Books of the Month

Fiction. Stockton’s Stories is the summary title of two volumes into which F. R. Stockton’s short stories have been gathered. (Scribners. ) We make no complaint of the title, with its jaunty bid for fame. The stories are nobody’s else, and the Stocktonese is a dialect which we warn writers is by no means so simple and easy as it looks. Mr. Stockton has achieved the feat which the philosopher with his lever hopelessly gave up. He has got outside of the world, and trundles it along with an ingenuousness winch is unblushing. Did ever people behave so naturally in any world as Mr. Stockton’s do in that which he has invented? Place them in the realistic world of Mr. Howells or the ideal world of Mr. Hardy, and they would appear to have lost their wits ; but in Mr. Stockton’s world the Mrs. Leckses and Mrs. Aleshines, the ladies and the tigers, are perfectly self-possessed, perfectly at home. — One can now have his Stevenson hot: there is no waiting to find out if he be a coming man; he has come, and the fife and drum may be sent to the rear to herald some one else. Here is Prince Otto, a romance (Roberts), and Kidnapped (Scribners). Prince Otto is a light, half-burlesque, half-fantastic play, with mixed romantic and realistic material; Kidnapped is a genuine tale of adventure, full of vitality and with just a touch of literary handling. It is this conscious artist in Stevenson which separates him from a story-teller like De Foe. — A Victorious Defeat, by Wolcott Balestier (Harpers), is a story which uses the Moravian life as substance out of which to lift a romance. The author has been conscientious, and he has by no means made a failure, but he strikes us as having fallen somewhat into the snare of the realists, and to have lamed the wings of his romance thereby.— Oblivion, by M. G. McClelland (Holt), is a story which we are glad again to commend to our readers as being worth their reading, though what crime the book has committed to be brought out anew in an ill-smelling oil-cloth suit we do not know. — This objectionable covering has been inflicted also on Hannibal of New York, by Thomas Wharton, — which also appears, however, in the neat binding of the Leisure Hour Series (Holt), — a novel which is clever and rattling, and dashes off New York and Newport and Philadelphia and English noblemen and American young women, and leaves the reader a little breathless, perhaps, but on the whole prepared to take a commercial view of life. — King Arthur, by the author of John Halifax, Gentleman,—a lady whom we like for her obstinacy in sticking to that one book which made her reputation (Harpers),— is declared on the title-page to be not a love story; but we are happy to say that it ends with a marriage, and although the love of a young man for a young woman is not the mainspring of the book, there is plenty of love shown by the old to the young and the young to the old in this half-family narrative. There is, to be sure, a good deal of sentiment to the page, but it is not unworthy sentiment, if it is a little effusive. — Misfits and Remnants, by L. D. Ventura and S. Sheirtch (Ticknor), is the title of a collection of slight sketches, stories, and odds and ends of material for stories. The writing is simple and the writers have not strained themselves for subjects, but one can hardly think that the book will ever justify itself in any strong interest or affection on the part of readers. The music is fairly good, but it is played with one finger. — Cut, a Story of West Point, by G. I. Cervus (Lippincott), has all the appearance of a story, but the author lacks the skill to select from his persons and incidents those which combine to make a picture of scenes, a development of character. The book is pretty hard reading, and yet the writer has written hard. — Mr. Desmond, A. S. A., by John Coulter (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago), is an honest story of the wronging of a girl by a selfish man. It is not a specially strong story, but it is effective in parts, it is natural, and it allows the main character in the book to shrivel in to insignificance according to his nature. It has, besides, a certain freshness in its transcript of army life and its apparently truthful record of the sentiment to be found in army posts. — No Saint, a Study, by Adeline Sergeant. (Holt.) This is a study of a man who murdered his brother in a fit of