Books of the Month

Fine Arts and Holiday Books. A History of Wood-Engraving, by George E. Woodberry (Harpers), is an important work, not from its contribution to the facts of the history of engraving on wood, for it displays no special research, but for its untechnical yet clear and discriminating statement of the relation which the development of the art has borne to civilization. In other words, Mr. Woodberry writes as a student, who values the art both for the pleasure which it gives and for its expository power; and he is rather a cultivated scholar writing for people of education than a technical student writing for professional artists. The illustrations are really illustrative. — History of Ancient Art, by Dr. Franz von Reber, translated and augmented by Joseph Thacher Clarke (Harpers), is a work of the same general character as Mr. Woodberry’s, but more comprehensive in subject and more exact and specific in treatment. But, like that, it is historical, and deals with art as an exponent of civilization in its successive stages. The work is furnished with a glossary, and with useful illustrations. Its compactness and order render it very serviceable as a hand-book for students. — An illustrated Dictionary of Words used in Art and Archæology, by J. W. Mollett (Houghton, Mifflin & Go.), is one of those convenient, hand-books which are rendering a high state of civilization endurable. It explains terms which everybody knows until he is asked, and is clear and concise. — The House that Jill Built after Jack’s had proved a Failure, by E. C. Gardner (Fords, Howard & Hulbert), is a book on home architecture, in which the discussions upon points are thrown into the form of a slight story. The book is illustrated, and one may find in it hints and suggestions of use. Perhaps the form adopted will reader the book more agreeable to the families which are now engaged in similar discussions; at any rate, it enables the writer to be lively at small cost. — The thirtieth volume of L’Art has been received from J. W. Bouton, and like its predecessors displays its richness more effectively than the weekly issues by themselves. The articles are by Champfleury, Decamps, Lalanne, Lenormant, and others; the etchings by Abot, Abraham, Artigue, Bocourt, Country, Daumont, Gautier, Greux, Lurat, Massard, and Yon, while a still larger number of artists are represented in the engravings on wood and the photogravures. The Salon of 1882 is liberally illustrated.—In Highways and Byways (Harpers) Mr. Gibson gives a twofold pleasure to his readers, and must himself derive a double satisfaction from his work, as author and artist. In his combined quality he has presented us with one of the most beautiful volumes of the season.

Geography and Travel. The Merv Oasis, by Edmond O’Donovan (Putnams), is an important work in two volumes, by the special correspondent of the London Daily News, treating of travels and adventures east of the Caspian during the years 1879-81, and including live months’ residence among the Tekés of Merv. Mr. O’Donovan’s five months were somewhat in the nature of a polite imprisonment, but he used his facilities well, and with the training of a newspaper correspondent has told everything he knows, apparently. We must confess to some doubts whether this training makes the most satisfactory historians of travel, but it certainly makes the liveliest narrators. The book is furnished with maps and a portrait of the author. — The Land of “ The Arabian Nights” is a volume of travel through Egypt, Arabia, and Persia to Bagdad, by W. P. Fogg (Scribners), with a page of introduction by Bayard Taylor. The book is lively and confined to the author’s personal experience. —Lieutenant Danenhower’s Narrative of the Jeannette (Osgood) is a revised version of the story first told to the New York Herald reporter. — Three Vassar Girls Abroad, by Mrs. Elizabeth W. Champney (Estes & Lauriat), is a bright and readable narrative of a vacation trip of three girls through France and Spain. The three girls may be inventions or copies; it does not matter so far as the reader’s pleasure is concerned. — Knocking Round the Rockies (Harpers) does not mean that the author, Ernest Ingersoll, has been injuring the Rocky Mountains to any appreciable extent, but has, since 1874, been on various expeditions over the country. He has brought together into more orderly form the notes which he has printed of his travels in several periodicals. He is a good traveler, and gives the reader a full taste of the joys of roughing it. — Pennsylvania Dutch, and other Essays, by Phebe Earle Gibbons (Lippincott), appears in its third edition, revised and enlarged. The first edition was published in 1872, the second in 1874, and the present contains about twice as much as the first. The interesting character of the leading paper will be recalled by many readers, and the writer makes further contributions from her note-books on the miners of Scranton, Irish and English farmers. The unfinished style seems to carry with it a certain authentication of the material.

