Books of the Month

Science and Philosophy. Mr. William M. Lacy has published in an octavo volume an Examination of the Philosophy of the Unknowable as expounded by Herbert Spencer. (B, F. Lacy, Philadelphia.) Mr. Lacy opposes to Mr. Spencer’s scheme of nescience the doctrine “ that we are capable of realizing something of the nature of things occupying the region outside of consciousness.” He treats Mr. Spencer with great courtesy, but he attacks his positions with great vigor. His book is one worth consideration.—Mr. John Fiske, on the other hand, in his Excursions of an Evolutionist (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), collects fourteen of his interesting essays, which owe much of their impulse to Mr. Spencer, and incidentally introduce illustrations of Mr. Spencer’s philosophy. Mr. Fiske has so clear and animated a style that it is a pleasure to read his lucid sentences, though he deals often with abstruse subjects.— Janet’s The Theory of Morals has been translated by Miss Mary Chapman, under the supervision of President Noah Porter. (Scribners.) It is another argument in favor of conscious personality in human life.—Certitude, Providence, and Prayer is the fourth in President McCosh’s Philosophic Series (Scribners), and the course of the argument leads to a somewhat comprehensive conclusion. — God and the Future Life, by Charles Nordhoff (Harpers), is an attempt to restate the theses of natural theology in a form more consonant with recent scientific investigations and in a style adapted to immature minds. Mr. Nordhoff treats the subject from a positive Christian point of view.—The Wonders of Plant Life under the Microscope, by Sophie B. Herrick (Putnam), is a readable and well-illustrated little volume, in which technical terms are avoided as far as possible. The writer has given special attention to the subject of insectivorous plants. — Optics without Mathematics, by Rev. T. W. Webb, is a plain and rather lively little volume, published by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. (Young.) — The Organs of Speech, by George Hermann von Meyer, is the forty-sixth volume of the International Scientific Series (Appleton), and is a physiologist’s study of the application of these organs in the formation of articulate sounds; it illustrates the physiological basis of philology, and thus reaches two classes of students. — Body and Will, by Henry Maudsley (Appleton), is an essay concerning will in its metaphysical, physiological, and pathological aspects. It is polemic in its form, being an attack upon the freedom of a spiritual will. It is a plea also for the positive method of observation and induction in mental pathology. — The Science of Correspondences Elucidated, the key to the heavenly and true meaning of the Sacred Scriptures, by Rev. Edward Madeley, revised and greatly enlarged by B. F. Barrett (Claxton), is a new edition of a work accepted by Swedenborgians as one of their apologies. — The Question of a Division of the Philosophical Faculty is the Inaugural Address delivered on assuming the rectorship of the University of Berlin, by Dr. August Wilhelm Hofmann. (Ginn, Heath & Co.) This edition is furnished with a valuable appendix and notes, the whole being a very interesting contribution to the question of the comparative advantages of a classical and scientific basis of the higher education.

Poetry. Lay Canticles and other Poems, by F. Wyyille Home (Pickering & Co., London), deserve attention as the interesting work of a thoughtful student, who has learned some of the power of well-knit language, and whose ear is trained to harmony. — Verses, by William S. Lord (Adam Craig & Co., Chicago), is a correct title, though scanning is not always possible.—One of the Shepherds of Bethlehem (J. B. Harrison, Pittsfield, Mass.) is a little Christmas poem. — Brangonar, a tragedy, by George H. Calvert (Lee & Shepard), is explained by the author to be a poetic interpretation of the career of Napoleon Bonaparte. It looks very much as if it might be followed by another.—Idle Fancies, by Minnie C. Ballard (A. S. Hooker, Troy), is a volume of easygoing verse, printed, not published. —Poems and Swedish Translations, by Frederick Peterson M. D. (Peter Paul & Bro., Buffalo, N. Y.), is apparently the pastime of a professional man, but it is pastime which is more than idleness. Dr. Peterson shows a quaint fancy, a knowledge of Oriental as well as Northern verse, and a dexterity of rhyme which often produces agreeable effects.— The White Nun and other Poems, by Agnes L. Carter (Putnams), is a prettily printed volume of serious verse.—The latest issue of the tasteful Parchment Series (D. Appleton & Co.) is English Lyrics, a companion volume to the French Lyrics, published last month. The name of the editor of the English poems is not given. This collection, which begins with a lyric by Sir Thomas Wyatt and ends with a song from The Bride’s Tragedy, by T. L. Beddoes, shows the touch of a skillful hand. The introduction and the notes are well written and to the point. — The English Verse of Messrs. Stoddard and Lynton (Charles Scribner’s Sons) is a storehouse of valuable matter. Compilations of this sort are more easily found fault with than made. Errors are inevitable in a work laid out on so large a scale as this ; the care and knowledge and excellent taste which the editors have displayed in attempting to perfect their plan do not always go with good intentions. Mr. Stoddard is always on his own ground when he writes of English poetry. His prefaces to the fine volumes which comprise the series are admirable in their kind. The idea of devoting a volume to translations and a volume to selections from the dramatists was altogether a novel and valuable idea. In several respects the work differs favorably from existing compilations of similar character. Its chief faults are such as can be removed by careful proof-reading in future editions.

