Recent Literature

MR. LOWELL’S new volume ¹ is made up of essays on five poets, Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Milton, Keats, — names which loose the imagination upon as long and wide a flight as any others in literature can give it. These poets, superficially so different, are fitly grouped together, for they have all in greater or less degree become types, and they are all alike in that something personal of which Mr. Lowell says, " Some men seem always to remain outside their work ; others make their individuality felt in every part of it; their very life vibrates in every verse; . . . the virtue that has gone out of them abides in what they do.”

This is especially true of Dante and Keats, of the latter of whom Mr. Lowell said long ago, when he wrote the essay here reprinted with some slight changes, “ Every one of Keats’s poems was a sacrifice of vitality ; a virtue went away from him into every one of them ; even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm and thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses and the flutter of his electrical nerves.” The whole essay on Keats is an exquisite piece of thinking and feeling, and is worthy to be ranked as it is here with the critic’s maturest work. It is as solidly done as that on Spenser, and has an advantage over the paper on Milton because it is devoted almost wholly to the consideration of Keats, and very little to the consideration of his biographer and editor. In the case of Milton there is too much of Mr. Masson, — not for Mr. Masson’s good, or that of the reader who might otherwise come unwarned to his work,— but too much for an essay which we would rather have all about Milton. We could wish that Mr. Masson, having once been well laughed at for his follies in general and particular, could be turned bodily out of the book, and his room filled up with what more Mr. Lowell might have to say of the poet. It can be answered, of course, that Mr. Lowell is at least ostensibly a reviewer, and that he must consider somewhat the book under review. Nevertheless one resents the intrusion of anything between him and the great matter of his discourse, and would have him as little like other reviewers in this as he is in everything else. Most critics approach the book or author they are to treat with a certain fever of preference or of prejudice, but in Mr. Lowell the difficult science of determining whether a thing is good of its kind seems nature. A broad and vivifying light of common sense shines upon all the facts and traits which his conscientious study and his subtle perception reach; his art is a sort of constructive criticism, which gives you the part criticised as a living whole, and not a bundle of dead particulars, as critical analysis is apt to do. Dante is as tangible a presence in Mr. Lowell’s book as if a commentator had never lived, and that august figure, which so many have labored to obscure, stands out in the relief and noble proportion of which any sincere and faithful reader of his poem may have glimpses if he will keep his mind clear of the rubbish of centuries of supposition and attribution. The Dante of Mr. Lowell is not a political dreamer, not a vindictive refugee, punishing in his hell the parties and persons who have exiled him, not a ferocious bigot, but a man full of devout reverence for philosophy and truth, deeply religious, and a patriot wiser than most statesmen of his time, and willing to own a larger country than Florence, but by no means forecasting a united Italy. But above all, he is, what we chiefly know him to be when we read him, a poet, — mystical in form, because he was a literary man of the thirteenth century, and in his art and essence sublimely simple, because he is a poet for all the centuries.

“ He discovered that not only the story of some heroic person but that of any man might be epical; that the way to heaven was not outside the world, but through it. Living at a time when the end of the world was still looked for as imminent, he believed that the second coming of the Lord was to take place on no more conspicuous stage than the soul of man; that his kingdom would be established in the surrendered will. A poem, the precious distillation of such a character and such a life as his through all those sorrowing but undespondent years, must have a meaning in it which few men have meaning enough in themselves wholly to penetrate. That its allegorical form belongs to a past fashion, with which the modern mind has little sympathy, we should no more think of denying than of whitewashing a fresco of Giotto. But we may take it as we may nature, which is also full of double meanings, either as picture or as parable, either for the simple delight of its beauty or as a shadow of the spiritual world. . . . The secret of Dante’s power is not far to seek. Whoever can express himself with the full force of unconscious sincerity will be found to have uttered something ideal and universal. Dante intended a didactic poem, but the most picturesque of poets could not escape his genius, and his sermon sings and glows and charms in a manner that surprises more at the fiftieth reading than the first, such variety of freshness is in imagination.”

To the lover of Dante this essay will be a delight, and to the student an instruction, such as our tongue does not otherwise afford. We are hardly willing to claim less for either of the other essays in its way. Hazlitt alone is worthy to compare with Mr. Lowell as a critic of English poetry, and even he has not our countryman’s vast reach and thorough study. Imagine criticism with the appreciative humor of Lamb’s, the keen, poetic sympathy of Hunt’s, the artistic insight of Hazlitt’s, and you have something like Mr. Lowell’s, but nothing quite like it till you have added his own erudition. It is an infinite pity that the same hand which has given us these delightful desultory papers on English poets should withhold that continuous history of English poetry which no other has ever been so able to write. To think of M. Taine deepens the sense of deprivation almost insupportahly. Besides, if Mr. Lowell had once set about so spacious a work as this, he might feel like economizing somewhat the affluence of imagination and suggestion that now floods his page, to the embarrassment of people accustomed to have thoughts come at longer intervals in their reading. His work is, in truth, not to be hastily run over by any, and one must read slowly if he would receive everything that is said. This lavishness is not merely the poet’s present mood ; it marks the paper on Keats, mainly written in 1856, as strongly as that on Milton, which was written last year. They are alike full of a mellow and long-hoarded pleasure in the study of the poet, and of a wise and ripe judgment. The Keats seems to us an almost perfect treatment of the subject, and it has passages that haunt the memory like the highest verse. We have quoted one of these, but the same tender yet restrained feeling for the poet makes the whole essay beautiful, and gives its criticism a tone that we find nowhere else.

The Spenser is imaginably one of those things in which the writer has taken the greatest pleasure. It advances from point to point with a sort of luxurious leisure, which has its response in the charmingly informal manner —a manner more personal than that of any other of the essays.

The criticism of Wordsworth is rather sketchy in structure as compared with the mellow perfection of the Spenser and the Keats, but we fancy it is of equal value as an estimate of the poet. It comes, after Wordsworthism has long triumphed in our poetic art and is, as it were, waiting to be superseded, —

and renews our sense of his greatness, while it follows his foibles with a most good-natured and delightful humor, and contrives with a sort of reverent amusement to set that outwardly formless greatness on high, where if any will climb he can see how inwardly beautiful and perfect it is.

— Mr. Bancroft has at length completed the publication of his valuable history of the native races of the Pacific coast,² and it stands to-day as one of the most valuable productions of American scholarship. From the vastness of the ground covered, the careful research it displays, and its unfailing, impartial treatment of the material collected, it is by all odds the most important contribution made to the subject of the early history of this country. In speaking of the preceding volumes we have expressed the feeling which they must inspire in all who read them, of respect and gratitude to the author for his admirable execution of so heavy a task. In mentioning the appearance of this last one we can only repeat the praise already given.