Poetry and the Drama. Poems of Life and Nature, by Mary Clemmer (Osgood), collects verses written upon a number of subjects, and all bearing the impress of a somewhat fervid nature, untrained in verse, and not always aware of the hairbreadth escape which she enjoys; for her poetic steed goes dangerously near the edge, at times. — A Symphony in Dreamland, by Alice E. Lord (Putnams), is a collection of poems arranged under the headings of the movements of a symphony, and having something of the vagueness of music. The conceit, however, helps to give character to the book. — A second series has been issued of Sunshine in the Soul (Roberts), a collection of poems of a religious character, treating of the varied experiences of life and cultivating a divine content. The good taste of the compiler is evident.— Poems, by Minot J. Savage (George H. Ellis, Boston), contains the off-hand versifying of a bright and busy man. There is slight range of poetic form and little sign that poetry as an art has been faithfully studied. — Idler and Poet, by Rossiter Johnson (Osgood), is a collection of poems, in very neat style, which one may take as the fancies and jeux d’esprit of a writer who has won his spurs in other fields. — Songs of an Idle Hour, by William J. Coughlin (Williams), is preceded by a too deprecatory preface: not that we should necessarily disagree with its reckless abandonment of claims, but such a preface is apt to produce an antipathetic mood in the reader. The poems show variety of form, but lack of melody. — Monte Rosa, the Epic of an Alp, by Starr H. Nichols (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), has the quality of greatness about it. That is to say, it is not only serious in intention, but it is built upon a strong plan; and however much one may differ from the author in his choice of a hero, it must be admitted that he is consistent, and the mountain remains throughout the hero of the poem. The book will be a nut to crack for many.

Literature and Literary Criticism. Dr. Holmes’s Autocrat of the Breakfast Table has been issued in a new edition (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), which, besides the charm of new and clear typography, has an embroidery of footnotes, in which the autocrat becomes a delightful reader of his own undying work. One feels that he is reading it aloud to his multitude of friends, stopping now and then to say something new, of which his old work has reminded him.—Tasso, by E. J. Hasell, is a recent number of Foreign Classics for English Readers. (Lippincott.) Most of the translations of poetry in the volume are by the author. — In English Men of Letters (Harpers), Macaulay, by J. Cotter Morison, is treated with that impartiality, and yet affection, which form the characteristics of much of our contemporary biographic criticism. — Herbert Spencer and the Americans and The Americans on Herbert Spencer (Appleton) is a pamphlet report of the well-known “interview” and the proceedings at the farewell dinner.

Biography and Memoirs. Ole Bull, a memoir by Sara C. Bull (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), will be received with alacrity as a report of a singularly attractive artist, and be read with respect and interest ; for it really presents to the reader in close contact a figure seen by most at the distance of the concert platform. The book contains also Ole Bull’s Violin Notes and Dr. A. B. Crosby’s Anatomy of the Violinist. There is a portrait of the great musician, and the book itself is an animated and graphic portrait of the most romantic figure in recent musical history.— Reminiscences of Court and Diplomatic Life, by Georgiana Baroness Bloomfield (Putnams), is a decorous work, recounting the experiences of a lady who was in waiting on Queen Victoria, and afterward the wife of a gentleman in diplomatic service in Russia and Austria. While the work has the general air of memoirs, in which the little and big jostle each other, it cannot be said to amuse or startle by its revelations. It is the memoranda of a cultivated lady, who had not much to say, and said it in two volumes.—The personal quality in Discourses and Poems of William Newell (George H. Ellis, Boston) is very attractive, and indeed gives excuse for the volume. Dr. Newell grew old in Cambridge, where he had long been a pastor; but he kept a playful, youthful spirit, and the writings in this book, both those of him and those by him, alike produce the impression of a most friendly and refined man. —Early New England People is the attractive title of a volume which Sarah E. Titcomb has formed from material illustrating the family history of Ellis, Pemberton, Willard, Prescott, Titcomb, Sewall, Longfellow, and other New England houses. (W. B. Clarke and Carruth, Boston.) It is genealogy in fatigue uniform. The absence of an index renders the work more of a tax upon the consulter than was necessary. — We have referred before to Heroes of Science,published by the S. P. C. K. Another volume has been added, devoted to astronomers, by E. J. C. Morton, and giving in the form of biographic sketches something like a history of the development of the science. — Memoir of John A. Dahlgren, by his widow, Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (Osgood), is a full and generous biography. It represents, it may be, the desire of Mrs. Dahlgren to erect a monument over her husband, and possible the very fullness of her narrative will partially defeat her object; but Admiral Dahlgren was a man whose life was well worth knowing, and cooler heads may from this material easily shape the figure which is to stand permanently in the national gallery. — Military Life in Italy is a volume of sketches by Edmondo de Amicis. (Putnams.) It is the work of a soldier, who is also a brilliant writer, and is in effect a piece of personal memoirs thrown into a somewhat fictitious form.