Fiction. The Jewel in the Lotos, by May Agnes Thicker (Lippincott), is a book of unequal merit, and needs to be read by one who is willing to be steeped in modern Italian life. — The Love of a Lifetime, by the author of From Madge to Margaret (Cuppies, Upham & Co.), is a domestic story of New England Life. — Guenn, a Wave on the Breton Coast, is a novel by Blanche Willis Howard. (Osgood.) Miss Howard is like an American artist who has shown signs of an artistic career, has made a little success at home, then has gone abroad, has studied, and now comes hack with a subject from Brittany. — Our Christmas in a Palace, by E. E. Hale. (Funk & Wagtails.) The palace is a Pullman palace car, and Mr. Hale’s railroad style and Christmas invention meet in a grand transcontinental fictitious journey. — A Hero’s Last Day’s, or Nepenthe (W. J. Duffle, Columbia, S. C.), is by the author of A Sequence of Songs, and, if not a very skillfully constructed story, shows thoughtfulness, a liking for excellent literature, and a more repressed sentiment than we are accustomed to in Southern novels.

Holiday Books. Sunlight and Shade, being poems and pictures of life and nature (Cassell), is a showy medley; most of the pictures and poems, of which there is a crowded lot, being by second and third-rate composers. It is a mere scrap-book, without any apparent method, except that of mechanical convenience. —Lee & Shepard send six of their illustrated books, in the milliner’s style, which has come in with the Macy period of bookselling: Curfew Must Not Ring To-Night, illustrated by Garrett and Merrill; That Glorious Song of Old, illustrated by Fredericks; It Was the Calm and Silent Night, illustrated by W. L. Taylor; My Faith Looks Up to Thee, illustrated by Miss Comins; The Lord is My Shepherd, illustrated by Miss Humphrey, and others ; Como Into the Garden, Maud, illustrated by Garrett. Hay Palmer’s poem is a facsimile of the handwriting.— One of the prettiest books of the holiday season — a season that has been notable for its profusion of illustrated and otherwise adorned books — is Flowers from Hill and Dale, a collection of poems arranged and illustrated in colors by Susie Barstow Skidding. (White, Stokes & Allen.) The full-page flower-pieces are very gracefully designed and executed. The cluster of pansies on page 21 and the spray of wood-fringe on page 29 are especially successful. Several of the poems are given in facsimile of the authors’ manuscript.

