Recent Literature

THE ballad of The Witch’s Daughter, which, with some change and very advantageous enlargement, is now published under a new title, Mabel Martin,¹ is one of Mr. Whittier’s most tender and searching stories in verse. The conception of a pure and tender - hearted girl, bereft of her mother by the religious madness of the Salem witch-slayers, living haunted by the memory of that dreadful and bewildering loss and by the taunts of her neighbors, is in itself singularly pathetic; but the situation is treated with that honest sympathy tempered by a wise reticence which gives to some of Mr. Whittier’s poems a fresh, firm grain, and a delicate and primitive perfume, like that of the pine. The poet has prefixed a short introduction, in the same measure with the original ballad, which sketches the scene of the legend. The description of this valley, that

is a substantial gain to the poem. Several new stanzas, also, have been inserted at different points, with the delicate touch of a hand that has lost none of its cunning and can greatly enrich its former work by a few masterly strokes. The lines which show us Mabel shrinking homeward in the dark, from the husking-party at Esek Harden’s, are very lovely ; as also these, on her reaching her empty home : —

Miss Hallock’s illustration of this passage is a charming triumph of sympathetic skill. The young girl stands at the door, with one hand lifted toward the latch-string, leaning her head against the wood in an attitude of weary sadness, with which is blended a weird and touching suggestion of her listening for some ghostly sound from within, from the deserted hearthstone where her murdered mother had in life been wont to await her, perhaps. The dead birch-bough, silvered by moonlight, stretches across, and just behind it the fine tracery of its tangled shadow clings to the door. For technical merit and exquisite feeling, this drawing should, we think, be set highest among Miss Hallock’s contributions to the book. The same division (Part V.) of the ballad contains drawings by Miss Hallock only ; and each one is rich in sentiment, while several have great beauty of execution. The riverview, “ She saw the rippled waters shine,” is a soft vista of thoroughly poetic landscape. It is noticeable, we think, however, that the artist is not so successful in scenes including several figures as in those demited to one or two. There is a. certain inadequacy rather than absence of characterization in the two husking-scenes, and though this is improved in the representation of Goody Martin ascending the scaffold, we find in the latter case a want of depth in the artist’s imagining, which fails to grasp the horror and dread of the occasion. This superior success with the single figures is owing, perhaps, to the concentration of interest upon Esek and Mabel, in the poem itself; the graceful groups in The Hanging of the Crane amply prove Miss Hallock’s ability in arrangement. On the whole, she has here presented us with a beautiful series of drawings; and Mr. Moran’s introductory and accompanying landscapes lend to the human story a deep undertone of sylvan emotion. Mr. Waud comes somewhat in the rear with his halftitles; though that which ushers in Part II. is apt and clever. All the decorative appointments of the volume are graceful, and we must especially praise the simple cover, with its loose stalks of golden wheat and its band of black wheat-ears above and below. For the excellent taste which prevails, as well as for the. cutting of the blocks, we in common with other readers owe Mr. A. V. S. Anthony many thanks.

— Baron Davillier’s book on Spain,² so pleasantly written, so abundantly and brilliantly illustrated, and so magnificently published, will not be surpassed, we faney, by any other holiday book of its sort; it has not at least been equaled by anything hitherto, unless by Messrs. Holt & Co.’s American edition of M. Taine’s Tour through the Pyrenees. In such a book one of course looks first at the pictures. In this case their variety seems well-nigh as inexhaustible as the picturesqueness of Spain, and they fairly represent the life of all parts of the Peninsula as observant travel sees it. As illustrations they also fairly represent the virtues and vices of Doré’s method. There is always more of the artist’s pleasure in making a picture than of sympathy with the subject in them; though, dealing with a spectacular land like Spain, the loss is perhaps less than it might otherwise be. There is not a very great range in the type of face portrayed. It is as if the artist, having settled upon a certain type, bestowed it upon all the figures in finishing up his hasty studies ; and so the different provinces are not satisfactorily discriminated ; in Andalusia, in Castile, in Catalonia, in Aragon, we have nearly always the same Greek or aquiline beauty for the young women, and the same Hibernian hideousness for the men. One is puzzled to understand how the women get all that regularity of feature and the men those brutish muzzles of the worst Irish character; and how the physiognomy of one sex fails to affect that of the other. But when the worst is said, it remains to add that the work is grandly done. Some pictures, like that of ladies at Granada listening to dwarf musicians, or that of the line of mounted picadores entering the plaza de toros, or that of the ladies of Vitoria on their balconies, are richly satisfying in their superb expression and their poetic suggestion ; and the book is full of those amazing feats of execution for which Bore is famous, The letter-press is confessedly the author’s response to the artist’s desire to make a book about Spain, but it is as agreeable as French ease, lightness, and literary good manners can make it. M. Davillier takes Spain very calmly, as a man must who has been there twenty times. He falls into no poetic raptures; he has no philosophy of the nation to warp his information about it, and his information is of the sort that fares best in off-hand informal statement. His familiarity with Spain has not made him tired of it; his narrative abounds in pleasant details that seem as fresh and interesting to the author as to the reader ; and his modern observation is directed by just so much historical reading as is needed to place it in the proper light. It is a thoroughly agreeable book.

— It is easy to say that these new and old sketches³ by Mr. Clemens are of varying merit; but which, honest reader, would you leave out of the book ? There is none but saves itself either by its humor or by the sound sense which it is based on, so that if one came to reject the flimsiest trifle, one would find it on consideration rather too good to throw away. In reading the book, you go through a critical process imaginably very like the author’s in editing it; about certain things there can be no question from the first, and you end by accepting all, while you feel that any one else may have his proper doubts about some of the sketches.