In this volume Mr. Bancroft runs over briefly, as they deserve, all the various conflicting theories concerning the origin of the native races of this country, which trace them back, according to the fancy of the investigator or manufacturer of the hypothesis, to their Chinese, Hindu, Japanese, Tartar, Egyptian, Phœnician, Carthaginian, Hebrew, Scandinavian, Celtic, Welsh, Scotch, Irish, Greek, or Roman ancestors. Since it has been impossible to come to any definite solution of this perplexing question, and since also the autochthony of the Indian races had to be denied because they were not accounted for in the early chapters of Genesis, hypothesis has run wild, and the arguments employed by some in defense of their theories read like a caricature of the approved methods of science. The early history of comparative philology alone shows similar unwisdom. The first Spaniards proved to their own satisfaction that Quetzalcoatl was St. Thomas, while Lord Kingsborough, who asserted that the Indians were derived from the Hebrews, thought that that great ruler was the Messiah himself. The notion that the Indians are descended from the lost tribes of Israel has its only sure ground in the apocryphal book of Esdras; from that point on it is wholly obscure and uncertain. The theory of Chinese origin which inspired Mr. Leland to write his Fusang, which we lately noticed in these pages, comes in for a few lines of unenthusiastic comment. All of these explanations are put before the reader without prejudice; he can choose his favorite theory, or, more wisely, leave them alone. He certainly has plenty to choose from. Lord Monboddo’s patriotic belief that the Indians spoke the language of the native Highlanders is mentioned, as well as his statement that several lines of “ Ossian’s celebrated majestic poem of the wars of his ancestors" are to be found in the Indian war-songs. Dr. Johnson should have known this. By the way, it is probably a misprint that makes Lord Monboddo a writer of the seventeenth century, as is done on page 121 ; it should read eighteenth. Mr. Bancroft is very brief with regard to the learned Abbe Brasseur de Bourbourg, with his wild notion of a now submerged continent reaching from the shores of Central America to Europe, by means of which all the civilizations of Europe and Asia were derived from America. This explanation does not commend itself to most students, even if they have no other to put in its place, and Mr. Bancroft considered that an abridgment of the abbé’s arguments would be unfair to him, while their full exposition would require too much apace. It is with quiet humor that he goes over this confused mass of theories, pointing out with the faintest possible sign of amusement some especially dreamy hypothesis. For himself he holds, until something different is proved, to the assumption that the Indians are autochthones; but whether they are or not is a question that may very possibly never be satisfactorily settled. Meanwhile, it is to be hoped that this synopsis of all the theories, which Mr. Bancroft has made, may inspire with modesty those persons who consider that the origin of the American Indians is one of those questions which can be solved by a week’s Study.

Mr. Bancroft has ransacked ancient chronicles for the early history of the civilized tribes, and has put together out, of them a complete although often contradictory record; for when authorities differ he gives both sides. This, it would seem, must have been one of the more difficult parts of his task. The Spanish historians accepted everything they heard with blind credulity ; they were always on the lookout for corroborations of their theological tenets and of biblical history, and moreover their work even then had to go through the hands of the censors, who were anxious to remove anything derogatory to the church. Consequently our information reaches us by a very tortuous channel, and with flavors which were unknown at the fountain head. No two men would agree, probably, about what was the true mean between skepticism and credulity in the matter, and Mr. Bancroft, whose opinion would inspire the greatest confidence, contents himself with merely submitting the evidence. That is his position throughout the book, and it is one deserving of the highest respect. We cannot help regretting that he has not at times spoken out more clearly, or at least we should regret it if he had not made it plain that his attitude of expectant doubt was after all the wisest one possible under the circumstances. A great deal will apparently have to he left in blank obscurity.

— Michelet says, at the close of his last book, that “ it has sprung wholly from the heart; nothing has been given up to the intellect, nothing to systems.” If he had added “ little to truth,” the confession would have been complete. The Insect³ is plainly the work of an imaginative, impressionable, passionate man, who has sought to enter Nature’s temple, but who, on the very threshold, has recoiled with horror before a spider at its meal, been struck dumb with amazement at the glow-worm’s light, or lost his wits at the near approach of a butterfly. He is enthusiastic, often charmingly so: he abandons himself utterly to his enthusiasm ; but one wearies of it, and sighs for fewer adjectives and a little relief from the inexorable fury of his words. Worse than all, he frequently expends his enthusiasm upon imaginary objects, and in his statements mingles the true and the false in the most grotesque manner. Notice the following passage from his introductory chapter : “ In the masses men have supposed to be mineral or inorganic, animals are now revealed to us of which it would take a thousand millions to form one inch in thickness, — the which do not the less present us with a rough sketch or outline of the insect, and have a right to be spoken of as insects commenced. And what are the numbers of these ? A single species accumulates the Apennines out of its débris, and with its atoms has raised up that enormous backbone of America, the Cordilleras.

“ Having arrived at this point, we think our review is ended. Patience! The mollusks, which in the Southern Seas have created so many islands,—which literally pave, as recent soundings have shown, the twelve hundred leagues of ocean separating us from America, — these mollusks are qualified by many naturalists with the name of embryo insects; so that their fertile tribes form, as it were, a dependency of the higher race ; candidates, one might say, for the rank of insect.

“ This is sublime.”

Sublime indeed! The mysteries and marvels of the natural world need little embellishment; at least they are in themselves sufficient to provoke the interest and attention of the contemplative mind; but first to manufacture the marvel and then to revel in its mystery is the audacious delight of our new master.

A worse feature of the book, and one which marks other works of this author, is a certain looseness of expression and of ideas concerning the higher human emotions, as if they were quite one with brutish sensations. The same phrases are used in describing the animal instincts of a beetle as would be employed in expressing the most sacred human feelings and aspirations ; in Michelet’s terms a common sensual vehemence embraces both. This is indeed not everywhere apparent, but it lurks throughout the entire book, degrading the moral tone; if the prevalent conception were always frankly stated, we should be appalled by its baseness, but it is none the less the undertone of the work. No single passage will fairly convey our meaning; but here is one selected at random : —

“Among most insects, marriage means the death of the father, maternity the death of the mother. Thus the generations pass away without knowing one another. The mother loves her daughter, anticipates her birth, often immolates herself for her sake, but will never see her.

