that would give it distinction even without the force of emotion back of the theme. The other poems are, with the exception of a few, notably a beautiful sonnet called "Growth," of less value as poetry. Many of the shorter poems show the author's musical sensitiveness and keenness of analysis, and all of them have a forcefulness far from mere prettiness of phrase or rhyme. Houghton Mifflin Co. "Henrik Ibsen: Plays and Problems" by Otto Heller is a moderate sized volume of estimate and appreciation that will be found of real value to both the careful student and the more casual reader of Ibsen. In line with popular estimate, the author ranks highest the social plays, and analyzes and comments upon them with particular lucidity. His treatment of the several periods of Ibsen's work and development is thorough and sound, and while not clothed in English of remarkable distinction, his observations are pleasant to read. Discussion of the "woman question" and various other social problems is well handled. All the sources of Ibsen information are back of this treatment and used with scholarly discrimination. The book is provided with careful notes, a good index and the following admirable motto: "Je ne propose rien, je n'impose rien, j'expose." Houghton Mifflin Co. Andrew Bedient, central character of "Fate Knocks at the Door," by Will Levington Comfort, is a young man destined for great adventures, whom we first meet as a ship's cook overtaken by a typhoon in the China Sea. Life in Luzon, Japan and India brings him daring, courage, suffering and contemplation. He is a strange combination of great physical strength and mysticism. An old sea-captain whom Bedient rescued from the typhoon loves him as a son and founds a fortune for him in an island of the West Indies. From the old sailor's death-bed, Bedient comes to New York imbued with a mission to teach the place for woman in the modern world. A group of women artists is the field for the serving of the new gospel. A portrait painter, Beth Truba, is destined to be the fulfilment of Bedient's ideals. The book is pervaded by a serious purpose and has a lofty idealism. To the average reader, the mystical portions are not always perfectly clear, but the situations are original and the story is unhackneyed and forceful. J. B. Lippincott Co. That very modern, evolutionary, and vital, subject of Eugenics is to have a series of books-or booklets, to be exact-all its own. The first three have appeared as "The Method of Raceregeneration" by C. A. Saleeby, "The Problem of Race-regeneration" by Havelock Ellis, "The Declining BirthRate" by Arthur Newsholme. Of the three the last, despite the fact that it is largely mere statistics, is the most interesting and instructive. The author does not theorize, does not fear to face facts and state them, does not even twist his facts to fit his theories. He merely emphasizes that remarkable phenomenon of this modern world-the better-educated classes are unwilling to have children. He is not so alarmed as the other two writers over that fact. Mr. Ellis approaches the subject from the viewpoint of the philanthropist and is more interested in preventing the incoming of children-with-a-poor-inheritance than in the birth of the elect. Dr. Saleeby takes an exactly opposite viewpoint. The two latter men go much farther in the matter of paternalism on the part of the government than the ordinary American can follow cheerfully. The books are English. All are well-worth-reading, all are clear, concise, and definite. Moffat, Yard & Co. II. Politics in the Pulpit. By Coulson Kernahan. NATIONAL REVIEW 395 Chapter XXXII. IV. The Coming of Bonaparte. By the Right Hon. the Earl of Rosebery. V. The Young People. By H. Belloc. OXFORD AND CAMBRIDGE REVIEW 424 VI. The Return to Nature. An Island Comedy. By Ian Hay. (Con FOR SIX DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, Txx Living Age will be punctually for. warded for a year, free of postage, to any part of the United States. To Canada the postage is so cents 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 let ter. 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. Single Copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents. HOME RULE. In April, 1886, The Contemporary Review published an article written by me on Ireland, which might have been more appropriately entitled Home kule. I wrote it at the request of my honored friend, Sir Percy Bunting, after Mr. Gladstone had formed his Government, but before he had produced his first Home Rule Bill, and, indeed, whilst Mr. Chamberlain' was still a member of his Cabinet. After six-andtwenty years I have been invited to write another article on the same subject, and I naturally turn back to my earlier work. I remember pretty well the circumstances of the time. A Home Rule Bill was evidently imminent, and though it could scarcely become law in the same session, it seemed highly probable that Mr. Gladstone would succeed in his new policy. He was full of power and authority, and though many members of the new House of Commons were stunned by a departure for which they were unprepared, the loyalty of the electorate to the Liberal leader might overcome all reluctance. In the first draft of the article I did, in fact, write of the ultimate success of Home Rule as inevitable, although I withdrew the word before publication, partly because I did not wish to prejudge the result, and partly because I still hoped that as Repeal had died out forty years before Home Rule might also disappear after a season. It was, in my judgment, the wiser policy to maintain one Parliament for the two islands, and, despite Mr. Parnell and Mr. Gladstone, Liberal legislation and Liberal administration might carry united nations through a crisis, possibly prolonged, back to the quieter temper which characterized the 'fifties and the earlier 'sixties. 