Books of the Month

Books for the Young. Louisa May Alcott, the Children’s Friend, by Ednah Dean Cheney. (Prang.) A pleasing little sketch intended for young readers, with a few of Miss Alcott’s poems, and some illustrations of her homes by Lizbeth B. Comins. — Great Thoughts for Little Thinkers, by Lucia T. Ames. (Putnams.) The author, in some of her introductory words, says that she shall be very particular never once to call her reader by the objectionable term “ a dear little reader. Nevertheless, that is the whole spirit of the style of her book. She has undertaken to talk to children of the deep things of the universe, and she begins with the wholly misleading, unbiblical, and unphilosophical statement that to create is to make something out of nothing. The phrases of her book suppose a very young child. The matter is wholly unsuited to very young children. —Prince Vance, the Story of a Prince with a Court in his Box, by Eleanor Putnam and Arlo Bates. (Roberts.) A lively little fairy-tale, with an unusual amount of invention in it and some very clever strokes of wit. We miss, however, a quality which we must call, for lack of a better term, geniality. — The Long Exile and other Stories for Children, by Count Lyof N. Tolstoï; translated from the Russian by Nathan Haskell Dole. (Crowell.) The book is not likely to interest children, except here and there, but it will have a value for older readers who desire to test Tolstoï by this new experiment. — The Youngest Miss Lorton, and other Stories, by Nora Perry. (Ticknor.) A half score of lively stories, chiefly about lively girls. It is interesting to see that the author of Miss Toosie’s Mission has tried her hand at a full story, as in Pen. (Roberts.) There is something of the same liking for oddity, the slight affectation of manner, and the risky sentiment which made her previous stories half engaging and half repelling. — Otto of the Silver Hand, written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. (Scribners.) Mr. Pyle has struck a signal brave success in his masterly pictures, which are everything that pictures for a child’s book should be, — strong, storytelling, and absolutely free from feeble refinement.

Art and Holiday Books. Mr. Sheridan Ford, of New York, has issued, without any publisher’s imprint, a vigorous brochure under the title Art, a Commodity, in which, in half a dozen essays, abundantly illustrated by instances drawn from current movements in the pictorial world, he treats of the commercial side of modern art. Many of his strictures are just, and his comments are always interesting. It is a pleasure to get hold of a piece of writing like this, which " speaks right out in meeting.” — Massa’s in the Cold, Cold Ground, written and composed by Stephen Collins Foster. (Ticknor.) An illustrated book, like its predecessors in the same line, the music also being given. It is odd how the sentimental darkey managed to impress himself on us in the old slavery days. This lament for the good old massa, now, used to bring tears to our eyes through Mr. Foster’s sweet melody. — The J. B. Lippincott Co. send us twelve little books in monotint, all edited by Geo. C. Haité, F. L. S., —Fellow of the Lithographic Society? — and illustrated by various persons; the covers, some of them, in a frosty style, and all the little books suggesting the confectionery of art. — Béranger’s Poems in the Versions of the Best Translators, selected by William S. Walsh, with illustrations on steel. (Lippincott.) The versions are well chosen, and the volume is printed in generous type on good paper. We cannot greatly praise the illustrations, which are somewhat conventional in design, and executed in a bank-note style, but the Louis XI. picture is striking.— Goldsmith’s The Traveller, with etchings by M. M. Taylor (Lippincott), is a formal piece of work, not very happily conceived, we think, since the poem calls for a lighter touch in book-making. —Infelicia, by Adah Isaacs Menken. (Lippincott.) The pictures, the red rule round the page, and the binding all pronounce this a holiday book. The frontispiece, which is a slice of chaos, excellently symbolizes the poetry, which despairs of the incoherence of verse, and settles into the incoherence of prose. — Hermann and Dorothea, translated by E. A. Bowring, with etchings by Hermann Faber. (Lippincott.) It is a pity that so solid a page should have been used. The etchings are rather conventional, the figures being stolid and unpoetic.