“ This cruel contradiction, this harsh denial which Nature opposes to the most pathetic aspirations of love, apparently inflames and irritates it. It gives everything unreservedly, knowing that it is for death. It draws from it two powers: on the one hand, unheard tongues of light and color, ravishing phantasmagorias, in which love is not translated, but expands in rays and pharos-fires and torches and burning sparks. It is the appeal to the rapid present, the lightning and thunder of happiness. But the love of the to come, the foreseeing tenderness for that which as yet is not, is expressed in another fashion by the astonishingly complex and ingenious creation of a store-house of implements, whence all our mechanical arts have derived their most perfect models.”

But if we speak so harshly of the work itself, we must dwell in quite another strain upon the illustrations by Giacomelli. Anything so light, so graceful, so tropical, it would be hard to find. The designs are exquisite and the execution wonderful. The insects are full of the poetry of their own freedom of motion. They peer at you through the herbage, flutter among the vines, sip the honey from a hundred flowers, or dance a pas de deux in mid-air in most delightful wantonness. Whether it be a fly crawling up a wall, a swarm of ants on the march, a bee buzzing about an open flower, ora moth on swift wing, the naturalness of the objects is unsurpassable and the expression of their movement most delightful.

It has been the fashion with naturalists (as one of whom we speak) to praise with little discrimination all works which beckon the unattracted into the Elysian fields of nature. But if they are to he enticed by such false allurements as this work presents, new and still more seductive novelties will turn their unstable feet toward other realms, and leave us wishing that these fantastic rhapsodies had been restricted to the language in which they were born.

— At the present day, when the Indian has fallen from his former high estate as hero of fiction and is generally treated with contempt and cruelty, it is interesting to come across a book that gives so unprejudiced an account of the red man as does this unpretending volume⁴ by Mr. Thomas C. Battey. The author lived for eighteen months among the Kiowa Indians and eight months among the less savage Caddoes, and devoted himself to teaching the young braves and squaws. This is not a book made up for the market; it is marked by many literary faults, for which, however, the author apologizes, but it brings us something better than conventional smoothness, in the light it throws on the savage life of the West. Mr. Battey writes with the antique simplicity of Bunyan ; here, for instance, is the beginning of the entry under Third month, 30th: “This morning, on awakening, a thought presented itself to my mind in such a manner as to affect me deeply through the day. It was as though I had distinctly heard the question audibly addressed to me, ‘ What if thou shouldst have to go and sojourn in the Kiowa camps ? ' The thought was entirely new to me, and, coming in the manner it did, it affected me to tears, looking as I have, and still do, upon the Kiowas as the most fierce and desperately blood-thirsty tribe of the Indian Territory.” Although then in no bed of roses among the mischievous Caddoes, he yielded to the entreaties of Kicking Bird, a Kiowa chief, and went among the Kiowas to teach. The first day his school was opened, “ a middle-aged man came in with an uplifted hand-ax, his face hideously painted with black lines, expressive of intense anger, advanced towards me with a most horrid oath in broken English, and, suiting his actions to his words, was, in appearance, in the attitude of striking me with the edge of his weapon; ” but Mr. Battey “ seized ” this conservative “ middleaged man” “by his uplifted arm and put him out of” his tent. In general he seems to have been very little troubled, and when menaced he managed to get out of his difliculty by fearlessness or tact. Trotting Wolf had him to a breakfast of stewed wild plums, boiled corn and pumpkins, bread, and coffee, and he was invited to witness the various war-dances, which he describes fully and entertainingly, but at too great length for quotation. The following story, however, deserves to he recorded : “ To-haint (noshoes), the great medicine chief, made medicine for clouds and rain. The rain came, with a tempest of wind and the most vivid lightning. Peal after peal of thunder shook the air. The ground was literally flooded. Two Cheyenne women were killed by the lightning. The next morning To-haint apologized for the storm. He was a young man, and had no idea of making such strong medicine. He hoped the tribe would pass by his indiscreetness. He trusted that as he grew older, he would grow wiser. The Cheyenne women were dead, not because of his medicine, but because of their wearing red blankets. All Indians know they should not wear red during the gust medicine dance of the Kiowas.”

The book is filled with just such incidents as this, which throw a great deal of light on the manners of the Indians. Their superstitions are recorded, their dread of “ bad medicine,” and many of their peculiar traits. On the whole, this book is charming for its simplicity and unpretentiousness, as well as valuable for the amount of rare information it contains. It well deserves reading.

— Dr. S. Edwin Solly’s pamphlet on the mineral-springs and climate of Colorado⁵ is clear, sensible, and scientific, and appears to contain exactly the kind and degree of information which an invalid always wants about the health-resorts to which he is wildly recommended by his friends. The long list of initials appended to Dr. Solly’s name, U. R. C. S. England, L. S. A. London, etc., advise us that if he does not know what he is talking about it is not the fault of the schools at home or abroad, and the modesty and lucidity of his style still farther confirm our conviction that he does know. Prefixed to the pamphlet is an analysis of the water of the six mineral springs at Manitou, by Prof. O. Leow, mineralogist and chemist of the Wheeler expedition. Dr. Solly goes on to show briefly and in popular language why it is that a smaller quantity of certain remedial agents, when found in natural solution in spring water, will usually influence the system much more powerfully than a larger quantity in artificial combination. He then divides the famous mineral springs of the world into four principal groups, the chalybeate, the sulphureous, the acidulous or carbonated, and the saline, and assigns to the springs of Manitou their proper place in this classification. The general conclusion is that, with slight individual differences, they all come under the head of weak compound carbonated soda waters, resembling those of Ems and excelling those of Spa; that the Manitou and Navajo springs are especially to be recommended for those unsafe plethoric conditions which physicians bring under the head of increased venosity, the Shoshone and Little Chief are adapted to give relief in chronic derangements of the liver, and the Iron Ote is unhesitatingly advised for anæmic conditions and incipient phthisis.

With regard to the climate of Colorado, Dr. Solly launches into no raptures, but appends to his dissertation on the waters a synopsis of the weather at Colorado Springs during a single average year. This last page of the book will be to many the most interesting and impressive of all. From this we learn that during the three winter months of 1872-73 (a specially stormy and unpleasant season here) there were at Colorado Springs sixty entirely cloudless days, twenty - two more which were overshadowed but without storm, and only eight of actually “ falling weather.” We do not see how any Bostonian, with a memory of past years and a presentiment of future ones, can peruse this statement without a throb of impatience to be following the star of empire. It has occurred to most of us, during the few fine days of November and December, to cherish a fond but fleeting dream of a winter which should be all like these, with sereue skies, moderate cold, little snow, and a relief to the eye, in constant soft, neutral tints, from the terribly refreshing green of growing vegetation. He who reads Dr. Solly’s pamphlet, and afterwards devours, by way of dessert, H. H.’s eloquent Symphony in Yellow and Red in the December Atlantic, will perceive that upon the upland plateau of North America this dream may be realized, with the added delight to the eye of new and exquisite combinations and effects of color.

