Books of the Month

Poetry and the Drama. Messrs. T. Y. Crowell & Co. (New York) publish an edition of Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s Poems in a style of binding which would have made the poet sigh for some law which should compel American publishers, when reprinting the works of an English author, to reprint the covers as well. Indeed, one takes leave to doubt if Mr. Rossetti’s poems can possibly be read by his admirers unless they are printed without red rules in a book bound in smooth green cloth, with a significant stamp, and with lining papers especially designed by Mr. Rossetti or Mr. Morris. Of course this is all nonsense, but the followers of the school do require that there shall be fitness all the way through, and the more devout would not sit down to this poetry at all if dressed in a ready-made suit and compelled to live in a boarding-house. — The same publishers send Scott’s Marmion and Lay of the Last Minstrel in the same dress. Let any one try to open the latter of the two books, and he will not succeed unless he breaks the back of the book. A volume of poems should certainly invite a reader, and not slam the door in his face. — The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere have been collected in three volumes (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London), and will be welcomed not only by Irish patriots, but by lovers of tuneful song, not led astray by the fashion of the hour. — Song and Story, Later Poems, by Edgar Fawcett. (Osgood.) —The Highlanders in Nova Zembla is an arctic poem, translated from the Dutch of Hendrik Tollens by Daniel Van Pelt, and supplied with a preface and a historical introduction by S. R. Van Campen. (Putnams.) The prose introduction, at any rate, is readable. It passes one’s imagination, however, to conceive of people really and truly supposing that a trade with the Orient could be secured by the northeast passage. If a vessel by once getting through could clear all the ice out of the way, the venture were worth trying, but one looks upon one’s ancestors with amazement as one sees them deliberately offering prizes and expecting to reap golden rewards from the discovery of a northeast passage. It would seem almost as reasonable to look for great wheat-fields in Spitzbergen. — Scientific and Poetical Works of the Last of the Hereditary Bards and Skalds. (The J. M. W. Jones Stationery and Printing Company, Chicago.) We don’t understand the scientific works, which are condensed into twenty-four pages of pemmican, so we have made a dash at the poetry, and are struck at once with the beauty of the line, uttered by a soldier in a fragmentary play, —

Not know what aboo means ? Read the lines im-
mediately preceding: —

— Estelle, an Idyl of Old Virginia, by Marcus B. Allmond (J. P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.), a not overstrained nor unmelodious story in verse, of a kind which sometimes tempts one to think that there is more chance for honest sentiment at the South than at the North. — Eos, a Prairie Dream, and Other Poems, by Nicholas Flood Davin. (Citizen Printing and Publishing Company, Ottawa.) The author of this little pamphlet is stirred by Canadian patriotism. Well, that is not a bad breeze for Pegasus to flap his wings on.

Travel. It is not quite clear under what head should be placed J. B. Thayer’s little volume, A Western Journey with Mr. Emerson (Little, Brown & Co.), but inasmuch as the book came into existence because of a journey, we place it here. Mr. Thayer wrote home from time to time letters narrating his experience upon a journey to California with a party of which Mr. Emerson was the sequoia. Thirteen years ago such a jour ney was a novelty, and the impressions then produced were worth preserving, if for no other reason ; but the death of Mr. Emerson has made such chance glimpses of him as the narrative affords to have a special value. If this little book had been, for example, a record of a journey in company with Franklin, and had just come to light, it would be hailed with enthusiasm. If it should lie in manuscript until 1930 and then were brought out, it would be regarded with equal favor. It suffers a little now from association with other reminiscences, but it will keep better in print than it could in manuscript, and we advise all who own it to bind it carefully and leave it for an heirloom. If too many persons do not do this, the copies on hand, a half century hence, will figure at good prices on the auction lists.—To Mexico by Palace Car, by James W. Steele (Jansen, McClurg & Co.), is intended as a guide to her principal cities and capital, and generally as a tourist’s introduction to her life and people. Mr. Steele’s enthusiasm is manifest, but it is under control, and he lias made a capital little handbook, not too desiccated, and at the same time free from mere fine writing.

