of "housekeepers" and actors. "The superiority of the Globe Company over all the others was acknowledged in the days of James and Charles, and to-day stands out as one of the most impressive facts in the history of the early drama.”

"The book is throughout the result of a firsthand examination of original sources," says Professor Adams, "and represents an independent interpretation of historical evidence." It is profusely illustrated with plans and cuts from old maps and old manuscripts which make clear in every case the exact situation of the particular playhouse under discussion. Involving as it does such a mass of detail, the book is remarkably clear in its arrangement and method of presentation and refreshingly free from dogmatism, pedantry, and the wearisome accumulation of statistics.

THE NATIONAL BUDGET SYSTEM. By Charles Wallace Collins. New York: The Macmillan Company.

This work is an attempt to show what the budget system is, and, in order to do so, the author sets forth in review the theory and practice of the budget systems in the leading states of the world. Next in order he discusses the proposed application of the system to the United States Government and the adjustments, short of a constitutional amendment, necessary to its adoption in our country. The book is written for the general reader. The descriptions of the plan and workings of the budget systems in foreign states are excellently done, as are also the detailed accounts of the preparation and ratification of financial measures in the United States. In the United States Government the spending of the money voted by Congress and the auditing of the accounts are completely in the hands of the Executive, and in these respects our system is unique. The author proposes that the President of the United States shall prepare and present to Congress an itemized programme of necessary expenditures for the following year, and that this programme shall be ratified by Congress without the privilege of amendment so as to increase the amount proposed. His proposal does not seek to change the principle of presidential responsibility and control, but suggests that some independent means of audit should be provided. A

large part of this proposed scheme could be accomplished, the author thinks, by drying up the Committee on Ways and Means, so that it would be functionless, and by allowing the powers of approval or disapproval of the Presidential Budget to devolve on the House Committee of the Whole. To the reviewer it seems difficult to escape the conclusion that the proposed budgetary system would have little to commend it, except that it would make easy the work of both the President and Congress. Under such a plan Congress could hardly do anything except give its approval of anything the President might propose to it. The only alternative would be revolution by force. H. H. S. AIMES.

Official Letter Books of W. C. C. CLAIBORNE, 1801-1816. Edited by Dunbar Rowland. Six volumes. Printed for the State Department of Archives and History, Jackson, Mississippi. 1917.

These six volumes, averaging some four hundred pages each, contain the letters, messages, proclamations, and other state papers of W. C. C. Claiborne, who was commissioned governor of the Mississippi Territory in 1801 by President Jefferson, and two years later made governor-general and intendant of the Province of Louisiana. Besides Governor Claiborne's correspondence and papers, the collection includes a great many valuable letters, reports, and other papers from his correspondence, pertaining not only to the administration of the great territory along the lower Mississippi, but to the economic and social life of its inhabitants as well. Dr. Rowland, the wellknown historian of the lower Mississippi Valley, and director of the Department of Archives and History of the State of Mississippi, has edited these volumes, added many footnotes by way of explanation, and attached a good index to the last volume. The only complaint we have to make is that Dr. Rowland has not written an introduction to these volumes, pointing out what was most valuable and most significant in this mass of material. one is better qualified to do this than himself. As to the importance of the subject, all students will agree with Dr. Rowland when he says that the purchase of Louisiana is one of the great turning-points in American history. It was an event which

No

"takes rank with the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth, the Declaration of Independence, and the adoption of the Constitution." S. L. WARE.

THE LIFE OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, DRAWN FROM ORIGINAL SOURCES (etc., etc.). New Edition, with New Matter, by Ida M. Tarbell. Two volumes. New York: The Macmillan Company. 1917. Pp. xxxii, 426 +475.

This new edition is simply a reprint of Miss Tarbell's Life of Lincoln which appeared some seventeen years ago; but it is a reprint plus an admirable new preface. In this introductory chapter for such it is-Miss Tarbell tells us that the stream of new material on Lincoln, which has been flowing to the public since the first publication of her book, “leaves us the Lincoln we had at the beginning." "We know him better," she says, and she admits that "the indictments brought against Lincoln for inefficient administration, for interfering with the army, for going beyond strict executive powers, have backing." But, she adds, "it is curious, how little these things affect our judgment of him. They leave him where he has long been in the popular mind." Miss Tarbell's new "preface" has little to do with authorities, but is a masterly character-sketch of Lincoln in the light of recent documents. S. L. WARE.