The characteristic traits of our friend — he is the friend of mankind—are all here ; here is the fine, forecasting humor, starting so far back from its effect that one, knowing some joke must be coming, feels that nothing less than a prophetic instinct can sustain the humorist in its development; here is the burlesque, that seems such plain and simple fun at first, doubling and turning upon itself till you wonder why Mr. Clemens has ever been left out of the list of our subtile humorists; here is that peculiar extravagance of statement which we share with all sufficiently elbow-roomed, unneighbored people, but which our English cousins are so good as to consider the distinguishing mark of American humor; here is the incorruptible right-mindedness that always warms the heart to this wit; here is the “dryness,”the “breadth,” — all the things that so weary us in the praises of him and that so take us with delight in the reading of him. But there is another quality in this book which we fancy we shall hereafter associate more and more with our familiar impressions of him, and that is a growing seriousness of meaning in the apparently unmoralized drolling, which must result from the humorist’s second thought of political and social absurdities. It came to Dickens, but the character of his genius was too intensely theatrical to let him make anything but rather poor melodrama of it; to Thackeray, whom our humorists at their best are all like, it came too, and would not suffer him to leave anything, however grotesque, merely laughed at. We shall be disappointed if in Mr. Clemens’s case it finds only some desultory expression, like Lionizing Murderers and A New Crime, though there could not be more effective irony than these sketches so far as they go. The first is a very characteristic bit of the humorist’s art; and the reader is not so much troubled to find where the laugh comes in as to find where it goes out — for ten to one he is in a sober mind when he is done. The other is more direct satire, hut is quite as subtle in its way of presenting those cases in which murderers have been found opportunely insane and acquitted, and gravely sandwiching amongst them instances in which obviously mad people have been hanged by the same admirable system.

Nothing more final has been thought of on the subject of a great public, statutory wrong, than Mark Twain’s petition to Congress asking that all property shall be held during the period of forty-two years, or for just so long as an author is permitted to claim copyright iu his book. The whole sense and justice applicable to the matter are enforced in this ironical prayer, and there is no argument that could stand against it. If property in houses or lands — which a man may get by dishonest trickery, or usury, or hard rapacity—were in danger of ceasing after forty-two years, the whole virtuous community would rouse itself to perpetuate the author’s right to the product of his brain, and no griping bidder at tax-sales but would demand the protection of literature by indefinite copyright. The difficulty is, to condition the safety of real estate in this way; but Mark Twain’s petition is a move in the right direction.

We should be sorry to give our readers the impression that they are unconsciously to imbibe political and social wisdom from every page of Mr. Clemens’s new book, when we merely wished to point out one of his tendencies. Though there is nearly always sense in his nonsense, yet he is master of the art of pure drolling. The grotesque cannot go further than in that Mediæval Romance of his, where he is obliged to abandon his hero or heroine at the most critical moment, simply because he can see no way to get him or her out of the difficulty ; and there is a delicious novelty in that Ghost Story, where the unhappy spectre of the Cardiff giant is mortified to find that he has been haunting a plaster cast of himself in New York, while his stone original was lying in Albany. The Experiences of the McWilliamses with the Membranous Croup is a bit of genre romance, which must read like an abuse of confidence to every husband and father. These are amongst the new sketches, though none of them have staled by custom, and the old sketches are to he called so merely for contradistinction’s sake. How I once edited an Agricultural Paper, About Barbers, Cannibalism in the Cars, The Undertaker’s Chat, The Scriptural Panoramist, To raise Poultry, A Visit to Niagara, are all familiar favorites, which, when we have read them we wish merely to have the high privilege of immediately reading over again. We must not leave the famous Jumping Frog out of their honorable and pleasant company ; it is here in a new effect, first as the Jumping Frog in Mark Twain’s original English, then in the French of the Revue des deux Mondes, and then in his literal version of the French, which he gives that the reader may see how his frog has been made to appear “ to the distorted French eye.”

But by far the most perfect piece of work in the book is A True Story, which resulted, we remember, in some confusion of the average critical mind, when it was first published in these pages a little more than one year ago. It is simply the story an old black cook tells of how her children were all sold away from her, and how after twenty years she found her youngest boy again. The shyness of an enlightened and independent press respecting this history was something extremely amusing to see, and we could fancy it a spectacle of delightful interest to the author, if it had not had such disheartening features. Mostly the story was described in the notices of the magazine as a humorous sketch by Mark Twain; sometimes it was mentioned as a paper apparently out of tin; author’s usual line ; again it was handled non-committally as one of Mark Twain’s extravagances. Evidently the critical mind feared a lurking joke. Not above two or three notices out of hundreds recognized A True Story for what it was, namely, a study of character as true as life itself, strong, tender, and most movingly pathetic in its perfect fidelity to the tragic fact. We beg the reader to turn to it again in this book. We can assure him that he has a great surprise and a strong emotion in store for him. The rugged truth of the sketch leaves all other stories of slave life infinitely far behind, and reveals a gift in the author for the simple dramatic report of reality which we have seen equaled in no other American writer.

