rest. being poor of its kind and weakening to the consti tution—and then to give it to the children, who are pretty sure to suck off the sugar and throw away the All of which is by no means a reason for giv ing up Sunday School libraries, but for reforming them. The Sunday School library idea is a sound one; all it needs is a wise hand to administer it; and if the wise hand is seldom found, the same is true in the administration of many another good institution. In country neighborhoods, especially, the church is often the only organized agency of civilization, except the public schools; and, containing within its influence the best element of the adult population, supplying the chief means of social intercourse and the only means of mental activity, it is the right and natural—often the only practicable-channel for good influences. There are no public libraries; the school libraries are apt to be more carelessly selected than the Sunday School library. It is therefore gratifying to see that the discontent long felt with the existing library is bearing fruit in a movement for better selection. This movement is most satisfactorily explained, both as to its facts and principles, in a little book by Rev. A. E. Dunning, called The Sunday School Library1. Of this book, the best review we can give is to strongly advise every one interested in the subject to read it; and the superintendent, library committee, librarian, or whoever is in authority of every Sunday School, should by all means possess it. The sixty cents thus expended will save many dollars worth of blunders in selection of books. There are a few such officials who know already all that the book has to teach; these will be gratified to find in it their own sound ideas preaching to a larger audience; the rest will learn much from it. The kernel of the book is its advice with regard to the meth of selection of a library. "No more superficial ex amination of books has yet been invented than the common one of ✶ ✶✶ holding two or three evening sessions of the committee to go through them (a miscellaneous lot of one or two hundred]. "A good deacon on such a committee sat one evening with the unexamined pile on one side of him, and on the other two piles, one accepted, the other rejected. After reading several pages of one book, he threw it as de *** declaring that such a book ought never to g into a Sunday School library! *** Some mischier ous young person slipped the rejected book into the unexamined pile. He soon took it up. His est caught a passage of Scripture. There,' said be laying it on the accepted pile, 'that is the kin book I thoroughly like. Such books as that do good. Many a 'carefully selected' library has been exam ined in this way, at a single sitting." The The day has long passed in which memoirs and narratives of pious deceased infants were characteristic of Sunday School libraries, and the derision of these in fashion among belated people who suppose that such treatises still compose the staple of Sunday School literature is some thirty years out of date; but the reaction from the stupid, good, and veracious was to something far worse-to a sort of "Sunday School novelette," much on a par intellectually with the servant-girl class of novels. In moral and spiritual tone, part of them were harmless enough, and only injurious in so far as they took the place of others in which the good shot of sound doctrine might have been launched by powder of intellectual power-a powder without which the best shot is apt to make little impression on its mark; others were distinctly productive of self-consciousness and sentimentality. Thus the latter condition of the Sunday School library, more than the first, has made it an object of much contempt from the friends of high lit-logues from which most help can be derived, erary standards; while even those who hold that its purpose is purely religious, not literary, have questioned much how intelligent a piety it was fostering. It has been too much the practice to put a little pill into a great deal of sugar coating-the sugar itself religious periodicals whose reviews are most trast worthy, are named with much discrimination. ning, Sunday School Secretary. Boston: Cong 1 The Sunday School Library. By Rev. A. S tional Sunday School and Pnblishing Society, 18 eral committees of intelligent persons have within a few years undertaken to read Sunday School books extensively and give the results to the public; their work and the means of availing one's self of it are also summarized. There are good hints as to the practical handling of the library, the writing of Sunday School books, etc. Of more general interest is a resumé of the history and development of Sunday School literature. There is much food for thought in the following testimony-quoted in a concluding chapter upon the influence of the library; it is that of a traveler upon the extreme north-western frontier, from the Yellowstone on : "I found no town so distant, nor any log-built and mud-plastered ranch so separated in its loneliness from others, that it was not invaded and defiled by these nefarious illustrated sheets, which flaunt the crimes of the metropolis, and stir the vile imaginings of men * * Whatever >ther papers might be missing, these were not. What ever other literature might be wanting, this was resent in a horribly plentiful supply. I tell you, this sa sad material to build into the foundations of apidly rising and majestic commonwealths.'" Into hese remote places the literature of "culture" will ot follow until the growing commonwealths are But missionary zeal projects the Sunday chool library far beyond the bounds of unaggressive