Travel and Nature. The second volume of Around the World on a Bicycle, by Thomas Stevens (Scribners), takes up the route from Teheran to Yokohama. To the adventures of the ordinary traveler Mr. Stevens adds those which spring out of the unceasingmarvel of his bicycle. But this is so old a story to him by the time he has gone half round the world that he takes his experience in this regard more as a matter of course in his second volume. He is a shrewd observer and lively narrator; not especially charged with information beforehand respecting the country he is to pass through, and thus not so instructive nor so tedious as he might otherwise be. The illustrations are mere memoranda. — Ancient Rome in the Light of Recent Discoveries, by Rodolfo Lanciani (Houghton), cannot be dismissed in a paragraph, and we shall return to it with a full review; but we mention it now to call attention to a singularly attractive book, attractive both in matter and in manner. It is rare that the general public hears at first-hand of archæological discoveries, and still rarer that a discoverer has the art to present the results of his search in so fresh and animated a style. That Professor Lanciani should have written his book in English is much, but it is more that he should have written it in a style which is full of light and grace.—Mexico, Picturesque. Political, Progressive, by Mary Elizabeth Blake and Margaret F. Sullivan. (Lee & Shepard). A collection of agreeable letters and articles contributed serially to two journals. Both writers have a large charity for the country, and their religious sympathy does not prevent them from being critics, though it makes them cautious critics. — Only Glimpses, by M. L. McMurphy. (Racine, Wisconsin.) An unpretending volume of notes of travel along the highways of Europe. — In Castle and Cabin, or Talks in Ireland in 1887, by George Pellew. (Putnams.) Mr. Pellew made a tour through Ireland for the purpose of getting at the facts which lie behind the present political controversy. He was well introduced, he used his eyes and ears well, and he came out of the scrimmage with an even head and with a disposition to find the solution of the problem in a via media. His book is an interesting and useful contribution to the literature of the Irish question. — Jottings of Travel in China and Japan, by Simon Adler Stern. (Porter & Coates.) Passages from unpretentious letters home. They have the easy carelessness of familiar letters, but are not very rich in matter, nor have they the light charm of a trained writer. — Western China, a Journey to the Great Buddhist Centre of Mount Omei, by Rev. Virgil C. Hart. (Ticknor.) Mr. Hart traversed regions rarely visited or described by English-speaking travelers, and his record is interesting, for he keeps close to his text; and though he is not a very engaging writer, and always seems a foreigner, he writes of interesting scenes, and describes what he sees without too great waste of words. — Ireland Under Coercion, by William Henry Hurlbert. (Houghton.) The natural history of this book is interesting. Here is an American, trained in journalism, who makes a tour through Ireland with his notebook, talking with persons of every degree, and getting as closely as he can at the facts in those parts of the country which have had the strongest light of passion cast upon them. He prints his notes with a running commentary, and his book sets all the London press talking. Then he republishes his book in a second edition in his own country. Yet all the time he writes as one who is interested chiefly in the effect which Ireland and the Irish question have upon American politics. — American Weather, a Popular Exposition of the Phenomena of the Weather, including Chapters on Hot and Cold Waves, Blizzards, Hail-Storms, and Tornadoes, by Gen. A. W. Greely. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A most interesting summary of scientific results, put for the most part in intelligible language. There are good charts and a few cuts. But why did the publishers make a book of less than three hundred pages so needlessly clumsy with heavy paper and thick signatures ? — On Horseback, a Tour in Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee, with Notes of Travel in Mexico and California, by Charles Dudley Warner. (Houghton.) It makes no difference how Mr. Warner travels,— we are perfectly willing to go afoot with him ; nor where he goes, for we will go anywhere he chooses, though we might hesitate to follow him to one of his favorite gaols. (We said gaols, not goals.)

Fiction. The Gallery of a Random Collector, by Clinton Ross. (Putnams.) A dozen sketches and little romances, written with pains, and not devoid of a certain grace. They are better, certainly, than if they had been more ambitious, for the author does not strain at his task.—A Bachelor’s Wedding-Trip. (Pen Publishing Co., Philadelphia.) A book of travel veiled under the form of a wedding-trip. The writer means to be airy. —Our Uncle and Aunt, by Amarala Martin. (Putnams.) A plea for woman suffrage, couched in a rambling story; at least it looks like a story, with its fictitious characters, its marriages, its conversations, and the like. We greatly fear that neither side of the cause will be much affected by the book, as certainly no one is going to read it for fun. — Glorinda, by Anna Bowman Dodd. (Roberts.) A story of a rustic beauty with her two lovers, —the selfish civilized one, and the generous savage. The scenes are laid in Kentucky, but the story is an old one. — Would You Have Left Her ? by William F. Kip. (Putnams.) The story of two young men and one young woman. Mr. Kip writes with a certain seriousness of mood which gives his novel the air of reality, and he shows care in his discrimination of character. It is by no means certain that he may not write another and a better novel, for this is good enough to make one wish so. — Her Great Idea, and other Stories, by L. B. Walford. (Holt.) The lightness borders on the farcical in these stories, and it seems to us that this clever writer is making an effort to live up to her reputation. — Odds Against Her, by Margaret Russell MacFarlane. (Cassell.) There is a first-class villain of a woman in this story. — Brueton’s Bayou, by John Habberton, and Miss Defarge, by Mrs. Burnett, are bound in one volume. (Lippincott.) The former is a clever story, based on the revelation of Southwestern society to a New York gentleman ; the latter is more skillful, perhaps, as a short novel, and the two have nothing in common except the same outside cover.—A Hard - Won Victory, by Grace Denio Litchfield. (Putnams.) The victory was in the domain of character. Miss Litchfield writes with care and with a respect for her art.—Young Maids and Old, by Clara Louise Burnham. (Ticknor.) A lively, agreeable story, with an air of naturalness which compensates for the absence of much incident.