— Colonel Rodenbough’s history of the regiment in which he was formerly a captain ⁶ is a curious, thorough, and valuable work of its kind. A map accompanying the volume gives all the great marches made by this body, its principal stations, and its battle-fields for nearly half a century, and impresses very forcibly upon one the varieties and vicissitudes which the regular soldiers of so vast a country as ours must encounter. The text still further illustrates this, and in the most vivid way. It is rather startling to read of “ troops, barefooted, their pantaloons cut off as high as the knee by the saw-palmetto,” in the old Florida war, campaigning in a heat without relief, and sinking to their waists in pestiferous black mud. But the Second Dragoons have journeyed through and fought in more than half the States and Territories, as well as in Mexico, with experiences much more thrilling in some of these places. Several of the narratives contributed by officers of the regiment are extremely spirited, and some of the best of the many songs scattered through the pages are also by them. The book is a mine for romancers and historians, and should he followed by similar histories of other organizations.

— The Notes of Travel⁷ by Mr. C. J. Andersson is a very painful record of almost fruitless energy on the part of an intrepid but unfortunate man, who is already known to science by his explorations in Africa. In this last volume the main incidents are the combination of mischances by which he lost all his money ; the way in which he became seriously crippled in a fight between two bands of natives ; and his last illness. It is impossible to read the book without feeling that Mr. Andersson was a brave man, and this fact only adds to its depressing influence. Everything seems to have conspired to baffle and defeat him, yet he pushed on his way with indomitable energy, only to die in the wilds of Africa. While talking of this part of the book it may be permitted us to protest against the retention on the part of the editor of so much of Andersson’s dairy as referred to his illness. There is a sort of desecration in thus baring to us his last sufferings; surely it would have been sufficient to tell us that he died where and how he did, without giving us the painful particularity to be found in almost every one of the last fifty pages.

Of a very different sort are Andersson’s numerous and interesting ornithological notes, such as those discussing whether the vultures and birds of that class are led to their food by the sense of sight or of smell. He believes that both serve as guides to these useful scavengers. Another noteworthy chapter is that on the lung - sickness, which was very fatal among the cattle. As he says, he spoke with authority, having lost more than two thousand head by the plague. The only cure with any pretensions to success was vaccination. What he has to say about the leopard will he found entertaining. The animal is about two feet seven inches high at the shoulder, and seven feet six inches is its maximum length. With these exceptions, the book is wholly made up of the author’s adventures in Southwestern Africa, a good part of the space being devoted to an account of the internecine strife of the wild tribes. We cannot place the book very high among the many volumes devoted to African travel ; it is by no means without value, but the confused arrangement of its contents and the faults we have already noted greatly mar it. A more liberal comprehension of the editor’s duties would have obviated all these objections.

— Very rarely, we believe, is there given to the world a controversial book so fit to enlighten and do it good, as Mr. Matthew Arnold’s last.⁸ It is indeed controversial in form, merely. It answers objections urged against a previous work, but every fair-minded reader of God and the Bible must feel that the answer is published not to gratify personal pique or to display argumentative dexterity, but because the author is so very sure of the need and worth of the truth which he labored to tell in Literature and Dogma that he cannot help reiterating and enforcing it. And, for a wonder, which says much for the fine spirit and high motives of the man, the second affirmation, though unflinching, is a great deal more moderate, patient, and respectful in tone than the first.

Yet even so, and convinced as we are that the views maintained so ably in these two books are singularly adapted to clear and uphold a troubled mind, we cannot anticipate for these views, in precisely their present shape, an immediate or general acceptance. The chief obstacle lies in the peculiarly unpopular temperament of the author. Matthew Arnold was born and bred (at Winchester School, not Rugby) an intense intellectual aristocrat. Like many another aristocrat, he has a heart really tender toward the human race, and a strong desire to help, and even serve it; but his manner continually belies him. He is earnest, he is rigidly simple in speech, he is even pathetically unpedantic; but it will not answer. The mass of both skeptics and believers feel that his attitude is haurghty, and hauteur is what all masses hate, with anything but a holy hatred. Haughty, in their sense of scornful and unsympathetic, he is not, but it is no use denying that he is dainty; that he cannot for his life repress an occasional shudder, a movement of whimsical repugnance, at the vulgarity of the minds and the stupidity of the faiths he is forced to encounter; that he is, in short, irremediably fine, and, what is a little worse, less like a fine gentleman than a fine lady. It is no crime, and he cannot help it; but again and again his mien and method remind us of certain dear and delicate women, who are possessed by the generous desire of extending their own privileges to their less fortunate sisters, and who therefore seek the latter out in what are oddly called their “humble homes” or maybe even summon them to their own, and make most anxious and self-denying efforts to establish a community of interests with them. They are almost sure to fail. Anxiety cannot avail, self-denial still less, where in look and manner, speech and raiment, outline and color even, there is a tacit and, so to speak, helpless assertion of superiority. Just so with Matthew Arnold and his efforts at imparting to the base world of readers his own luminous views. By difficult and expensive processes he has won what he feels to be a precious conception of truth, and he wants to share it. Curiously, almost painfully, he seeks the very choicest words in which to express his thought, then utters it, and feels it ineffective. And then he tries to mend the matter by repeating his formula. We believe this to be the true history of most of those stereotyped definitions for the reiteration of which he has been so freely abused: “ The Eternal not ourselves which makes for righteousness ; ” “ the method ” and “ secret ” and “ sweet reasonableness of Jesus,” and the “ sweetness and light” of earlier days. To us, his manner grows every year more winning; but even yet, as it would seem, he cannot quite understand why the phrase which to himself so perfectly embodies the result of his own long research and refined reasoning should be obscure and even irritating to the ordinary mind. It is always hard to say who is most to blame in cases like this and the parallel we have ventured to cite. It may be that there is very little blame due anywhere; that they are cases of misfortune rather than fault; but we strongly suspect that, of the two, the futile benefactor is to be justified rather than the stiff-necked beneficiary. And it is for this reason, and because we would so gladly persuade even one of the perplexed religious inquirers of the day to lay aside an idle prejudice and listen teachably to a noble voice, that we have dwelt so long on the author before speaking of his book. And also because we can well afford to allow his weak point, since the whole personality of the man, as revealed in his writings, has always appeared to us irresistibly attractive ; his aim lofty and single, his courage admirable, his achievements durable, the swift and reflex action of his wit delightful even when it stings, and his very petulance a sort of grace.