Books for Young People. Jingles and Songs for Wee Girls and Boys, by Mary D. Brine (Cassell), is a large quarto, crowded with pictures and what may be called graded rhymes, the earliest being nursery jingles, and the latest looking toward matrimony. The pictures have, for the most part, a satisfactory rudeness and freedom from over-refinement; the rhymes have an agreeable objectiveness. On the whole, the book attracts by its general homeliness, though it has not the virtue of the Ann and Jane Taylor homeliness. — Queen Victoria, her Girlhood and Womanhood, by Grace Greenwood (J. R. Anderson & Henry S. Allen, New York), is an attempt at “a pleasant, simple fireside story of the life and reign of Queen Victoria.” A cat may look at a king, and a republican woman may look at a queen with a womanly interest in her personality. — The Queens of England, abridged and adapted from Agnes Strickland’s work, by Rosalie Kaufman (Estes & Lauriat), is also intended for young people, but treats the subject in a historical rather than a gossipy fashion. — Young Folks’ History of the Civil War, by Mrs. C. Emma Cheney (Estes & Lauriat), is a partisan history, very inadequate in its account of the causes of the war, and one’s confidence in its accuracy is not increased as one reads. — Raising the Pearl, by James Otis (Harpers), is one of the serials published in Harper’s Young People, and is well worth having as a separate book. It is a good story for boys ; the scene laid in Tampa Bay, and the Pearl a little sunken steamer, which was raised by the boys, and made to do good service. It is of very little consequence whether school-hoys do or do not raise sunken steamers.

Literature and Literary Criticism. Shakespeare as a Lawyer, by Franklin Fiske Heard (Little, Brown & Co.), is a sheaf gleaned after earlier reapers, but so learned a student in the law could scarcely fail to make new and interesting discoveries. — The Odes of Horace, complete, in English rhyme and blank verse, by Henry Hubbard Pierce (Lippincott), is a soldier’s attempt to render Horace into popular form. He has annotated his translations, but the result on the whole is soda-water which has stood for a while in the sun. — Mr. Oscar Fay Adams’s Handbook of English Authors (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is a convenient and carefully planned and executed manual, in dictionary form, by which one may quickly ascertain the full name, date, and principal works of all the English authors, living and dead, who have secured conventional immortality. Of course such a book is a selective one, but the compiler has apparently followed a general taste, and has not allowed any special proclivities of his own to mislead himThe book is especially full in its reference to contemporary authors, and is the more valuable for this reason, since ordinary dictionaries and eyelopædias satisfy inquiry concerning the dead. — Folk-Lore of Shakespeare, by Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer (Harpers), is an interesting survey of the almost numberless passages in Shakespeare which refer or allude to the common speech of Englishmen of his day, with comment and annotation. It is a very desirable book for any reader of Shakespeare, and its full index makes it as good as a handbook. — Winnowings from Wordsworth, edited by J. Robertson (Nimmo, Edinburgh), is a tinv book, a veritable vest-pocket volume. The editor claims to have included all of Wordsworth’s poems not ruinously faulty in workmanship. A long preface is chiefly occupied with a criticism of Matthew Arnold’s essay on Wordsworth in his Selections. Whatever may be said of Mr. Robertson’s exclusion, no fault can be found with his inclusion. — Tennyson’s In Memoriam, its Purpose and Structure, a study, by John F. Genung (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), may be warmly commended to all students of a great poem. The analysis is deeper and more final than any that we have seen, and is plainly the work of a man who has brooded over the volume, yet has taken pains to present his results in an exact, almost dry form. — Characteristics is a volume of sketches and essays, by A. P. Russell (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), whose Library Notes is well known. This newer volume is a little more concrete in its subject than the former, Mr. Russell’s very close mosaic being fitted to represent figures of persons, rather than abstract ideas. To read it is to be constantly in the society of the best thoughts of the best men, so cleverly consolidated into a continuous whole as to give one the effect of a brilliant monologue. —Pen Pictures of the Earlier Victorian authors (Putnams) is edited by William Shepard, whose Authors and Authorship preceded and was on the same general plan. In this volume Mr. Shepard draws upon a variety of sources for descriptions of Bulwer, Disraeli, Macaulay, Charlotte Brontë, and others. The literary character is of a generally high order of the interview. — The handsome library edition of Emerson’s Works (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is completed by the publication of volumes nine, ten, and eleven. Volume nine constitutes the only full collection ever made of Emerson’s poems. It contains several pieces never before printed. The Lectures and Biographical Sketches (volume ten) and Miscellanies (volume eleven) also include much fresh matter and some entirely new. Among the former the reader will find the delightful papers on Ezra Ripley and Mary Moody Emerson, lately given in the pages of this magazine.