— Fagots for the Fireside, a collection of more than one hundred entertaining games for evenings at home and social parties, by Lucretia Peabody Hale. (Ticknors.) The form of a story is used, and serves excellently to explain the games, which are capital. We think Miss Hale has made a real hit with this book.

— Eve, by S. Baring-Gould. (Appleton.) A story of the early part of the century, written with a constant strain after effect. The author has no clearly marked characters in his mind, but by clothing and painting them elaborately he has gotten up quite a show. — For Fifteen Years, a sequel to The Steel Hammer, by Louis Ulbach ; translated from the French by E. W. Latimer. (Appleton.) — Temple House, by Elizabeth Stoddard. (Cassell.) — Ilian, or the Curse of the Old South Church of Boston, by J. J. Kane. (Lippincott.) Mr. Kane calls his book a psychological tale of the late civil war. The psychology with which he sets out has the disadvantage of being at odds with what goes by a less formidable name, — human nature. The poor Old South plays a most uncomfortable part in the tale. A curse is pronounced under its shadow, and the business of the book is to make the curse good and to confound it at the same time. — The Inner House, by Walter Besant. (Harpers.) A parable of life and death, of an ingenious sort, the fiction used being an imagined state of things, in which science had discovered a power capable of arresting decay and death. — Oddly enough, the next book we take up, When Age Grows Young, by Hyland C. Kirk (Dillingham), is a mild contribution to the same general subject, in which the reader pursues a supposed dead man until he catches up with him in life. — The Admirable Lady Biddy Fane, by Frank Barrett. (Cassell.) A somewhat spirited story of the early part of the seventeenth century, written as if by one of the figures in the story. — The Astonishing History of Troy Town, by Q. (Cassell.) A funny story. —Under French Skies, or Sunny Fields and Shady Woods, by Madame de Gasparin. (The Baker & Taylor Co., New York.) A series of religious sketches set in gentle reflection. The French idiom of the stories adds a certain grace which relieves the book. — Amos Kilbright, his Adscititious Experiences, with other stories, by Frank R. Stockton. (Scribners.) Mr. Stockton has made a small collection of stories not included in his other volumes, and hardly likely to be quoted as much as they, but we never can get too much of his darkey, and there are some capital illustrations here of his humor in this particular. — The Peckster Professorship, an Episode in the History of Psychical Research, by J. P. Quincy. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic will be entertained at seeing how ingeniously Mr. Quincy has dovetailed the portions of his book printed in the magazine with other matter so as to make a continuous story.

— The Philistines, by Arlo Bates. (Ticknor.) — Better Times, stories by the author of The Story of Margaret Kent. (Ticknor ) The author of this book has lately received considerable attention from the public ; it is onlyfair that by this collection she should show her readers how well she served her apprenticeship as a novelist. — From Moor Isles, by Jessie Fothergill. (Holt.) The scenes are laid partly on one side the Atlantic, partly on the other. We are pleased to see that this writer gives, incidentally, a little dig at pirated English novels. —Ruth, the Christian Scientist, or The New Hygeia, by John Chester. (H. H. Carter & Karrick, Boston.) Has it come to this, that Christian Science is also to have its exposition in fiction ? This book may help the cause of Christian Science, but it does nothing for the poor abused cause of Fiction. — A Gallant Fight, by Marion Harland. (Dodd, Mead A Co.) Although intended to illustrate a large virtue, the book has a very hothouse air. —Cousin Bette, one of Balzac’s most striking and painful studies, has been added to Miss Wormly’s series of translations from that author. (Roberts Bros.) — The Aspern Papers, to which no Atlantic reader needs introduction, gives the title to Mr. James’s latest collection of short stories. The volume contains Louisa Pallant and The Modern Warning. (Macmillan.) — Recent numbers of Ticknor’s Paper Series are : Two College Girls, by Helen Dawes Brown ; John Bodewin’s Testimony, by Mary Hallock Foote; Rachel Armstrong, or Love and Theology, by Celia Parker Woolley.

