Books of the Month

History. New York, The Planting and the Growth of the Empire State, by Ellis H. Roberts. (Houghton.) The latest issue in the American Commonwealths Series, and in two volumes. Mr. Roberts has made more of a detailed history than have the authors of most of the other volumes of this series, and his survey is a striking one, as it marshals the successive forces in the development of the great State. The work is written with moderation, and in the later portion with an intimate personal knowledge which no mere acquaintance with books could have afforded. The repressed glow flames out at last into a hearty, enthusiastic peroration which will kindle the reader, especially if he be a New Yorker. — The Pharaohs of the Bondage and the Exodus, by Charles S. Robinson. (The Century Co.) Dr. Robinson prints lectures which he delivered in the course of his parish duties. He undertook to systematize the recent discoveries in Egypt, and he also desired to point morals. The result is a hook which constantly annoys one by assuming that the preacher has the monopoly of moral reflection. Are not the people who are capable of following the facts capable also of seeing their moral force and drift ? — A History of Modern Europe, by C. A. Fyffe. (Holt.) This volume, the second in the series, extends from 1814 to 1848. One advantage of Mr. Fyffe’s method is that it keeps before tlie reader the conception of a Europe which acts and is acted upon by various forces, notwithstanding the political divisions. The historical view of states is well supplemented by an historical survey of a continental mass, and the interdependence of European states is probably more sharply marked in the period contained in this volume than it has been since. The Napoleonic movement produced an artificial union which left its impress on nations for another generation. Mr. Fyffe’s hold groupings are very effective. — A Day in Ancient Rome, being a revision of Lohr’s Aus dem alten Roin, with numerous [sic] illustrations, by Edgar S. Shumway. (Heath.) Mr. Shumway has built upon the German original by using later information derived from the excavations still going on at Rome. The book is a lively sketch, but fully to enjoy it one needs to be something more than a moderate student of ancient literature and history. Possibly it will stimulate to such knowledge. — The Provinces of the Roman Empire from Cæsar to Diocletian, by Theodor Mommsen, translated by W. P. Dickson (Scribner’s), is in effect a sequel to the author’s as yet incomplete history of Rome. It is in two volumes, and provided with eight maps by Kiepert. The subject permits an independent treatment, and indeed occupies a more open field than would the volumes yet remaining to complete Mommsen’s great work. The survey is a singularly important one, since it implies the beginning of modern national histories, and gives the reader the advantage of a preface, so to speak, to the several distinct treatises which he may follow in pursuing any special line of historical study. We notice that the translator is a little reluctant to accept Mommsen’s reading of Jewish history. It is interesting to observe how sensitive Christian scholars, and especially Englishmen, are to any purely secular view of Jewish development.—A Short History of Parliament, by B. C. Skottowe. (Harpers.) The well-read student in English history will find this hook an agreeable and lively illustration of political changes. Mr. Skottowe is by no means awed by Parliament. He carries himself with a somewhat humorous air, which does not become buffoonery, and in general writes like a spectator, ready to be amused. He may be congratulated on having made a dry subject lively without any sacrifice of real dignity.—The Story of the Normans, told chiefly in relation to their conquest of England, by Sarah Orne Jewett(Putnams.) This book belongs to a series designed in a general way for young people, but there is little in Miss Jewett’s treatment which especially calls up such an audience. We like best those portions, both at the beginning and end, and where she touches upon the artistic contribution of the Norman life, which enable her to lay aside for a while the strictly historical manner. Miss Jewett seems hardly to feel the more rugged force of the Norman character, or rather she is perhaps a little out of sympathy with Norman savagery, and more desirous of getting to the finer development. Her quiet style makes the book a somewhat amiable presentation of the subject, and she writes sometimes as if the work were an effort. A little sharper historical analysis might have given strength to her work, but we must nevertheless congratulate the author on the success which she has attained in a difficult task. — Another volume in the same series is the Story of Ancient Egypt, by George Rawlinson, with the collaboration of Arthur Gilman. Mr. Rawlinson brings to his task a scholar’s knowledge, and thus relieves the hook of much speculation, giving rather the facts which have been established than those which are required to make a symmetrical story. His attempt at the story form is fortunately slight. Perhaps he regards the poetry which is introduced as equivalent. — The Early Tudors, Henry VII., Henry VIII., by C. E. Moberly. (Scribners.) A new volume of Epochs of Modern History. Mr. Moberly appears to have struck a very happy mean in this book between the too general and popular and the too scientific. He is a fresh and agreeable writer, and the subjects with which he deals are full of interest to American as well as English readers. He does not treat England as an isolated section of Europe, but gives useful hints of the whole movement of thought in state at the important period covered by his book.

