Recent Literature

WE think every one will find Mr. Lamon’s “ Life of Lincoln ” a book of uncommon interest, whatever may be the opinion of its wisdom, its reliability, and its propriety. On all these points we confess to having doubts, and on one at least something more than a doubt. We cannot see what there was in the career or the character of Lincoln that justifies Mr. Lamon in dragging from the dead man’s grave the miserable fact of his unhappy marriage, and thrusting it again and again before the reader. It was a point that needed only to be touched with the lightest hand, to which it would have yielded all that was qualifying and significant in it; but this shameless pressure upon it, this record of preliminary occurrences, these hints of the spiritual squalor and the cruel suffering of his marriage, do nothing to explain Lincoln ; and they form a violation of the silence of death, an aggression upon the right of those yet living — the widow and the blameless children — to the oblivion which at least temporarily falls upon such facts. This is the chiefly unpardonable feature of a work which has many features hard to forgive, and which treats all Mr. Lincoln’s love-affairs with a maudlin insistence and a fumbling melodramatic sentimentality very repugnant to taste and trying to patience. There was really nothing uncommonly tragical in them ; he lost his first love, and loved several times afterwards, as such vast numbers of other young men do, who finally marry happily, or marry unhappily, or marry not at all, and in either case do not greatly distinguish themselves from the human race at large. Lincoln was a man of profound inherent melancholy, and these disappointments doubtless had their effect upon him ; but that this effect must have been superficial, all but the young ladies will believe; and his disappointments do little or nothing to account for him as the man we know. By and by it would have been well enough to tell of them ; there is not necessarily any harm in them ; there is nothing so “ unchivalrous ” even in Lincoln’s own account of his courtship of Miss Owen that it cannot be excused as a humorist’s naturally fantastic view of the matter; but it was not yet the time to tell these stories. There are some things which the world has no right to know at once, even concerning the sorrows, the secret personal griefs, of a man who has inexpressibly benefited the world.

The history of Mr. Lincoln’s childhood and early life is exceedingly full and minute. It appears to us at times quite too full to be quite true. There are few things so untrustworthy as the memory of a great man’s boyhood friends and old neighbors concerning his life among them. The passion for distinction at his expense through indiscriminate praise or gross derogation, is one that few of them can resist; and even when their recollections are confronted and compared, it must be wellnigh impossible to sift the truth from them, to gather the grains of wheat from the bushels of chaff. However, this only tells against Mr. Lamon’s book in greater degree than it tells against other biographies trusting to similar material, and it must be owned that the use of it is by no means unguarded. Some of the neighbor-lore is discarded, and poor, bragging Dennis Hanks, who wished to be drawn upon as an inexhaustible well of reminiscences, is quite needlessly snubbed before the world. Mr. Lamon was master to take Mr. Hanks’s fables or leave them in silence ; the jeering rejection of them has an air of cruelty.

But though there is little in this part of the work save an expansion of the stories told in some of the first campaign biographies of Lincoln, and the contribution to his personal history of a large additional quantity of similar stories, yet the whole is very useful as a description of the state of society in which he was born and passed his youth. In its general form and its external features life was the same in Indiana and Illinois during the first quarter of this century as in Kentucky and Western Pennsylvania and Virginia during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. But pioneer society in the younger States had lost nearly all its heroic and poetical traits, its hospitality, its dramatic courage, its picturesque religion, its sense of fraternity, and its hearty sympathy, and nearly all its vices remained. It was more shifting and unstable than ever, for it was born of the vagabond impulse of the most wayward children of the maternal West; it had no civilization at all to forget, but everything to learn ; it was rude and fierce, without the generosity sprung from danger in the earlier time ; it was quite as lawless and coarse, and it was more squalid ; besides the stock was not so good, for there was a larger admixture of poor whites from the South, and less of the steady Scotch Irish, thrifty Yankee, canny Jerseyman in the younger than in the elder Western States.