Literature and Criticism. Half-Hours with the Best Foreign Authors, selected and arranged by Charles Morris. (Lippincott.) This work is included in four volumes, divided into Greek and Roman, German, French, Italian, and Spanish. The editor has prefaced the several selections from authors by convenient head-notes, giving information regarding them and their works. In the classic volume there appears to be no special order of selection ; at least the order is not chronological. The names of translators are usually given. The whole set makes a useful chrestomathy. La Critique Scientifique, par Emile Hennequin. (Perrin, Paris.) A study in criticism with reference to what the writer terms esthopsychologie, for which he offers in his appendix a scheme of comprehensive method. — Hamlet ein Genie, by Hermann Türck. (Max Hoffmann, Leipzig.) A philosophical study of fifty pages. — Books that have Helped Me. (Appleton.) A dozen papers from the Forum by an interesting variety of persons, including E. E. Hale, A. Lang, W. T. Harris, B. Matthews, E. Eggleston, and others. One is likely to read these entertaining bits of autobiography with the questions in his mind, What had the books to do with this writer’s actual product ? Did he choose such and such books because his mind was already bent, or did the books bend his mind ? — British Letters, illustrative of Character and Social Life, edited by Edward T. Mason. In three volumes. (Putnams.) An interesting and readable collection, arranged topically, an arrangement which serves better when persons are under consideration than when the topics are so general as The Family or Friendship. The division, besides, makes a certain confusion of time as one slips from one decade to another and back again. Mr. Mason does not go much behind the present century, else he could have found some charming material in the seventeenth and early part of the eighteenth century; but he has preserved by his method a better unity. — Master Virgil; the Author of the Æneid as he seemed in the Middle Ages ; a Series of Studies, by J. S. Tunison. (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.) A most interesting and valuable monograph upon a subject which has always had a charm for scholars. Mr. Tunison not only has collected his material with care, but he has digested it, and reproduces it for his readers in an attractive and readable form. He wall have not only the scholar, but the general reader, in his debt. — Pen and Ink, Papers on Subjects of More or Less Importance, by Brander Matthews. (Longmans.) Readers of this book will find favorites in the papers. Mr. Matthews is always interesting, and the secret is that he is himself greatly interested in his subjects. — Information for Authors, Hints and Suggestions concerning All Kinds of Literary Work, by Eleanor Kirke. (The Author, 986 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y.) If publishers and editors knew their own interest, they would secure a list of all authors under twenty-one, and send a copy of this book to each. The useful information is, to be sure, mixed in with considerable that is of no great importance, but it is never safe to say what is and what is not of importance to the tyro-author.

Education and Text-Books. The Meisterschaft System has been applied to the Latin Language, by R. S. Rosenthal. (Meisterschaft Pub. Co., Boston.) The first of fifteen parts has been issued. — How to Judge of a Picture, Familiar Talks in the Gallery with the Uncritical Lovers of Art, by John C. Van Dyke. (Chautauqua Press.) A sensible book from a man at home in his subject, and also well acquainted with the limitations of the popular mind. — Civil Government, Studies of the Federal Constitution, by R. E. Clement. (Lovell.) The teacher is helped by lists of questions appended to each section. We think the writer, in following the historical method, has made the approach to the practical part of his work needlessly severe. — The Young Idea, or Common School Culture, by Caroline B. LeRow (Cassell), is a series of lively yet painful chapters on the ignorance of teachers and pupils in our public schools, as instanced by the ridiculous answers to questions in the several branches of study. It is an old story, and perhaps some will take heed who read this little book, for, after laughing, they may become serious. — Goethe’s Torquato Tasso, edited for the use of students by Calvin Thomas (Heath), is treated happily as a book of literature, and not an exercise in parsing. — Preparatory French Reader, by O. B. Super. (Heath.) We can hardly agree with the editor in giving space to translations from Andersen’s and Grimm’s stories. Surely there are many perfectly simple French tales corresponding to the Danish and German ones; and, beside learning to read, the student ought incidentally to learn something of French literature.