— If it were the fashion to reward unusual qualities with proportionate praise and accurate appreciation, Mr. Nadal’s essays ⁴ would secure him a very high position in the popular esteem ; they are certain to secure it for him among the best readers, with whom in this case we are inclined Pharisaically to include ourselves. It is not too much to say that Mr. Nadal sounds a new and entirely distinct note in our literature. Here for the first time a man of society, a connoisseur of the clubs, yet a person distinctly American in sentiment and in the fine quality of his apprehension, and possessed of remarkable but wholly modest literary skill, undertakes to give his impressions of English life, with such reflections upon our own as his subject suggests. His method is entirely his own, and has about it a freshness and simplicity that are very strange after the singularly elaborate performances which we have grown accustomed to seeing hurled against England at regular intervals, from foreign presses. Mr. Nadal treats his subject with a directness and an absence of effort which recall the manner of old travelers nearer the dawn of modern literature, who accepted healthily whatever struck them, and offered it to their readers with complete confidence in its sufficiency as entertainment. “When I was in England,” he says, “ I noticed ” so and so. One feels that it is a new and fascinating thing to have been in England and to recall what one noticed there. The author does not lay bare the whole English system, root and branch, as Mr. Emerson has done in his tremendous English Traits. Such searching and brilliant analysis, though invaluable, is like too bright a flame. It makes the eyes ache. Nor is Mr. Nadal a historical literary critic, like M. Taine, who sifts his subject with the industry and not much more than the delicacy of a laborer shoveling gravel. He does not play upon his theme from the high and visionary standpoint of Hawthorne, nor with so marvelous a reach of language as he. Mr. James’s Transatlantic Sketches come much more readily into comparison with these papers than do the books of those more eminent writers. But Mr. Nadal widely differs from Mr. James. With the former, the human interest is very important; the latter strangely slights it. Mr. Nadal feels the security, also, of a man who has lived in a society of foreigners without losing his own national standpoint. Mr. James is unable to get anything definitive out of the difference between Europe and America, and constantly measures one thing in Europe by another in some other part of Europe, generally to the disadvantage of what is before him at the time. Mr. Nadal offers us nothing like Mr. James’s splendor of style, however ; although he has an art of his own that will wear very well. Not least among the charms of his writing is his dry humor ; there are bits of admirable description in it, too; and, besides, fragments of wisdom and of poetic perception like these: “ Grace, I should say, was the expression of a beautiful past.” “ It is the way of the world to regard success and fortune as another sort of character.”

The articles on English Tradition and the Future, Our Latest Notions of Republics, and English and American NewspaperWriting are particularly commendable ; and we should advise the chief steamship companies doing business between the New World and the Old to provide some of their passengers with free copies of the essay on Americans Abroad. Mr. Nadal’s four pages on British presumption are simply masterly; and possibly, while making the arrangement just suggested, the steamship companies would do well to supply this essay at the other end of the route. It should be done before the influx of centennial visitors begins.

All the articles in this book are brief, and the volume is accordingly soon perused, though not exhausted. This brevity reminds one of the talk, heard at an evening party, of a thoroughly entertaining man, who never forces his wit, and leaves you always listening for the next thing. In the midst, your companion is called away to another group, and you look after him, wishing he might have stayed longer.

— In Dr. Hunt’s volume of collected chemical and geological essays ⁵we have a masterly presentation of a variety of related topics, a more familiar exposition of which, judging by the favorable reception of recent popular science publications, would be interesting at this time to a large circle of amateurs and persons of general culture. From most readers unversed in scientific methods, however, a large part of these essays will claim such close attention and careful thought that they will probably be generally regarded as addressed by a specialist to scientific men engaged in the same pursuits with himself.

The essays have been selected from numerous writings published by the author during the last fifteen or twenty years, in many American and foreign periodicals. The author modestly remarks that it has been his fortune to enunciate in very many cases views for which his fellow-workers were not prepared, and after a lapse of years to find these views propounded by others as new discoveries or original conclusions ; and being naturally desirous of vindicating his claims to priority, he republishes these enunciations, in their old form, as far as possible, on account of the historic interest which attaches to this in his mind. (Preface.)

Non-scientific men in general do not comprehend the importance that attaches in the minds of nature-investigators to the credit of first discovery. A truth once recognized seems to them to belong to the world, not to any particular advocate of a once disputed theory ; and the frequently recurring scramble for priority, often embittered by repeated claims, denunciations, and recriminations, is offensive to them. But discovery is the ambition of the scientific worker and the object to which his toil is directed, and it must be remembered that he has not the poet’s resource at his command, to dismiss the matter, when a question is once raised, relieving his mind at the same time, with a neat stanza: Sic vos non vobis.

Dr. Hunt is a leading authority on the subject which he treats. Geology has only too often been approached from a preparation limited to some one department of scientific knowledge, namely, chemistry, zoölogy, or physics; but he combines acquaintance with each of these branches, so attaining a many-sidedness of mind which gives weight to his opinions. The largeness of his views is best shown by his estimate of the comprehensive scope of the science with which he deals. In his own words, “ While theoretical geology investigates the astronomical, physical, chemical, and biological laws which have presided over the development of our earth, and while practical geology or geognosy studies its natural history, as exhibited in its physical structure, its mineralogy, and its paleontology . . . this comprehensive science . . . sits like a sovereign, commanding in turn the services of all ” these studies.

The original molten condition of the earth, as indicated by astronomical analogies and the form and character of the sphere itself at the present time, is a theory generally accepted by geologists ; and the cooling globe is the author’s starting-point. In many of his theories as to the early chemistry of the primeval earth, contained in Chapter IV., he touches on matters in regard to which his opinion is as good as that of any other, and upon which no one will venture to contradict him.