“ The houses were scattered far apart; but the inhabitants would travel long distances to a log-rolling, a house-raising, a wedding, or anything else that might be turned into a fast and furious frolic. On such occasions the young women carried their shoes in their hands, and only put them on when about to join the company. The ladies drank whiskey-toddy, while the men took it straight ; and both sexes danced the live-long night, barefooted, on puncheon floors. The fair sex wore ‘ cornfield bonnets, scoop-shaped, flaring in front, and long though narrow behind.’ Shoes were the mode when entering the ball-room; but it was not at all fashionable to scuff them out by walking or dancing in them.

' Four yards of linsey-woolsey, a yard in width, made a dress for any woman.’ The waist was short, and terminated just under the arms, whilst the skirt was long and narrow. ‘ Crimps and puckering frills ’ it had none. The coats of the men were home-made ; the materials, jeans or linseywoolsey. The waists were short, like the frocks of the women, and the long ‘clawhammer ’ tail was split up to the waist. This, however, was company dress, and the hunting-shirt did duty for every day. The breeches were of buck-skin or jeans; the cap was of coon-skin; and the shoes of leather tanned at home. If no member of the family could make shoes, the leather was taken to some one who could, and the customer paid the maker a fair price in some other sort of labor. The state of agriculture was what it always is where there is no market, either to sell or buy, where the implements are few and primitive, and where there are no regular mechanics. The Pigeon Creek farmer ‘ tickled ’ two acres of ground in a day with his old shovel-plough, and got but half a crop. He cut one acre with his sickle, while the modern machine lays down in neat rows ten. With his flail and horse tramping, he threshed out fifteen bushels of wheat: while the machine of to-day, with a few more hands, would turn out three hundred and fifty. He ‘ fanned ’ and ‘ cleaned with a sheet.’ When he wanted flour, he took his team and went to a ‘ horse-mill,’ where he spent a whole day in converting fifteen bushels of grain. The minds of these people were filled with superstitions, which most persons imagine to be, at least, as antiquated as witch-burning. They firmly believed in witches and all kind of witch-doings. They sent for wizards to cure sick cattle. They shot the image of the witch with a silver ball, to break the spell she was supposed to have laid on a human being. If a dog ran directly across a man’s path whilst he was hunting, it was terrible ‘luck,’ unless he instantly hooked his two little fingers together, and pulled with all his might, until the dog was out of sight. There were wizards who took charmed twigs in their hands, and made them point to springs of water and all kinds of treasure beneath the earth’s surface. There were ‘ faith doctors,’ who cured diseases by performing mysterious ceremonies and muttering cabalistic words. If a bird alighted in a window, one of the family would speedily die. If a horse breathed on a child, the child would have the whooping-cough. Everything must be done at certain ‘ times and seasons,’ else it would be attended with ‘ bad luck.’ They must cut trees for rails in the early part of the day, and in ‘ the light of the moon.’ They must make a fence in ‘the light of the moon ’; otherwise, the fence would sink. Potatoes and other roots were to be planted in the ‘ dark of the moon,’ but trees and plants which bore their fruits above ground must be ‘ put out in the light of the moon.’ The moon exerted a fearful influence, either kindly or malignant, as the good old rules were observed or not. It was even required to make soap ‘ in the light of the moon,’ and, moreover, it must be stirred only one way, and by one person. Nothing of importance was to be begun on Friday. All enterprises inaugurated on that day went fatally amiss. A horse-colt could be begotten only ‘ in the dark of the moon,’ and animals treated otherwise than ‘ according to the signs in the almanac ’ were nearly sure to die.”

