Books of the Month

Nature and Travel. Three Cruises of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey Steamer Blake in the Gulf of Mexico, in the Caribbean Sea, and along the Atlantic coast of the United States, from 1877 to 1880. By Alexander Agassiz; in two volumes. (Houghton.) In these two handsome volumes Dr. Agassiz has gathered the results of a series of observations of deep-sea and other soundings; he has traced the formation of the coast line, examined the fauna of the deep sea, studied the currents and temperature, and investigated the Florida reefs. His own work is supplemented and enlarged by the contributions of his associates, but the plan of the entire work is the author’s own, and impresses the reader by the unity and directness which prevails in spite of the distractions which the process of the work rendered probable. That is to say, Dr. Agassiz has not wearied the reader by compelling him to cross and recross his tracks in following separate narratives of the several cruises, but has led him by a logical course from an account of the equipment of the Blake through an historical sketch of deep-sea work to the structure of the forms examined, an examination of all the elements involved, and, finally, to monographs on characteristic types. The book is primarily for scientific students, but there are many parts which will reward the general reader with remarkable glimpses of nature, and give him new conceptions of thalassography, as the author cleverly denotes the geography of the sea. — Historic Waterways; six hundred miles of canoeing down the Rock, Fox, and Wisconsin rivers, by Reuben Gold Thwaites. (McClurg.) An agreeable narrative by a writer whose taste for history and knowledge of local events enables him to make of his book something more than a record of personal adventure. The volume is, besides, a plea for rational vacation jaunting. — The Pocket Guide for Europe; handbook for travelers on the Continent and the British Isles, and through Egypt, Palestine, and Northern Africa, by Thomas W. Knox. (Putnams.) The mechanical neatness and compactness of this handbook corresponds with the condensation and straightforwardness of the contents. Colonel Knox is an experienced tourist, and his book makes an excellent analysis of a long journey. — Indian Sketches taken during a United States expedition to make treaties with the Pawnee and other tribes of Indians in 1833. By John Treat Irving. (Putnams.) Interesting, both intrinsically and as the report of life among the Indians more than a half century ago. We do not see that either Indians or whites have changed greatly. We wonder that the author, in speaking of his companions, feels it necessary to veil their names, at this remote date, under initials. —Tenting at Stony Beach. By Maria Louise Pool. (Houghton.) A racy book of the summer experience of two unmarried women camping out. It just lacks a certain artistic touch to make it a piece of literature, but it has a vigor of handling which compensates in some degree. — Tropical Africa, by Henry Drummond. (Scribner & Welford.) A refreshingly small book of personal observation, by a man of very quick perception and agreeable literary manners. Mr. Drummond is a naturalist; he is also a man who loves his fellow-men, and it was impossible for one of so high a spirit to come in contact with great problems of civilization and not speak; his speech is thoughtful and to the point. The reader need not be a naturalist to enjoy the book, but he will enjoy it all the more if he has had a training in science. — In NestingTime, by Olive Thorne Miller. (Houghton.) Fifteen delightful papers make up this volume ; some of them are already known to our readers. They are the results of personal observation and also, what is quite as important, of personal affection. One needs not only to see birds, but to care for them with more than curious interest, to write as Mrs. Miller does.