He advances a plausible theory (first adopted by him in 1863) of “ cycles in sedimentation,” resulting in the formation of two groups of strata, — aluminous silicates (the granites, gneisses, mica schists, and clay slates), and silicates of protoxid bases, lime, magnesia, and ferrous oxid (sienites, diorites, serpentines, etc.), — and claims that as a consequence of the natural tendency which produces this result, the minerals developed by metamorphism in each of these two groups, differing, of course, according to the composition of the mass from which they are derived, may be made a test of the age of the rocks in which they occur, when the better evidence of organic remains is wanting, In this, he probably lays too much stress on the value of these minerals for this purpose. The theory seems to fail in this, that the sedimentation of these rocks, if similar in its operation to that now at work (which Dr. Hunt claims to have been the fact), would produce, at the same time, strata of compositions so various (including both the classes named), in each formation, that subsequent division according to his lithological test would inevitably err stratigraphically. Thus in his scheme the presence of staurolite, eyanite, alusite, and garnet is made a sign of identity of age of the rocks in which they occur. From this, as well as other propositions, Professor Dana dissented in a paper in the American Journal of Science for February, 1872. In his reply here to this criticism of Professor Dana’s, Dr. Hunt says (p. 327), “ I answer that ... it has not yet been proved that they belong to any later geological period than the one already indicated ” (his Terranovan, a fanciful pre-Cambrian group including similar schists in many places, and probably of many ages). This opinion Dr. Hunt will probably find his fellow-workers unprepared to accept, but he need have no fear that any of them will seek to deprive him of the credit of having made such an assertion after his attention had been particularly called to instances in which these minerals are found in many different formations, fossiliferous as well as azoic.

In his development of the subject of the obscure origin of rocks of purely hornblendic, serpontinous, chloritic, or other similar character, he has done science a good service.

In many of his views as to the nature and operation of the influences which have brought crystalline rocks to their present condition by molecular rearrangement of the promiscuous particles of sedimental deposits, he differs from Gustaf Rose, Blum, Volger, Haidinger, Rammelsberg, Dana, Bischof, and others, “ the now reigning school of chemical geologists,” as he calls them. It may be remarked that in some particulars he mistakes the views of his opponents, attributing to them opinions which they disclaim.

The chapters on veinstones and minerals, and on chemistry, will be of interest principally to those with whose business these subjects are intimately connected.

The question of pseudomorphism is one much discussed of late by scientific writers.

To all who are interested in the origin of life, the chapters on the history of the Cambrian and Silurian rocks will be of the greatest service as a summary of the discoveries so far made of the remains of early life in the seas from which these strata were deposited. The great services of the English nobleman who made such a reputation for himself in the van of palæontological research, Sir Roderick Murchison, the author of Siluria, have been supples mented to a wonderful extent. Rocks which even at the time of the publication of his great work were regarded as unfossiliferous have been made to reveal new secrets, and these strata as grouped by Sedgwick have received the name of Cambrian, a term taken, of course, from the old name of Wales, the region where they are principally found. The Lower Cambrian rocks, represented in America, so far as is yet known, only in small areas in Newfoundland, at St, John, New Brunswick, and at Braintree, Massachusetts, are found in Sweden, Wales, Shropshire, and elsewhere in Great Britain and on the Continent. In these foreign localities they are more prolific in fossils than with us, and an abundant fauna has been disclosed, particularly in South Wales.

There is an interesting discussion of Emmons’s Taconic group of Western New England, familiar by name to many, but understood by few. In conclusion, it may be truly said that these essays will well repay careful study.

— If Mr. Russell had in mind any particular plau in putting together his Library Notes,⁶ it must have been that of the older essayists, who pressed into the service of the topics they were treating almost any subject they could lay hold of; and Montaigne, in the copiousness of his extracts, seems to have been his model. Like that delightful gossip he does not refuse any sort of excursion that will bring him to a detachable fact or fable which he can throw into his essay, leaving the reader to place and connect it with the other matters as he likes, and Construes his somewhat Emersonianly stated topics of Insufficiency, Extremes, Disguises, Standards, Rewards, Limits, Incongruity,Mutations, Paradoxes, with almost the Frenchman’s liberal sense.

It is a pity, we think, that in this age of attractive labels his book could not have been less plainly named ; yet the name describes it well enough. It is simply and really the notes of an experienced and observant man’s reading, in which one may find a genuine love of books and a taste commonly as sound as it is cordial and unaffected. He has liked a vast variety of authors, and in his mental perspective, which we should fancy was arranged in the quiet of a study remote from the warring currents of contemporary criticism, there are hints and suggestions of the possible judgment of posterity upon many modern authors which are curiously interesting. The stories and anecdotes with which the essays are so generously enriched, and which are always significant if not always pertinent, show the same universal interest and liking. One is apt to find a thought from Goethe next a sentiment from the Rev. W. R. Alger; and a bit of Jolm Brown’s history following close upon some account of the Spanish Inquisition; Johnny Appleseed, of the Ohio backwoods, and the beggar-nobles who petitioned Margaret of Parma against the persecution of the Protestants are friendly guests of the same hospitable page ; and it is pretty, as Pepys says, to note how these authors and events and Subjects give and take dignity from each other. At the same time that Mr. Russell shows his appreciation of modern thought and example, it is plain that his taste was formed in the good old school of English classical reading, and that his greatest fondness is for masters who are in some danger of becoming merely names to our generation. For this reason as well as others we commend his entertaining book. His part in making it has been greater than is at first apparent; he is himself so little obtrusive that one does not always realize that he has thought about matters of which he says nothing in presenting the sense of others. He is the ideal host at the hoard where he sits ; he starts the conversation with some suggestion or query, and only drops in a word here and there, when the talk is likely to flag, or it is necessary to awaken an interest in some other phase of the subject.