Travel. Spanish Ways and By-Ways, with a glimpse of the Pyrenees, by William Howe Downes (Cupples, Upham & Co.), is provided with a number of illustrations of varying degrees of merit, but the text scarcely rises above the level of a fair newspaper correspondent. — Woods and Lakes of Maine is the title of a handsome volume by Lucius L. Hubbard, containing a narrative of the author’s trip from Moosehead Lake to New Brunswick in a birch-bark canoe, and with an appendix containing a good list of Indian place-names and their meanings. Mr. Hubbard is a man thoroughly versed in woodcraft, who has made the Moosehead region his own by personal discovery; and besides the agreeable narrative, there arc many incidental references to life in the woods, of great practical value. The illustrations, by Will L. Taylor, arc very effective. (Osgood.) — A Roundabout Journey, by Charles Dudley Warner (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is occupied mainly with the countries lying about the Pillars of Hercules; but Mr. Warner, as his title implies, goes as far round about as to Munich and Baireuth. The roundaboutness, however, which the reader most enjoys is that of the author’s mind, which plays when traveling, and, as the French say, goes to school by chemin des écoliers.— Mr. William Winter’s English Rambles, and other fugitive pieces in prose and verse (Osgood), belongs here, under Literature, and under Poetry. It is a volume which one need not trouble himself to classify, since its interest and the pleasure which it gives are largely due to the personal element in the literature. Mr. Winter has a sensibility which makes him respond quickly and warmly to those gentler aspects of nature and life which most people are, shall wo say, too shamefaced to recognize openly. It is a pleasure to meet with so good a lover, and his love is for that which is pure and honorable. Certainly no American since Washington Irving has written so appreciatively of rural England as Mr. Winter has done in this and in a previous volume of the same sort. As to Loudon, one must go back to Dr. Johnson himself to find any such admirer of its historic nooks and corners.

Economics. General Francis A. Walker has rewritten in a small volume the four lectures on Land and its Rent (Little, Brown & Co.), which he delivered last spring at Harvard University, The theme of the book is the rightfulness and the expediency of private property in land and of the influence of rent, upon the distribution of wealth, and the immediate occasion seems to have been the discussion excited by Mr. George’s hook on Progress and Poverty. — The Destructive Influence of the Tariff upon Manufacture and Commerce, and the Figures and Facts relating thereto, by J. Schoenhof, is one of the aggressive publications of the New York Free Trade Club (Putnams), in which history is ignored. It is singular how heated these scientific missionaries get in discussion.— Workers and Idlers, by Merritt H. Dement (Chicago), is a somewhat angry tract upon the present inequalities in fortune, which it claims should be mended by the abolition of usury and the taxation of land. — Mineral Resources of the United States, by Albert Williams, Jr., is a volume of the United States Geological Survey. (Government Printing Office, Washington.) Here one may learn with little difficulty what deposits he may look for on his ten-acre lot, in addition to the coal which occurs not in situ, but in cellar.

Text-Books and Education. Davies’ Elements of Surveying and Leveling, which has been a standard text-book ever since its first appearance in 1830, was made more valuable by the author’s revision in 1870, and has now passed through a second revision at the hands of J. H. Van Amringe, who has especially availed himself of the government operations. (Barnes.)—An Epitome of English History, with questions for examination, by S. Agnes Kummer, revised by A. M. Chandlee (Barnes), follows the old formal division of reigns, a method which is thoroughly artificial; but then many conceive that memory is best aided by artificial systems. — In Worman’s Chautauqua Language Series, a Second French Book after the Natural or Pestalozzian Method (Barnes) has been published; the student is led on by easy lessons in French without any English, and is supposed to have partaken of some magic herb which makes him a child again in his apprehension. — Professor W. G. Peck, of Columbia, has added to his other text-books one upon Popular Astronomy for the Use of Colleges, Academies, and High Schools. (Barnes.) Mathematical formulas and demonstrations have been avoided as much as possible, but the effort has been to preserve a logical order in the treatment of subjects. — In the Dime Question Books (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.), two recent numbers are Geography and Grammar. —Prof. J. B. Greenough has completed his edition of the Greater Poems of Virgil by a second volume containing the latter half of the Æneid and the Georgies. (Ginn, Heath & Co.) The admirable typography seems to belong to the editor’s clear and crisp style of annotation. Two or three little illustrations are given. Why should not Latin and Greek text-books have interpretative illustrations in the text rather than in the notes? — In Ginn, Heath & Co.’s Classics for Children has been included the Merchant of Venice, edited by Mr. Hudson, who has also printed as an introduction the story of the play as given by Charles and Mary Lamb. —What Shall we Do with our Daughters ? Superfluous Women, and other Lectures, by Mary A. Livermore (Lee & Shepard), is mainly educational in its bearing; but it also is oratorical, as the origin of the hook determined, and its eloquence seems sometimes wasted upon a generation which is really very much in earnest about women and their education. — Sound Bodies for our Boys and Girls, by William Blaikie (Harpers), is the Incorporation of a well-known writer’s views on physical culture into a manual for school use. It has the advantage over a mere hook of exercises that it gives also the rationale of the exercises, which are simple and safe.—Mr. Rolfe, on second thoughts, has added Titus Androuieus to his series of Shakespeare’s plays; not committing himself to any hard and fast judgment as to Shakespeare’s share in the play, but giving the testimony of various experts. (Harpers.)