The aim of Mr. Arnold in God and the Bible may best be described in his own words: “The reader will do well to keep in mind what is the one object we set before him in the present inquiry; to enjoy the Bible and to turn it to his benefit“ Of biblical learning we ” (in England, and a fortiori in America) “ have not enough. Yet it remains true, and a truth never to be lost sight of, that in the domain of religion as in the domain of poetry, the whole apparatus of learning is but secondary, and that we always go wrong with our learning when we suffer ourselves to forget this. The reader of Literature and Dogma will allow, however, that we did not there intrude any futile exhibition of learning to draw off his attention from the one fixed object of that work, — religion. We did not write for a public of professors; we did not write to interest the learned and curious. We wrote to restore the use and enjoyment of the Bible to plain people who might be in danger of losing it. We hardly subjoined a reference or put in a note; for we wished to give nothing of this kind except what a plain reader, busy with our main argument, would be likely to look for and use. Our reader will trust us, therefore, if we now take him into this subject of the criticism of the Canon, not to bury him in it, not to cozen him with theories of vigor and rigor, not to hold a brief for either the conservative side or the liberal, not to make certainties where there are none; but to try and put him in the way of forming a plain judgment upon the plain facts of the case, so far as they can be known.” “ We seek not to produce a complete work of ingenious criticism on the Bible, or on any one document in it; but to help readers, sick of popular and conventional theology, and resolved to take the Bible for nothing but what it really is, — to help such readers to see what the Bible really is, and how very much, seen as it really is, it concerns them.”

This is an aim very unlike the rude and lusty iconoclasm of the ordinary rationalist, whether learned or unlearned. It is almost identical with that of the most pungent of our own writers, Gail Hamilton, in her amusing yet admirable Sermons to the Clergy. Wide as is the contrast in method and style between these two writers, they labor for the self-same end, and alike make their direct appeal to the most sincere and stable class of minds in the community.

Before proceeding to his criticism of the Canon, first of the Old and then of the New Testament, Mr. Arnold gives us a chapter on Miracles, and one on Metaphysics. He rejects without reservation the supposed proofs derived from either source of the existence of God and the authority of his revelations to man. The reasons drawn from miracles he dismisses “with tenderness,” “for they belong to a great and splendid whole, — a beautiful and powerful fairy-tale which was long believed without question, and which has given comfort and joy to thousands. One abandons them with a kind of unwilling disenchantment, and only because one must.” The reasons drawn from metaphysics, on the other hand (as illustrated principally by the famous argument of Descartes, Cogito ergo sum, etc.), he owns that he dismisses with “ sheer satisfaction. They have convinced no one, they have given rest to no one, they have given joy to no one. People have swallowed them, people have fought over them, people have shown their ingenuity over them, but no one has ever enjoyed them. Nay, no one has ever really understood them. No one has ever fairly grasped the meaning of what he was saying, when he laid down propositions about God’s finite and infinite substance, and about God’s essence involving existence.” “ Sometimes,” he says in another place, “ a youthful philosopher, provoked at our disrespect for metaphysics, tells us that he has been reading Hegel and would greatly like to have a word with us about being. Our impulse is to reply that he had much better have been reading Homer, and that about Homer we at any rate had much rather he should talk to us.” To this cavalier congé the old accusation will of course be retorted, which Mr. Arnold so cheerfully admits, that he has himself no aptitude for metaphysics; and as a refutation of Hegel the above is certainly unsatisfactory. But whatever disgust such treatment of some of the sweetest studies that ever engaged the human mind may inspire in the few to whom metaphysics are a delight, it ought rather to attract that very much larger number to whom metaphysics are and ever will be a despair.

With regard to the Old Testament Canon, Mr. Arnold affirms that we can trace, “ without coming down below the Christian era to listen to late and untrustworthy traditions,” exactly how this Bible came together. To the strenuously guarded books of the Law were added, during the great revival of religion among the Jews under Ezra and Nehemiah, “ the things concerning the kings and prophets, and David’s things” or the Psalms (2 Maccabees ii. 13). And to this venerable collection he is far from assigning a merely historical value. Insisting still, as in Literature and Dogma, that of all nations the Jews have had the highest and truest ideal of righteousness or right conduct, and the clearest conception of an Eternal Power impelling to righteousness, he finds the more meditative portions of the Old Scripture unique in literature and altogether priceless.

In tracing the history of the New Testament Canon the author dwells chiefly upon the Gospels, as the earliest of these later records, and naturally the most mysterious in their literary origin; and to the Fourth Gospel—the favorite fighting - ground of modern skepticism—he devotes a minute critical discussion, occupying nearly one half of his volume. It is much the most valuable portion of the work, and seems to us the most valuable positive work which Mr. Arnold has yet accomplished. His theory, supported both by tradition and documentary evidence, is that the Apostle John, living at Ephesus in extreme old age, was entreated to make some record of his own reminiscences of the sayings of Jesus, rather than of the facts of his career, already recounted by the earlier evangelists John, being either unable or, as the tradition says, unwilling to make the record himself, told what he remembered to his brethren at Ephesus, and these fragments of actual recollection were subsequently combined and arranged by some Christian Greek of literary culture, Gnostic proclivities, and an ardent, poetical mind. This view is very strikingly supported both by external and by internal proofs; and the patient render, saddened and baffled hitherto by the incongruities and even absurdities of this beautiful Gospel on the old theory of its authorship, while yet he has shrunk from the wholesale brutality of German criticism, branding as empty sentimentalism or deliberate romance some of the sweetest and most inspiring words ever recorded, will be amazed to find what trouble will vanish, what new force will he given to more than one distorted word, what clearness and quiet of mind will return to him, if he re-reads the Gospel of Saint John under our author’s guidance.

Mr. Arnold’s summing up of the results of his last labor is very impressive : “ The Canon of the Now Testament, then, is not what popular religion supposes; although on the other hand its documents are in some quarters the object of too aggressive and sweeping negations. The most fruitful result to be gained from a sane criticism of the Canon is that by satisfying one’s self how the Gospel records grew up, one is enabled the better to account for much that puzzles us in their representation of Jesus — of his words more especially.” “That miracles cannot happen we do not attempt to prove; the demonstration is too ambitious. That they do not happen, that what are called miracles are not what the believers in them fancy, but have a natural history of which we can follow the course, the slow action of experience, we say, more and more shows; and shows too that there is no exception to be made in favor of Bible miracles.” “ The charge of presumption, of setting one’s self up above all the great men of past days, above ‘ the wisdom of all nations,’ which is often brought against those who pronounce the old view of our religion to be untenable, springs out of a failure to perceive how little the abandonment of certain long-current beliefs depends upon a man’s own will, or even upon his sum of powers, natural or acquired. Sir Matthew Hale was not inferior in mind to a modern chief justice because he believed in witchcraft. Nay, the more enlightened modern who drops errors of his forefathers by help of that mass of experience which his forefathers aided in accumulating may often be, according to the wellknown saying, ‘ a dwarf on giant’s shoulders.’ His merits may be small compared with those of the giant. Perhaps his only merit is that he has had the good sense to get up on the giant’s shoulders instead of trotting contentedly along in his shadow. Yet even this surely is something.” “ We have to renounce impossible attempts to receive the legendary and miraculous matter of the Scripture as grave historical and scientific fact. We have to accustom ourselves to regard henceforth all this part as poetry and legend. In the Old Testament, as an immense poetry growing round and investing an immortal truth, the secret of the Eternal: Righteousness is salvation. In the New, as an immense poetry growing round and investing an immortal truth, the secret of Jesus : He that will save his life shall lose it; he that will lose his life shall save it.”

