Books of the Month

History and Biography. The Winning of the West, by Theodore Roosevelt. (Putnams.) The two volumes of this work which have appeared carry the narrative to the year 1783, and practically extend the West to the Mississippi River. Mr. Roosevelt makes no promises, but it is fair to suppose that he means to continue his work to the present time, or at least to the war for the Union. Valuable as these volumes are for their study of Indian fighting, those which follow and have to do with the Spanish intrigues ought to be even more full of fresh historical material, to judge from the hints which the author gives in his preface. Mr. Roosevelt’s hearty sympathy with the frontier life of the present day makes him in love with the older frontier life, and he has besides a graphic faculty of no mean order.— The Birth of the Republic, compiled from the National and Colonial Histories and Historical Collections, from the American Archives and from Memoirs, and from the Journals and Proceedings of the British Parliament, by Daniel R. Goodloe. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) Mr. Goodloe has contented himself with a mosaic of passages from speeches, proceedings, public documents, and the like, illustrative of the movement which resulted in the separation of the thirteen colonies from the British Empire. It is a convenient thesaurus. — The True Story of a Great Life, the History and Personal Recollections of Abraham Lincoln, by William H. Herndon and Jesse William Weik. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) Mr. Herndon, it is well known, was a law partner and intimate friend of Lincoln. Mr. Weik has been an industrious collector of all that relates to Lincoln. The three volumes, therefore, have at once a claim upon the attention of the student, and the reader in expectation of a racy life will not be disappointed. There is a halfcontemptuous disregard of the amenities of literature in this work which is not without its value. The authors plainly determine that Abraham Lincoln shall not escape them into the limbo of hedged-about divinities. He is always close to the soil in their apprehension. The illustrations are delightfully and extraordinarily matter of fact.—A Popular History of California from the Earliest Period of its Discovery to the Present Time, by Lucia Norman. (The Bancroft Company, San Francisco.) A little, unpretentious book, of which more than one half, and that the better portion, deals with the history prior to the possession of the country by the United States. The facts in the latter half are rather disorderly, and it is difficult to extract history from them. — Two more volumes of English Men of Action (Macmillan) are Wellington, by George Hooper, and William Dampier, by W. Clark Russell. The latter is a specially spirited narrative of a picturesque career; the former is a clear, sympathetic, but discriminating account of a man whose character always seemed to overtop his ability in every other field save that of the art of war. — The series of English History by Contemporary Writers (Putnams) has been enriched by The Crusade of Richard I., 118992, selected and arranged by T. A. Archer. These little books are most admirable aids to teachers and students of history.

Education. No. XIV. of Guides for ScienceTeaching (Heath) is Dr. H. P. Bowditch ’s Hints for Teachers of Physiology. An attempt to lead teachers to use judiciously the experimental method in teaching physiology. The experiments suggested are simple ones.— Confessions d’un Ouvrier, par Emile Souvestre ; edited by O. B. Super. (Heath.) Not many notes are needed. The selection of this book is a slight, indication of the tendency of thought; for it is not merely that the editor wished to give an example of Souvestre ; he was attracted by the thought of the book. Schoolmasters and professors are in the workingman ’s procession. —Pestalozzi, his Aim and Work, by Baron Roger de Guimps; translated from the edition of 1874 by Margaret Cuthbertson Crombie. (Bardeen.) A somewhat dry and fragmentary work, but in the absence of one written afresh by an American student, this will be of service in taking readers direct to the fountain-head of much of our modern thought on elementary education. — Physiological Notes on Primary Education, and the Study of Language, by Mary Putnam Jacobi. (Putnams.) Dr. Jacobi’s collection of essays has the value of experimental work and physiological knowledge for a basis, with a superstructure of keen reasoning and philosophic induction. It deals largely with the vital question of the true order of studies, and should not be overlooked by any one who is engaged in the study of primary education in something more than an empirical method. — The third volume of the Nature Readers, by Julia McNair Wright. (Heath.) The various lessons are simple and straightforward. Perhaps this is enough to ask, yet we wish the language had a little more grace, a little more of that winning quality which lures the young reader. The general effect is of chapped food. — Jeanne d’ Arc, by A. de Lamartine; edited, with notes and a vocabulary, by Albert Barrère. (Heath.) The notes are for the most part translations of the tough passages or words.