Poetry and the Drama. With Sa’di in the Garden; or the Book of Love; being the “Ishk” or Third Chapter of the “Bostan” of the Persian Poet Sa’di, embodied in a Dialogue held in the Garden of the Tas Mahal, at Agra. By Sir Edwin Arnold. (Roberts.) There is something courageous in such an announcement by a poet. Come into the garden, he seems to cry, but come through a prickly hedge ! — The Prophet and other Poems, by Isaac R. Baxley. (Putnams.) Underdone piecrust verse.— Through Field and Wood, lyric verses and sonnets, by Lewis Dayton Burdick. (Lippincott.) Verse to the eye, but it does not seem to get behind the eye. — Australian Poets, 1788-1888 ; being a Selection of Poems upon all Subjects, written in Australia and New Zealand during the first century of the British colonization, with brief notes on their authors, and an Introduction by Patchett Martin. Edited by Douglas B. W. Sladen. (Griffith, Farran, O’Keden & Welsh, London.) Two or three names only strike the reader’s eye familiarly: Barron Field, Alfred Dornett, John Boyle O’Reilly, and, to our surprise, Thomas Woolner, who appears to have lived at one time in Australia. The poems are not all suggested by life in a new continent, but there are enough of them to furnish the reader with some new words, at least, if not new images. What is a " buddawong " ?

There are some pretty little touches of homesickness in the volume.—In the Woods and Elsewhere, by Thomas Hill. (Cupples & Hurd.) Dr. Hill’s feeling for Nature is simple, direct, and healthful, and is reflected in his verse, but he is not always able to please the ear with really melodious verse. The religious poems and hymns have much the same quality of objective freshness.

Theology and Religion. Spirit and Life, Thoughts for To-Day, by Amory H. Bradford. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert.) A volume of sermons, fresh, spirited, generous in their temper, and abundantly illustrated from life and literature. The gist of the book is, in the Scriptural phrase, that spiritual things are spiritually discerned; but the preacher is not a mystic; he is in close touch with the life about him. — Harvard Vespers ; Addresses to Harvard Students by the Preachers to the University, 1886—1888. (Roberts.) The preachers were Messrs. Brooks, Peabody, Hale, Gordon, and McKenzie, and their discourses were brief, earnest talks, delivered in Appleton Chapel on Thursday afternoons. The place, the audience, the occasion, all conspired to make the preachers direct and swift; and this little book, especially valuable as a souvenir to the young men who heard the discourses, will give any thoughtful reader a fair notion of the force at work in the religious life at Harvard. —Jesus in Modern Life, by Algernon Sydney Logan. (Lippincott.) A singular illustration of the modern reverent temper, which is so possessed with a loyalty to truth that it proceeds to strip all the old idols, in an intense desire to get at the spirit which informed them. This process, applied to the Saviour, has the air of heroism, but often leaves upon the spectator a mournful sense of the fanaticism of the truth-seeker. He too can see but one thing, but the object in the exhausted air-receiver, though unchanged to the eye, is nevertheless dead. Mr. Logan has written a very suggestive book, and one which has much literary as well as speculative merit, but even the reverence of the surgeon with the scalpel may not prevent him from a fatal use of his instrument. — God Knowable and Known, by Maurice Ronayne. (Benziger Bros., New York.) An argument for the existence and knowableness of God, by a Romanist priest, who avails himself of the machinery of discussion between imaginary persons. These men of straw are not worked very hard, and the writer dismisses them altogether when they are in the way, but they serve to lighten the book, which is not unreadable otherwise. — The I Ams of Christ, a contribution to christological thought, by S. H. Giesy. (Randolph.) Dr. Giesy, writing from a strictly orthodox point of view, has struck upon a subject which is unquestionably the profoundest aspect of the personality of Christ. He studies the consciousness as disclosed in certain fundamental expressions. Others are at work upon this theme in its more far-reaching consideration of the growth in consciousness, and this book comes thus as an interesting contribution to a great subject. The writer is forcible and suggestive, and his work ought not to be overlooked by the student. — Laconisms, the wisdom of many in the words of one, by J. M. P. Otts. (Lippincott.) The apothegms in this book are not all upon theological or religious topics, but the most important are. The thoughts are sometimes trenchant and the expression is close, but the test of such writings is a severe one ; and they suffer also from the fact that one epigram affects another, and the reader is constantly demanding more stimulant. — The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, with notes, comments, maps, and illustrations, by Rev. Lyman Abbott. (A. S. Barnes & Co.) Mr. Abbott writes with a refreshing freedom from merely traditional exegetical methods. He writes as a person who has an eager desire to read his subject as a living, immediate concern of men, and thus his book is likely to catch many minds that would refuse to attend to ordinary commentators. If he is somewhat diffuse in his earnestness, and treats the Epistle as a text for a discourse, at least his own sermon is not conventional. — Introduction to the Books of the Old Testament, with analyses and illustrative literature, by O. S. Stearns. (Silver, Burdett & Co., Boston.) A succinct outline of each of the books, with copious reference to accessible commentaries and critical studies. The questions of authorship, date, and intention are considered, and the book offers itself for the use rather of the intelligent layman than of the professional student. — Essays on God and Man, or a Philosophical Inquiry into the Principles of Religion, by the Rev. H. T. Bray. (Nixon-Jones Printing Co., St. Louis, Mo.) The work of a learned man who yet hardly has learned to translate his thought into the vernacular, while the form, which is largely that of a mosaic, does not especially commend the book to scholars.

