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Show BOOK REVIEWS. I "Exits and Entrances" is the title of a new book by Charles Warren Stoddard, to be published immediately by the Lothrop company. The author presents reminscences of interesting literary figures like Robert Louis Stevenson, Ste-venson, Bret Harte and George Eliot; some sketches of travel and personal experiences. It is a volume of garnered gar-nered memories of the kind Mr. Stoddard Stod-dard delights to dwell upon and of which his readers never tire. The latest of the Cornhill booklets must be of interest to all who have studied bookmaking and "Old Time Printers' Marks." Mr. George Burwell Utley's handling of this last named subject is especially good both as to matter and presentation. The illustrations illus-trations are full of charm to the book lover, and ' it ' Is worthy of note that church symbols were very generally used by designers of printers' marks, showing that the association between learning and religion was not broken by the invention of printing. News comes from Shanghai of the death in his seventy-seventh year of Father Zottoli, S. J., famed for his knowledge of the Chinese language and literature, which is said to have been more broal and accurate than that of. any other European. Despite his al-vanced al-vanced age, this gret missionary was almost up to the day of his death hard at work on a distionary (to be pub-lishel pub-lishel in ten or twelve volumes) of the Chinese language, covering almost all the vast field of its difficult literature. A set of Father Zottoli's Latin translations trans-lations of the Chinese classics, which holds an honorel place in our library, is perhaps the only one in the United States. A reviewer who has gone carefully through ex-President Kruger's Memoirs" Me-moirs" finds the rugged personality of the author reflected on every page "not pretty to look.at, mark you, nor a thing to be set to music; a man more apt to take off his coat to an affront than his hat to a eoat-of-arms." A description altogether consistent with the character of the "old Lion of the Transvaal," who, when an English Eng-lish lord was being prestned to him, interrupted his long account of his lordship's imposing pedigree with the remark: "I was a cowherd anl my father a farmer." The first of a new series of Catholic catechisms edited by the Rev. Francis J. Butler of the archdiocese of Boston has made its appearance. It is intended intend-ed for the use of first confession and first communion classes. The purpose of this Holy Family series, as it Is called, is to render the catechism of the third plenary council of Baltimore more serviceable for beginners and to supply what seems lacking in it for advanced classes of Christian doctrine. St. Augustine and His Age. By Joseph Jo-seph McCabe. New York: G. P. Put-i Put-i nam's Sons, $2.00 net. Like the earlier monograph on Abe-lard, Abe-lard, this "Life of St. Augustine" is not a volume of a series made to order, but is written from the author's heart and from fullness of knowledge. It has not quite the unique interest of the Abelard for. several reasons, above all for the reason that Its subject is not so perfectly sympathetic to the writer There is, too, some confusion here and ' I there in his plan, notably where in balancing the good and evil of the age he leaves the reader in bewildered uncertainty un-certainty as to whether morals had grown purer or more corrupt under the Caesars In his account of Manicheism he has let slip the opportunity of evok-ng evok-ng a picture of strange and fascinating fascinat-ing interest such as might easily have been drawn, from the controversial works of St. Augustine. Nevertheless, the book as a whole, the portraiture of the Bishop of Hippo himself and the description of the times, is a brilliant and masterly piece of work. It is better bet-ter realing by far than most novels. |