God and the Bible will make more converts than did Literature and Dogma, partly because, as we began by saying, it is more patient and respectful in tone; partly because the world has rolled on even in the two years since the earlier volume appeared, and the direction of its motion is unmistakable. The point at which many will pause, and perhaps recoil from their guide, is where he touches on the hope of immortality. He does not believe, or seems not to believe, that Jesus himself expected his conscious personality to continue after death. “ He lives in the Eternal Order, and the Eternal Order never dies,” he affirms to be the sum of Christ’s clear teaching about this life and the future. But this, after all, is the ringing of a knell. It may be that nothing more is proven. It may well be, and history would seem to show that it is not needful to making the highest use of this life that one should have a clear vision of another; it may even be that the true child of God should be ready in spirit for this last, most intimate sacrifice. But surely we need not feel ourselves, like the poet Horace, forbidden to cherish a far-off hope : “ Vitœ summa brevis spem nos vetal inchoare longam.” May there not be, even in that profound saying which may well contain the whole " secret of Jesus,” the hint of a more definite promise than this of a life incorporated with the Eternal Order ? And may not he — the very he — who “will lose his life” in the service of truth “ find ” it again " unto life eternal ” ?

— The second volume of Mr. Hart’s series of German classics for American students has appeared, and is marked by the same merits as its predecessor. The book chosen is Schiller’s Piccolomini.⁹ Mr. Hart has taken especial pains to secure the purest text and to throw as much light as possible on the history of the time of the play. The introduction consequently contains a tolerably full sketch of the life of Wallenstein, and the notes are prepared with especial reference to the teaching of history and geography ; but yet grammatical points are by no means neglected. At times we find the German idioms simply translated without a word of comment; e g., page 146, line 499,“es ist gethan um, it is all over with ; ” p. 165, 1. 2402, “ein schlechter Streich, a poor trick;" p. 156, 1. 1566,“sieht sick heiter an, is fair to look upon ; ” etc. The bane of these translations is this, that they unnecessarily aid the scholar. Why should he not look out the meaning of these phrases for himself, and so remember them? As they stand, they are of no real service to him and are the detestation of the teacher. Here our criticisms end; for everything else in the volume we have only praise.

— In a very interesting volume¹⁰ Mr. Andrew Wilson describes his journey through the lofty upper valleys of the Himalaya Mountains from Northern India to the Valley of Kashmir. It was in April, 1873, that he arrived at the hill-station of Masúri, in a weak state of health and requiring a cool and invigorating climate. Thereupon he pushed on to Simla, but a glimpse at the distant mountains tempted him “ to make a closer acquaintance with these wondrous peaks — to move among them, upon them, and behind them.” To carry out his speedily formed determination he had to take with him everything he should need, “ house, furniture, kitchen, cooking-pots, bed, bedding, a certain proportion of our food, and all our potables, except water,” and moreover, so feeble was he, he had to arrange to be carried. At first he was carried in a dandy, which is a very rudimentary seat of carpet with a rest of the same for the feet, slung over a long bamboo. The objection to this contrivance in mountainous countries is the extreme likelihood of bumping the person carried against rocks and stones. The greater part of his journey he rode, on yaks, zo - pos, cows, Spiti ponies, a Khiva horse, and blood-horses. The general direction of his journey was given up. He had endeavored to enter into Chinese Tibet at Shipki, but the orders of the Chinese government forbade the entrance of foreigners, and he was compelled to turn back, much against his will. He met with enough savageness and wildness, however, one would think, to make up to him for his exclusion from the society of Tartars. In the first place, his journey was a very perilous one, over wild, snow - covered mountains, often amid heavy snow - storms, then with men who at the most dangerous times were inclined to desert him, although they did not give him all the trouble they might have, and entirely secluded for many days at a time from any Europeans. But through everything he went on, overcoming the timidity of his men, conquering even his own physical weakness, and enjoying his strange life to the utmost. The writer is a very acute observer of human beings, as well as of inorganic nature, and has a delightful humor, with a very seductive way of running ou through fact and fancy, which gives the volume a great fascination.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.¹¹

Quinet’s last volume, L’Esprit Nouveau,¹² is in many ways a remarkably entertaining book, and, more than that, it has the advantage of being very suggestive and novel. In his introductory address to his readers the author says that it summed up the work of his life, that it contained all the conclusions he had reached in the main subjects of human thought; and when a man of the intellectual calibre, the strong individuality, and the wide erudition of Quinet, utters, with honesty like his, his final opinions on such matters, the result cannot fail to be interesting and instructive. It has so happened that for a long time Quinet has not been as well known as he has deserved; he made his first appearance in literature, when a young man under twenty-six, as the translator of Herder’s Philosophy of the History of Humanity, to which he prefixed a valuable essay on Herder, and from that time he became a herald of German progress to the French public. Meanwhile, however, he did not neglect original work ; he wrote poems which are said on good authority to lack charm, and as a historian he exposed freely what there was of hollowness in imperialism, at a time when it was not so much the fashion to laugh at the Bonaparte family as it is at present. Another feeling of his was strong detestation of the Jesuits; indeed, his ardor lost him his professorship at the Collége de France in 1846. At and after the revolution of 1848 he became very much interested in politics, and the prominence thus gained made the world forget his worth as a scholar and thinker. He died in March of last year.