ulture, and keeps it close at the heels of enterprising ice. rown. Together with this excellent manual, we receive om the same publishing company several specimens their Sunday School books: Ned Harwood's Deht1, The Academy Boys in Camp 2, and The Boy illard. The trio are fairly representative of the rious grades of the better class of Sunday School oks. Ned Harwood's Delight is a rehash of desptions of the Holy Land, set into a frame of conrsations between children and their grandmother, er the good old pattern set, perhaps, first for chilen's instruction by "Evenings at Home," but, be remembered, adopted long before by a greater than 5. Barbauld-by Plato himself. The conversational me is decidedly prim, and its primness is the more usingly evident from the painstaking effort apparto be sprightly. The selections from books of zel, however, are excellent. The book ought to e been provided with maps. The Academy Boys Camp is a cheerful account of a party of nice boys iping out with their teacher; there is only a minm of religion in it, but perhaps the fact that the boy in it will be also quite the most likeable to ish readers counts for a moral. We should like Ved Harwood's Delight. By Mrs. S. G. Knight. on: Congregational Sunday School and PublishSociety. 1884. The Academy Boys in Camp. By Mrs. S. F. Spear. on: Congregational Sunday School and PublishSociety. 1884. The Boy Lollard. By Rev. Frederick A. Reed. on: Congregational Sunday School and PublishSociety. 1884. to see the incident of the good boy refusing to inform upon the bad boy, and suffering in consequence, forever banished from juvenile fiction, but are glad to say that incident occurs only in its mildest form here. The school-boy code on this point is founded on the relations of tyrant and subject, and is often as hostile to the interests of order and the public good as the present Irish state of mind on the same point. The Boy Lollard is of a much higher grade, and is, indeed, a book of considerable historic value. It is a narrative-of moderate narrative interest-of the reign of Henry VIII. Its object is to show the Lollardry of a century before still covertly lingering in England, and renewed by the invasion of Lutheranism, never losing itself in that stronger current, but maintaining its original simple Biblical faith, unaffected by the special points in which the Protestantism either of Luther or Cranmer differed therefrom. In an earlier book the author traced this same independent and primitive element in English Protestantism through the reign of Elizabeth to its culmination in the definite separation of the Scrooby congregation, and the withdrawal from England of the Pilgrim Fathers. This makes New England Puritanism the only lineal heir of Wiclif's Lollardry, the rest of English Protestantism owing its first impulse to Lutheranism and Oxford humanism. The historic authorities used are good and are carefully followed, and the conclusions seem warranted. The view taken of Sir Thomas More-who, with his household, plays a large part in the story-seems less appreciative than one might wish; and, indeed, the whole Oxford school of reform is hardly done justice; its men are looked upon from the Lollard's point of view as lukewarm and reactionary, and due weight is not given to the considerations that made them reactionary. As we have hinted, the narrative interest of this story is not absorbing, but it is quite sufficient to serve the purpose, and introduce young readers to the persons and times of which it treats. It is decidedly a desirable Sunday School book. Briefer Notice. IT is surprising to receive such a book as Twelve Months in an English Prison, from a publishing house of high standing. It seems that a few years since an American woman living in London as a "medium was tried and convicted in London on a charge of obtaining goods on false pretences; and that after serving her term she wrote this book to exonerate herself and injure her opponents. There is really very little said of the English prison, the book being mainly taken up with the circumstances that led thereto. In spite of a prefatory note of the publishers-which must, it would seem, be based on some evidence-the book seems to us in substance unmistakably the work of a charlatan, though oddly enough the language is that of good-breeding. 4 Twelve months in an English Prison. By Susan Willis Fletcher. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1884. Mrs. Leighton's Life at Puget Sound1 is not a book that can be viewed as a work of art by itself. It is so filled with the personality of its author, that to read the book is to make her acquaintance, and to criticise it is to pass judgment on the lady herself. Perhaps this quality of the book is unavoidable from its form. It is evidently pieced together from scraps of a journal, or from letters written while on the wing, which accounts for the scrappy nature of its contents, and the personal and epistolary style. The book has its good qualities. Mrs. Leighton is an acute observer, and has a large share of the curiosity said to belong to her sex; furthermore, she has a bright and interesting way of speaking of common things and minute points, and sometimes gives a touch of description that is fairly poetic. This, how ever, cannot be allowed to blind us to some grave errors; as, for instance, when she speaks of the fortytwo days of her passage from New York to San Francisco as "longer than the children of Israel were in the wilderness," nor can it make us fail to note her shallowness in treating of the vexed Chinese question. Cookery for Beginners 2 is like the previous books of its class by the same author, in