We would call the attention of our readers to the paper on King Edward VII. in another part of this number of THE BOOKMAN. The writer of it is a gentleman long connected with one of the embassies in London, and his opportunities for gaining a first-hand knowledge of the new king's personality were exceptionally good. His name is withheld for obvious reasons.

The death of Queen Victoria has in itself nothing that involves the element of humour, but the most reverent mind could not fail to note the combination of ignorance and absurdity discernible in the comments and information contributed in such generous abundance by the American press. Thus, the Sun of this city expressed its surprise editorially that King Edward in issuing one of his first proclamations signed it "Edward R." instead of "Edward R. I." We should think that any editorial writer on a metropolitan daily ought to be aware of the fact that the Act of Parliament authorising the use of the title Empress of India or Emperor of India allowed its use in documents relating to the external members of the British Empire, and thus by implication forbade its use officially in Great Britain itself. Then there was the Journal, whose bright correspondent cabled over from London the interesting

information that Queen Victoria was especially fond of Osborne House in the Isle of Wight because from its windows she could gaze upon the mausoleum of her late husband, the Prince Consort, at Frogmore. This would seem to contradict the general impression that the Queen's sight was somewhat defective in her later years, and it is very much as though one were to declare that President McKinley has an especial fondness for Atlantic City, since from his apartments when there he can look out upon the broad Ohio, washing the borders of his native State. But, in a certain way, the most amusing and the most voluminous writing has been done by those persons who have speculated at great length on the question as to whether the new king would revert to the absolutism of the Tudors or whether he would continue to be a constitutional monarch and allow Parliament and his ministers to govern. The humour of this is so decidedly naïve as to make it seem a pity to say anything about it.. We really suppose that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country who believe the pleasant little legal fiction that the English monarch rules as well as reigns.

Another of the mysteries of contemporary journalism is found in the cable despatches relative to the rioting in Madrid,

BURTON EGBERT STEVENSON.

where it appears that a "great and hostile crowd" assembled at the railway station and greeted Count Caserta with vociferous cries of "Vive Liberté!" and "A bas Réaction!" The mystery comes in when we try to explain just why a Spanish mob when particularly excited should vent its feelings in bad French rather than in the vernacular. Or can it be that the American papers which printed this bit of news tried to give it a little foreign colour, and in the absence of any knowledge of Spanish, threw in some broken French instead?

The writer of the present day who sits

Historical Periods

and the

Historical Novel.

down to construct the historical romance is necessarily subject to a great many limitations in the matter of his period and of the historical personages whom he aims to introduce. That part of history which is in any way familiar to the general reader has been pretty thoroughly threshed out. For instance, when a few years ago Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett published A Lady of Quality, almost every reviewer alluded to the fact that the period and setting had been pre-empted by The History of Henry Esmond, and that Mrs. Burnett's book would inevitably invite a rather crushing comparison. Mr. Maurice

Hewlett writes Richard Yea-and-Nay, an admirable story, and yet one which obliges the reader mentally to contrast Mr. Hewlett's Coeur de Lion and his time with the monarch and the environment of Scott's Ivanhoe. French history can be covered almost completely by naming a few very familiar books. We have the time of Louis XI. in Quentin Durward. A period somewhat later is treated in Victor Hugo's Notre Dame. The reign of the merry king François I. has been treated in a number of romances. Of subsequent French history there is hardly a decade that is not covered by one of the swiftly moving novels of the elder Dumas. After Marguerite de Valois, La Dame de Monsoreau and Les Quarante Cinq what can one find to say about the years preceding and following the massacre of St. Bartholomew? Novelists may find a certain inspiration in the power of Richelieu, the dramatic scenes of the Fronde and the early and glorious years of Louis XIV., but those times belong and always will belong to Les Trois Mousquetaires, Vingt Ans Après and Le Vicomte de Bragelonne.

"At Odds with the Regent."

While it is almost impossible to find in history an absolutely virgin field, a writer now and then stumbles on a period of years which, through having been written about very little, are so little known that he may for the time being make them to all practical purposes his own. This has been the case with Mr. Burton Egbert Stevenson's At Odds with the Regent, a story of Paris and the French Court in the second decade of the eighteenth century, when Louis XV. was a child and the succession was temporarily threatened by the Cellamare conspiracy. The idea of writing At Odds with the Regent first came to Mr. Stevenson in the autumn of 1899, after he had been reading some French memoirs. The period of the Regency appealed to him as one especially full of colour, and after studying very carefully all the available literature dealing with the time he found that it had been overlooked in a surprising manner by romancers in general. In fact, it has been treated only in two comparatively obscure works of fiction, Ainsworth's John Law and the Chevalier d'Harmental of the ubiquitous

Dumas. At Odds with the Regent is, in many respects, far above the general run of recent historical novels. It is worth while reading for one chapter alone; that chapter which tells how the hero escaped from his jailers through a stratagem based on a game known as "Prisoner's Chase." The device is, so far as we know, absolutely new in fiction. It was adapted by the author from an old game called "Battle Game," or "Siege." The topography of old Paris, with which the story abounds, was studied from Turgot's map of the city in 1830 and Paul Lacroix's The Eighteenth Century in France. Mr. Stevenson is a Princeton man, class of '94. He left college at the end of his junior year to accept a newspaper position in Chillicothe, Ohio, his native city. He remained in newspaper work as city editor of the Daily News, and later of the Daily Advertiser, until August, 1899, when he resigned

JIGGERS.

the latter position to accept that of librarian of the Chillicothe Public Library, an office which he still holds. His second novel, A Soldier of Virginia, a story of the Fort Necessity and Braddock expeditions, is soon to appear from the press of Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company.

A good deal of the recent fiction dealing with undergraduate life has been devoted to the experiences of the freshman. Some months ago Mr. Jesse Lynch Williams published his Adventures of a Freshman, and now Mr. Charles M. Flandrau treats of the same subject in The Diary of a Freshman. Mr. Flandrau

CHARLES M. FLANDRAU.

first won a reputation with Harvard Episodes, which is undoubtedly one of the very best of all the books of college tales. that have as yet been written. The hero of his new book is a young man from the West, who finds the environment of one of the great traditional universities of the East very different from his earlier associations.

We may reasonably be pardoned for calling attention with a certain pride to the very artistic series of books which is appearing under the general head of The Bookman Classics. This series is designed to include the principal works of English prose and verse. The books are