Born of the lowest down of these lowdowners, Abraham Lincoln, while he was yet in the passive ignorance of youth, took the color of things around him — how could it be otherwise ? On the memory of his mother, from whom he seems to have derived all his intellectual force and possibility of growth, a cloud rested; his father appears to have been as worthless a squatter as ever breathed, — in the expressive Western phrase, thoroughly “ ornery ” ; and Abraham Lincoln grew up to be the life of the corn-husking, the stag-dance, the wrestling-match, the free fight, the cross-roads grocery. Those wretched Hoosiers and Suckers, decimated by fever and milk-sickness, frozen by ague and burned by whiskey, ill-fed, ill-clothed, ignorant, superstitious, fierce, had a truculent love of humor, to which the gaunt, uncouth, good-hearted, bright-witted, wandering farm-drudge ministered by his mock-sermons, his scurrilous rhymes, his coarse stories ; and it is no wonder if throughout life the habit of some of these things clung to him. He always told equivocal stories, we believe, while he lived; but it is not credible that he had any affinity save with the undeniable humor of those lawless tales. He was essentially a humorist, while even this unsparing biography, which strips from him every shred of privacy, shows him singularly free from any quality that could sympathize with their mere grossness.

It shows him continually outgrowing his faults ; just in proportion as he grew in knowledge he grew in wisdom. Your admiration of him suffers nothing by the fact that he wrote malicious lampoons when a boy on those who slighted or misused him ; for his magnanimity kept pace with his thought, and for every good thing that he learned he put a bad thing away, until he stood the foremost man in greatness of soul as well as mental power in his State, if not his nation. The processes of his education are duly dwelt upon by Mr. Lamon, but they are not novel or singular. It is the old story of the borrowed books, of study by the cabin-fire, of groping up the hill of knowledge without a hand to help or guide, — a story which has been told of so many that its pathos is now blunted, and it has come to be despised by those to whom fortune has been friendlier But it can never cease to touch the heart of our people, whose experience individually and collectively is so often mirrored in it; and it is one from which humanity can well take courage, for it teaches how sufficient is a man to himself in all noble aims. It will not do to say that in no other circumstances than those which attended his development was Lincoln possible, but it is certain that he was the product of a state of things that, according to all our theories of transmitted qualities, of civilization, of education, ought not to have produced the man he was, but a brutal, ignorant clown. Self-made men, if they are more than half made up, always deplore their want of school and college ; they are rarely arrogant for themselves, whatever their admirers may be for them ; they are commonly resolute, as Lincoln was, that their children shall have the advantages they had not ; but none the less each of them, grotesque and unbalanced and unpolished as he may be, is an irrefutable witness that the virtue is in the race, and not in mere continuous culture. Perhaps also he may even intimate that Divine Providence still concerns itself with human affairs, and selects its instruments by tests which the sciences do not know.

Lincoln seems certainly to have been such an instrument of Providence, and he was not less so because, as Mr. Lamon’s book shows, he sought with a consuming ambition all the honorable places that he attained, and did not wait, as some feebleminded have supposed, for honors to seek him. Ambition was the absolute condition of his intellectual growth; it is in fact neither a good nor a bad thing in itself, or, rather, it is an unmixed good of itself unless a bad purpose qualifies it; and without it the droll, uncouth lout of the backwoods, whose very origin was lost in doubt if not in shame, would be now a barefooted old squatter on some far Western river-bottom. But the biography which tells us that Lincoln was eager to rise, fond of applause, made an idol of the people, was a politician to the core, also proves that he never unworthily sought office, or meanly craved popularity, or was ever a dishonest politician. On the contrary, nothing betrays less of selfish design, less of ignoble expedient in our history, than the development of Abraham Lincoln’s greatness. It is by very slow degrees, but it is out of his great, true heart. The raw country lad, who makes a flat-boat voyage to New Orleans has never thought about slavery, or if he has, he probably shares the vulgar contempt of “ niggers ” ; but in the South he sees men and women chained and beaten, and from that moment he abhors slavery. When he enters political life, however, he does not sympathize with the first enemies of slavery ; possibly he thinks the Abolitionists provoked all the violence they suffered. He is a Whig, and he is opposed merely to the extension of slavery ; he votes in Congress “ more than forty times ” for the Wilmot Proviso. When the Whig party begins to break up after the nomination of Taylor, he remains a Taylor Whig; when that short-lived negative organization to which he belonged, the Anti-Nebraska party, crumbles to pieces, he does not know what he is ; “ thinks he is Whig,” But he no sooner becomes identified with the Republicans than he becomes their life in Illinois ; again and again he is their champion, beaten but undismayed. Finally he takes a step that terrifies them, defeats them, and threatens their ruin ; he makes the speech declaring that the Union cannot exist half slave and half free. He is defeated for Senator, but he is the strongest man of the party. Wherever he goes, he makes this known ; in Ohio, in New York, in New England. People are astonished at his simple and manly style, in which there is nothing rude or “ eloquent,” his shapely logic, his sagacity, his humanity, his humor ; he is a revelation.

