell; "Truth and Falsehood in Religion," by William Ralph Inge, M.A., D.D.; "Saint Bernardine of Sienna," by Paul Thureau-Dangin; "Joseph Priestly," by T. E. Thorpe, F.R.S., in English Men of Science Series; and "Trinity College, Cambridge," by W. W. Rouse Ball, in the College Monographs Series; "The Shores of the Adriatic," the Italian side: Architectural and Archæological," by F. Hamilton Jackson, R.B.A.

Lovers of sonnets will welcome the announcement of a new anthology of English sonnets, which is to be published by Mr. S. Wellwood of 34 Strand, as the first of a number of finely produced volumes, called the "Wellwood Books." Each book will have its own format. The printing is by the Chiswick Press in an exclusive type designed after Froben, an early Basle printer, and the paper is Van Gelder hand-made. The anthology will range from Wyatt and Surrey to poets of the present day, and will contain many copyright pieces which have not previously appeared in any collection. Among the living poets represented are: Mr. A. C. Benson, Mr. Hilaire Belloc, Mr. Wilfrid Blunt, Mr. Robert Bridges, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. Andrew Lang, Mrs. Meynell, Mr. Swinburne, Mr. William Watson, Mr. Watts-Dunton, and others. The edition is limited to five hundred and thirty-five copies on paper at 12s. 6d. net, and ten copies on Japanese vellum at £2 2s net. After printing the type will be distributed.

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III.

IV.

SEVENTH SERIES
VOLUME XXXII.

No. 3238 July 28, 1906.

CONTENTS.

The Vocation of the Journalist, By D. C. Banks

FROM BEGINNING
Vol. COXLX.

NINETEENTH CENTURY AND AFTER 105

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Wild Wheat. Chapter XIV. The Fifteenth of November By M. E.
Francis (To be continued.)

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The Decadence of Tragedy. By Edith Searle Grossmann .

LONGMAN'S MAGAZINE 211

V.

Lucy Bettesworth

VI.

CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 215
BLACK WOOD'S MAGAZINE
The Evolution of an Act of Parliament. By Michael Macdonagh
MONTHLY REVIEW

221

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FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the U. S. or Canada.

Postage to foreign countries in U. P. U. is 3 cents per copy or $1.56 per annum. Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office or express money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, express, and money orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE Co.

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THE VOCATION OF THE JOURNALIST.

It

Historically regarded, the principal reason of the failure of journalism to make good its claim to rank as a profession appears to be that the mercantile element in it has always been evident, and sometimes predominant. was not to the manner in which they discharged their functions the periodical writers of a former generation owed the prejudice they had to encounter, but to their engaging in such work at all. To cultivate literature in any form as a gainful employment was a breach of social propriety; and to write for a periodical was a gross aggravation of the offence. Why this should have been so is not at once obvious; but the idea appears to have been that, in writing for the press, a man became the bond slave of every trivial occasion; he wrote for pence at the crack of the master's whip. This prejudice, as it was sometimes expressed, was unreasonable; yet, unreasonable though it was, let us admit it was only a perversion of the fundamentally sound principle that the press which is wholly a commercial undertaking cannot exercise a really wholesome influence over public opinion and public taste. Journalism has conquered prejudice and obtained social recognition wherever it has been possible to reconcile commercial interest with the just pride a competent editor takes in the excellence and consistent character of his journal. So Mr. Anthony Trollope suggests; and all experience bears out the truth of the suggestion. Conversely, it is just the predominance of the mercantile element and its divorce from editorial control that constitute to-day the greatest menace, not to the commercial success of journalism perhaps-although we doubt

the

permanence of a catch-copper popularity-but to its professional standing.

We scarcely realize how great an obstacle this was in the past; we have now little idea of the extent to which prejudice against literature itself as a gainful calling once prevailed. With what shame-faced explanations, and not without some lack of gratitude, does Lockhart acknowledge that he has consorted with publishers and meddled with periodical publications! Yet his fastidiousness was not singular. Any man in his position might, in reviewing his life, have said, "I lost an honorable profession, and had, after a few years of withering hopes, to make up my mind for embracing the precarious, and, in my opinion, intolerably grievous fate of the dependant on literature": even though, like him, he might have half suspected that the Edinburgh Parliament House could never have proved the gateway to Eden. It was not because of his politics that Lockhart was dubious about his connection with periodical literature. The memoirs of the time make it plain that a Whig advocate would have had the same feeling. From the reminiscences of that interesting Whig lady, Mrs. Fletcher, we catch an echo of the animated buzz of the Whig coteries over their Review, and the alert air of literary curiosity with which they discussed the authorship of masterpieces long since forgotten. "The man that wrote that might do or be anything," said Fletcher (a good man, but destitute of humor) on one occasion of some brilliant disquisition on chemistry, a subject of which he was almost certainly quite ignorant. "May he be Lord Chancellor?" asked Brougham, betraying himself by the

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