Comment on New Books

Biography. Gustavus Adolphus, and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence, by C. R. L. Fletcher. (Putnams.) Mr. Fletcher had a capital subject, and he has treated it with a good sense of its general relations. In his modest preface he disclaims any pretense at original research. As he points out, the Thirty Years’ War affected Europe so widely that no one can be sure the archives of any state may not suddenly disclose documents which would lead to a new reading of character and events. The real merit of his work lies in his interesting study of the movements which Gustavus led, and in the clear manner of his stating those large subjects which remain to concern us when the good knights are in the dust. — A Sketch of Chester Harding, Artist, by his own hand ; edited by his daughter, Margaret E. White. (Houghton.) Such a career as Mr. Harding had would seem to be impossible now, and it is a most singular commentary on the ingenuous nature of American life two generations ago, and the relation which it had to England. The selfeducation of this artist was a striking testimony to the native virility of American genius. We have become more sophisticated, and it is doubtful if our present-day portrait painters could write with the simplicity which characterizes Mr. Harding’s autobiographic sketch. It was well worth preserving. — Four Frenchwomen, by Austin Dobson. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) The four are Mademoiselle de Corday, Madame Roland, the Princesse de Lamballe, and Madame de Genlis. Mr. Dobson is always interesting, but these essays show rather the easy use of familiar material than either great insight or full scholarship. What a singular sentence, by the way, this is for a master of English prose ! “ The other

[portrait] painted by Hauer in her cell, and wearing originally the red shirt of the murderess.” — Lord Beaconsfield, by J. A. Froude. (Harpers.) This volume is one of a series devoted to Queen Victoria’s prime ministers ; and if it contained only Beaconsfield and Palmerston the series would in a measure be complete, for it is as prime ministers that both men will be remembered. A more artificial man than Disraeli it would be hard to find in public life, but the artifice was exceedingly clever. He was the product of politics as a game, and the result is a fairly good measure of the worth of politics. His statesmanship was bounded by parliamentary rules, and even his literary productions are little more than the projection into an ideal sphere of an order of society composed of diminishing rows of satellites of the Crown. Mr. Froude has found a subject to his mind in this epigram of English politics. — Désirée, Queen of Sweden and Norway, translated from the French of Baron Hochschild by Mrs. M. Carey. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) Désirée Clary, at the early age of fourteen, was the choice of Napoleon for wife ; but the engagement, if the attachment could so be termed, was broken off by Napoleon’s marriage to Josephine Beauharnais, and Désirée afterward married Bernadotte. The sketch is a slight one, and has little value for any except those who are attracted by crowns and courts without much regard to what is under the crown. — Savonarola, his Life and Times, by William Clark. (McClurg.) A revision, apparently, of a previous work by the author. The book is written with moderation and with an impartial spirit, though the writer is clearly in sympathy with the great martyr. He makes good use of Villari and other historians, but has the advantage over them, for American readers, that he is not only interested in the subject, but he is aware of the kind of interest which his readers will feel — The Life of an Artist, an Autobiography, by Jules Breton ; translated by Mary J. Serrano. (Appletons.) We reviewed this book at length upon its appearance in France, and are glad that it is to be had in English dress, for it is a delightful addition to autobiographic literature. Breton’s enthusiasms at once win the reader. — The number of the Asclepiad for the Fourth Quarter of 1890 (Longmans) contains a long and interesting account of Benjamin Bell and his services in systematic surgery, by B. W. Richardson, who has a singularly vital touch in all that he undertakes. — In the series of American Religious Leaders (Houghton), Dr. James O. Murray treats of Dr. Francis Wayland, who, though a Baptist by conviction, cannot be shut up within the bouuds of any denomination, however large ; for the habit of his thinking was continental, and not parochial. Nothing impresses one more, in reading this sympathetic study, than the ease of Dr. Wayland’s largeness. His nature led him into fields of thought and action where a small man shows his smallness and a large man his largeness ; and the simplicity with which this moralist and teacher made for the central thing in all the subjects he attacked is attested by the generosity of the results which he reached. — An Address Commemorative of Richard Henry Mather, professor of Greek in Amherst College, by Professor Henry Allyn Frink. An interesting and affectionate analysis of a man who had wide interests, and was indeed a pioneer in a direction which is common enough now in our colleges, but was not at all common when Dr. Mather conceived the notion of enriching college life by collecting casts of Greek sculpture. The generosity of his nature will not soon be forgotten by those who knew him.