Mr. Lamon would have us believe that it was from shrewd forecast, from a desire to outdo Seward, to surpass the “ irrepressibleconflict ” speech, and thus snatch from the chief Republican the nomination in 1860, that Lincoln made “ the house-dividedagainst-itself speech ” in 1858. But this is asking too much. Lincoln had a perhaps superstitious consciousness of some high destiny reserved for himself, but he was no prophet, and it is far easier to believe that he spoke in 1858 from principle and conviction, and from a desire to be made Senator. No one could then foresee what the public mind would be in 1860 ; nay, we doubt if that phrase overthrew Seward, and raised Lincoln to the Presidency.

As to provisions for success less honorable than the prophetic instinct, there is little proof that Lincoln made any before the convention ; yet he was a politician, and his “ friends ” were politicians, and they bought and sold as usual in the convention. Lincoln felt bound by their bargain with the Pennsylvanians, and sorely against his will gave Mr. Cameron a place in his Cabinet. But he never was at peace with himself as long as Cameron remained there, and he summarily dismissed him at last. In fact, the popular conception of Lincoln’s character was an exceptionally sound and just one. He was honest. Whatever shadow of duplicity rests on his fame seems to have fallen from his slow and hesitating habit of mind, and his continual self-subordination to the popular will. At the same time he did not become the prey of individuals ; no one knew better how to manage and shake off the useless or worse than useless persons who believed they had greatly served him, and had “ claims ” upon him as early friends or zealous partisans. This facility Mr. Lamon is inclined to attribute to a cold-heartedness of which Lincoln seems to have given no other signs. Indeed, there is an antipathetic spirit towards Lincoln manifested through the greater part of the book, which is only restrained when the facts put it to shame, and which almost wholly disappears towards the end, when Lincoln has fully grown upon the reader’s knowledge. It is as if the author had begun to write it with a dislike of Lincoln, which vanished as he learned to know him better. With this improvement of the author’s tone, there is also a great improvement of his literature. The reader will perhaps get half-way through the large volume without great respect for the author’s workmanship, which often appears coarse and flimsy ; but the material immeasurably gains in dignity towards the close, and the author rises with it. We may instance as perhaps the best performance in the whole book the description of the final scenes of Lincoln’s life at Springfield, and that of his farewell to his old friends and neighbors, though this is disfigured by the sentimentality which curiously mingles with the antipathy shown elsewhere : —

“ It was a gloomy day : heavy clouds floated overhead, and a cold rain was falling. Long before eight o’clock, a great mass of people had collected at the station of the Great Western Railway to witness the event of the day. At precisely five minutes before eight, Mr. Lincoln, preceded by Mr. Wood, emerged from a private room in the dépôt building, and passed slowly to the car, the people falling back respectfully on either side, and as many as possible shaking his hands. Having finally reached the train, he ascended the rear platform, and, facing about to the throng which had closed around him, drew himself up to his full height, removed his hat, and stood for several seconds in profound silence. His eye roved sadly over that sea of upturned faces ; and he thought he read in them again the sympathy and friendship which he had often tried, and which he never needed more than he did then. There was an unusual quiver in his lip, and a still more unusual tear on his shrivelled cheek. His solemn manner, his long silence, were as full of melancholy eloquence as any words he could have uttered. What did he think of? Of the mighty changes which had lifted him from the lowest to the highest estate on earth ? Of the weary road which had brought him to this lofty summit ? Of his poor mother lying beneath the tangled underbrush in a distant forest? Of that other grave in the quiet Concord cemetery ? Whatever the particular character of his thoughts, it is evident that they were retrospective and painful. To those who were anxiously waiting to catch words upon which the fate of the nation might hang, it seemed long until he had mastered his feelings sufficiently to speak. At length he began in a husky tone of voice, and slowly and impressively delivered his farewell to his neighbors. Imitating his example, every man in the crowd stood with his head uncovered in the fast-falling rain.