— It seems a mockery to class among religious books, and a pity to class anywhere, a production like the Rev. Mr. Talmage’s last.⁷ It is feeble and flaunting j the literary vulgarity of it is astounding ; it is illogical naturally, and it is also insincere. For while professing a strenuous reformatory aim, every page of it contains some flattery of ignorant prejudice, or palpable bid for coarse applause. Many of the objections which Mr. Talmage urges against the modern drama are, unhappily, well founded ; as those who best love the noblest and most universal of the arts best know. But it may well be doubted whether the theatre, even in its present degenerate state, cherishes any vice of mind or of manners which is not equally and perhaps more fatally encouraged by the theatrical style of pulpit performance. It seems proper to justify these remarks by a fair specimen of this “popular” teacher’s fol-de-rol: “I charge upon the average theatre that it is the enemy of domestic life. The children are handed over to irresponsible employees, while the father and mother are at the theatre. Wherever it offers its fascinations, children are a great nuisance. If the measles come to the little ones the week that Davenport plays, Davenport triumphs, and the measles GO under. . . . What will that mother say when she goes up to God and God asks, ‘ Where are your children ?' She will say, ‘ One of them turned out to be a defrauder, and another went off from home and was never heard of again. I did all I could for them; that is, I gave three dollars a week to a good Irish nurse, and it was her business to take care of them.’”

— The observatory of Harvard College early became noted for the excellence of its researches in physical astronomy. In the Memoirs of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 1848 may be found two drawings accompanying two memoirs on the nebulæe of Andromeda and of Orion respectively. The memoir on the Andromeda nebula and the accompanying drawing were by G. P. Bond, then assistant in the observatory, while the latter memoir was by W. C. Bond, then director.

To understand the nature of the work which was thus assumed by the Harvard College Observatory, it will be necessary to give a slight sketch of what had been done up to that time. It is now certain that the nebula in Andromeda was known to the Persian astronomer Sûfi in the tenth century, and he speaks of it as an object “generally known.” In Europe it was first discovered by Simon Marius in December, 1612, and from that day to this it has been usually visible to the naked eye, its appearance being, according to the expressive simile of Marius, that of a lantern shining through a disk of horn. We say it has usually been visible to the naked eye, but in the Philosophical Transactions we find a note by Bullialdus, in which it is declared that in the year 1677 this nebula was fainter than of old, and that during the months of February and March it was not visible at all. Again, Cassini speaks of its shape as triangular, while Mairan contends that it changed in shape as well as in brilliancy. Here, then, astronomy was already face to face with problems which are yet unsolved : Do the nebulæ change in brightness ? Do they change in shape? The ancient eye - observations of course could not settle either of these questions, which demand quantitative measures of a refined nature, but they could set them plainly forth. If the nebulae are bodies very far removed from us, as was formerly unhesitatingly assumed, a change of brightness would be far more likely to be noted than a change of shape, since a change of the visible boundary of a nebula by so much as one tenth of a second of arc would imply a movement of some kind of matter over millions of miles. But the proof of changes of brightness requires refined photometers, which have only lately been constructed, and so far as we know have never yet been applied to the solution of this question. The detection of changes of shape is more easy : we have only to make an accurate map of the small stars which are usually found spread through a considerable nebula, and by means of these stars to draw in the line where the nebulous matter ends and the black background of the sky begins. Here again a difficulty is met with, since a large telescope will show more nebulous matter than a small one, and hence the boundary is more extended for the larger instrument.

Huyghens independently discovered the nebula of Orion in 1656 (it had been seen in 1618 by Cysat), and he has left us a drawing of it as he saw it. This drawing is the first evidence we have for the solution of the question, Does a nebula change in shape ? Le Gentil, Picard, Messier, Le Fevre, Sir William Herschel, and others made figures of this nebula before 1800. Since that time we have two drawings by Sir John Herschel, two by Lassell (only one published), and more or less elaborate drawings by Sccchi, Liaponoff Rosse, W, C. Bond, G. P. Bond, Da Vico, Lamont, and others. The nebula in Andromeda has likewise been figured by Messier and by several since his time.

All the drawings up to 1800 have been declared by Sir John Herschel to be mere objects of curiosity, and to be of no practical value for the solution of this question. If his verdict be true, his own first drawing in 1826 is but little more valuable, and however this may be, it is certain that the first adequate representation of the figure of a nebula was made in America about 1840 by two undergraduates of Yale College, Smith and Mason, who not only constructed their own telescope, but while still undergraduates did work with it which remained, until the publication of the first work of the Bonds, decidedly the best extant.

it has been necessary to say so much on this subject in order to show what the position of science in regard to this problem has been, and in order to show the object toward which the observatory of Harvard College has been striving. Up to the time of Smith and Mason nothing claiming high accuracy had been done in the way of figuring uebulæ, and a few years after them (1848) we have the drawings of the nebulæ of Andromeda and of Orion by the younger and elder Bond. The latter drawing was based upon measurements which were made with less care than the subject demanded, and was sharply criticised by the younger Struve. To the desire to have the work of the Harvard College Observatory equal to any in the world we owe the second engraving of the nebula Orionis, which was executed on steel after an exquisite drawing of the younger Bond’s, but only published after his too early death. This engraving was and probably to-day is the very finest piece of astronomical engraving extant; and we praise the present series of drawings ⁸ highly when we say that they are worthy of it. As Harvard College Observatory had already taken a leading place in delineations of this kind, with no real rivals save the private observatories of Lord Rosse and Mr. Lassell, Professor Winlock, the late eminent director, determined on prosecuting a work in which the observatory had already done so much. This decision was peculiarly happy ; for we have already pointed out that to make drawings strictly comparable they must be done by one instrument, and if changes are then fairly made out, they must be supposed to be true variations of the object itself. The eyes of different observers may be compared so as to show that such changes are not due alone to retinæ of different sensitiveness.

