Mr. Jastrow brought to his labours on the _Song of Songs_ at once the erudition and common sense with which he had already edited _Job_ and _Ecclesiastes_ and in addition a feeling for youth and love and poetry which his latest theme particularly required. In a masterly introduction, utilizing all that is known about the book and reducing it to convenient form for a wide audience, he cuts away the accretions of centuries while tracing the fortunes of this golden treasury with its cloud of commentators. Then he offers a new translation divided into twenty-three separate lyrics, each of which he equips with adequate yet simple notes, purging the text of intrusive variants and glosses, explaining the allusions, sympathetically pointing out the grace and spontaneity of the poems. In his treatment the _Song of Songs_ is restored to an ancient status which gives it a fresh, modern meaning. Once more the Palestinian villagers have come together at a wedding; once more they sing exquisite songs about the joys of love which no thought of theology invades. Lover and beloved praise one another’s charms in glowing imagery. Alone, each longs for the other; united, they rush to ecstatic, unabashed consummation of their desire. This is love at its rosy dawn, tremulous, candid, exultant. This is what Wilfrid Scawen Blunt had in mind when he declared in his diary that he would rather have written the _Song of Songs_ than all the rest of literature. THE CHRISTIAN DIPLOMAT Regarding Europe as an intricate republic with all its interests close-knit and its equilibrium exquisitely sensitive, François de Callières in 1716 published at Paris a vade-mecum for diplomats which has been translated and issued in a handsome edition by A. F. Whyte as _On the Manner of Negotiating with Princes_. “Secrecy,” says Callières, “is the very soul of diplomacy”; and his manner of expounding the manners of negotiation might almost be that of some accomplished mole long employed by his monarch in listening for ground-tremors in all parts of the garden, learning where traps were set and ploughs expected and where the roots grew sweetest and lushest, and finding out the shortest way to them and back in safety. Discretion, however, not deceit is the method Callières urges. The ideal diplomatist must be “a man of probity and one who loves truth.” “It is true that this probity is not often found joined to that capacity for taking wide views which is so necessary to a diplomatist.” He should have learning, experience, penetration, eloquence, as well as the most equable temper, the most easy gallantry, the quickest repartee, the most tireless patience; he must be courageous without being rash, dignified without being mysterious, wealthy without being too proud of his purse, well-bred without being haughty. He must dispense gifts generously, though he should rarely take them, and he should do his bribing like a gentleman, in the due fashion of the court to which he is accredited.