“‘FRIENDS, — No one who has never been placed in a like position can understand my feelings at this hour, nor the oppressive sadness I feel at this parting. For more than a quarter of a century I have lived among you, and during all that time I have received nothing but kindness at your hands. Here I have lived from my youth, until now I am an old man. Here the most sacred ties of earth were assumed. Here all my children were born ; and here one of them lies buried. To you, dear friends, I owe all that I have, all that I am. All the strange, checkered past seems to crowd now upon my mind. To-day I leave you. I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him, shall guide and support me, I shall not fail, — I shall succeed. Let us all pray that the God of our fathers may not forsake us now. To him I commend you all. Permit me to ask, that with equal security and faith, you will invoke his wisdom and guidance for me. With these few words I must leave you: for how long I know not. Friends, one and all, I must now bid you an affectionate farewell.’ ”

The book abounds in material which brings Lincoln personally before us, and some of the sketches in the closing chapters are very graphic : —

“ Mr. Lincoln was about six feet four inches high, — the length of his legs being out of all proportion to that of his body, When he sat down on a chair, he seemed no taller than an average man, measuring from the chair to the crown of his head ; but his knees rose high in front, and a marble placed on the cap of one of them would roll down a steep descent to the hip. He weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds; but he was thin through the breast, narrow across the shoulders, and had the general appearance of a consumptive subject. Standing up, he stooped slightly forward; sitting down, he usually crossed his long legs, or threw them over the arms of the chair, as the most convenient mode of disposing of them. His 'head was long, and tall from the base of the brain and the eyebrow ’ ; his forehead high and narrow, but inclining backward as it rose. The diameter of his head from ear to ear was six and a half inches, and from front to back eight inches. The size of his hat was seven and an eighth. His ears were large, standing out almost at rightangles from his head; his cheek-bones high and prominent; his eyebrows heavy, and jutting forward over small, sunken blue eyes ; his nose long, large, and blunt, the tip of it rather ruddy, and slightly awry toward the right-hand side ; his chin, projecting far and sharp, curved upward to meet a thick, material, lower lip, which hung downward ; his cheeks were flabby, and the loose skin fell in wrinkles or folds ; there was a large mole on his right cheek, and an uncommonly prominent Adam’s apple on his throat; his hair was dark brown in color, stiff, unkempt, and as yet showing little or no sign of advancing age or trouble ; his complexion was very dark, his skin yellow, shrivelled, and ‘ leathery.’ In short, to use the language of Mr. Herndon, ‘ he was a thin, tall, wiry, sinewy, grizzly, raw-boned man,’ ‘ looking woestruck.’ His countenance was haggard and careworn, exhibiting all the marks of deep and protracted suffering. Every feature of the man — the hollow eyes, with the dark rings beneath ; the long, sallow, cadaverous face, intersected by those peculiar deep lines ; his whole air ; his walk ; his long, silent reveries, broken at long intervals by sudden and startling exclamations, as if to confound an observer who might suspect the nature of his thoughts — showed he was a man of sorrows, — not sorrows of today or yesterday, but long-treasured and deep, — bearing with him a continual sense of weariness and pain. He was a plain, homely, sad, weary-looking man, to whom one’s heart warmed involuntarily, because he seemed at once miserable and kind. On a winter’s morning, this man could be seen wending his way to the market, with a basket on his arm, and a little boy at his side, whose small feet rattled and pattered over the ice-bound pavement, attempting to make up by the number of his short steps for the long strides of his father. The little fellow jerked at the bony hand which held his, and prattled and questioned, begged and grew petulant, in a vain effort to make his father talk to him. But the latter was probably unconscious of the other’s existence, and stalked on, absorbed in his own reflections. He wore on such occasions an old gray shawl, rolled into a coil, and wrapped like a rope around his neck. The rest of his clothes were in keeping.