Fiction. Funk & Wagnalls, New York, publish a translation of Daudet’s L’Évangeliste, by Mary Neal Sherwood. It is not exactly a case of Saul among the prophets, but perhaps the picture here presented may lead some readers of English and American versions of the Romish faith in fiction to be a little cautious as to what they accept. — The Mistress of Ibichstein is a novel by Fr. Henkel, translated from the German by S. E. Boggs, which one may read with heightening alarm, but with an undercurrent of faith that the most inexplicable situations will be cleared before the close, and the two people made happy. — The sixth and closing volume of the series of The Surgeon’s Stories, by Z. Topolius, is Times of Alchemy. (Jansen, McClurg & Co.) The detail of these stories differs from that of the realistic stories to which we are most accustomed chiefly by the infusion of a strong historical and imaginative element. The books form an interesting escape from much contemporary fiction, but one is plunged into new and confusing perils. — Dissolving Views, by Mrs. Andrew Lang (Harpers): an attractive novel, in which the movement of the story is helped by making the characters change their places a good many times. Mrs. Lang has caught the bright, half-jesting tone of the refined novel very cleverly, but has not dissipated her story in mere badinage. — Himself Again, by J. C. Goldsmith (Funk & Wagnalls): a preposterous story, in which the author uses ever so much machinery, which he does not wholly understand, for bringing about a psychological change in a man. — A Fair Device, by Charles Wolcott Balestier (John W. Lovell Company, New York), comes out just in time for the summer boarder. — The Shadow of the War, a story of the South in reconstruction times (Jansen, McClurg & Co.), appears to be written by a person better able to describe scenes in Southern life than to construct a piece of fiction. It is, in effect, an apology for the forcible recovery of political power by the native-born Southern whites, a passage in our history which is likely for a long while to come to offer a fruitful theme for discussion to historian and moralist. — Miss Nancy (David McKay, Philadelphia) is a society novel, in which simple virtue comes out triumphant. — Mr. Laurence Oliphant’s Piccadilly has been published in book form by Harpers, who also reprint the Miz Maze, already recorded in these pages. — Charles Reade’s A Perilous Secret and A Hero and a Martyr appear both in 16mo and in the Franklin Square Library. (Harpers.) In the Franklin Square Library also appear Godfrey Helstone, by Georgiana M. Craik, My Ducats and my Daughter, and Lucia, Hugh, and Another, a novel by Mrs. J. H. Needell. — Eustis, by Robert Apthorp Boit (Osgood), holds out hopes that writers will turn from the international to the intersectional novel, and gives us the contrasted forms of Northern and Southern life. — StageStruck, or She Would be an Opera Singer, by Blanche Roosevelt (Fords, Howard & Halbert), is a course-flavored novel, which professes to illustrate the career of a Western girl who goes abroad to qualify herself for the stage. —A Palace Prison, or the Past and Present (Fords, Howard & Hulbert), is a story intended to expose the viciousness of the insane-asylum system. — Wheels and Whims. (Cupples, Upham & Co.) The wheels are those of tricycles; the whims those of four young ladies, who make an excursion on or in these centaur vehicles. One of the young ladies in the introductory chapter has blighted hopes ; the blight is so entirely fictitious that the reader has not the slightest fear that the wheels will roll her into a state of perennial happiness with the fictitiously base young man of the first chapter. — A Midsummer Madness, by Ellen Olney Kirk (Osgood), has the author’s cleverness which lacks — who shall say what it lacks? Just the something which would make her stories thoroughly enjoyable, instead of constantly suggesting echoes and second thoughts. — The Fortunes of Rachel, by Edward Everett Hale (Funk & Wagnalls), is an entertaining story ; it is also an indirect plea for the new world which Mr. Hale’s charity and hope have never ceased to construct for men and women. If he sands his granite to make it more life-like, who shall complain? — An Average Man, by Robert Grant (Osgood) suggests its measure too readily. — There was Once a Man, by R. H. Newell (Fords, Howard & Halbert), includes the author’s whole duty of man.—At Daybreak, by A. Stirling. (Osgood.) — Mingo, and other Sketches in Black and White, by Joel Chandler Harris (Osgood), contains four stories of Southern life.— Tinkling Cymbals, by Edgar Fawcett. (Osgood.) — The Usurper, an Episode in Japanese History, by Judith Gautier, has been translated by Miss Alger. (Roberts.)—The Loyal Ronins is an historical romance translated from the Japanese of Tamenaga Shunsui by Edward Greey and Shinichiro Saito. (Putnams.)—The fourth volume of Stories by American Authors (Scribner’s Sons) contains short tales by Miss Woolson, H. C. Bunner, N. P. Willis, Mrs. Foote, J. W. De Forest, and Noah Brooks. Mr. Bunner’s Love in Old Clothes is altogether the best sketch in the present collection. —In The Giant’s Robe (D. Appleton & Co.) Mr. Anstey has given us a delightful story. Though not so fantastic as Vice Versâ, The Giant’s Robe is quite as original and diverting. — Mr. Frank R. Stockton’s very ingenious sketch, The Lady, or the Tiger? furnishes the title to a collection of his clever short stories. (Scribner’s Sons.) We do not mean to dispraise them when we say that none is so clever as the first.