Health and Charity. The supplement to the fourth annual report of the Massachusetts State Board of Health, Lunacy, and Charity — three ill-assorted graces — contains several papers on the Adulteration of Food, Our Eyes and our Industries, Water Board. Sewerage of Nahant, etc. Dr. Jeffries’ paper on Our Eyes and our Industries is especially readable.—An Ethical Symposium is the title of a series of papers concerning medical ethics and etiquette from the liberal standpoint, by New York physicians of general repute (Putnams), who oppose the old code of ethics of the American Medical Association as presented by Dr. Austin Flint. The book is a curious commentary on social conditions, as well. — A Directory to the Charitable and Beneficent Institutions of the City of New York has been published for the Charity Organization Society (Putnams), and is an aid in the present rational movement toward a social mastery of poverty.

Humor, Intentional and Unintentional. Her Second Part of English as She is Spoke (Putnams) is a further contribution to the literature of the now famous Portuguese guide. We are afraid that we may enter now upon a series of imitations, for the great original must have created a school of students. — English as She is Wrote (Appleton) is an amusing collection of solecisms and absurdities in literature.

Domestic Economy. The Oyster Epicure is a collation of authorities on the gastronomy and dietetics of the oyster. (White, Stokes & Allen.) The editor has done his work in collecting a number of interesting and useful hints upon the subject from a variety of sources. One may learn where the most toothsome come from, how they should be cooked, how served, how eaten, and, most important of all, how many one may eat. — Health in the Household, or Hygienic Cookery, by Susanna W. Dodds, M. D. (Fowler & Wells), is a plump book of minute directions for the table upon sound principles of hygiene. Whatever may be the particular value of its receipts, its general views are agreeable to common sense.

History and Biography. History of Prussia to the Accession of Frederic the Great, 1134—1740, by Herbert Tuttle (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is a substantial addition to historical literature. Professor Tuttle has a deliberateness and directness in his style which quickly enlist the reader’s confidence. A good map prefaces the volume. —Political Recollections 1840-1872, by George W. Julian (Jansen, MeClurg & Co.), is naturally devoted mainly to anti-slavery polities, since Mr. Julian was a thorough-going opponent of slavery. — Memoir of Charles Lowe, by his Wife, Martha Perry Lowe (Cupples, Upham & Co.), is a full record of the life qf a man nowise remarkable, but solidly respected in the community in which he lived, useful in religious and benevolent movements, and by his editorial and other capacities frequently brought into connection both with famous men and important measures.

Art and Scholarship. Music in England, and Music in America; are two volumes by Fréderic Louis Ritter (Scribners), which give a running narrative of the development of music in the two countries, — a narrative which is animated and discursive. Mr. Ritter properly gives Foster a special place in his study, but we think he scarcely makes enough of the latent musical power in the colored race.—A Critical Bibliography of the Greek New Testament as published in America is a careful monograph by Isaac H. Hall. (Pickwick & Co., Philadelphia.) The work, itself an illustration of American scholarship, contains some interesting tributes to the researches in the direction of New Testament Greek.