This book, like almost every one written liy a Frenchman, is arranged in the most orderly way, the first division containing chapters on the origin of the intellectual and moral worlds; the next, on social physiology ; the third, on the new spirit in political science, and so forth. The reader, however, will not find it necessary to follow the author’s rigid order ; he can open at any chapter and he is pretty sure to be repaid by coming across some original and thoughtful remark expressed tersely and clearly. The book was written from day to day during the melancholy period of civil war in Paris, for, as the author said, he found it necessary in those disturbed times to turn for support to those things which were eternally firm and true, and not the sport of the moment. From the large number of subjects treated briefly in this volume, it is impossible to select enough to give a notion of the wide field the author covers, but a few extracts may very well show how intelligently he thinks and utters what he has to say. For instance: “In the eighteenth century, the philosophers thought that virtue was only what was the best policy. And I ask, ‘ How does it happen that there are still men who remain faithful to the truth ? It is the best policy, do you say ?' Ahsurdest of absurdities ! In what respect are depression, misery, persecution, and contempt the best policy ? I have always seen people of little conscience arm themselves with the maxim that virtue is the best policy, in order to crush the man of conscience with it. ‘ Never mind him,’they say, ‘ he is a sage, an eccentric; he needs nothing. His conscience is enough for him; it would only pain him to leave him what is his by right.' So saying, they rob and strip him out of deference, or for some scruple, or for love of justice, one may guess which. . . . ‘ Why do the wicked live, yea, are mighty in power?’ This single question of Job gives the date of the Idumæan poem. You may be sure that the author was living in a period of decay. The ideas of Socrates about justice, which he regarded as the first condition of happiness, are those of a still prosperous society, of the last calm days of Greece. Pericles in matters of government and Socrates in philosophy belong together, just as do Machiavelli and Borgia. . . . Consider this first advantage of the wicked man — the good are afraid of him. It is just the same as if they loved him, because, from fear, they do everything they would do for love. Another advantage of the wicked man is that he has the skill to circumvent the efforts of those unlike himself.” A few pages farther on he proceeds : “ When theologians go on repeating that the just man should not seek for happiness in this life on earth, they implicitly recognize all I have just said, of the advantage the rascal enjoys in the struggle for existence. False theology and false morality. We, on the contrary, are anxious to struggle bitterly with the wicked man and deprive him of his power. Let us not postpone the victory of the just man until the day of judgment. That is too easy for the wicked man. . . . You argue about the right to punish. When I see so many men carrying their callous indifference to the pitch of madness, I believe in the excellence of punishment. He who was sure of escaping every penalty would, like Caligula, be anxious to get rid of the whole human race with a single blow. That is the vice of the Cæsars. Observe the vicious, count the steps of their fall. They have become what they are by only continually eluding punishment ; they, with their head high, have walked more quickly than justice, which is lame and could not get up to them. They despise it; hence arises their cynicism.”

He by no means confines himself to these more serious and gloomy questions, although naturally enough, considering the circumstances under which the book was written, they have a certain prominence. In another part he turns to subjects of literary criticism, and attacks with much eloquence and good sense the often received opinion of many German scholars that the Iliad and Odyssey were the work of many joint authors. He points out differences between Homer and Hesiod, and, coming down to modern times, he lays great weight on Schliemann’s excavations at Troy; he asks, “ If this city is not Troy, what one can it be ? How could antiquity know one and not know the other ? As to the fact that the things exhumed are of an older age than that of Homer, it can be explained by the fact that every epic poet sings an earlier period. We are told that this newly dug up Troy is too small a city ; but did Homer need a great city to make a great poem ? ” Perhaps the most interesting part of the volume is that which contains a description of the modern German pessimistic philosophy of which Schopenhauer was the founder and Hartmann is now the apostle. Quinet had drunk deep of German philosophy at a time when it took less hopeless views of the universe, and all of this turn towards gloom which it has lately taken is to him a matter of surprise. From Germany, a country which has succeeded in everything it has undertaken, one would expect to receive a metaphysical system which should give expression to a feeling of triumph and of indomitable strength; but, on the contrary, what one does find is a succession of variations on the one theme of despair, or, rather, proofs are given that there is nothing about which human beings ought not to despair profoundly. With all this Quinet has no sympathy, and after setting forth the views of these philosophers in a short series of imaginary dialogues between himself and them, he proceeds to point out the refutation which he has learned to draw from his own experience. With this closes the entertaining volume, which is noteworthy, not because it carries within its covers a complete explanation of everything in the universe which puzzles the thinker, but because it presents to us the picture of the mind of an honest and intelligent man who is setting down to the best of his ability the solution he has chosen for many important and baffling matters. It has the misfortune of being written in an epigrammatic style which at times is very suitable, but again is likely to jar on the reader’s sense of what is proper; but this does not result from any flippancy or cheapness in Quinet. If for nothing else his book would be remarkable from the fact that it is so fair-minded and so free from any hostility against Germany.

— Mention has already been made in these pages of the volume of Brandes’ work ¹³ on the literature of this century, and now an opportunity presents itself to speak with renewed praise of the two volumes continuing the German translation of his lectures. In the first place, great credit is due to the translator, Adolf Strodtmann, author of the only complete life of Heine, for the capital way in which he has done his work. As for Brandes, he is a man of originality and a careful student, who is familiar with the main currents of the literary history of this century, and who puts what he has to say into the most attractive form.

With the second volume he takes up the discussion of the German Romantic school, tracing its growth in the unpractical nature of the Germans, from Tieck’s William Lovell through its full flower until its end. He does not fail to draw the striking contrast between the Germany of that time and the Germany of to-day, for it is one of his main principles to illustrate his remarks by continual reference to the social history of the time. In other words, he does not overlook the obvious connection between the ideas and the books of a period. Already in his first volume he had traced the reaction against the eighteenth century beginning with Voltaire and Rousseau, and carried on in Werther, René, Obermann, etc., and now he goes on with the discussion of the more important works of the Romantic school. Sehlegel’s Luciude naturally comes in for full mention. The main idea of this extraordinary and distasteful book is, he says, the Romantic doctrine of the identity of life and poetry. He says that in it all the views and passwords of Romanticism are collected, and yet that in its execution there is so much which is repulsive that from a moral and an artistic point of view it deserves only reprobation. Tieck, Novalis, Hoffmann, all are mentioned, as well as Eichemlorff’s charming presentation of Romanticism in his Aus dem Leben eines Taugenichts. As a summary of Brandes’ views, perhaps the following passage may serve as well as another, although the merit of the book is nowhere condensed into a single page : “ I have represented the Romantic spirit as dull subjectiveness without energy or effort; as a glowing furnace in which freedom is smothered, and every motion outward is crushed. But this is not the whole truth. One external tendency remains, the one which is called yearning [Sehnsucht]. Yearning is the form of Romantic action, the mother of all its poetry. What is yearning ? It is deprivation and desire at the same time, wholly without will or determination to attain what is longed for, and without choice of the means to get it in its power. And what is the direction of this yearning ? Simply that which is the direction of all the yearning and longing in the world, in whatever pompous or hypocritical words disguised, towards enjoyment and happiness. The Romanticist never speaks of happiness, to be sure, but that is what he means. He does not call it happiness, he calls it the ideal. But one should not he deceived by the word. The peculiarity of the Romanticist is not the search for happiness, but rather his belief that it is at hand. He knows it is awaiting him; he must be able to find it somewhere; it will come to him when he least expects it. And since it is a gift of Heaven, and he is not its author, he can lead as aimless a life as he pleases, at the direction of his own vague longings. It is only necessary to hold fast the opinion that this yearning will attain its object; and it is so easy to keep that opinion. For everything about him contains indications and premonitions of this truth. It was Novalis who gave it the famous and mysterious name of the blue flower [die blaue Blume). This name is, of course, not to be construed literally. The blue flower is a mysterious symbol, not unlike the IXΘΥΣ, the fish, of the early Christians. It is an abbreviation, a shortened, condensed expression in which is included all the limitless amount for which human heart can yearn. The blue flower is the symbol of perfect satisfaction, of happiness which fills the soul. Hence we have indications of it long before we find it. One dreams of it long before seeing it. One fancies it here and there, and it appears that it is a deception ; it greets us for a moment among other flowers and disappears ; but one gets stronger or fainter whiffs of its perfume, so that one loses his head, and always yearns and seeks for the one, perfect, ideal happiness,”