History. The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, or the geography, history, and antiquities of the Sassanian or new Persian empire, by George (Rawlinson Dodd, Mead, & Co ), which is in two octavo volumes, copiously illustrated and furnished with maps, completes the author’s ancient history of the East. It is a sequel to the Parthians, and carries down the history of Western Asia from the third century of our era to the middle of the seventh.— English Colonies in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, by J. A. Doyle (Holt), is by a writer who has already shown his ability in a small Volume devoted to American history, and in this furnishes the first of an important series of three, covering the whole of our colonial life. The work is a careful study, from contemporaneous sources largely, and belongs to the new order of scientific histories. It is a work of great value to the historical student. — A History of the French War, ending in the conquest of Canada, with a preliminary account of the early attempts at colonization and struggles for the possession of the continent, by Rossiter Johnson (Dodd, Mead & Co.), is not an original work, but a straightforward narrative, drawn from good sources and intended for popular reading. Without a distinct statement to the effect, it is probably designed chiefly for young readers. It avoids the faults of sensationalism, except in its illustrations. — Celtic Britain, by J. Rhys, is one of the historical compends published by the London Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (E. & J. B. Young & Co., New York), written by a professor of Celtic, who is probably better qualified for his work than his somewhat jocular and apologetic preface would intimate.— History of Augusta County, Virginia, by J. Lewis Peyton (Samuel M. Yost & Son, Staunton, Va.), is a substantial county history, in which is gathered much local material, and there must be very few persons in the county whose names may not be found on some page. Many curious details are preserved, and the book will take its place as one of the storehouses for historians. It is a pity it has no map. — Gesta Christi, or a History of Humane Progress under Christianity, by Charles Loring Brace (Armstrongs), is a suggestive treatise by a man who has won honor as a worker in Christian schemes. He seeks to discover the practical witness to Christianity in historic progress, and his work, while not original in investigation, is one of those quickening works which are quite sure to result in the growth of ideas. — Mr. William Swinton has reissued his Campaigns of the Army of the Potomac (Scribners), but claims that, while he has corrected his work in some minor details, the substantial truthfulness of the original publication has been confirmed by later histories and records.