Poetry and the Drama. Translations from Horace, and a few original poems, by Sir Stephen E. DeVere. (George Bell and Sons, London.) A second and enlarged edition of an earlier publication, the author having increased the number of his translations from ten to thirty-one. It is a pity that the Latin which is given at the end of the volume had not been more conveniently placed opposite the corresponding translations. Sir Stephen’s versions are rather paraphrases than translations; they have a certain dignity, but it is the dignity of leisurely form, rather than the wonderful dignity of light strength which one finds in Horace, and when it comes to the swift touch which makes Horace’s lines inimitable, we have instead a smooth agreeableness. —Sonnets in Shadow, by Arlo Bates. (Roberts.) Mr. Bates has added another to the lengthening list of In Memoriams. His verse has the force but not the incoherence of weeping passion, and there are many striking lines, as that one which closes the twenty-ninth sonnet, —

“ Death takes a rush-light, but he gives a star ! ” Yet is not the immortality of Tennyson’s dirge to be found in the expanse of light into which the mourner finally rises, and in Tennyson’s case was not the element of time which brings the healing hour the salvation of his elegy ? — The Lady of Dardale and Other Poems, by Horace Eaton Walker (Browne & Rowe), is a volume containing six hundred pages of closely printed meaningless verse. It is seldom that we come across a more pathetic instance of self-delusion and misdirected assiduity. — Daffodils, by A. D. T. W. (Houghton.) Mrs. Whitney’s allusiveness of style serves a better purpose in verse than in prose. Her ear is not over-critical, and her verse thus sometimes is not very musical, hut it is charged with a spiritual energy, and conveys her feeling upon deep subjects with a suggestiveness which will be appreciated by many. — Madrigals and Catches, by Frank Dempster Sherman. (White, Stokes & Allen.) Mr. Sherman differs from most young poets in not having passed through the dark tunnel in which so many get lost, and from which issue many doleful sounds. At least, there is no evidence in this book of a discovery of the general emptiness of life. On the contrary, there is a careless, bright humming of verse which disarms the critic. The verse is pretty light; it is sometimes almost an echo of an echo, and one is half inclined to be vexed that the author doing so well does not do better, — does not carry his fancy into thought, occasionally, and give the touch of passion which thrills ; but at any rate there is no mocking and there is no foolish cynicism. —In Divers Tones, by Charles G. D. Roberts. (Lothrop.) There is an eagerness about many of these poems which is not far from a real poetic fire, and in general a fullness of life which is in contrast with the timidity and hesitation of much contemporaneous poetry. At the same time we cannot think that Mr. Roberts has yet separated the essential from the accidental in his poetic nature. —At last we are to have a uniform and beautiful edition of Browning’s poems, the first four volumes of which have been issued by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Six volumes will include all the works of the writer up to date. These are very elegant books in typography and all externals, being similar in style to the Riverside Edition of Shakespeare. The work is printed from entirely new electrotype plates, and the poems, with the author’s latest revision, are grouped in accordance with his own plan. The first volume contains a fine steel portrait of Browning, engraved by Wilcox from a recent photograph.

