The

and the locality of any catastrophe, but also its exact date from twenty-four to twenty-eight days in advance." "professor" must have improved since the time when a thorough examination of his methods was made at Kew Gardens, with the result that his predictions were almost invariably found to be falsified by the event. Setting such wonders aside, it may be definitely asserted that our knowledge is not as yet enough to enable us to foretell any earthquake. Even the wind that preceded the Jamaican shock was no sign, for every attempt to connect disturbances of the atmosphere with those of the crust has broken down. "After the wind an earthquake. . . and after the earthquake a fire"; but if the fire is the result of the earthquake, we cannot say the earthquake is the result of the wind. The most that we can do is to mark out certain areas as liable to shock, and to be on our guard so long as their equilibrium appears unsettled.

Possibly, as we acquire more certain knowledge of the earth's interior, when we have mapped all lines of faulting with greater exactness, and when we have placed on a surer basis our theoretical explanations of the changes that have taken place in the shape of the globe, then we may attempt prediction with more confidence. We are beginning to understand the factors that control the situation, but they are so numerous that as yet we can strike no balance between them. None the less the enormous advance in seismology effected of late years can but encourage us to further efforts, not The Saturday Review.

merely in the cause of science but to the practical benefit of mankind.

The earthquake areas have long been known, but during periods of relative quiet men grow careless. Now, from a succession of catastrophes, they seem likely to be over-afraid. They see, as they think, the foundations of the earth tottering and the stability of all things shaken.

There have been before now periods of unrest in the history of our globe; may it not be that we are entering on another? There does not seem to be any good reason for these fears. Our earth is always groaning and travailing. The seismograph knows "nulla dies sine linea." Turn to Whitaker and read the lists of the more obvious earthquakes and eruptions for each year. You will be astonished to find how many, and great ones too, you have never heard of. A shock in Turkestan is registered on the seismographs of the world; but who cares? The Arabs fold their tents and no one is the worse. A slighter shock in Lima, and walls are shattered to dust. Still, even Lima is not much to us. But when by chance the earthquake centre is near a Charlestown, a San Francisco, or a Kingston, then a world throbs in sympathy. Nowadays, too, we learn of much that formerly was spared to our intelligence. There are more centres of population to be shaken, and in each of them special correspondents ready to seize on every ghastly detail. The true conclusion then may be, not that the world gets more tottery as it contracts, but that it grows smaller.

Bad weather has a charm of its own, provided it is only bad enough. To reach this standard it must be so bad as to give to our favorite refuge from it that added zest which makes the last touch of perfection. To have a welllaid fire of logs burning up to its proper climax, to have in your hands a long-coveted book just arrived by post and still uncut, to sit down at your writing-table with your mind clear but full and at the true psychological moment for unburdening-these things are good and pleasant on almost any winter day, but they touch the high-water mark of pleasure on a day when to lift your eyes to the window is to get a shock of disgust. John Milton knew how to get his effect when, in asking his friend to luncheon, he wrote:

Lawrence, of virtuous father virtuous son,

Now that the fields are dank, and ways are mire,

Where shall we sometimes meet, and by the fire

Help waste a sullen day, what may be

won

From the hard season gaining?

Such effect is the operation of the law of contrast, the gold mount in the black frame, the oasis in the desert; the jewel, as Shakespeare notes it, the shining jewel in the head of the ugly and venomous toad. But it is something more than the effect of the law of contrast; it is also the release from distraction, the suspending of all counter-charm.

And if this sense of contrast and release from distraction are the scholar's charm in bad weather, there are other charms for other men and moods. There is a pleasure in seeing any kind of thoroughness, and a thoroughly bad

day or night, whether of wild wind or down-pouring rain or dense fog, is an exhibition of how far these aspects of Nature may be carried, is in fact what may be called a very thorough performance of this or that kind. Was it not on some such day as this that Charles Kingsley was stirred to take his pen and begin:

Welcome, wild North-easter?

On some such days of storm and hurricane have not most of us, ere now, buttoned up our coat, donned the closest-fitting cap we could find and, stick in hand, sallied forth along the cliffs to see what the waves were doing?

It

A man has had bad luck in life if he has never chanced to be by the sea at a time when one of the highest spring tides occurs simultaneously with a hurricane. For there is no parallel spectacle to this in the world. is not necessary to have a shipwreck in the foreground-that is too much of a distraction, appeals too much to our sense of pain and fear, but without the shipwreck the storm is magnificent enough in itself; and when no fellowman is in danger of being shattered under our eyes, we can be free to fancy there is a certain furious mirth in the noise and onrush of the flood. There was this element of comedy in such a storm not many years ago off the Cumberland coast, where the combination of burricane with the spring tide brought the billows dashing up into the fields so far above the normal tide-line that they reached ground where a large rabbit-warren had had time to get established; and as the salt water poured down the holes, the terrified tenants crept out at the openings furthest away and in the driving

spray and wind they betook themselves to sitting each one behind a withered thistle, which presented about the most ludicrous picture of inadequate protection which it was possible to conceive. If there were elves or spirits of the vasty deep at that particular quarter they must indeed have been lacking in the sense of mischief and humor if they did not chuckle to themselves at the odd spectacle presented by Brer Rabbit and all his house squatting there, wet to the skin, and wondering how long this kind of thing was going to last.

"Heavy fall of snow in Scotland!" When such a headline greets the morning reader he knows it will be followed by accounts of how the line was blocked by drifts here or there, and the night mail delayed five or six hours, with consequences of much irritation to travellers, and the letters not being delivered till half a day late. But what does not get into the papers is the good turn done to the schoolchildren of half a countryside in their obtaining an unlooked-for holiday, and one of the best playthings in the world without spending a half-penny; not to mention the equally good turn to the parish schoolmaster who also gets the holiday and time to finish that immortal work which would have been done weeks ago but for the everlasting invasion of all his time and strength by the hard necessity of having to teach "wee Willie Gray, and his leather wallet," with Master Gavin Hamilton and Peggy Macpherson, and all the rest of the punctual little troop that nothing short of five feet of snow will deter.