Fiction. Mr. Bishop’s The House of a Merchant Prince (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) carries on its title-page the words “ A Novel of New York; ” and it is the studious local color of the book which gives it value as a survey of current life in some of its phases. The story, besides, is a story, and not a mosaic of incidents. — Little Sister is the first of the third of the No Name series of novels (Roberts), and will attract by its sweetness of tone, even if that be sometimes a little cloying. — Janet, a Poor Heiress, by Sophie May (Lee & Shepard), is a story of the good-natured, domestic kind, vastly better for the girls who will read it than much of the fiction which has more style about it. — Nantucket Scraps, being the experiences of an off-islander, in season and out of season, among a passing people, by Jane G. Austin (Osgood), is the light and trifling book of a summer visitor, who finds amusement nearer home than some travelers, and romanticizes in a manner to make one wonder if he would find all that she saw if he went to Nantucket. — Heart of Steel, by Christian Reid (Appleton), is an elaborate novel by an American lady, the scenes laid in Europe, involving some of the customary international questions. — Doctor Grimshawe’s Secret (Osgood) is the Hawthorne romance which, with its fringe of notes and experiments, promises to be the occasion of a vast deal of writing now and in the future. How thankfully one gets out of Hawthorne’s tomb this half-legible story, and how thankfully he would fill up any vacant, tomb with a large part of the fiction since his day! — The Modern Hagar, by Charles M. Clay (Harlan), is a two-volume novel in continuation of the author’s previous Baby Rue. — Mr. Isaacs, a tale of modern India, by F. Marion Crawford (Macmillan), is sufficiently cosmopolitan: a Persian for the hero, modern India for the field, an American for the author, and an Englishman for the publisher. It needs no such help from the four quarters of the globe to give it a position; its own character will do that. — Césette, a story of peasant life in the South of France, from the French of Emile Pouvillon by C. W. Woolsey (Putnams), will give a fillip to the taste of the jaded novel-reader. It is perhaps the situation and frank exhibition of rustic life which will interest, rather than any singular story-telling power, but at any rate the peasants are not interrupted by high life. — The Problem of the Poor, a record of quiet work in unquiet places, by Helen Campbell (Fords, Howard & Hulbert), is fictitious rather in form than in substance. It contains sketches of actual experience in the slums of New York, made by a writer of experience in story-telling; and while the book has a charm of narrative, it has also internal evidence of faithfulness to fact. We commend it as doing more than to state the problem, for it suggests solutions. — Loser the Watchmaker, an episode of the Polish Revolution, by Rev. Adolf Moses, translated from the German by Mrs. A. de V. Chaudron (Block & Co., Cincinnati), is a Jewish tale, which covers by a veil historic fact.

Books for Young People. Building the Nation is the title of a work by Charles Carleton Coffin (Harpers), which deals with events in the history of the United States from the Revolution to the beginning of the war between the States. It has the characteristics of Mr. Coffin’s work, a nervous haste as if history were a variety show, a bright sense of something more than the material side of life, and an unfailing confidence in the destiny of the nation. We suspect that most boys and girls who read the book would not fail of an exalted notion of their own country. — Zigzag Journeys in the Occident, by Hezekiah Butterworth (Estes & Lauriat), is this year’s number of the Zigzag series, and covers a summer trip from Boston to the Pacific. The book strikes us as rather more lively than previous ones, but with somewhat the same galvanic life. — Of the same general class is The Knockabout Club Alongshore, the adventures of a party of young men on a trip from Boston to the land of the Midnight Sun, by C. A. Stephens. (Estes & Lauriat.) The midnight sun is seen off Greenland, and not off Norway, and the experiences of the travelers are confined to this hemisphere. Mr. Stephens makes a plea for a different kind of education from that which has grown out of the world’s experiments, but his book does not make one sanguine of the lasting success of a steamship college, and the judicious parent will be likely to put the book back on the counter after reading the opening pages. — Rev. Alfred J. Church has added to the obligations which the public already owed him by his Stories from the Greek Tragedians. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) Such a book is an admirable introduction to a warm interest in antiquity, and is likely to do more than simple translation in giving those who do not read Greek an insight into Greek thought and life.— Plish and Plum, from the German of Wilhelm Busch by Charles T. Brooks (Roberts), is one of the German drolleries which never quite gets acclimatized, but is given as much freedom of the country as is possible under Mr. Brooks’s sympathetic rendering. — Boys in the Mountains and on the Plains, by William H. Rideing (Appleton), is an illustrated work, in which the author’s experience as a member of one of the geographical surveys is thrown into the form of a narrative recording the adventures of a company of bright boys traveling in the far West. It is a sensible book, of more unity than many of its class. — Jewish and Christian History (Osgood) is a work in three volumes, based upon the Bible, but giving the narrative in a consecutive form and in a style intended for the young. In a large portion the Bible language has been used, and the compilers have in the main followed the lead of Ewald and his English popularizer, Dean Stanley. The book is furnished with notes and with a few illustrations, the latter of which would scarcely commend themselves to Ewald, one would say. It strikes us that the critical apparatus and indeed some of the text presuppose a tolerable maturity of mind in the reader.— Facts and Phases of Animal Life, interspersed with amusing and original anecdotes, is the naive title of a volume prepared by Vernon S. Norwood, described as lecturer to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. (Appleton.) The book is illustrated by wood-cuts, executed apparently by some society for the prevention of justice to animals. It is didactic and somewhat formal, and overdoes the business of exciting kindly emotions. — Our Boys in India (Lee & Shepard) is another of the showy books of travel for the young, which are laying the seeds this year of an immense crop of travelers a dozen years hence. It describes the wanderings of two young Americans in Hindustan, with their adventures on the sacred rivers and wild mountains, and is by Harry W. French, who appears to be better equipped as a traveler than as a story-teller. — Young Folks’ History of Mexico, by Frederick A. Ober (Estes & Lauriat), is a somewhat enthusiastic work, in which romance is freely used and dates are given with an air of authenticity which is amusing. One would think that a daily record of events was kept in Mexico in the twelfth century. The author does not indulge much in prophecy, but he says soberly, Mexico “has now enjoyed an almost uninterrupted peace of nearly live years.” It certainly is high time, then, to write the history of Mexico. — The Live Oak Boys, or the Adventures of Richard Constable afloat and ashore (Lee & Shepard), is one of Mr. Kellogg’s rugged, sensible books, devoid of art, but possessed of sterling qualities of nature.— Mildred’s Bargain and other stories, by Lucy C. Lillie (Harpers), is a sensible book for girls, the stories being loaded with good principles, and not too subtle or romantic.—Winning his Way, by Charles Carleton Coffin (Estes K Lauriat), is a new edition, in the prevailing style, of a book which had a success in war times as a picture of boy and soldier life. It appears now with a new set of illustrations, which generalize the incidents illustrated in a suspicious fashion. — Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales, by Juliana Horatia Ewing, is a collection of stories by a practiced writer, who is familiar with the standard fairy stage, and puts on new dramas in the same general style, but with some modern spirit infused. Mrs. Ewing has perhaps a trifle too much purpose in her fairy tales. The book is published by the S. P. C. K. (E. & J. B. Young & Co., New York.)