passion, and by circumstances was brought, after his release from prison, to live in the village where he had committed the crime. The situations in the story are somewhat strained, but the author set herself a difficult task, at which she has wrought with some success. — Whom God hath Joined, by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin (Holt), one of the Leisure Hour Series. We may return to this story. — A Romantic Young Lady, by Robert Grant. (Ticknor.) Even a romantic young lady requires the gift of imagination in her creator, but a more business-like imagination than Mr. Grant’s it would be difficult to conceive. The dreariness of this succession of scenes in what purports to be a picture of life is hard to match. Mr. Grant has ability of a certain sort.— Miss Jewett has collected her recent short stories into a pretty little volume, A White Heron, and Other Stories. (Houghton.) Our readers will find some of their favorites, together with two new stories which have not before been printed. — A Politician’s Daughter, by Myra Sawyer Hamlin (Appleton), is written by a person who appears to have seen politicians in processions, perhaps, and their daughters in galleries, but scarcely to have had a nearer and more intimate acquaintance. — Pepita Ximenez, from the Spanish of Juan Valera, with an introduction by the author. (Appleton.) The introduction, written especially for this edition, is very interesting as disclosing the author’s relation to his work, and the book itself will not disappoint the reader if he be thoughtful and not too wedded to current forms of fiction. — Double Cunning, the tale of a transparent mystery, by George Manville Fenn (Appleton), is a novel of conventional society, pitched in a low key, and devoid of wit or wisdom. — St. John’s Eve, and Other Stories, by Nikolaï Vasilievitch Gogol, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood (Crowell), is another of the Russian stories which are like nuts with hard shells to the ordinary reader. However, the bizarre style has a fascination for some; one can call all the proper names Moses, and by aid of the foot-notes can usually tell what the queer-named dishes and titles mean.—Miss Melinda’s Opportunity, by Helen Campbell. (Roberts.) Mrs. Campbell’s fertility is that of a very observing and eager-minded woman, and the characters whom she creates are individual and forcible. Her humor also is ready, and in all her writing she seems to have before her the thought of how much more might be made out of life by the men and women whose circumstances seem commonplace. — Love and Luck, the Story of a Summer’s Loitering on the Great South Bay, by R. B. Roosevelt. (Harpers.) Mr. Roosevelt is first a sportsman, and after that a novelist; but we are not disposed to quarrel with a story-teller who has so laudable a purpose in his story as to transform a Saratoga blasée belle into an open-air, yachting, and fishing girl. — A Secret of the Sea, etc., by Brander Matthews (Scribners),—a collection of stories which, like all of this author’s work, have reason in their being. His brief story of Perturbed Spirits is a capital example of how a little fancy may go a great way and produce a positive impression. — Aliette, by Octave Feuillet, translated by J. Henry Hager. (Appleton.) The name of the heroine in La Morte has been used for the English version.—Constance of Acadia (Roberts) is a praiseworthy attempt by an anonymous writer to work in the historical material furnished by the annals of New England. Constance is La Tour’s wife, and the conditions of the story give the opportunity for a contrast of the French and English, the Puritan and Jesuit, the Huguenot and the Catholic. The book is sober in its use of all this material, and strikes us as rather careful and discreet than vividly imaginative. — Recent numbers of Harper’s Handy Series are The Fall of Asgard, by Julian Corbett; Our Radicals, by Fred. Burnaby; A Wicked Girl, by Mary Cecil Hay; The Long Lane, by Ethel Coxon; Francis, a Socialistic Romance, by M. Dal Vero. — Recent numbers of Harper’s Franklin Square Library are Pomegranate Seed, by the author of The Two Miss Flemings; Like Lucifer, by Dengil Vane; Keep my Secret, by G. M. Robins; The Chilcotes, by Leslie Keith; Two Pinches of Snuff, by William Westall; St. Briavels, by Mary Deane; Ottilie, an Eighteenth Century Idyl ; and the Prince of the Hundred Soups, by Vernon Lee.

