seem to me to deserve a word of defense. They are too natural, too obvious and convincing, ever to disappear entirely from our music once they have been made at home in it. We have only two legs, and for that reason we have to move almost entirely in two-four time. At any rate, it is the easiest time in which to dance, and the best suited for sustained dancing a point not to be scorned in a period when the age-limit for dancing is being extended upward so dizzily.

'Of course the transposition of jazz rhythms into our own music presupposes a feeling for style, a solid taste, and great cultural restraint. But given these things, there is no serious reason to object to enriching our powers of musical expression by adaptations of jazz.

"This sort of addition to our store of musical forms will certainly not mean the abandonment of our own indigenous songs and dances. I don't think there is any danger that in fifty years nothing but Negro songs will be sung in Vienna. And I think there is just as little danger that the waltz-step which is musically more valuable — will ever be come archaic. The waltz-form, in spite of Johann Strauss, is not yet exhausted. The present generation and its successors will write many charming waltzes, and the waltz will be danced in Vienna as long as there are Viennese orchestras.'

based on the principle of regarding groups of letters, not as single words, but as abbreviated composite or agglomerate words, - that is, a series of abbreviations written in sequence, and of reconstructing the full vocables on the basis of archaic Greek.

'Signor Cavallazzi,' says Professor Mario Ferrigni in the Corriere della Sera, 'set himself to translating about a hundred Etruscan inscriptions with this "cipher," and with the support of a Greek vocabulary found for them all a grammatical and logical construction; a precise and plausible meaning, entirely new and quite different from that hitherto attributed to them, on the basis of imaginary hypotheses, by Italian and foreign scholars; and, finally, a detail of the greatest importance, a meaning in harmony with the objects on which the inscriptions are found mirrors, cups, cinerary urns, and the like.'

Professor Ferrigni is inclined to regard the discovery as in all likelihood a valid one. Professor Giulio Buonamici, of the University of Pisa, on the other hand, considers the new method equally illusory with all those 'discovered' from the sixteenth century to the present day. He holds that the groups of letters on Etruscan inscriptions are proper names, and denies that the alleged affiliations between Etruscan and archaic Greek are scientifically substantiated.

is regarded in Japan as having much the same sort of deterministic properties as the several months have according to many Western superstitions. The year of the Tiger, for instance, is regarded as a good year in which to set out upon a journey, for a safe return is confidently predictable - on the basis, it appears, of the fact that the tiger itself never fails to get back to its lair.

VERDI BALLET-MUSIC

THE recent observance in Italy of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Verdi's death gives special interest to the following communication from Vienna to the Observer:

At a symphony concert for workmen the ballet music of Verdi's opera, Othello, was performed in Vienna for the first time. The music, which is said to be unknown also in Germany, was written by the more than seventy-year-old composer for the Paris. grand opera, and is contained only in the French score of that work. It seems almost incredible that a man at that age should have had the temperament and power of invention shown in those brilliant and exotic dances. The opening Arabian dance, the invocation of Allah, a Greek dance, and a war dance are most original, not only in thematic material, but also in orchestration. This remarkable piece, finely conducted by Robert Heger, was encored.

SAVING A GREAT MANSION

THE Villa Aldobrandini, one of the historic mansions of Rome and one of its most beautiful buildings, was recently sold by the Prince Aldobrandini into the hands of a syndicate, and there was a justifiable fear that it would be turned into a hotel. Appeals to the Government were made by various art associations and others, and as a result a decree has been signed

by the King authorizing acquisition of the building and its grounds by the State. This step has been regarded as particularly judicious because the work that had been begun on the demolition of the gardens had led to the discovery of important ancient ruins in the subsoil. These are thought to include, not only a large house, but baths and shops of second-century construction. At all events, the preservation of the building as a national monument, and the scientific excavation of the buildings buried under the villa proper, are now assured.

The Money-Box, by Robert Lynd. London: Methuen. 68.

[Sunday Times]

CHRISTOPHER SLY, importuned with luxuries, brushed them aside and demanded a pot o' the smallest ale. Even so a reader, harassed with problem novels and treaties on the currency or relativity, might call for a few of Mr. Lynd's essays. For in this new collection Mr. Lynd is even less profound than usual. We encounter no dimensions more serious than those that are taken when we are measured for a suit of clothes, and nothing graver about money than how to extract it from a money-box, or how to avoid lending it to other people. Mr. Lynd himself is such a born spender that he exhorts us all to travel first-class, if the state of our money-box permits of it.