Education and Text-Books.—A Text-Book on the Elements of Physics, for high schools and academies, by Alfred P. Gage (Ginn, Heath & Co.), rests distinctly upon the experimental method, and, while it does not require laboratory apparatus, expects and encourages it. The author shows the unreasonableness of the objections against the use of physical laboratories in elementary work. — Anacreontics, selected and arranged with notes, by Isaac Flagg (Ginn, Heath & Co.), contains thirty-five delightful little pieces, which may be studied with profit, but thoroughly enjoyed only by those to whom the classics have ceased to be dictionary exercises. — Beowulf, an Anglo-Saxon Poem, and The Fight at Finnsburg, translated by James M. Garnett (Ginn & Heath), is well furnished with notes, bibliography, and glossary. — W. J. Rolfe’s Shakespeare (Harpers), has reached Henry the Sixth, the three parts of which are published in three separate volumes.

Biblical and Religious. The third volume of Dr. Philip Schaff’s four-volume Popular Commentary of the New Testament (Scribners) is occupied with the Epistles of Paul, and, besides the editor, the authors contributing are “English and American scholars, of various evangelical denominations.” Dr. Riddle, of Hartford, is the only American employed upon this volume. The work is loaded down with analysis and comment, and its popularity surely must be based upon the comprehensive, not the stimulating, character of the exegesis.—Home-Life in the Bible, by Henrietta Lee Palmer (Osgood), is an abundantly illustrated octavo, in which the topics naturally falling under the title are treated in a free, narrative manner. —• Under the general title of The Land and the Book, which was used for a previous volume, descriptive of Southern Palestine and Jerusalem, Dr. William M. Thompson, a veteran missionary, has now published a second section devoted to Central Palestine and Phœnicia. (Harpers.) The book is a portly one, freely illustrated, and containing maps; its value will be found in the personal experience and observation of a well-equipped traveler and resident, and, since the indexes are copious, the itinerary form which is adopted is made almost as convenient for reference as if the topical form had been chosen.