We have among these drawings one of the nebula of Andromeda, on a larger scale than that made by the younger Bond,upon which too much praise cannot be bestowed. It was drawn, as indeed all of these have been, by Mr. L. Trouvelot, in whom the observatory of Harvard College found an artist and an astronomer combined. No text as yet accompanies these drawings; this was to have been supplied by Professor Winlock, but we suppose the process of making this drawing to have consisted, first in making an accurate map of the stars within and near the nebula, and then in drawing, with the aid of this map, the outlines of the nebula and the boundaries of its different lines of shade among the stars. From this description it is easy to understand how patience in such work would insure accuracy of detail, but it is by no means easy to convey to those who have not a vivid recollection of the nebula, and who have not this exquisite drawing before them, how artistic it is. Not only are the boundaries and the lights well given, but the effect of the nebula in the telescope is given in a marvelous way. A Woodburytype of a trial drawing of the central portion of the nebula Orionis is also given. No satisfactory complete drawing of this was made, but this sketch is put forth for study and criticism. In it we certainly do find cause to suspect minute changes since Bond’s time, in the portion delineated. To settle this question a careful examination is required, which is out of place heré; but it is not too much to say that the evidence on this point which is obtainable from these drawings is more to be relied upon than that from any two others now before the world. The subject will undoubtedly receive full attention. Besides the drawings mentioned there are delineations of other nebulæ and of two clusters, which are beautiful specimens of work. Several plates of drawings of Jupiter and Mars are likewise given. To the plates of Jupiter we can give almost unqualified praise; those of Mars maybe equally faithful, but the printed figures give au aspect of relief which we have not remarked in other excellent drawings of Mars (those of Dawes, Kaiser, and Lockyer for example), nor indeed in the [Janet itself. We have especially to commend the color of the central bands of Jupiter and of the reddish portions of Mars, which seem very faithful. It is a curious fact that in the year 1874-75 at least, the color of the red belts of Jupiter is the same or very nearly the same as that of the general surface of Mars, although of course this tint is of less intensity on Jupiter.

Bond’s beautiful engravings of Donati’s comet and several good lithographs of Coggia’s comet are also included. Careful studies of several moon-craters have been made, of the highest degree of excellence. We have ourselves compared one of these with the moon, and have found it, exceedingly faithful. The sun has received its full share of attention, and figures of the solar corona and of the solar prominences and sun-spots are given, which appear to be of equal excellence with the rest. We note iu passing that the red color of the solar prominences is very successfully reproduced.

Steel-engravings of the spectroscopes of the observatory show the details of the most ingenious device, which Professor Winlock was the first to invent, for registering the lines of a spectrum, without which spectroscopic work on sudden phenomena, like solar eclipses, lightning, or the aurora, would be far behind its present state. Most of the drawings are lithographed by J. H. Bufford and Sons, whose work deserves high commendation. From the text, which wo understand is in preparation, we shall know better what share the accomplished director of the observatory had in this most valuable contribution to science; we may be sure that the results of his foresight, his care, his skill, his patience, are everywhere seen.

This work is of the highest order, and we may safely say that no telescope has done more toward the accurate solution of the question of the variability of nebulæ than the Harvard refractor. The present series of plates is the result not only of favorable opportunity but of great skill, patience, and devotion, and it will remain as a monument to its authors.

— In this volume of Essays and Studies⁹ Mr. Swinburne goes over a good deal of ground and pays his respects to a number of more or less great men. Victor Hugo, Mr. William Morris, Mr. D. G. Rossetti, and Mr. Matthew Arnold among the living, and Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, and Ford, the dramatist, among the dead, are the men treated of at length. For those he admires he finds no words of praise too warm, so long as they are alliterative, and when he has to blame any man or class of men his denunciations never leave his readers in doubt about his meaning. The following passage may serve as an example of some of his “ tall ” writing ; speaking of Rossetti’s sonnets he says: “Their golden affluence of images and jewel-colored words never once disguises the firm outline, the justice and chastity of form. No nakedness could be more harmonious, more consummate in its fleshly sculpture, than the imperial array and ornament of this august, poetry. Mailed in gold as of the morning and girdled with gems of strange water, the beautiful body as of a carven goddess gleams through them tangible and taintless, without spot or default.” Here is Mr. Swinburne when he has laid aside his paint-brush and begun to call things by their right names: “It [Victor Hugo’s L’Homme qui rit] is a book to be rightly read, not by the lamplight of realism, but by the sunlight of his imagination reflected upon ours. Only so shall we see it as it is, much less understand it. The beauty it has, and the meaning, are ideal, and therefore cannot be impaired by any want of realism. . . . This premised, I shall leave the dissection of names and the anatomy of probabilities to the things of chatter and chuckle so well and scientifically defined long since by Mr. Charles Reade as ' anonymuncules who go scribbling about;ߡ there is never any lack of them; and it will not greatly hurt the master poet of an age that they should shriek and titter, cackle and hoot inaudibly, behind his heel. It is not every demi-god who is vulnerable there.” We do not however recall at this time any thing of chatter and chuckle who considered the heel as the weak spot in Victor Hugo, but this passage is as characteristic of Mr. Swinburne’s facetiousness as the other is of his notorious good taste. Bits of eloquence like these are not rare in the book; indeed, some readers will find their heads buzzing after a few pages of it as if they had been reading in a noisy railway train, while others again, it is fair to suppose, will greatly admire this luxurious style. At times Mr. Swinburne hides what he has to say in a cloud of words; the chapters on Victor Hugo, for instance, are songs of admiration rather than models of intelligible praise.