This is one of the glimpses he gives us, with the essayist's legitimate egoism, of his own personality. Others can be discerned in the pleasant papers called "The Professor' and 'The Stranger's Room.' In the former we get a vivid portrait of Sir Samuel Dill, the Irish scholar and historian, whose orbit in Belfast is crossed by a certain eager and impulsive student. In the latter we have earlier passages in Mr. Lynd's youth, when his father's house was the resort of other Presbyterian ministers, to whose good and forcible talk the child listened with ears alert to catch their every word.

A Chinese Mirror, by Florence Ayscough. London: Jonathan Cape; Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. $5.00.

[Manchester Guardian]

Books on China fall into two main classes learned works, and travelers' impressions. The former seldom reach the general reader; the latter are usually soon forgotten because of their superficiality. Mrs. Ayscough, a serious student of things Chinese, who has lived in China all her life, has attempted to present something of 'the reality behind the appearance.' It is a praiseworthy aim, because the solid works of the scholars are apt to leave out that part of the reality which only contact with Chinese life and actual observation can give. Her first essay, describing the building of her house by Chinese workmen in native style, with all the native rites, is quite charming and admirably succeeds in its

aim. Each item of the process of building opens up a vista into that vast complexity of custom, legend, superstition and sound reason, sentiment, and keen sense of beauty that make up this immensely old, yet so living, civilization. The second essay, describing a voyage up and down the Yangtze, pleasantly mingles with impressions of scenery the countless associations of the river's shores with Chinese history and poetry. To the ordinary European these mean nothing, and intending travelers might well take this book with them, to learn how much they might miss.

We feel that Mrs. Ayscough sometimes takes too much for granted in the reader, especially in the latter part of her book, which contains serious contributions to Chinese folklore. She has wisely added a brief synopsis of Chinese history, which is really useful. Versions of poems by famous poets are interspersed through the pages. Mrs. Ayscough has the gift of sympathy, and works in a good cause the better understanding of our fellow creatures.

Banzai! by John Paris. London: W. Collins, Sons and Company. 78. 6d.

[Daily Telegraph]

MR. JOHN PARIS is well known for his books on Japan, but in his latest story he plunges us into the byways and quagmires of Japanese psychology in the setting of a cinema in Piccadilly Circus. Here we meet Takao Ono, living at present in a back room of Peckham, where he poses as a Japanese prince. Takao, almost from the first moment, dominates the story, and little by little his boyhood in Kyoto and Tokyo unfolds itself in London with all the relish and gusto of vivid memory. For the story is no mere tour de force, and the Japanese atmosphere is not arrived at by any tricks of light and costume and stage-management. Takao is as living a representative of the East, in his way, as Kim or Gora, and one gets to know him almost as one gets to know the respective heroes of Kipling and Tagore. For all that, he is so essentially elusive that the English couple, who have learned so much about his past, are not a little perturbed about his future. Naturally it is the wife who plans something practical for their protégé, who, incidentally, had long ago 'become a Christian in order to improve his English.' Against the long evidence of his own life-story they contrive to believe, at least partially, in this vital rascal,

only to find that Ono has cleared out with their artistic treasures. But in spite of everything they, and the reader too, would like to see him again just for his own sake. Perhaps Mr. Paris will bring him back?

New Verse, by Robert Bridges. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 6s.

[Morning Post]

THE poet laureate's new verse-book, which contains the harvesting of 1921 with a few earlier pieces, is packed with experiments in 'NeoMiltonic syllabics,' in accentual measures, and in a somewhat amended form of William Stone's quantitative prosody. It is absurd to be angry with experimentalists, be they young or old, and to raise against them the cry of ‘Bolshevism,' that modern equivalent of the medieval word Vauderie. But for them all new poetry would be merely an appreciation of the old, English verse would run to seed in artificiality and sentimentalism, and it would be left to other nations to catch and crystallize that new beauty which is the aura of new-found truth. At the same time it is the duty of the critic to say when the experimentalist has failed, and we are bound to condemn even the essays in Neo-Miltonic versification,