Health and Medicine. In the Health Primers (Appleton) the ninth number is The Nervous System. The application of the doctrines to the care of the body is brief, the work mainly resting its value upon the clearness of its analysis of the system. — Speech and its Defects, considered physiologically, pathologically, historically and remedially, by Samuel O. L. Potter, M. D. (P. Blakiston, Son & Co., Philadelphia), is a prize thesis, and is very full and minute on the subject of stammering, although we do not see that he quotes Colonel Sellers’s remedy. — Transactions of the Brighton Health Congress (John Beal & Co., Brighton, England) is a volume containing a report of the addresses and papers given at a congress held in Brighton in December, 1881. Dr. B. W. Richardson presided, a domestic and scientific exhibition was held, all sorts of hygienic subjects were discussed, and the principal speakers furnished their photographs. The volume is a curiosity as showing how queerly things are sometimes done in England. — Dr. Lionel S. Beale’s treatise On Slight Ailments, their Nature and Treatment, appears in a second edition, enlarged and illustrated. (P. Blakiston, Son & Co., Philadelphia.) While strictly a medical work, it has its charms for the lay-reader who may he suspected of having slight ailments of which he wishes to know a little. —Dr. J. Mortimer Granville is the author of a manual (S. E. Cassino, Boston), How to Make the Best of Life, and discusses the subject under the heads of health, feelings, breathing, drinking, eating, over-work, change, and life strength, but he is neither very forcible nor very suggestive. There are better aids to health in the same compass.—Cerebral Hyperæmia, by Dr. C. F. Buckley (Putnams), is an examination of some of Dr. W. A. Hammond’s views by an English specialist in lunacy. Dr. Hammond published a book with the same title, and thus Dr. Buckley adds to his title the words, Does it exist ? The question is asked simply on the title-page, but before the little book is closed it is asked derisively, indignantly, and aggressively.

Household Economy. The Book of Forty Puddings, by Susan Anna Brown (Scribners), is not, as its external form hints, a suggestion for an æsthetic repast, or a Barmecide feast. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and it is no objection to this little book that its residence in the kitchen would be brief, owing to its decorative properties. — Be Kind to Your Old Age (E. & J. B. Young & Co., New York) for the London S. P. C. K., is a book upon thrift, the principles of which are of universal application, but calculated for the meridian of Greenwich, where there are “ post-office aids.” — Domestic Economy, a new Cookery Book, containing numerous (sic) valuable receipts for aid in housekeeping, prepared and arranged by Mrs. R. C. Hollyday (John Murphy & Co., Baltimore), is an entertaining as well as useful work, since it gives one the authority in the names of Maryland and Virginia housekeepers for the various receipts. Here at last we may hope that the famous Southern cooking is made possible to the

Union. Science. Chapters on Evolution, by Andrew Wilson (Putnams), is a popular and intelligible presentation, by an authority in scientific matters, of the chief evidences of the evolution of living beings. “In this view,” the author says, “whilst I have been content to assume the reality of that process, I have also endeavored to marshal the more prominent facts of zoölogy and botany, which serve to prove that evolution, broadly considered, is not merely a name for an unknown tendency in nature, but is an actual factor in the work of moulding the life with which the universe teems.” The work, which is an English one, is liberally illustrated. — The Falls of Niagara is the title of an illustrated work by George W. Holley (Armstrong), who has been a resident for many years in the vicinity of the Falls, and has brought into this form the result of his observations. He assumes to demonstrate the existence of a dam that was once the shore of an immense freshwater sea. The historical side of his subject he has also treated, and has added a sketch of other famous cataracts. — Ragnarok, the Age of Fire and Gravel (Appleton) is by Ignatius Donnelly, who has an aptitude for seeing the romance in science, and in this volume undertakes to explain the drift by the action of a comet upon the earth. He writes with zeal and animation, and attacks his subject with something of the spirit which he attributes to the comet. —In the series of Science Ladders (Putnams), the fifth number is Lowest Forms of Water Animals, by N. D’Anvers, the previous numbers having been devoted to plant life. It begins with protoplasm, and rises to the corals. The book belongs also among books for young people.