History and Biography. Missouri, by Lucien Carr, is a new volume in the American Commonwealth series. Mr. Carr has a clear conception of the individuality of the State, and his book, while not professedly a defense, is in effect a strong statement of the position occupied by a great border State under the strain of the slavery contest. Mr. Carr writes a clear, forcible English, and when he is dealing with matters of description, as in the early territorial life, he is very happy in manner. The book is a real contribution not only to our knowledge of Missouri, but also to our understanding of what may be called the borderstate mind. — Solomon Maimon ; an autobiography, translated from the German by J. Clark Murray. (Cupples & Hurd.) The record of a Polish Jew, a Kantian philosopher, who is referred to in Daniel Deronda. He was born about 1754, and his book is an interesting view of lofty modern Judaism from the interior. — Discovery of the Origin of the Name of America. By Thomas de St. Bris. (Box No. 1852, New York.) Mr. de St. Bris finds a number of names upon the South American continent bearing a close resemblance to the name America, and without very close attention to dates, especially of cartographical dates, he reaches the conclusion that the Spaniards at once named all that part of the world Amaraca or America. He does not seem to have read Mr. Jules Marcou’s ingenious and more scholarly plea for Meric in Central America. — William the Conqueror, by Edward A. Freeman. (Macmillan.) The first of the series of Twelve English Statesmen. Mr. Freeman has an opportunity here to enforce his cardinal doctrine of what constitutes Englishry, and he uses it vigorously. While the sketch is on broad lines, it also contains those minute discussions which seem unavoidable with Mr. Freeman. — The Life of Dr. Anandabai Joshee, by Mrs. Caroline Healey Dall. (Roberts.) Many have heard of the high-caste Hindu woman who came to this country and studied medicine, but died almost immediately after her return to India, where she was to be physician in charge of the female wards in an English hospital. Her character was one of singular sweetness, and though it is impossible to judge of a race by an individual member, it is possible to gather new impressions of Hinduism by the study of this noble woman.

Fiction. John Ward, Preacher, by Margaret Deland. (Houghton.) A vigorous presentation of a dilemma which seems far away to many minds, yet is by no means an impossibility. A young preacher, who holds, with earnestness, the severest tenets of Calvinism, marries a girl who is practically an agnostic. After the marriage the husband discovers the irreconcilable difference between his belief on the subject of future punishment and his wife’s inertia. He endeavors to bring about her conversion, and finally wrecks his life in the vain attempt. Stated baldly, this does not promise a very entertaining story, but Mrs. Deland has certainly made her hero very real, very consistent, and has introduced some pretty idyllic passages as a foil. The moral seems to be that people with consciences like John Ward and the pretty Lois Howe, when they throw away their common sense, are sure to be miserable; but the reader finds himself swinging between logical, whimsical consistency and a limp sort of hedonism. However, we do not suppose Mrs. Deland set herself the task of proposing a philosophy of life or even an eirenicon in the matter of eschatology. Some of the passages, such as the scene where the rector visits Mr. Denner in his sick-room, are very clever. — A Man’s Will, by Edgar Fawcett (Funk & Wagnalls), is a temperance story, full of most disagreeable truths, the one forcible moral, that the only deliverance lies through the exercise of the will, being scarcely more than a slight incident at the end of the story ; the reader has no means of knowing how efficient it proved in the case of the hero. — A False Start, by Hawley Smart. (Appleton.) An English novel; some of the scenes laid in South Africa. The effect of life-likeness is obtained chiefly through slouch and slang. —Mrs. Lord’s Moonstone, by Charles Stokes Wayne. (Wynne & Wayne, Philadelphia.) A collection of five stories, in which mystery is made to play a somewhat flaring part. — The Veiled Beyond, by Sigmund B. Alexander. (Cassell.) Esoteric Buddhism must be held accountable for some of the most foolish fiction with which we have been tried of late. The adepts are anything but adepts in novel - writing.