'He resigned on the eve of the publication of the article. In 1912 I have to confess that my hopes of 1886 have not been realized. The Liberal Party of to-day cannot be said to be possessed of the glow and fervor of Mr. Gladstone's belief, but it has become more and more committed to Home Rule until the pronounced dissidents may be counted on the fingers, whilst Unionism has slipped into and become undistinguishable from Conservatism. The two great par ties of Great Britain are ranged opposite one another on the issue of Home Rule, and the new Labor Party is in close alliance with the Liberal Party in this struggle. There is no prospect, no possibility of a united British party, and, what in my judgment is a more serious and indeed fatal Parliamentary fact, the Irish Party has rigidly maintained the attitude prescribed by Mr. Parnell of absolute aloofness at Westminster. Mr. Redmond's Nationalist followers are a foreign element resisting all forces tending to its solution, impeding if not destroying the normal conduct of the life of the House of Commons. Hence the conviction that the Irish question must be settled-a conviction which I am inclined to believe is shared by not a few Conservatives of stronger minds, although they may be reluctant to confess it. It is under this impression that I approach Mr. Asquith's Bill, an impression which apparently explains the comparative apathy with which the Bill has been received. It does not excite enthusiasm; it does not excite passionate opposition. The Parliament Act in some measure contributes to the maintenance of this temper of calm. expects the Bill to become law this year, and no one is disturbed at the No one certainty of its failure. It will pass through the House of Commons in some shape or other, but must be ex pected to receive short shift in the House of Lords. And what then? There remain a couple of years more in which the Bill may appear and reappear modified in one part, abated in another, but at the end of two years it will somehow become a statute. This is the Liberal view; whilst on the Conservative side, beside the lurking hope that any accident may happen in two years, there is the feeling that serious changes might at the last moment be effected, and then the untold thought that if Home Rule were out of the way the Opposition might romp into Office, and has not the time come when the Irish question must be settled? The Home Rule Bill must be treated as a study for the settlement of a practical question, and it is from this point of view that I approach its examination. I have no enthusiasm on the subject; but, as Lord Morley has often said, we have in political life frequently to be content with the second best, and we may, perhaps, be well pleased if we can recognize anything of best in what we have to accept. The central indispensable principle of Home Rule, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, is the establishment of a Home Parliament for Home Government, and Mr. Asquith proceeds on this basis, with the necessary substitution of Senate for House of Lords as the name of the Second Chamber. He proposes that his House of Commons (164 members) should consist of forty-five elected by single-member constituencies, and the rest by constituencies returning two, three, four, and in one case five, members. There is no provision as to the way electors shall vote in these two, three, four and five-member constituencies, and it may be inferred that each elector would be able to vote for as many members as there are to be returned, although there is a provision still on the Statute-book that in the case of English constituencies return ing three members no elector shall vote for more than two candidates. The provision is at present inoperative as there are now no three-member constituencies, but it remains unrepealed. It would seem that the framers of the new Bill intend to give to the majority in each constituency the power of carrying its whole representation. Mr. Asquith proposes that his Senate (forty members) shall in the first place be nominated on the advice of the Imperial Ministry, and the desire of himself and his colleagues would be to submit to the King a body of Senators of weight and position drawn from all parts of Ireland, representing all varieties of political opinion in due proportion to their strength. The Senate thus chosen is to be renewed in quarters every two years when the incoming new members would be recommended to the Lord Lieutenant by the Irish Prime Minister. My readers, if I may assume them to be acquainted with my avowed opinions, will scarcely expect me to look with favor on the Parliament thus constituted. The conception of the Senate as first started is indeed excellent. It would be a gathering of men of light and leading representing all Ireland, and the scheme must be hailed as a confession of the true principle of constitution of a legislative chamber. Its members, at least those of the minority or Opposition within it, would lose some little authority, because they would be accused of having accepted their positions from Mr. Asquith and Mr. Birrell. This was the taunt brought against the members of the Second Chamber in the Transvaal Legislature before the Union of South Africa, and it is said to have sensibly weakened their influence. Granting, however, that the Senate starts perfected above criticism, it is obvious that the biennial nomination of a quarter of its members by the Irish Prime Minister would rapidly and fa |