Fiction. The Confessions of Claud, by Edgar Fawcett. (Ticknor.) Mr. Fawcett impresses us as having made a somewhat violent effort in this book, and to have depressed himself, autobiographically, with unnecessary gloom. Somehow we do not seem to he going down into the unrelieved depths of human life, but into the cavernous abyss, several feet deep, of a city theatre. Even the satirical pictures of high life are somewhat solemn, and we come upon such three-storied names as Mrs. Trinitysteeple with a feeling that there is suicide from the top of them. — Drops of Blood is the somewhat curdling title of a volume of short stories by Lily Curry. (J. S. Ogilvie & Co., New York.) They all have astounding situations, and movements as rapid as a lightning express ; there is blood of some kind on each one, and by a grim sort of humor the last page of the book closes with an advertisement of Sapolio. One needs lots of it to clean off with, and yet, and yet, there is, even if misdirected, a trace of power now and then, which makes one regret that the author has not a little less sanguinary mood. —The Feud of Oakfield Creek, a novel of California life, by Josiah Royce, (Houghton) has the somewhat uncommon quality of ending well; that is to say, the climax of the interior story coincides with a climax of exterior events. There is also at least one good character in the study of a California millionaire, and there is a heartiness and general breeziness about the hook which reconciles one a little to the somewhat wasteful character of the lauguage. The author seems to have one of those expansive minds which are curious of everything that momentarily interests them, so that their pleasure is rather to turn a subject round than to carry it forward. The result is repetition, a lack of real proportion, and an inordinate amount of speculation in place of action. — The Old House at Sandwich, by Joseph Hatton. (Appleton.) An English story of American life, mainly. A traveler in America, Mr. Hatton makes use of his travels to work out more effectively a conventional plot. He is lively, conversational, and carries his story along in a negligée manner. It is conventionalism which has taken off the dress coat and put on the Oxford jacket. —Mrs. Hephaestus and other short stories, together with West Point, a comedy in three acts, by George A. Baker. (White, Stokes & Allen.) Mr. Baker seems to have read The Tinted Venus in preparation for his first story, but he somehow does not succeed in creating much of an illusioh with his Venus.—A Child of the Century, by John J. Wheelwright. (Scribners.) Mr. Wheelwright has written an entertainingbook, and perhaps we ought not to ask more. Entertaining books are not so common that one should make us querulous. All the same, we can’t help wishing that Mr. Wheelwright were more than an amateur instantaneous photographer. — The Strike in the B—Mill (Ticknor) is a story in which the too common incidents of a conflict between manufacturers and their hands are given with fairness. The moral of the book is the safe and desirable one that employers and employed have a pretty equal share of human nature, and one of the remedies for the present disorder is found in a methodical readjustment of manufactures and agriculture, by which the lands of New England should he reclaimed. The book is honestly written, and has the force of reason rather than of special literary art. — Juanita, a romance of real life in Cuba fifty years ago, by Mary Mann. (Lothrop.) Mrs. Mann has woven pictures of life uuder the slave system, drawn from personal observation, with scenes of imaginary action. There is almost a quaintness about the book, an old-fashioned air; but we cannot help thinking that if she had confined herself to actual record of what she saw, she would have made a more valuable book. — Roberts Brothers have added two volumes to their admirable series of translations from Balzac, — The Country Doctor, and Two Brothers.—The Startling Exploits of Dr. Quiès, translated from the French of Paul Célière by Mrs. Cashel Hoey and Mr. John Lillie (Harpers), is a capital book of the Jules Verne kind and very spiritedly illustrated. Dr. Quiès’s whimsical adventures are calculated to please boy-readers between sixteen and sixty years of age. — Beauchamp’s Career (Roberts Brothers) is, we believe, the final volume of the American edition of George Meredith’s novels. Beauchamp’s Career is regarded by many of Meredith’s admirers as his best work. The curious thing about Meredith’s admirers is that no two groups agree on the same masterpiece. — Mr. Crawford is so prolific a novelist as to make it difficult for a critic to do more than to record that author’s publications. Mr. Crawford’s latest story — and it is one in which some of his very best qualities are shown — is entitled Saracinesca, and deals with that Roman life which Mr. Crawford knows more intimately than any living writer of fiction; in English, we mean. (Macmillan & Co.)