‘ He did not walk cunningly, — Indian-like, — but cautiously and firmly.’ His tread was even and strong. He was a little pigeon-toed ; and this, with another peculiarity, made his walk very singular. He set his whole foot flat on the ground, and in turn lifted it all at once, — not resting momentarily upon the toe as the foot rose, nor upon the heel as it fell. He never wore his shoes out at the heel and the toe more, as most men do, than at the middle of the sole ; yet his gait was not altogether awkward, and there was manifest physical power in his step. As he moved along thus silent, abstracted, his thoughts dimly reflected in his sharp face, men turned to look after him as an object of sympathy as well as curiosity: ‘ his melancholy,’ in the words of Mr. Herndon, ‘ dripped from him as he walked.’ If, however, he met a friend in the street, and was roused by a loud, hearty ‘ Good morning, Lincoln ! ’ he would grasp the friend’s hand with one or both of his own, and, with his usual expression of ‘ Howdy, howdy,’ would detain him to hear a story : something reminded him of it; it happened in Indiana, and it must be told, for it was wonderfully pertinent.”

This volume gives the history of Lincoln up to the moment of his inauguration, the account of his flight through Baltimore being full and circumstantial, and consolatory to the reader in showing that in this matter Lincoln yielded against his will and judgment to the wishes of his friends. The work is based upon the recollections of Lincoln’s early and lifelong friends, upon his own letters, and upon the abundant collections of his partner, Mr. Herndon. The theory upon which it is written seems to be that of photography ; the faithful reproduction of every trait of Lincoln’s character and every event of his life ; and its failings are the faults which so often prevent photography from making a likeness ; the focus is sometimes bad, the perspective is incorrect; more and less are included than should be in a truthful picture. Many trivialities are dwelt upon, and some things, such as the fact that Lincoln was not theoretically a Christian, are dwelt upon too much; what was needed being a brief refutation of the quackery on the part of his other biographers. But, on the whole, in spite of these defects, we think we may accept this as a likeness of Abraham Lincoln. There are extremely unpleasant things in it; here are the ineffaceable scars on those sad lineaments of early poverty, hardship, and mean associations ; here is the coarseness which we all ought to have known was in him; but here also are the evidences of a rich, profound, wise, good soul.

Rarely in the whole course of literature have all the disguises of privacy been so stripped from any human character. It is as if it stood naked before the world. But in this gaunt, uncouth, melancholy figure there is so little to make his friends, who are all mankind, ashamed, there is so much of an immortal beauty and grandeur in him, that we might, save for a haunting sense of sacrilege, thank the half-unwitting hand that has so discovered him. The Lincoln of Mr. Lamon is after all the Lincoln whom the poet had already revealed to us : —

FRENCH AND GERMAN.<FNREF>*</FNREF>

BY far the cleverest and most entertaining book that we have to notice this month is Sardou’s new play, Rabagas. The author is a well-known and experienced playwright, who has already lashed the follies and extravagances of the Second Empire with a dramatic success and a lack of moral improvement in his victims that might well make reformers despair if they were not generally made of very stern stuff, and did not go on their way in ignorance of the latest pieces of the theatres. In this play he strikes at higher prey than frivolous wearers of silks and satins, namely, at examples of the political levity of the French. He turns to ridicule both Émile Ollivier and Gambetta, while many less known Frenchmen may well feel their checks burning as they read his satire of their frenzies. It is simply the story of a turncoat, Rabagas, who is tempted from the position of demagogue by cheap bribes and gross flattery, who finds himself tricked by other machinations, is baffled in his revenge, and then, in bidding good by to those who have ousted him at the close of the play, announces that he intends to depart from Monaco, where the scene is laid, for the only country where talents like his are duly valued; they all ask him what country he means. He replies, “ France,” and with this last epigram the curtain drops. Running through the play is a little love-story that probably adds to the interest when it is acted, though to the reader it is of no great importance. We have not space enough to quote half of the epigrams that the play contains, or to do more than call the reader’s notice to the Polish general who is to head the insurrection, and who has three thousand decorations but not a change of linen, and who, at the entrance of the police, hides under a table. The whole comedy is full of the keenest satire.