These essays have been much praised for what is called their wide sympathy and generous breadth; we are called upon to admire Mr. Swinburne because he admires Mr. Matthew Arnold and his contemporary Mr. D. G. Rossetti, but it is not easy to see what claim this gives him upon our affection. That he should set great store by Mr. Rossetti is nothing remarkable ; there is but little blame be could find with that poet’s faults which would not tell more severely against his own, and it is easy to praise since the former has done what Mr. Swinburne has shown that he approves. That he should find something to admire in Mr. Arnold could only be remarkable if he had given evidence of a petulant desire to denounce qualities that were unlike his own, and even if he here made an exception and did like something that was good and of a merit not akin to his own, it is but a very negative virtue which we are summoned to admire. His essay on Mr. Arnold is perhaps the most valuable in the volume ; it contains criticism, and not merely gushing praise; and some of the criticism is very good. It is fair to dispute Mr. Arnol’s estimate of Maurice de Guérin, and his disproportionate praise of the French Academy, and what Mr. Swinburne has to say of these matters is well worth listening to. When he admires Mr. Arnold’s poetry he does it generously and intelligently. There is less verbiage here than in some of the essays; it would seem as if Mr. Arnold’s refining influence had acted upon his critic. The few pages treating of Coleridge and Byron may also be commended to the reader’s attention for their suggestiveness.

In brief foot-notes and in occasional sidereferences we are treated to bits of criticism which sometimes show the writer’s power for indiscriminating admiration, and sometimes his lack of susceptibility to the best work. Not every one will agree with him in his passionate liking for “ the great newyear hymn of Miss Rossetti, —

‘ Passing away, saith the world, passing away,’so much the noblest of sacred poems in our language that there is none which comes near it enough to stand second; a hymn touched as with the fire and bathed as in the light of sunbeams, tuned as to chords and cadences of refluent sea-music beyond reach of harp and organ, large echoes of the serene and sonorous tides of heaven ! ” Nor is it easy to join hands with Mr. Swinburne in his bravado of calling Mademoiselle de Maupin " the most perfect and exquisite book of modern times.” But far more serious than these thoughtless assertions is his contemptuous treatment of Alfred de Musset. In one passage he calls him the “ female page or attendant dwarf” of Chamfort, and speaks of his poems as “ decoctions of watered Byronism.” Elsewhere he speaks of his “monotonous desire and discontent” and his “ fitful and febrile beauty.” This brief summing up is more alliterative than just; Alfred de Musset’s faults are indicated in this statement, but no sort of justice is done to his imagination and his great excellence as a poet. It need not be remarked how uncritical is the habit of calling Alfred de Musset or any one else by opprobrious names, as Mr. Swinburne does.

This volume of Essays and Studies contains some good criticism amid a great deal of idle praise; bits of really fine description, as on the opening page ; many pages on the other hand given up to the indiscriminate heaping of adjectives; and remarks showing thought and study alternating with passages of boyish insolence. It is, in a word, a singular mixture of ripe ness and crudity.

FRENCH AND German.¹⁰

With the third, and fourth volumes of his history of our civil war,¹¹ the Comte de Paris brings his work no farther than to the end of the year 1862. He had hoped at first to complete his task within the compass he has already reached, but his work has grown under his hands, and now it seems probable that the author will require ten or twelve volumes before bringing his story down to the end of the war. No one will begrudge him this space, for it becomes continually clearer that this is destined to be the generally received history of the War of the Rebellion. It will be deservedly so, for the author, by virtue of being a foreigner, has an impartiality which it would be hard for one of us to acquire ; he has a satisfactory knowledge of both the great principles and the minutiœ of the great struggle, and he spares no pains in search of thoroughness and accuracy. More than this, he is so completely master of his subject that he makes clear the most complicated campaigns, and he tells his story in the most lucid way.

The third volume opens with an account of the operations of the army of the Potomac in the spring of 1862, the beginning of the period which many of our readers will not be able to recall without a shudder. McClellan landed his army of over a hundred thousand men before Yorktown, and Magruder with eleven thousand men kept our whole force at bay until it was too late to attack with any fair chance of success. Finally, when the attack was made, it would in all probability have Been successful if it had been well managed, but too small a force was sent to the charge, it was not properly supported, senseless delays took the place of prompt action, and the consequence was that the attack of April 16th was a discouraging failure. What the reader notices in the account of these early days of the campaigns made by the army of the Potomac is the primeval way in which everything seems to have been managed, and especially in time of action. The condition of the battle-field was often the cause of the groping uncertainty with which generals sent their forces forward without proper dependence on the supporting troops, but often again there seems to have been at headquarters a lamentable ignorance of what was to be done and of the way to do it. The question of McClellan’s ability is always complicated in our minds with all sorts of political issues, which really have no bearing on his military skill. The author makes a good showing for his old chief, without, in our opinion, laying himself open to the charge of partiality, but he has cause to complain at times of inexplicable delay on the part of his general. The first book contains an account of what was done by the army of the Potomac until McClellan’s withdrawal from Harrison’s Landing; Williamsburg, Fair Oaks, Gaines’s Mill, Glendale, and Malvern are the actions giving titles to the different chapters. It is hard not to blame the commanding general for the faulty disposition of the army which led to the unsatisfactory result at the battle of Fair Oaks, and to our subsequent disasters. But without opening this delicate question it will be sufficient to say that this history contains a very clear exposition of the events; all of our misfortunes in all their painful monotony are plainly narrated.

It is an agreeable relief to turn from these gloomy pages to the second book, which describes the deeds of our navy in the beginning of the war. The capture of New Orleans was one of the most important as well as one of the most honorable of our successes. Naturally Butler comes prominently forward in the account of subsequent events, and he is not mentioned in terms of enthusiastic praise. A few lines are devoted to the speculations by which he made himself notorious, while he receives the credit due him for the order preserved in the captured city and the excellence of his sanitary regulations, which kept off the yellow fever during the whole time of the war. The remaining chapters of this book describe the campaign leading to the evacuation of Corinth and the capture of Memphis, as well as the resulting attempt to open the whole Mississippi, which was pre vented bv the strength of the fortifications at Vicksburg. From this we are carried to what was done by the navy in front of Charleston and Savannah.