The third volume takes up the reaction in France. It opens with a sketch of the revolution of ’89, in which is shown more especially the way in which religion was persecuted during those years of violence, and then follows an account of the Concordat. The aim underlying these historical sketches is to show how the principle of authority, overthrown in the Revolution, became again established in France, — the swing of the pendulum from license to conservatism. This is, of course, introductory to the second overthrow of the principle of authority which is to be discussed in a future volume. Châteaubriand, Lamartine, to a certain extent Victor Hugo and Lamennais, are the writers mainly discussed, while Madame de, Krüdener is the subject of an entertaining chapter, and a certain amount of space is devoted to Bonald. Châteaubriand’s valentine-like contributions to religious literature, Lamartine’s fantastic love-tales, and Lamennais’ struggle for the establishment of Catholicism are set before the reader with great force and no less fullness. The two poets are treated, not so much mercilessly as candidly, although perhaps judicial impartiality is fur from being preserved when some of the wilder talk of the first-named comes under discussion. We must recommend every careful student of anything more than the names and dates of modern literature to beware of neglecting these volumes, which have value, not only as compendiums, but also as original works. Their importance is not to be judged by the meagre space at our command for their discussion.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

William s. Allison, New York : The Modifier, and other Poems. By Isaac M. Inman.

Verlag von Aug. Berth. Auerbach, Stuttgart: Demokratie und Monarchic in Frankreich. By Charles Kendall Adams.

Cassell, Petter, and Galpin, London : Free Trade and the European Treaties of Commerce.

Chapman and Hall, London : The Free - School System of the United States. By Francis Adams, Secretary of the National Education League.

Clark and Maynard, New York : An Elementary French Grammar. By Professor Jean Gustave Keetels, author of Analytical and Practical French Grammar, etc.

Concord, New Hampshire: Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Oliver Ditson & Co., Boston : The Shining River. By H. S. & W. O. Perkins.

Dodd and Mead, New York : The Bertram Family. By the author of Chronicles of the Schönberg-Cotta Family. — Brought Home. By Hesba Sfretton.— Notes, Explanatory and Practical, upon the International Sunday-School Lessons for the Year 1876. By Rev. Rufus W. Clark, D. D. — Two Lectures upon the Relations of Civil Law to Church Polity, Discipline, and Property. By Hon. William Strong, LL. D., Justice of the Supreme Court, U. S.

J. B. Ford & Co., New York: St. George and St, Michael. A Novel. By George Macdonald. Illustrated.

E. J. Hale and Son, New York : Hoosier Mosaics. By Maurice Thompson.

Henry Holt & Co., New York: Dissertations and Discussions: Political, Philosophical, and Historical. By John Stuart Mill. Vol. 5.

Jansen, MeClurg, &Co., Chicago : A Few Thoughts for a Few Friends. By Alice Arnold Crawford.

Lee and Shepard, Boston : The River of Dreams, and other Poems. By G. E. 0., author of Thurid, and other Poems.

J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia : Prose Miscellanies from Heinrich Heine. Translated by S. L. Fleishman. — A Handbook of Punctuation, containing the more important Rules and an Exposition of the Principles upon which they depend. By Joseph A. Turner, M. A., Professor of English and Modern Languages, Hollins Institute, Va.

Loring, Boston: Grand ther Baldwin’s Thanksgiving, with other Ballads and Poems. By Horatio Alger, Jr.

Macmillan & Co., London and New York : The Children’s Treasury of English Song. Selected and arranged, with Notes, by Francis Turner Palgrave, late Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. — Deutsche Lyrik. Selected and arranged, with Notes and a Literary Introduction, by C. A. Buchheim, Phil. Doc., F. C. P., Professor of German Literature in King’s Chapel, London.

James P. Magee : Memorial of Jesse Lee and the Old Elm. Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of Jesse Lee’s Sermon under the Old Elm, Boston Common, held Sunday Evening, July 11, 1875; with a Historical Sketch of the Great Tree.

New York Society of Practical Engineering: The Relation of the Patent Laws to American Agriculture, Arts, and Industries, being the Annual Address before the Society.

James R. Osgood & Co., Boston : Songs of Three Centuries. Edited by John Greenleaf Whittier.— Twice-Told Tales. Vols. 1 and 2. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.— The Blithedale Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.—The House of the Seven Gables. A Romance. By Nathaniel Hawthorne.— The Young Surveyor ; or. Jack on the Prairies. By J. T. Trowbridge. With Illustrations. — A StoryBook for the Children. By Mrs. A. M. Diaz. Illustrated.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: The Big Brother. A Story of Indian War. By George Cary Eggleston. Illustrated. — Stories from the Lips of the Teacher. Retold by a Disciple.

Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., New York: The Mysterious Island. Abandoned. By Jules Verne. Translated from the French by W. H. G. Kingston. — The Mysterious Island. Dropped from the Clouds. By Jules Verne. Translated from the French by W. H. G. Kingston.

Sheldon & Co., New York: Our Poetical Favorites. Second Series. A Selection from the Best Minor Poems of the English Language, comprising chiefly Longer Poems. By Aschel C. Kendrick, Professor in the University of Rochester.

Charles P. Somerby, New York : Soul Problems, with other Papers. By Joseph E. Peck.