my well-continued fanciful experiment,

wherein so many strange verses amalgamate on the secure bed-rock of Milton's prosody, –

despite the versifier's dexterity and the occasional profound thought or noble phrase; and when we ask, patient and expectant, for the bread of life and get a William Stone- then, O tuneful Nine, we should be tempted into blasphemy were it not for wondering who it was that could be described as 'a rank musk-idiot, the filthiest skunk,' fit to justify the use by Catullus of his most horrible vocabulary. But, if there be any need of forgiveness, all is forgiven when we reach Part III, which is 'all in recognizable old styles.' There we find, for example, a tribute to Emily Brontë that is worthy of that undaunted daughter of desires:

What was 't to thee, enamour'd

As a red rose of the sun,

If of thy myriad lovers
Thou never sawest one?

The Sailor's Return, by David Garnett. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1925. $2.00.

Books like this make one suspect that Mencken and Colonel George Harvey are both mistaken in their opinion that England has collapsed. In short, Mr. Garnett has done it again more successfully perhaps than ever before. His formula is the same a preposterous situation treated seriously and logically: a trick, by the way, that a recent contributor to the Living Age also descried in Charlie Chaplin. The situation this time deals with an English sailor of the late fifties returning to England with his wife, who is a Negro princess, and their small child. They open a pub on the Negress's money and try to adapt themselves to their strange surroundings. The sailor, William Targett, is real flesh and blood; his wife, Tulip, is purely fantastic but entirely convincing. The story is told with almost archaic simplicity and studied detachment. It runs along in an unbroken stream a continuous narrative of steady, intense interest, successively humorous, ironic, and sympathetic. It is a work of art, but is in no sense arty; original, but in no sense smarty.

Courts and Countries after the War, by H. R. H. the Infanta Eulalia of Spain. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1925. $3.00. THE author of this book is an aunt of the King of Spain - on his father's side. She has, therefore, Hapsburg blood in her veins, and this presumably accounts for her ardent espousal of the royalist cause in every modern nation. Her propaganda, if such it may be called, consists of intimate yet vague allusions to various European celebrities. She shows nice sense and nice feelings in defending her own nephew, the superbly adequate king of the best nation in the world, though as a character-sketch these pages are, one suspects, nearly worthless. The two most interesting passages in the book are the defense of the Crown Prince of Germany and the eulogy of King Ferdinand of Bulgaria. The only idea that one encounters is that Sir Basil Zaharoff and Venizelos are 'the accredited agents of the unseen force which dominates modern Europe.' This force is nothing more or less than our old

friends the Masons, who are said to have every king except Albert of Belgium and Alfonso of Spain under their thumbs. Since the Infanta is herself a Catholic, and in the light of the latest Papal Encyclical, this sounds like six of one and half a dozen of the other. The good Infants will never take her place with Spengler and Bergson as one of the great minds of the century, but she furnishes as rare gossip as you will meet in any general store.

Romantic Episodes in Old Manila, by Percy Hill. Manila: Walter Robb, 1925. 81.00. THIS little volume contains eight short stories' half fiction, half history, which are based upon records turned up by the author in his searchings among the old Manila archives. They picture the life of the romantic days of the old Spanish capital in the Orient, when communication with the mother country was still confined to the Acapulco galleon, the long trail across Mexico, and a second sea-voyage from Vera Cruz to Cadiz. It is an interesting story that, like the story of the Spanish Missions in California, is the more fascinating because it is the prelude to a chapter in the history of our own civilization. An excellent little book for the world tourist whose journeyings will take him or her to the Philippines.

Toute la France, by Emile Saillens. Paris: Bibliothèque Larousse, 1925.

Ir not the kind of book to be recommended for reading in bed, this volume by M. Saillens can be heartily recommended for very constant use in reference, and indeed for a certain sort of informative reading. It is as full of information as an egg of meat. The author has given an account, which can have few omissions, of the physical, economic, social, political, and cultural life of modern France, beginning with a chapter on 'The Soil' and ending with chapters on 'The French Genius' as expressed in literature and the arts and 'France and the Rest of the World.' What comes between is as varied and encyclopædic as this would indicate, and, since it is very accurately documented, the utility of the book should not need to be emphasized.