EAST BY WEST. ESSAYS IN TRANSPORTATION. By A. J. Morrison. Boston: Sherman, French and Company. 1917. Pp. 177. $1.25.

Here are a series of breezy little essays written about that part of mankind engaged through the ages in manufacturing and transportation, and trading and trafficking. The author begins. with the merchants of the Babylonian East and winds up with the building of the Bagdad Railway by the Germans. Mr. Morrison is hardly the scholar in his chosen field, still less is he the specialist. But he is the cultured man of wide reading who has skimmed an interesting bit of information for us here, another bit there, and who knows how to dish it all up for the general reader in an attractive and often suggestive and striking manS. L. WARE.

ner.

LIFE OF ROBERT E. LEE FOR BOYS AND GIRLS. By J. G. de Roulhac Hamilton and Mary Thompson Hamilton. New York and Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $1.25 net.

"This book is written with the hope that through it the life and character of Lee may become more real to the generations of young Americans now growing up. His was a life worthy of study to all young people, particularly those who are Americans.' With no attempt to exalt Lee unduly, either as a man or as a general, with no tendency to belittle his opponents, the story of his life and achievements is told accurately, sympathetically, impartially. In this present critical period of American history, such a study as this,-simple, straightforward, sincere in its characterization of one of the greatest of American patriots, -is timely and helpful. Both in school and college it should do much toward developing and strengthening among our young people a fine spirit of patriotism free from sectionalism or jingoism and based not on power but on righteousness, justice, humanity.

EVERY-DAY WORDS AND THEIR USES. A Guide to Good Diction. By Robert Palfrey Utter. New York: Harper and Brothers. $1.25 net. This book is divided into three parts, the first part (15 pages) being devoted to a statement of Guiding Principles in the Use of Words; the second (225 pages) containing an alphabetical list of words and expressions to which one may refer as to a dictionary; and the third (27 pages) furnishing a Glossary of Grammatical and Other Terms Used. The author "explains the meaning and use of a thousand or more every-day words and expressions which are frequently misused or misunderstood." He seeks to "give exactly the information most wanted, and to present it in compact, accessible form, without pedantry, formality, or technicality." In preparing the book he has been "guided by the belief that the ways of our speech are formed by the users of it; that grammarians and dictionary-makers are not kings in the realm, but merely recording secretaries." In spite of such an explicit and fearless declaration of independence, the author at times exhibits a dogmatism which shows either that his field of observation has not been wide enough or that he is

still bound by traditional rules of grammar; as when (in spite of the Oxford Dictionary) he condemns unreservedly the construction "everybody" with a following plural pronominal adjective, and declares that "dove is fast becoming obselete as the past tense of the verb to dive," as if dove were the original form of which dived is now being substituted, instead of the reverse. Sometimes his point of view is not quite plain, as when he says "anybody's else" is correct, but modern usage prefers "anybody else's" Why? the reader naturally asks. Again, "both loud and loudly are used as adverbs; as "The rites of war speak loudly for him,' and 'where the battle rages loud and long.' What is the principle to guide the inexperienced reader here?

On the whole, however, the book is fair in spirit and accurate in statement and as a reference book in school or college should do much to counteract careless errors in speaking and writing.

VOYAGES ON THE YUKON AND ITS TRIBUTARIES. A Narrative of Summer Travel in the Interior of Alaska. By Hudson Stuck, Archdeacon of Alaska. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. $4.50 net.

The author tells us in his Preface that his book is "a sober attempt to describe the country and its people, without any ulterior ends whatever," and that, though quite complete in itself, it is intended as a supplement and complement to Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog-Sled. The sobriety of purpose is evident throughout the book, but the spirit in which it is written reveals the many-sided personality of the consecrated Apostle to the Eskimos: his jealous love for the people among whom he has labored faithfully for so many years, his vision of the future of this great undeveloped country of Alaska, and his righteous indignation at the slightest thought of any unjust exploitation of its resources and its people. As he carries us with him on his journey of twenty-two hundred miles from the headwaters of the Yukon to its mouth and then takes us off into extensive sidetrips on its tributaries, pouring forth a poetical rhapsody on a thunderstorm, sketching the history of every settlement, giving spicy anecdotes of early settlers, discussing the etymology of place-names, calling attention to geological formations, with