that she aims to be plain and practical. She certainly is so in this. We should think the young housekeeper might follow these directions and achieve success. The author has given due prominence to bread in its various forms, evidently remembering the adage that "Bread must be the queen of the kitchen." Strange to say, fish appears only in the form of fish balls, and pie is placed under ban and not allowed to appear at all. There are, however, a variety of dessert dishes. The addition of blank leaves for copying recipes is a good idea. -The second of a course of biennial lectures, delivered under the terms of a recent endowment at Kenyon College Theological Seminary, was by Bishop Cotterill of Edinburgh, Scotland, and upon the subject of Revealed Religion Expounded by its Relations to the Moral Being of God. The "lecture or lectures" provided for in the endowment were in this case three in number. These lectures are known as the "Bedell Lectures," from the name of the donors of the endowment; they are all to be published as they take place, in uniform style; the two we have already received were neatly and appropriately issued. To the last one is annexed a list of 1 Life at Puget Sound, with Sketches of Travel in Washington Territory, British Columbia, Oregon, and California, 1865-81, by Caroline C. Leighton. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1884. 2 Cookery for Beginners. A Series of Familiar Lessons for Young Housekeepers. By Marian Harland. 3 Revealed Religion Expounded by its Relations to the Moral Being of God. By the Rt. Rev. Henry Cotterill, D.D. Bishop of Edinburgh, Scotland, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1884. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co. donors to the institutions connected with Kenyon College, among whom we see various notable names, mostly of English churchmen and lords: Henry Clay, John Quincy Adams, Mrs. Sigourney, Arthur Tappan, Dr. Tyng, Albert Barnes, Peter Stuyvesant, George Peabody, and President Hayes are, perhaps, the most important American names; William Wiberforce, Hannah More, Dr. Doddridge, W. E. Gladstone, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Deans of Canterbury and Salisbury, several Lord Bishops and Bishops, the Duchess of Kent, among the English. In all, by name or number, thirty-six hundred and fifty-four benefactors "and several hundred more," are mentioned-a number sufficient, however small the gift of each, to warrant us in saying that the college must have had a very fortunate knack at attracting gifts.—Tennyson's In Memoriam + is the title under which a very tedious and somewhat oversubtle analysis of the poem appears. It divides the whole into cycles, representing the phases through which the mood passes from grief to triumph, and subdivides every cycle to weariness, repeating again and again with a tone of profundity the most obvious things. Yet the analysis, however overdrawn, is not untrue, and a young student of the poem, to whom the reflections had not yet become obvious, might get real profit from the reading of this “study”; it would force upon him, by overstatement, a realiz ing sense that there is a structure and symmetry under the apparently careless arrangement of the poem. -In The Boys of Thirty-Five, the reminiscences of boyhood fifty years ago in Portland, Maine, are related-the frolics, scrapes, quarrels, and adventures of a set of boys of whom the author made one. The city was then a small town, and with its combined attractions of harbor and country was a royal place for boys. Contests with down-town boys, skating adventures, boating and camping on the Islands, training-day frolics, school experiences of fifty years ago, and the like, make the book pleasant reading for boys. Our Mabel is a book of so lofty moral tone as rather to disarm the critic, who might other wise be inclined to ridicule it. It is a very unsoph isticated sort of story of one Mabel, and the wise things that her uncle said to her at various times 13 her life; and these numerous pages of advice are, fact, fairly sound. The printer has evidently seen t to reproduce his copy exactly in matters of puncte tion, paragraphing, and the like, thus betraying the world the fact that it was no less unsophisticated in form than in matter. 4 Tennyson's In Memoriam: Its Purpose and .3 Structure. A Study. By John F. Genung. Be Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1884. For sale by Big Harbourne & Co. 5 The Boys of Thirty-Five. By Edward Henry Esc Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1884. 6 Our Mabel. By Mrs. E. R. Mason. Chicag Cushing, Thomas & Co. 1884. THE OVERLAND MONTHLY. DEVOTED TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE COUNTRY. VOL. III. (SECOND SERIES.)-JUNE, 1884.-No. 6. MARKETS AND FAIRS. Come, march to wakes and fairs and market- explain one another. ns. King Lear, Act III., Scene 6. No subject offers a more interesting and itful field of inquiry to the student of econic industries than does the subject of rkets and fairs. A walk through a well ulated market of the present day, or a t to a country fair, is interesting enough itself to the most casual observer. In one place we see how the population of eat city is supported and on what it is ported. In the other place we see the cts of friendly emulation upon those ened in agricultural and mechanical pur3. We can thus get some idea of how institution affects the municipal life, and the other institution exerts its influence 1 rural life. A market soon creates a <et town. In like manner a fair is an tution of the country. We no sooner tion the word fair than we picture to our Is horses, cattle, mammoth turnips, and of more than ordinary size. And so it ough all history. The market is an inion of the town; the fair an institution e country. market is a kind of lesser fair, and a 3 a periodic market; so if the two inions are studied together, they serve to OL. III.