76 



The Reviews Reviewed. 



THE FORTNIGHTLY REVIEW. 



The Fortnightly Review for January opens well. 

 The articles on topical subjects are noticed elsewhere. 



TRIAL BY JURV IN SOUTH AFRICA. 



Mr. H. Lardner Burke, who was Crown Prosecutor 

 in South -Xfrica from 1897 to 1902, argues strongly in 

 favour of substituting a Special Court of two judges 

 for juries in all cases in South Africa which involve 

 questions between Europeans and natives. He thinks 

 Lord Gladstone is inclined towards the Natal system, 

 in which the .\ttorney-General has discretion to decide 

 whether the case shall be tried by jury or by a Special 

 Court without a jury. He thinks that the Special 

 Court should be constituted not of men " qualified to 

 be appointed" judges, but of men who actually are 

 judges. He thinks that trial by jury inevitably breaks 

 down when racial prejudice is involved, and experi- 

 ence shows that a Special Court composed of two 

 judges of the High Court and one Commissioner 

 appointed by the Government formed a very efficient 

 tribunal in Kimberley for the trial of offences against 

 the Diamond Trade Act. It is an interesting and 

 well-informed article. 



JOURNALISM THEN AND NOW. 



Mr. T. H. S. Escott gossips in his accustomed 

 manner about Literature and Journalism, the relation 

 between the two. He says ; — 



.\mong newspaper people the good .ill round man, who may 

 have had now and then a smattering of science, but who was 

 particularly at home in politics and letters, and who could do 

 into flowing English couplets, for appearance in liis newspaper 

 next morning, the Westminster play, prologue and epilogue, 

 has been replaced by the specialist of a few departments, by the 

 manufacturer of literary pemmican, and the condenser, some- 

 limes of old-world folios, sometimes of the chief points in the 

 tuiiversal Tress of this planet, into tabloids to be taken as a 

 whet for breakfast or as a digestive for lunch. This new work 

 affords the performer asjiiuch real display, no doubt, of ability 

 and resourcefulness, as tasks of a very dilferent kind provided 

 for his predecessors. 



WHAT PEOPLE READ. 



Mr. Raymond Blathwayt has taken a great deal of 

 trouble to compile an admirable paper on England's 

 taste in literature. He has interviewed librarians, 

 booksellers, etc., and is in a position to pronounce 

 an authoritative judgment as to the literary taste of 

 different classes of the community. On the authority 

 of Mr. C. Arthur Pearson's managing^director, Mr. 

 Peter Keary, he tells us that — 



the autobiography of "John Lee, the Man they Couldn't 

 Hang," rejected by a publisher to whom it was ollered 

 for /;6oo, was accepted by another, with the result that tlie 

 circulation of his paper was so much increased thereby that 

 lie made upwards of ^15,000 by his bargain. The sixpenny 

 novel has so encour.iged the popular laste for fiction that novels 

 which formerly sold less than 3,000 copies at six shillings a copy 

 now sell 300,000 copies at sixpence a copy. Five or six millions 

 of these sixpenny novels are now sold annually in Kngland, 

 though to balance this I may state that to the serious puld'ic Mr. 

 i lent has sold seven millions of his classical " Every Man's 

 Library " during the last five years. 



OTHER PAPERS. 



One of the most interesting articles in the Review 

 is the account of the early Cossacks of the Setch, 

 who were all celibates, and enforced chastity and 

 honesty by death for the first offence. The Russian 

 Revolutionary story is continued. Mr. R. Croziet 

 Long contributes a long letter on the prospect of the 

 German Election. He anticipates that the election 

 may revert to the position of 1903, but if it deprives 

 the Conservatives and Centre of liberties which they 

 have e.xercised for nearly thirty years, it will certainly 

 be the most important contest since the foundation of 

 the Empire. 



THE CONTEMPORARY REVIEW. 



The Contemporary Review for January contains 

 two or three articles of exceptional interest. The 

 Rev. William Blackshaw's account of '' Modernism 

 in the Prussian Church " is a very instructive and 

 interesting account of Jatho's views. Jatho has been 

 condemned by the Prussian National Church for 

 holding that it is indifferent whether the historic Christ 

 ever existed, as the living Christ is the inexhaustible 

 Christ idea. Professor Harnack recognises that this 

 position is incompatible with adhesion to the Evan- 

 gelical Church. He would have preferred that 

 the Church had not cast him out, holding that, 

 although his theology was unendurable, Jatho must 

 be endured. 



Mr. H. F. B. Lynch expresses the dissatisfaction of 

 the anti-Russian pro-Persian group with Sir Edward 

 Grey's speech on Persia. Mr. Basil de Selincourt 

 sings the praises of Ruskin in an article based upon 

 Mr. Cook's great biography. Mrs. Sturge Gretton 

 writes enthusiastically upon Mr. Henry James and his 

 Prefaces. 



Mr. H. S. Shelton discourses upon Eugenics in an 

 article in which he recognises that there is the gravest 

 danger that the relaxation of customary ideas on the 

 subject of marriage may increase the economic power 

 of the employer class of men over the employed class 

 of women. He admits there is more wisdom in the 

 common traditions of mankind than appears at first 

 sight when they are viewed from the standpoint of 

 science. It seems to Mr. Shelton a melancholy fact 

 that as the Catholic Church sterilised their best in the 

 convent, we are sterilising our best in the struggle for 

 careers. 



There is a very curious little paper composed 

 chiefly of two letters to the Pope, one from the 

 Dowager Empress Helen of China, in the year 1652, 

 and the other from her eunuch, who were both 

 converts of the Jesuits. 



The Rev. W. \V. Peyton, continuing his series ot 

 articles upon the modern view of the plan of creation, 

 describes the part which the death of Christ plays in 

 the plan. 