— The Bureau of Education at Washington has varied its line of work somewhat by undertaking to publish historical notes on education in several States, especially as regards the higher education. We have already noted two of these Contributions to American Educational History, which are under the editorship of Herbert B. Adams, and we have now five further numbers: the History of Education in North Carolina, by Charles Lee Smith ; History of Higher Education in South Carolina, with a Sketch of the Free School System, by Colyer Meriwether; Education in Georgia, by Charles Edgeworth Jones; History of Education in Florida, by George Gary Bush ; Higher Education in Wisconsin, by William F. Allen and David E. Spencer. The information given is of the most outline character, but the reader is advised of the bibliography of the subjects. It is noticeable in all these sketches of education in the South how large a part is played by the several denominations. The church is more decidedly the parent and instigator of education in that section than is the state. — A more comprehensive and condensed work is Education in the United States, its History from the Earliest Settlements, by Richard G. Boone. (Appleton.) This book, in Dr. W. T. Harris’s International Education Series, is put forth as the “ first noteworthy attempt at a general history of education in the United States.” We think that if Mr. Boone had omitted his accounts of public libraries and reformatories he would have kept closer to his subject, and might have expanded his study so as to have passed beyond the formal bounds which he set himself. The book is too much like an analytical table of contents to a possible book. — Physical Training, or the Care of the Body, by E. B. Warman. (A. G. Spalding & Bros., Chicago.) A book of exercises with and without clubs, preceded by some general observations on the care of the body. The corset comes in for its customary share of condemnation. We take pleasure in registering each fresh attack upon the venerable monster. Mr. Warman makes one suggestion on the subject which we do not remember to have met before when he says, “ Were the men to band themselves together and publicly declare that they would never again embrace a young lady who wore a corset, — except, on trial, — ere the sun had descended on that proclamation the corsets would part company with their victims to whom they had so fondly clung.” — A recent German text-book is Freytag’s Die Journalisten, edited by Walter D). Toy. (Heath.) — Recent French text-books are Daudet’s La Belle Nivernaise, edited by James Boïelle (Heath) ; Souvestre’s Le Mari de Madame de Solaage, edited by O). B. Super (Heath); Pages Choisies des Mémoires du Due de Saint-Simon, edited by A. N. Van Daell (Ginn). — Professor T. F. Crane has done most excellent service in arranging for the use of schools and colleges, with an introduction and notes, an account of French society in the seventeenth century, from contemporary writers, under the general title of La Société Française au Dix-Dix-Septième Siècle. (Putnams.) Thus by his plan the reader is put in direct connection with the Hôtel Rambouillet, with Mademoiselle de Scudéry, with Les Précieuses and Les Règles de la Civilité. It is a capital idea, capitally carried out. — The fifteenth of the Guides for Science Teaching, issued under the auspices of the Boston Society of Natural History, is by Henry Lincoln Clapp, and is devoted to thirty-six Observation Lessons on common minerals. They are lessons which have been worked out in one of the public grammar schools of Boston. — Syllabus of Lectures in Anatomy and Physiology, by T. B. Stowell. (C. W. Bardeen.) The book is issued with alternate blank pages for further notes. — Practical Latin Composition, by William C. Collar. (Ginn.) Mr. Collar introduces his book with a delightful quotation from Ascham, which gives in firm and agreeable English the method pursued by that great schoolmaster, — a method, as Mr. Collar shrewdly observes, which probably ran counter to all the traditions of the day. This method another great schoolmaster — for such Mr. Collar is — has revived, not slavishly, but with clear regard to the aptitudes of boys and girls in our own community. His book is thoroughly equipped, and we are greatly mistaken if it does not prove a most admirable aid toward sound scholarship. — A Guide to the Study of Nineteenth Century Authors, by Louise Manning Hodgkins. (Heath.) Miss Hodgkins, who is professor of English literature in Wellesley College, has been in the habit of preparing leaflets for her students which are practical bibliographies, and she has now brought these together in a convenient form. They contain excellent clues to the reading and study of the great English and American authors, from Scott to Matthew Arnold, from Irving to Lowell, and theb book ought to be of real service not only to schools, but to reading circles and studious persons. — The Protagoras of Plato, with the commentary of Hermann Sauppe, translated, with additions, by James A. Towle, has been added to the College Series of Greek Authors. (Ginn.)