History and Biography. The seventh volume of the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen, runs from Charles Brown to Richard Burthogge. There is a long, minute, and very even-handed article on Burns by the editor, who also writes well, in brief, on Buckle. Mrs. Browning is treated by Mrs. Ritchie, and the world at last knows on what day the poet was born. The Bucklands, Frank and William, are treated perhaps too summarily, considering the interesting characters which they present, and one wishes that so important a figure in architectural history as Bruges might have had greater prominence, but we are struck anew with the excellent judgment of the editor as to the general proportion of articles.—Memoirs and Letters of Dolly Madison, Wife of James Madison, edited by her grand-niece. (Houghton.) The American literature of this order is so scanty that we welcome this agreeable little book with a cordiality perhaps beyond its actual deserts. Madison, with all his greatness, was personally so colorless a man that the bright, winning ways of his wife seem almost to convince us that she was a woman of wit. Her amiability and her domestic tastes conspire to make her comments on men and affairs not important so far as the interior of life is concerned, but very useful as humanizing and making real the somewhat impoverished society of Washington in the early days. We hope the book will succeed, not only because it deserves to succeed, but that it may call out similar books. — Woodstock, an Historical Sketch, by Clarence Winthrop Bowen. (Putnams.) Mr. Bowen has in preparation a formal history of the town, and this sketch is an address given before the town at its bi-centennial celebration. He has compressed a good deal into it; we trust his history will preserve the juice of New England country life also. — Mary and Martha, the mother and the wife of George Washington, by Benson J. Lossing (Harpers), is, in effect, a sketch of the domestic life of Washington. Mr. Lossing has used the material which he has printed at different times in different forms, has added a few trivial letters and anecdotes, and presented the whole in a series of somewhat desultory chapters. The book has no great critical value, but it is a convenient repertory of anecdotes. — The Dearborns, a discourse commemorative of the eightieth anniversary of the occupation of Fort Dearborn and the first settlement at Chicago, read before the Chicago Historical Society, by Daniel Goodwin, Jr. (Fergus Printing Company, Chicago.) With this is bound Provincial Pictures by Brush and Pen, by the same author, an address delivered before the Bostonian Society. The connection of the two cities by means of the name of Dearborn is easily established. — In Memory of Edwin Channing Larned (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago) is a volume of tributes to a man whom Chicago could ill spare. Half of the volume is occupied by one of Mr. Larned’s arguments in a slave case. — The Rear-Guard of the Revolution, by Edmund Kirke. (Appleton.) “ Mr. Kirke ” is to be thanked for showing what brilliant material is unused for historical and romantic purposes in our post-revolutionary days. The after-clap of war in the Tennessee mountains was not only significant; it was the beginning of the history of a great section of our country. In the growth of nationality, we look to men and women bred in Kentucky and Tennessee for literary work which shall be enduring. No people with such a beginning can help some day honestly building upon it in literature. — The Last Days of the Consulate, from the French of M. Fauriel, edited, with an introduction, by M. L. Lalaune. (Armstrong.) Why, by the way, not put M. Fauriel’s whole name on the title-page ? One might as well say, The Life of George Washington, from the pen of Mr. Irving. Fauriel’s narrative has an air of candor about it, and is one unlikely to satisfy extremists. It is in effect a defense of Moreau. — California, from the conquest in 1846 to the second vigilance committee in San Francisco, a study of American character, by Josiah Royce. (Houghton.) This book, which is one of the American Commonwealths Series, justifies its title ; for it is not, strictly speaking, a history, but a study based upon history, and as such takes very high rank. It is refreshing to find an American writing of the development of a State with so much freedom and at the same time with such an absence of petty criticism. Dr. Royce writes in a large spirit, but with an acumen which never allows him to lapse into mere vague generalities. He has limited himself in the period which he studies, but after all that period was the central and crucial one for California. It is as if one were to write the biography of a man, and seize upon the day in his life when he crossed the Rubicon. Dr. Royce gives the day before that yesterday sufficiently to account for the one day which he wishes to characterize; and while he seems to have allowed himself to stray a little from his main subject in order to corner General Frémont, this hunt serves to disclose many features in the Californian character. We greatly mistake if this book does not take its place as one to be read by more than one generation of readers. — In the series The Story of the Nations, three new volumes have appeared; The Story of Germany, by S. Baring-Gould, with the collaboration of Arthur Gilman; the Story of Norway, by H. H. Boyesen; and the Story of Hungary, by Arminius Vámbéry, with the collaboration of Louis Heilprin. (Putnams.) Mr. Boyesen has had somewhat the easiest task, and we think he has performed it the most satisfactorily. He has written a popular history of a compact people, and has done his work seriously and apparently faithfully. To give the story of Germany was a much more difficult matter, but the central idea of showing the development of the imperial principle was a good one, and has been kept in mind with some steadiness. It strikes us, however, that in his eagerness to be bright and lively Mr. Baring-Gould has crowded in a good deal of detail to the exclusion of strong leading lines. We wish, for example, that he had made more clear the real meaning of Protestantism. It seems a pity that Mr. Vámbéry should not have given a fuller and clearer statement of the recent constitutional questions. The illustrations in the first two books, especially in Germany, are capital; those in Hungary are inferior.