— A Woman’s Face ; or a Lakeland Mystery, by Florence Warden. (Appleton.) A thoroughly disagreeable, unwholesome story, with not even power of writing to atone for its unpleasantness. — Len Gansett, by Opie P. Read. (Ticknor.) A rude story of life in the Southwest. The writer keeps pretty near the ground. — The King of Folly Island and other People, by Sarah Orne Jewett (Houghton), contains eight stories, of which three are already known to our readers; but the charm of Miss Jewett’s stories is not exhausted by a single reading. — Two Men, by Elizabeth Stoddard. (Cassell.) A reissue of a novel which appeared inopportunely, but has always remained strongly in the minds of those who read it, thirty years ago, was it ? It has a suffocating power. — Mr. Tangier’s Vacations, by Edward E. Hale. (Roberts.) Mr. Tangier is a city lawyer, who stops his brain in the city just in time to prevent it from running away with his life, and flees to parts unknown for total rest. The rest is quickly resolved into a lively interest in the country community about him, and thus the story goes on with a hop, skip, and a jump, taking in all sorts of bright situations, and giving an opportunity for a great variety of entertaining social schemes. Mr. Hale’s ingenuity never deserts him, and his rattle is a most diverting compound of sense and nonsense. Before one knows it one has pulled the stringand gasped under a shower-bath of refreshing, stimulating ideas. — The Steel Hammer, by Louis Ulbach, translated by E. W. Latimer. (Appleton.) Of the Gaborian school, apparently. — The Brown Stone Boy, by W. H. Bishop. (Cassell.) A collection of eight of Mr. Bishop’s magazine stories. His invention is always fresh, and the reader is sure to get a story, which ought to go without saying in books of this class, but does not. — Recent numbers of Ticknor’s Paper Series are the Led Horse Claim, by Mary Hallock Foote; Next Door, by Clara Louise Burnham; and Looking Backward, by Edward Bellamy. — A Nymph of the West, by Howard Seely. (Appleton.) By deepening the shadows and intensifying the high lights, this author has tried to draw a striking figure of a beautiful, ignorant frontier girl; but though the reader has not been in Colorado, he may be allowed to doubt the truth to nature in the picture. — The Residuary Legatee, or The Posthumous Jest of the Late John Austin. By F. J. Stimson. (Scribners.) — The Spell of Ashtaroth. By Duffield Osborne. (Scribners.) A fervid historical romance; material drawn from the Book of Judges and the author’s imagination; language of direct address taken from melodrama. — At Home and in War, 1853-1881. Reminiscences and anecdotes, by Alexander Verestchagin, translated by Isabel F. Hapgood. (Crowell.) It is not strictly correct to place this book under the head of Fiction, but its form is so free, and there is such a wealth of

petty detail, that it is hard to believe that the lively autobiographer has not been aiming at the effect of a novel. It may be taken as a further commentary upon the particulars of Russian life in military service. — The Lasses of Leverhouse, by Jessie Fothergill. (Holt.) It is odd how slight the disguise of sex is in this novel. It is supposed to be told in autobiographic form by a man, but the voice and manner are strictly feminine. — The Case of Mohammed Benani. (Appleton.) “ The serious object of the book is, without attacking individuals, to attract public attention to the evil adjustment of a mechanism which grinds, not grain, but human creatures between the upper and nether stone of Jewish and Moorish oppression — awful mills to which the placid breeze of consular support imparts continuous motion.” The romantic object appears to be to employ mesmeric phenomena. Perhaps it is in the nature of things impossible, but we wish these writers of psychical romances were a little more skeptical. This book has an amateurish air. — Lotus, a psychological romance, by the author of A New Marguerite. (George Redway, London.) Such stuff as nightmares are made of. — A Debutante in New York Society; her illusions and what became of them, by Rachel Buchanan. (Appleton.) Rather hard on the mother of the period. — His Broken Sword, by Winnie Louise Taylor. (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.) A novel of Western life, with special reference to the problems involved in the social degradation which follows upon imprisonment. The force of the book is rather scattered, and the writer has more energy of mind than clearly ordered power. One, in fact, lays the book down with more interest in the writer than in the characters she has drawn. — One Maid’s Mischief, by G. Manville Fenn. (Appleton.) We decline to read a novel, however good, in such small print as this book contains. — Master of His Fate, by Amelia E. Barr, (Dodd, Mead & Co.) Another of Mrs. Barr’s vigorous sketches of life among the willful. — The Path to Fame. By Edward Ruben. (O. Lanckner, New York.) A dull book in which a would-be artist’s career is sketched, with the addition of some social studies. The book reads like the work of one who did not invent his characters and scenes, but lacked the power to give reality in fiction to a copy of reality in life. — Brinka: an American Countess, by Mary Clare Spenser. (Spenser Publishing Co., New York.) A racket of a book. — Agatha Page: a parable, by Isaac Henderson. (Ticknor.) A novel of Italian life, with an andante movement. — Isidra, by Willis Steell. (Ticknor.) The pastime of one who went to Mexico with other views than novel-writing.