"Great Floods in the Thames Valley." Here also is the suggestion of suffering farmers and drowning sheep and floating haystacks and impassable roads, but then if only the flood is great enough there is also the possibility of those Eton boys finding a decree

issued that Authority has had to own itself beaten, and they must go home to save their lives. Think how precious is every inch of water when it gets anywhere near such a standard of emancipation. Think of the prospects of cutting in for the November pheasants, and of the eager glances of anticipation looking from the schoolroom windows at home, if only the rain will go on for another day, if only the water flowing under the bridge will touch the top of the arch.

Perhaps the kind of bad weather the charm of which is hardest to appreciate, is a fog; but, in the country at any rate, it has a charm of its own, if only it is dense enough and white. It is like the charm of blind-man's buff. It is a sudden reversal of ordinary conditions, and an inauguration of new experiments, in motion and the sense of locality. To sensitive minds overworried with the presence of their fellow-men, it brings a welcome privacy and sense of seclusion. The high road becomes as private as a thick wood, and the open field like a hidden glen.

As you go from one place to another by the customary path, you go without any sense of distance, for all the familiar landmarks are hidden and everything is new. The look of trees and buildings as they loom out of the mist, close to you, is itself a change of mental impression, as great as that which the body itself enjoys when it enters deep water and feels that in a moment it will be lifted off the ground and be upborne by something more akin to its own nature than the thin air. white mist or fog the trees seem to lose their rooted firmness, and look like great flowers that you might approach to gather; the buildings seem shadowy forms that might presently change and dissolve as a cloud, and you yourself are hardly the same as at other times, and can imagine that

In a

everything solid is melting into a thinner element with which you also might blend, and in which you and the things of the earth might enter on some new mode of existence.

When you come home from your walk you will find that the woodman and keeper, the shepherd and waterman have found their own ways of turning the bad weather to account. They trouble not about speculation, but they know how to improve the hours that do not shine; and they generally have some corner where they can make a fire and do some repairs to their respective kinds of gear.

The Outlook.

"Mending their nets" is not a fisherman's job only; making a new handle or "stale" for an axe or rake, and doing it leisurely with much use of the pocket knife or spokeshave; sharpening the knives of the turnip-cutter. splicing a broken oar or punt pole, or refixing a damaged rowlock-all these and half a hundred more by-works are ready to hand to make up the charm of bad weather, and prove that to the wise man there is no such thing at all, but that everything is good in its season and it is merely a question of knowing how to use whatever weather the clerk of this department ordains.

Industry: a Study of Business Organization." The author traces throughout the past twenty-five years the modern movement towards industrial combination in all its forms. The book concludes with some general economic criticisms, and is in the main analytic and descriptive. An appendix of illustrative documents is included.

M. Francis Charmes, the successor of Ferdinand Brunetière as editor-in-chief of the Revue des Deux Mondes, is a native of Aurillac (Cantal), where he was born in 1848, and is a politician and journalist rather than a literary critic. He was for some years a leading member of the staff of the Journal des Débates, and, in addition to a number of public appointments, has been several times elected to the French Chamber of Deputies. In 1893 he published a volume of historical and other studies.

Messrs. Kegan Paul will publish this month a new and exhaustive work on the Egyptian Sudan, by Dr. Wallis Budge. He went on three missions to the Sudan on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum, and was engaged in excavations there. The work is not only a history of the Sudan from the earliest times to the present day, but also gives full and interesting descriptions of its monuments and inhabitants. It is profusely illustrated with photographs, many of them taken by the author.

E. P. Dutton & Co. have just published in their "Library of Early English Novelists," "The Monk," by M. G. Lewis, edited, and with an Introduction by E. A. Baker, M.A.; in the same "Library" a volume of "Early English Prose Romances," edited by Wm. J. Thomas, with Introduction by Henry Morley. The volume contains, among others, "The History of Reynard the

Fox," "Robert the Deuyll," "The Pleas aut History of Tom A. Lincoln." "The History of the Damnable Life and Deserved Death of Dr. John Faust"; in the "London Library," two volumes of "Letters of Literary Men," one from Sir Thomas More to Robert Burns, and the other "The Nineteenth Century."

St. Deiniol's Library at Hawarden was formally opened January 31. The new wing, recently completed. has accommodation for seventeen visitors, as well as for a warden and his assistant. Here the bookishly inclined may retire for a season. And here, at a very moderate cost, he may enjoy the advantages of a fine library situated in a beautiful part of the country. About £60,000 has been devoted to this admirable scheme. £40,000 was provided by Mr. Gladstone himself, £10.000 by his sons and daughters, and £10,000 by the nation. It is a noble memorial to one who found his chief recreation in the study of literature. The Library numbers thirty-seven thousand volumes.

"The Malefactor" of E. Phillips Oppenheim's latest novel is an Englishman of good family and traditions who submits to a sentence of fifteen years' penal servitude for manslaughter without urging the extenuating circumstances which would have compromised the reputation of his victim's wife, and returns to freedom changed beyond the recognition of his friends, possessed of accumulated resources, and bent-somewhat inconsistentlyon revenging himself on society for its injustice. The working out of his purpose outlines the plot, which is as sensational as Mr. Oppenheim's public expects and some shades more unsavory. Pot- and caldron-boiling though such work may be, the literary critic need not take it seriously. Little, Brown & Co.