-36. Bouvier defines a fair to be "a greater species of market, recurring at more distant intervals." The universality of fairs and markets, and the close resemblance of their constitutions wherever found, afford abundant material for the student of comparative institutions. In all communities where intercourse with the outside world is a circumstance of rare occurrence, and where traffic with neighboring communities is tedious or dangerous, fairs play an important part in commercial activity. This is especially the case in primitive societies, where the fair and the market seem to converge. "What we know as a fair," says Herbert Spencer, "is the commercial wave in its first form." There is a growth in the organization of fairs and markets as there is in every other institution. They change with the development of state life and in turn modify it. The rude fairs and markets of the Sandwich islanders, or those of the half civilized kingdoms of Africa, differ very much from the same institutions of France or of England. But the objects of the institutions. were originally the same, whether in savage or civilized societies; and there are sufficient resemblances in their general economy to make them of interest wherever they are found. "In order to understand what a market originally was," says Sir Henry Maine, "you must try to picture to yourselves a territory occupied by village communities, self-acting, and as yet autonomous, each cultivating its arable land in the middle of its waste, and each, I fear I must add, at perpetual war with its neighbor. But at several points, points probably where the domains of two or three villages converged, there ap pear to have been spaces of what we should now call neutral ground. These were the markets. They were probably the only places at which the members of the different primitive groups met for any purpose except warfare, and the persons who came to them were doubtless at first persons specially empowered to exchange the produce and manufactures of one little village-community for those of another." In England fairs and markets are of remote origin. Their constitution possesses characteristics that at once distinguish them from those of other peoples. These characteristics are, of course, largely the result of circumstances that are historical, and are also partly owing to peculiarities in English institutions. The usefulness of fairs and markets was early seen by the English kings, and the statute books are full of laws providing for their encouragement, and for the protection of people attending them. All markets were held in open places; and sales made in the open market, the market overt, were considered binding on all parties. All contracts for the purchase of produce were made in the market, and were not allowed to have their inception outside of it. This was an old Anglo-Saxon regulation. Forestalling was forbidden as far back as in the reign of King Ethelred, in his regulation of the port -the ceapstowe or market of Billingsgate. In order to protect the traders at the market-town from the competition of the countrymen, persons living out of the town could not sell their wares by retail within the town limits, but they could sell goods in gross there. To protect the market people, William the Conqueror decreed that all fairs and markets should be held in fortified places. Owners of live stock were protected from thieves in various ways. Some of these methods of protection still survive. “Let no one slay an ox,” says a statute of Ethelred, “except he have the witness of two true men, and that he keep for three nights the hide and the head; and the same with a sheep. And if he disposes of a hide before that, let him pay XX ores." Frauds in weights and measures were carefully guarded against. Among the Anglo-Saxons, marketing on Sunday was strictly prohibited, and the offense was punishable by a fine and the forfeiture of the goods. One old law enacted that "If any one engage in Sunday marketing, let him forfeit the chattel, and twelve ores among the Danes, and XXX shillings among the English." Persons attending fairs and markets naturally afforded a great temptation to highwaymen, and many ingenious schemes were devised to protect these people from the rob bers. In 1285 a law of Edward I. required that highways leading from one market-tow to another should be so enlarged that the should be neither tree, bush, nor ditch of either side of the road for two hundred fee In the disorderly reign of Henry II heavy tolls were enacted and usurped in cie towns, and boroughs where fairs and market were held. This discouraged many from a tending them, and the prolific granting charters during this period of English ha tory exhibits the many expedients rescrie to in order to encourage traffic and marke It was one of the prerogatives of the King grant some man or lord the privilege of h ing a fair or market, and none could be he without such a grant, unless it had been e so long that it was allowed to be contin by prescription. Every such owner of or market had the right to collect toll history of this toll is very interesting. Ces defines it to be a "reasonable summe money due to the owner of the fair or marke upon sale of things tollable within the far market, or for stallage, picage, or the In later years the toll seems to have exse not so much for the purpose of afford. revenue to the owner of the fair or m |