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 Rh The broken friendships and divided families of those days, when neighbors, and even brothers, felt so deeply on opposite sides of the great question are vividly described; and the char acter of Abraham Lincoln is portrayed with a loving reverence and deep admiration which must touch the hearts both of his friends and of his enemies. One feels sure the book is his torically faithful and trustworthy. ARROWS OK THE ALMIGHTY, by Owen John son, is the history of a man inheriting an intense pessimism, which is aggravated by every sort of misfortune, but who eventually works out his own salvation, or, to quote the author, "ac claims his own soul, recognizing that within him something greater than his understanding had existed and would exist forever and ever." The psychological aspect of the story is not intruded, though it serves to explain the intro duction of so many incidents, and possibly re lieves the strain on the reader's sympathy which such great misfortunes as overwhelm the hero might arouse, if one were not interested in their effect on his point of view. The style is good, but the various scenes seem to lack continuity, giving the effect of many good short stories, not of necessity part of the same novel. In a pocket volume of less than two hundred pages, one of the series of Temple Primers, Mr. Jose has in press a very readable history of Australasia from its discovery to the present day. The political system, also, and the social development of the colonies, are outlined in an interesting way. RECEIVED AND TO BE REVIEWED LATER.

JOHN MARSHALL. By James Bradley Thayer. Number 7 in the Riverside Biographical Series. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1901. Cloth. 7S cents. (157 pp.) FALSTAFF AND EQUITY. By Charles E. Phelps. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1901. Cloth. £1.50.

(xvi+201.)

POLITICS AND THE MORAL LAW. By Gustav Rtiemelin. Edited by Frederick W. Holls. D. C. L. New York : The Macmillan Company, 1901. Cloth. 75 cents. (125 pp.) 1 AUSTRALASIA THE COMMONWEALTH AND NEW ZEALAND. By Arthur W. Jose. London : J. M. Dent and Company. 1901. Cloth, 40 cents.

NEW

369 LAW

BOOKS.

A DIGEST OF THE LAW OF INSURANCE. Vols. 3 and 4. BY John Л. Berryman. Callaghan & Co., Chicago, 1901. (iv. -f- 1831 pp.) "I was just going to say, when I was inter rupted, that one of the many ways of classify ing minds is under the heads of arithmetical and algebraical intellects. All economical and practical wisdom is an extension or variation of the following arithmetical formula: 2 + 2 = 4. Every philosophical proposition has the more general character of the expression a+b=c. We are mere operatives, empirics, and egotists, until we learn to think in letters instead of fig ures." Thus Dr. Holmes begins " The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table "; and as in his youth he spent some months at a law school, it is proba ble that he was not unmindful of the bearing that this passage has upon the law. It is hardly necessary to expound the quota tion; for it is obvious to the lawyer that the judgment pronounced in any one case is one of the arithmetical formulas contemplated by Dr. Holmes, and that the general propositions found in treatises are formulas of an algebra ical nature. What is equally true, but perhaps not quite so obvious, is that the function of di gests is to aid in the transmuting of lawyer's arithmetic into lawyer's algebra. And how laborious the performing of this useful function is I Take for example these two new volumes of the series entitled " A Di gest of Insurance." They embody, in more than fifteen thousand paragraphs, the legal propositions — and often the facts — of more than seven thousand cases; and the paragraphs represent a vast amount of work, for the digester has not been content to reprint head-notes. These new volumes closely resemble their predecessors, of which the first volume was by Sansum, and contained the cases down to 1876, and the second was by the present digester and brought the cases down to 1887. The present volumes, coming down to substantially the close of the nineteenth century, follow, as has already been said, the plan of the earlier volumes, using the same titles for the topics and digesting most of the cases in the same rather elaborate form. The series has been before the public so long and has been so favorably received, that it is