In the history of the stage this piece, to our thinking, is of great importance. The English stage is in about as prosperous a condition as sculpture is in Washington ; in Germany it is better, but in France alone does the drama really exist. That it will languish there without government aid seems certain, but the last few years, at any rate, have produced rich fruits. This, for obvious reasons, is almost the only political play of the day in France; but the author brings to it the experience of many years, during which he has profited by intelligent criticism and keen competition. We recommend this play to our contemporaries, and, with due humility, to posterity.

In fiction we have found but little that is new, and less that is good. Inveterate readers, whose minds are seared by a long course of French novels, may perhaps read Adolphe Joanne’s Albert Fleurier. It is a novel belonging decidedly to the second class, but, on this very account it serves to show, by the care with which details are managed, the smoothness of the dialogue, the lack of creaking in the machinery of the plot, how much such respect on the part of the author for the reader is valued among a certain people which it is the fashion nowadays to decry for their frivolity. To the careful student of literature such novels are of importance, as are galleries of the paintings of second-rate men to the student of art, but no one wishes to write stories that may serve as literary warnings. No one feels flattered at being called an excellent example of mediocrity, one would rather be a first-rate villain. For still more hardened readers it will be almost enough to say that George Sand has written another novel, Francia, which is told with all of that author’s admirable limpidity, as simply, smoothly, and clearly as if it had been all done at one breath. Whether the breath were worth taking is another question. Those who ignore what English readers would call, with the utmost mildness, lack of good taste, or who explain their fondness for such novels by alleged deep-seated psychological interest, will find the story readable, others will not. The volume contains a charming proverbe, as clever as need be.

In poetry there is Victor Hugo’s new book, L'Année Terrible. It is not easy to read it with due reverence. The author’s bombast, ranting declamation, noisy selfcomplacency, and rhyming billingsgate demand in the reader very ardent faith and a great aversion to the ludicrous before he can admire the poem. It is in the terms following that the inspired bard speaks of Grant’s message. We recommend the whole blast to the newspaper friends of Mr. Greeley, who may find in it excellent material for a campaign document: —

Here is an allusion to Spotted Tail: —

Speaking of L'Amérique baisant le talon de César, he says : —

We forbear to quote the lines addressed to Bancroft. Among other epithets, he calls him an “espéce d’ombre obscure et vague,” “un nain,” “un néant,” and “ un stercoraire.” A gray-beard foaming with rage is not an agreeable sight.

M. Jules Claretie has written what he calls Le Roman des Soldats, which he dedicates to the army of vengeance. The book contains four short martial tales, praising highly the military valor of France. They are of no special merit. The Introduction, in which he takes occasion to explain the military decay of his country, contains some intelligent writing.

M. Ernest Feydeau spent last autumn in Hamburg, and there devoted himself to the study of the German nation. He has embodied his results in a volume called L’Allemagne en 1871. He is not favorably impressed by what he saw. The Germans seem to him to lack polish, as well as more important virtues. He says that the nation has made no advance since the first century of our era. Nowhere, to our knowledge, has there been such an exhibition of poor taste, of petty spite, as in this book; it is very much what the once notorious Belle Boyd might have written seven years ago about the North. With all its gross faults, it contains, however, some sparks of truth. Even the prejudiced enemy may see glaring faults.

Turning to the much-abused Germans, we find Vischer’s Der Krieg und die Künste, a singularly German treatment of war, inspired by a desire to catalogue the effects it has had upon all the fine arts. For instance, the Iliad is a great poem ; it treats of war, statues represent warriors, there are some good paintings of battles, etc., etc. The same spirit, the scoffer would say, might persuade one to write about the æsthctical side of the recent hot weather, of railroad accidents, horse-cars, etc., but it is not likely that an American would do it.