Page:American Historical Review vol. 6.djvu/359

 R/iys and Jcvics : The M'clsJi People 349 tended for the use of the teacher rather than for that of the pupil, and they would seein to add little to the usefulness of the volume. They are too brief to help the pupil, and a well-eiiuipped teacher would regard them as superfluous. Kach chapter is followed by to]jics giving a synopsis of the text, ac- companied by references for further reading, prepared by Mr. Homer P. Lewis, Principal of the English High School at Worcester, Mass. These references are selected — so Mr. Larned says in his preface — with regard to adaptability for school use. The list is by no means complete. Such works as Prothero's Select Statutes and Other Documents and Gardiner's Documents of the Puritan Revolution should surely find a place among any working list of books upon English history. A list of references should also make some distinction between original and secondary ma- terial. The book has an excellent index. The maps are commendable, and the illustrations are well-chosen, if not always well-executed. Gertrude S. Kimball. Tlie llVls/t People. By John Rhy.s and David Brynmor Jones. (New V'ork : The Macmillan Co. 1900. Pp. xxvi, 678.) The title of this work is skilfully chosen to cover a variety of subjects. The book consists partly of extracts from the Report of the Royal Commis- sion on Land in Wales and Monmouthshire, and partly of new matter written later. The additional chapters make up about half the volume, which deals with the ethnology, political and economic history, consti- tutional law, language and literature, and finally the educational and religious conditions of the Welsh people. If it purported to be a history of Wales, the choice of subjects might appear arbitrary and the treatment sometimes disproportionate. But the book is rather to be judged as a series of chapters embodying contributions to such a history, and the con- tributions are valuable. The authors begin by dealing pretty fully with the ethnology of Wales, and incidentally with that of England and Ireland. They show that the race, or rather people, commonly termed Celtic is of very mixed origin, and they conclude that the blood of a " pre-Aryan " population pre- dominates in the modern Welshman. This pre-Aryan people they hold to have survived in the historic Picts, and in a long chapter on the Pictish (juestion they present very fully the arguments for their view. The opinion that the Picts were non-Aryan in race and speech undoubtedly holds the field at present, as they maintain, though with regard to the language the controversy is not conclusively settled. Students of Celtic literature, — and in general, students of popular epics and romances, — will find in these ethnological chapters a good many valuable comments on the old Welsh and Irish saga texts. From this point of view the remarks on possible survivals of matriarchy, — the suc- cession of sister's sons to a title, metronymic designations, and the like, — are of especial interest. The authors also have some things to say about