Art and Archœology. National Academy Notes, edited by Charles M. Kurtz (Cassell), has passed to its fourth year. It contains a complete catalogue of the fifty-ninth spring exhibition of the National Academy of Design, New York ; 122 illustrations, 115 of them reproduced from drawings by the artists ; personal notices of the artists whose works are reproduced; a brief history of the National Academy; a plan of the building and diagrams of the galleries. The personal notices, fortunately, are condensed statements of the artistic career of the artists, entirely free from any comment; the reproductions are convenient memoranda ; and the descriptions of the pictures are as a rule free from impertinence. — The Trustees of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, have issued their eighth annual report. It contains an interesting special report on the increase of the collections. — The fifth annual report of the Executive Committee and the third annual report of the Committee on the American School of Classical Studies at Athens have appeared in a single number. (John Wilson & Son, Cambridge, Mass.) The reports are incidentally interesting contributions to archæological science. — The Amateur Photographer is the title of a little handbook by Ellerslie Wallace, Jr., M. D. (Porter & Coates), which serves as a manual for photographic manipulation, intended especially for beginners and amateurs, with suggestions as to the choice of apparatus and of processes. It appears to be in the interest of those who wish to make use of this art, and not of those who have goods to sell. — Cottages, or Hints on Economical Building, containing twenty-four plates of medium and low cost houses, contributed by different New York architects, together with descriptive letter-press, giving practical suggestions for cottage building, compiled and edited by A. W. Brunner, architect ; to which is added a chapter on the water supply, drainage, sewerage, heating, and ventilation, and other sanitary questions relating to country houses, by William Paul Gerhard. (W. T. Comstock, New York.) The limits of a book of fifty pages permit, of course, only suggestions and hints, but the plates will give further information to those who know how to look at them. A narrow examination would make a good housekeeper think twice before yielding to the seductive exteriors.

Education and Text-Books. The queer conglomeration which is issued by the Bureau of Education, at Washington, under the title Circulars of Information, is represented by two recent issues: The Teaching, Practice, and Literature of Shorthand, by J. E. Rockwell, is one, a volume of curious information on the subject, containing for one thing a bibliography a hundred pages in length; the second gives statistics regarding illiteracy, and contains an appendix on national aid to education. — Mr. John Tetlow, master of the Girl’s Latin School in Boston, has prepared a progressive series of inductive lessons in Latin, based on material drawn from classical sources, chiefly from Cæsar’s Commentaries. (Ginn, Heath & Co.) The system seems better adapted to maturer minds than to those that take up elementary work, but in the hands of a good teacher such a book ought to offer opportunity for close and valuable work. — Dr. A. P. Peabody has translated Cicero de Seneetute, and furnished it with an introduction and notes. (Little, Brown & Co.) — A First Book in Geology, designed for beginners, by N. S. Shaler. (Ginn, Heath & Co.) The author’s ingenuity of imagination serves an excellent purpose in vivifying the facts of geology to the young student.—A Method of English Composition, by T. Whiting Bancroft. (Ginn, Heath & Co.) The book is intended as an accompaniment to formal works on rhetoric. It will be valued most, we think, for its practical portion, in which themes are suggested and examples of analytic treatment given. —The Mother’s and Kindergartner’s Friend, by Harvey Carpenter. (Cuppies, Upham & Co.) It is doubtful if the ordinary mother or kindergartner could fathom this work. — On History and the Study of History, by W. p. Atkinson, consists of three lectures given to his classes by the Professor of English and History in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It has some very sensible notions well put, but a true student of history would be the last to decry the study of the classics, although he may object to certain methods in that study. — The Meisterschaft system has been applied to the Spanish language by Dr. Richard S. Rosenthal, and is presented in fifteen parts. (Estes & Lauriat.)

Religion and Philosophy. The Apostles’ Creed, tested by Experience, by Charles R. Baker (Whittaker): the work of a man who has caught at. the larger interpretation of the standard, and is more eager to find an inclusive meaning in it than to make it a mere touchstone of ecclesiastical standing. — Travels in Faith from Tradition to Reason, by Robert C. Adams. (Putnams.) The opening chapter is a curious piece of autobiography, by which the reader is enabled to account for the author’s reasoning in the rest of the book. — The Great Argument, or Jesus Christ in the Old Testament, by William H. Thompson. Dr. Thompson labors to establish the Messianic prophecies and their fulfillment. The value of the book lies largely in its incidental illustration of the physical conditions of Hebraic life. — Agnosticism of Hume and Huxley, with a notice of the Scottish School (Scribners), is the sixth number in Dr. McCosh’s Philosophic series. — Buddhism in China, by the Rev. S. Beal, is a volume in the series of NonChristian Religious Systems, published by the S. P. C. K. (Young, New York.) Mr. Beal is an erudite scholar, and his book is necessarily rather a digest of Buddhist writings than the result of direct personal familiarity with the system. —The Consolations of Science, or Contributions from Science to the Hope of Immortality, and Kindred Themes, by Jacob Straub. (The Colegrove Company, Chicago.) Mr. Straub writes temperately, but with firm conviction that science points to an endless life for the person, and of the existence of a future world commensurate with the needs of humanity. — “ Catholic,” an Essential and Exclusive Attribute of the True Church, by Right Reverend Monsignor Capel. (Sadlier, New York.) Mr. Capel rests his argument upon a basis which would make the Catholic Church dependent wholly upon human instrumentality. The Catholic Church, apparently, is such by the count of noses and by tactual transmission.