Books of Reference. The second volume of the new edition of Chambers’s Encyclopædia (Lippincott) includes the terms from Beaugency to Cataract. The first title intimates one of the characteristics of the work, for it is a gazetteer as well as general cyclopædia. The articles are terse, and also stimulate further research, for they often contain convenient lists of references. American subjects are treated in copyright articles, and, though none of the articles are signed, a list is given of the longer articles, with the names of their respective authors, among whom may be named Andrew Lang, who writes of Burns; Stanley Lane Pool, who treats Cairo; G. Barnett Smith, who gives the facts in the case of Robert Browning; and Calvin, by Principal Tulloch. There are good maps and useful wood-cuts. It is singular how a publishing house like Chambers’s manages to impress its personality upon its issues. — The fifth volume of Mr. Stedman’s and Miss Hutchinson’s Library of American Literature from the Earliest Settlement to the Present Time (C. L. Webster A Co., New York) is the second part of the division Literature of the Republic, and covers the period 1821-1834. The important writers included are Irving, Cooper, Halleck, Bryant, Prescott, but there are many other names which have an interest both as secondary authors and as men eminent in their professions who dabbled in literature. We suspect that some of the names would not have appeared if the writers had happened to live a generation later. — Proverbs, Maxims, and Phrases of All Ages, compiled by Robert Christy. (Putnam’s Sons.) If Mr. Christy has not, in his two interesting volumes, exhausted the wisdom of every age and language, he has at least come nearer doing so than any previous gleaner in his special field. The compiler is to be thanked for presenting his vast material classified and alphabetically arranged.

History and Biography. Indiana, by J. P. Dunn, is the latest volume in American Commonwealths series (Houghton), and is an admirable example of a monograph, for the author has had a clear determination to settle an historical problem. The sub-title of his book, A Redemption from Slavery, intimates the nature of his task, and he has devoted himself to showing how, in the development of the State, slavery did not merely slip out of sight, but was resolutely fought down in politics. The array of foot-notes indicates the thoroughness of the investigation. —Elizabeth Barrett Browning, by John H Ingram, is a number of the Famous Women series. (Roberts ) Mr. Ingram has brought together the scattered references to Mrs. Browning to be found in many writers ; he has pieced out the story of her life; but though he has admiration for his subject, he is not a truly sympathetic nor a very critical biographer. — A History of Charles the Great, by J. I. Mombert. (Appleton.) Dr. Mombert has gathered from a variety of sources the most credible information respecting the life of Charlemagne, and has written a formal biography. The book is rather encyclopædic than stimulating or original in treatment.—Patriotic Addresses in America and England, from 1850 to 1885, on slavery, the civil war, and the development of civil liberty in the United States, by Henry Ward Beecher ; edited, with a review of Mr. Beecher’s personality and influence in public affairs, by John R. Howard. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert) Besides the addresses proper, there are many of Mr. Beecher’s glowing editorials from The Independent. The long and interesting introduction is in effect a biography of Mr. Beecher as a public man. The book will do much to hold the great preacher before the public in an attitude most striking and worthy of remembrance.