time, in Warwickshire." Starting from the rootnumber 523, the author evolves "Master William JackSpur writ this play, and was engaged at the Curtain,' Next, from the root-number 516 he evolves the same sentence for the second time. As if this is not enough, he starts with 505, and evolves it for the third time. Then, starting with 513, produces it for the fourth time. And, starting with the fifth root-number, viz., 506, produces it yet again for the fifth time. There are but five root-numbers, or this sort of thing might be made to go on for ever. Again, the author arrives at the one prime key-number which Mr. Donnelly has reserved as his greatest of all secrets. He declares it to be 814; and, if it be not right, it at any rate will do all that is required. The conclusion to be drawn, in the author's own words, is simply this: "The cipher tells any story under the manipulation of the operator. In point of fact, it is no cipher at all. Mr. Donnelly is an enthusiast, but the cryptogram is a delusion."

The "cryptogram" is hardly worth powder and shot. It will always impose on the credulous, and never on the mathematician or the student of our literature. Still, it was worth while to expose it just once for all. And now it has been exposed twice.

The University Economics.-Political Economy: an Elementary Text-Book of the Economics of Commerce. By E. C. R. Gonner. (Sutton & Co.) MR. GONNER has written a useful book for beginners, but we do not understand by what right he calls it 'The University Economics.' We imagine that its merits and demerits are the author's own, and that Oxford has no claim to rejoice over or suffer from either. Mr. Gonner is not a speculator. He has not gone beyond the beaten track, but has put very clearly before his readers the facts and assumptions which are generally accepted by economists. We do not, indeed, call to mind that we have ever found in the same small space so good an ac count of the conclusions on which the orthodox schools of political economists are in agreement. The heretics are not represented-there are heretics in political economy as well as in theology. This was not to be expected in a text-book. The short space explaining what Socialism involves will be found useful to many who denounce without understanding. Mr. Gonner has no sympathies with that form of thought, but he understands the aims of its advocates, and does not misrepresent them.

Great Writers.-Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson. By Richard Garnett, LL.D. (Scott.)

THIS is one of the best-indeed, in some ways, quite the best-life that has appeared in this series-the gentle, quiet, uneventful history of one who spent an almost ideally tranquil existence amid the fever and fret of modern American progress. Dr. Garnett has drawn largely on Mr. J. E. Cabot, Emerson's authorized historian, and acknowledged the same; but we never for one moment are allowed to feel that we are reading a book "made to order," as, to some extent, all works in a series of this kind must in the nature of things be.

Emerson is one who has never been fully appreciated in England. Long after his own countrymen had come to feel what manner of man he was, the cultivated Englishman regarded him as a visionary, somewhat as they did, and in this case justly, Alcott. No two minds could have been cast in more varied moulds, and Dr. Garnett brings out the practical side of Emerson as it has never been brought out before, while at the same time he never forgets that he is dealing with one who had another, a far more idealistic, side to his character. It is as an essayist that Emerson will be remembered. He wrote, indeed, true poetry at times; but his verse is,

as a rule, wanting in some of the higher qualifications that go to make a poet. In his admiration of the beauties of nature he reminds one at times of Wordsworth, but never at his best is he to be compared for one instant with the great Lakeland poet.

The Morning Psalms: Meditations for Every Day in the Year. By the Author of The Daily Round.' (Whitaker & Son.)

WE have here, in a very elegant pocket edition, well printed, bound in red morocco, a series of devotional reflections of a kind for which The Daily Round' has prepared the reader. The volume is likely to enjoy a widespread popularity.

DR. BIRKBECK HILL, the editor of Boswell's 'Johnson,' has nearly ready for publication through the Clarendon Press a collection of letters from David Hume to William Strahan, hitherto unpublished. In the preface he recounts the circumstances under which Lord Rosebery purchased the originals when the authorities of the Bodleian and of the British Museum had declined them. A life of Hume has been prefixed, and the letters have been fully annotated.

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Yonder lies our young sea village,

Nature's charms are less and less,
Science grows and beauty dwindles;
Roofs of slated hideousness.

W. FELLS (Hamlet,' Act IV. sc. vii.: "Long Purples"). -The early purple orchis, Orchis mascula, a flower blooming in April and May. One of the names by which it is known is the "rampant widow." Lyte's 'Herbal,' 1578, gives various appellations too gross for mention. See the Garden, Sept. 19, 1874.

From the ballad Waly Waly.' See 7th S. iv. 296; v. C. TOMLINSON ("When cockle shells turn siller bells "). 15.

B. T. WOODD-SMITH ("Who plucked these flowers?").— See 'N. & Q.,' 6th S. xi. 349, 399; 7th S. i. 79, 111, 494.

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No. 334, will be published on WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24th.
Contents.

1. ROBERT ELSMERE and CHRISTIANITY.
9. DANIEL O'CONNELL'S CORRESPENDENCE.

3. NONSENSE as a FINE ART.

4. CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHY and ANTIQUITIES. 5. MATTHEW ARNOLD.

6. PROVINCIAL LIFE under the ROMAN REPUBLIC.

7. TECHNICAL EDUCATION and FOREIGN COMPETITION.

8. Mr. BALFOUR'S ADMINISTRATION of IRELAND.

9. REMINISCENCES of SAMUEL ROGERS.

10. The WORK of the SESSION.

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