Page:The Journal of English and Germanic Philology Volume 18.djvu/487

 Reviews and Notes 483 powerful counter-influence of the uniform orthography which tends to keep the parts together. There are at present earnest reformers at work to simplify the orthography and some pro- gress has been made. Unfortunately, however, the reformers in America and England do not agree and at the present moment it even seems that they will drift apart. This would be disas- trous. It seems to the reviewer that the common sense of the great English-speaking family will ultimately bring the different members together. The cause is so important that a final separation is unthinkable. After a long struggle the German- speaking states have become one in orthography and this will be the final result of the present orthographic struggle on English-speaking territory. The reviewer hails the appearance of this book with joy. He hopes that it will be followed by many others and that the author himself will be able to carry out the desire expressed in the Preface p. VIII to investigate further the grammar of American vulgar speech which he discusses in the present work in chap. VI. He is not a professional philologist as can be seen in several slips in his historical explanations, as for instance on p. 179, where in speaking of the influence of the masses in the making of speech he says: "Thus it was, too, that . . . we got rid of whom after man in the man I saw." The terse form here without whom is the original form of the relative clause, not something that has been rendered terse by the omission of whom. The author, however, does not claim to be a philologist and is as modest as a man can be. He has a genuine interest in his native language and with the joy of an enthusiast has presented to the public useful materials in a pleasing and entertaining style. GEORGE O. CURME. Northwestern University. LEARNED SOCIETIES AND ENGLISH LITERARY SCHOLARSHIP IN GREAT BRITAIN AND THE UNITED STATES. By Harrison Ross Steeves, Ph.D., Instructor in English in Columbia University. New York, Columbia University 'Press, 1913. Organization for efficiency a strange sounding motto for scholarship and literary activity, yet that seems to be the final conclusion of the monograph after a review of the facts of origin and growth of learned societies in England and America and their relation to literary scholarship. The book was written as a dissertation for the doctorate in the Department of English, Columbia University, and published in the Columbia University Studies in English and Comparative Literature. It presents