The third book opeus with Pope’s assuming command of the army of Virginia, and an account of the battle of Cedar Mountain. This is another melancholy chapter in the recollection of us all. There was uncertainty everywhere ; those in authority at Washington felt anxious about the safety of that city, and when the unfortunate battle of Manassas took place, and our defeated army took its sad way back to Washington, matters stood at about as low an ebb as at any time during the whole war. Then came the surrender of Harper’s Ferry and the battle of Antietam, With this the third volume closes.

The fourth volume carries us out to the West again; Perryville, Corinth, Prairie Grove are the titles of the chapters of the first book ; Chickasaw Bayou, the guerrillas, and Murfreesborough, of the second. The battle of Pcrryville, it will be remembered, put an end to Bragg’s active campaign in Kentucky and Tennessee. At this fight aud at Corinth the losses were large. At Perryville, out of twenty-five thousand of our men engaged, in four hours no less than four thousand were lost, and three thousand of these belouged to one corps, that of General McCook, which entered the field twelve thousand and five hundred strong. The opposing army lost more than a quarter of its strength. At Corinth what was most noticeable was Roseerans’s bravery. The other campaigns in the West are well described, much space being devoted to the history of the important battle of Murfreesborough, where Rosecrans again distinguished himself.

With the third book of this volume we come back again to Virginia, and to Burnside’s appointment to the command of the army of the Potomac. This general’s failure at Fredericksburg is told at great length. His plan of campaign is fully expounded, and with regard to the minutiæ of carrying it out this excerpt may show the author’s treatment better than anything else. He says : “ The delay in the arrival of the pontoons, which had so unfortunate a result on the Federals for all the rest of the campaign, is one of those questions, so frequent after a reverse, which are still matters of debate in America. We have entered into the details of this matter in order to show one of the thousand difficulties which in this war managed to overthrow the wisest combinations. From what we have said every one will see at once that in this matter the blame is to be divided among all. Burn-

side was wrong, in the first place, in allowing the success of his campaign to depend on a coincidence hard to forecast; and, moreover, as he has himself acknowledged, in not sending an officer to Washington to oversee the transport of the pontoons, so as to make this coincidence possible ; and, finally, in not having ascertained the presence at Belle Plain of the boats which he could have made use of before the others arrived, Halleck absolutely neglected to see to the execution of an order the importance of which he knew; he did not hasten those who were charged with carrying it out, nor did he give Burnside word of a delay of which he had himself been informed. General Woodbury committed a serious error in not sending by water the two complete equipments, and in sending Spaulding’s convoy with a load which made its progress impossible in that season.” The results of this melancholy defeat the author sets forth at great length; desertion became very common after the battle of Fredericksburg, the officers criticised freely the plans of their commander, and the only hope of the army seemed to be in the new chief, Hooker, who was appointed in January, 1863. His exploits are to be recounted in a succeeding volume. In the concluding book of this fourth volume, entitled Politics, after a brief account of the doings on the const of Texas, Georgia, and the Carolinas, is to be found a full exposition of the financial policy then begun, and of the steps leading to the proclamation of emancipation, January 1, 1863.

— A volume better suited for the frivolous is Droz’s last novel, Les Étangs.¹² Some of our readers will perhaps remember that notice was made in these pages a few months ago of what was then, and indeed still is, a receut novel of his, Une Femme Gênante. After a long silence he pained every one by that tasteless production, which was but a sorry reward for patient expectation, during three years, of some new work from his pen. Now, after about six months he gives us this new story, as if to destroy the bad impression its predecessor made. That it will have this effect is fortunately the case, and, considering that the course of the novelist is so much like that of any other sinner plunging violently headlong towards destruction, this exceptional case may be the cause of rejoicing as over a brand plucked from the burning.

The present story is of a very different kind, not only from that one, but from any he has ever written. That remorse could have inspired him to write it cannot, however, be affirmed. Une Femme Gênante had reached its seventeenth edition before this one appeared, only one less than his Autour d’une Source had reached after many years.

Les Étangs is not written in the usual formal manner; the narrator of the tale tells us how it happened that he began to take an interest in some old, barely habitable ruins he chanced to come across one day when hunting. In seeking shelter from a storm, he made his way into them and found their only occupants to be an old man, an American, and his servant. This American had the reputation of being a great hater of his kind ; he lived here in almost entire seclusion, having no intercourse with his neighbors. The narrator found the old place charming ; it had belonged in the last century to ancestors of his, and when the American died he bought it. He then set himself to work to unravel some obscurities in his family history, and he soon found some letters throwing more or less light on them, and these form the slight plot of this novel. As a story it is of the least solid sort, but in spite of this the little volume will be found entertaining reading. It would be unfair to extract the meagre plot from its surroundings; nine readers out of ten will scent the end before they have read

many pages, but they will not feel then as if they had exhausted the only charm of the book, which is the delightful style of the author, Droz always writes with that most truthful realism which is the height, or, at least, one of the heights of art, and an important one. He always seems to he writing, not an imaginary record, but a literal statement of facts. He wheedles his readers into believing the reality of his statements by the most ingenious devices ; he seems not to care to make a vivid impression so much as an accurate one; he takes pains to mention insignificant trifles, which, while they appear trivial, are surest to carry conviction. But it is not only the air of truth, which is agreeable; he shows frequently great humor and great pathos; some of his little sketches, which are buried in a great deal of worse than worthless material, bear witness of this. He generally gives the impression of being able to do better than he has yet done, — an impression which, be it said by the way, one is apt to have about a writer one likes for this gift or for that, who at the same time has some marked fault, — and the reader will be inclined to ask better use of his graceful talents. For they are graceful because they are combined by his tact, which saves him from ever being tiresome even when he most displeases. He is one of the younger French writers, from whom much is yet to be hoped, and he has left behind him much on which to base these hopes.