REVIEWS 125
his fondness for repetition. With Mr. Seeley recapitulation becomes a vice. This is a real blemish in an author otherwise almost faultless. The reader never has to question a sentence twice to catch the author's thought. Unlike Freeman, he deals in no recondite allusions, so annoying and baffling to the really conscientious reader. Seeley rather goes to the other extreme and never takes the reader's knowledge for granted. And here, perhaps, is the explanation of his apparent fondness for repetition. Mr. Seeley was first and last a teacher. He wrote as he lectured with the student ever before him. But what adds strength and completeness to a lecture, may become tedious even to wearisomeness in an essay or a book. It may be said, how- ever, in defense of the oft occurring repetition, that Mr. Seeley never returns to a thought, once expressed by him, that he does not by a word, the new turn of a phrase, or a differently-constructed sentence, present his first thought in some new light, or add to what has already been said. His method is somewhat like that of a man who addresses himself to the opening of a door. He does not make one clean job of it at the first trial, but opens his door only a little way ; yet with each successive trial, he throws the door open a trifle wider, and at last after a progress of such openings and shuttings, he leaves it opened wide to its utmost limit. BENJAMIN S. TERRY.
Proceedings of the National Conference of Charities and Correction, 1895. Boston: GEO. H. ELLIS.
THIS volume illustrates the contemporary tendency to specializa- tion, while the conference itself is one of the chief agencies for coun- teracting the dispersive and centrifugal movements of specialization.
The address of Mr. R. T. Paine, as president, gives a survey of the related fields of charitable endeavor, and the spiritual inspirations of social effort for the unfortunate. Rev. T. T. Munger's sermon leads into the religious sanctuary. Mr. F. H. Wines discusses State Boards of Charities. The National Conference is in reality a meeting of state boards and invited friends. Their function is to investigate the facts of dependence and crime and give counsel to authorities and associa- tions. They are not to interfere with liberty but are able to prevent abuses in public and private < h.mtv. What Mr. Wines says of the relation of the state to voluntary chanties is timely and wise. "What the state does is best done when done by the state's own agents and
