6o8 Reviews of Books than French in translating the Greek which occurs in these letters. We could wish that he had carried this principle still further and had not in- troduced into his version so many foreign words and phrases. In the space of three lines (No. 228) we meet with Greek, Latin, and French. We can see no excuse for using a large number of Latin words for which English equivalents are easily found, such as legaiiis, ordo, trihuni aerarii, etc. It seems inexplicable that one who is so fond of Latin forms should employ such plurals as " Catiuses " and " Amafiniuses " (541). At times we meet with a painfully literal rendering as: "a great rumor " (120), " I was very weighty " (22), " I will bring you a pair of ears " (476), " one's eyes add to the pain " (537), " He will be unwilling that you should, as you would sooner or later, have time to thank for this rather than his favour " (284). At other times the author is very free in his translation and introduces colloquial expressions and slang phrases which are not in harmony with the tone and spirit of the original. Errors in English grammar and in the use of words are not infrequent, and at times there is an incorrect use of tenses which entirely destroys the thought. For example Cicero says in reference to a future event ; " If you were to be at Rome, I should have no fear, " but this we find translated: " If you were there when this was going on, I should not have been at all afraid" (227J. Often the spirit of a passage is lost owing to an apparent lack of appreciation of the special force of indi- vidual words which strike the key-note of the thought, as herns {22) , gloriolae (133). When we find in perhaps the most impressive passage of the most perfect letter (554) of the whole collection such a translation as "the corpses of so many towns lie in helpless ruins," we feel that a positive wrong is done Latin literature. .•lbert Granger Harkness. The Story of Assisi, by Lina Duff Gordon. (London, J. M. Dent and Co., 1900, pp. 372.) This book undertakes to do three things: (i) to give an historical sketch of Assisi, (2) to trace the life of St. Francis and the development of his order, (3) to furnish the traveller with a handbook of Assisi's monuments. These aims are nowhere an- nounced in this categorical fashion, but may fairly be said to be involved in the treatment. With regard to the history of Assisi the author finds that the chief interest lies in the struggles with Perugia. She dismisses the origin of these struggles with a reference to Perugia's "inborn love of fighting" and " to her restless spirit" (p. 19). It is evident without a further word of comment that a writer who contents himself with this simple- minded point of view may save himself much inconvenient trouble, but will not raise the darkness hovering over the Italian commune. The life of St. Francis and the origin of his order have been treated with such undeniable sympathy and acumen by Paul Sabatier that a reader is justified in demanding an equally successful narrative from every later writer. Sabatier understood that his task was, while making
