complete confidence in the art instincts of
the people.

They say that the people are brutal--
That their instincts of beauty are dead--
Were it so, shame on those who condemn them
To the desperate struggle for bread.
But they lie in their throats when they say it,
For the people are tender at heart,
And a wellspring of beauty lies hidden
Beneath their life's fever and smart,

is a stanza from one of the poems in this volume, and the feeling
expressed in these words is paramount everywhere. The Reformation gained
much from the use of popular hymn-tunes, and the Socialists seem
determined to gain by similar means a similar hold upon the people.
However, they must not be too sanguine about the result. The walls of
Thebes rose up to the sound of music, and Thebes was a very dull city
indeed.

Chants of Labour: A Song-Book of the People. With Music. Edited by
Edward Carpenter. With Designs by Walter Crane. (Swan Sonnenschein and
Co.)

MR. BRANDER MATTHEWS' ESSAYS

(Pall Mall Gazette, February 27, 1889.)

'If you to have your book criticized favorably, give yourself a good
notice in the Preface!' is the golden rule laid down for the guidance of
authors by Mr. Brander Matthews in an amusing essay on the art of preface-
writing and, true to his own theory, he announces his volume as 'the most
interesting, the most entertaining, and the most instructive book of the
decade.' Entertaining it certainly is in parts. The essay on Poker, for
instance, is very brightly and pleasantly written. Mr. Proctor objected
to Poker on the somewhat trivial ground that it was a form of lying, and
on the more serious ground that it afforded special opportunities for
cheating; and, indeed, he regarded the mere existence of the game outside
gambling dens as 'one of the most portentous phenomena of American
civilisation.' Mr. Brander Matthews points out, in answer to these grave
charges, that Bluffing is merely a suppressio veri and that it requires a
great deal of physical courage on the part of the player. As for the
cheating, he claims that Poker affords no more opportunities for the
exercise of this art than either Whist or Ecarte, though he admits that
the proper attitude towards an opponent whose good luck is unduly
persistent is that of the German-American who, finding four aces in his
hand, was naturally about to bet heavily, when a sudden thought struck
him and he inquired, 'W