Books for the Young. Thine, not Mine, a Sequel to Changing Base, by William Everett. (Roberts.) A capital book for boys and girls ; capital because its manly lesson of unselfishness is presented frankly, but not priggishly, and because the type of family life set forth is sterling New England. The author constantly interjects also telling little shots at the weaknesses of boys and girls, which will be felt by them and appreciated by their elders. - — A Lost Jewel, by Harriet Prescott Spofford. (Lee & Shepard.) A bright little story, in which a slight improbability is made the basis of some adventure, but of more lively, playful criss-crossing of a family of children with a well-drawn grandmother. It is not always that we find Mrs. Spofford so natural and simple as she is in this book. — Freedom Triumphant, the Fourth Period of the War of the Rebellion, from September, 1864, to its Close, by Charles Carleton Coffin. (Harpers.) The opening of the campaign in the Shenandoah Valley is the starting-point of the narrative, and once in motion the author keeps on in his hearty, sometimes headlong fashion to the end of his story. He mingles personal experience with historic incident, and thus personally conducts the reader. He has a commendable way of placing at the close of each chapter a list of the authorities to which he has referred. If Mr. Coffin’s style is both journalistic and highly accented, one only wonders that he can keep his pace so well as he does.— through Magic Glasses, a Sequel to The Fairyland of Science, by Arabella B. Buckley. (Appleton.) The glasses are the lenses which make the telescope and microscope ; the spectroscope, also, and the photo-camera, with their wonderful disclosures, are brought into use. The reader need not fear any fantastic apparatus of fairy or spectre. The book is simply a clear, animated, and most attractive introduction to the study both of astronomy and of the lower forms of life. — The Silver Caves, a Mining Story, by Ernest Ingersoll. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A story of adventure, with no end of frontier excitement, and of course a stunning success at the end. We make haste to get upon another book, for we begin to find our English getting careless. — The Young Folks’ Cyclopædia of Games and Sports, by John D. Champlin, Jr., and Arthur E. Bostwick. (Holt.) Eight hundred double-columned pages, full of descriptive illustrations, and so brought to date that the noble game of Tiddledy Winks has more than a column. We object seriously to one of the rules : “ A player may not intentionally cover any of his opponent’s counters.” Why, the snap is taken out of the game when one can cover accidentally only. There is not much waste of space in giving the antiquities and curiosities and derivations of games. Let scholars and quibblers find the origin of cat’s-cradle ; it is enough for our Cyclopædia that it gives intelligible illustrations of the successive movements. We are rather surprised that under Riding it is boys only who are considered. Girls need more instruction. — Under Orders, the Story of a Young Reporter, by Kirk Munroe. (Putnams.) Mr. Munroe’s reporter has this advantage over some in real life, that his destiny is arranged for in advance, and is sure to be a fortunate one ; but then he was gifted with pluck, and the snobbishness with which he set out in active life was only skin-deep. The story lets the reader into the language of the reporter’s business, and is no more misleading than is any narrative of active life wherein the writer selects character and circumstance ; but we suspect that the young collegian who takes it for his guidebook will exhaust its capacity for instruction or inspiration pretty rapidly. — In the Cheering-Up Business, by Mary Catherine Lee. (Houghton.) Mrs. Lee’s story has the same qualities which made her former book, A Quaker Girl of Nantucket, so agreeable, — brightness, sympathy with young life, buoyancy, and a playful humor which is well under control. Her stories are both of them a trifle far-fetched in plot, but is not this very unusualness of incident a characteristic in keeping with the qualities we have named ? That is, since she looks into life with so much freshness of interest, is it not natural that she should concern herself to discover her characters in a certain waywardness of movement ? At any rate, whether one criticises her plot or not, one is very sure to be taken captive by her irrepressible good humor. — Captains of industry, Second Series, by James Parton. (Houghton.) Twoscore brief biographies of men and a few women, almost all Americans, who have attracted Mr. Parton’s attention by some special fitness for improving the world. It is interesting to see how varied are the occupations, how diverse the conditions, of life. The group has an added interest as illustrating the democratic character of American society, and the freedom with which individual worth has asserted itself, not in self-aggrandizement, but in impact upon the body politic. The book ought to set young Americans thinking.

Education and Scholarship. The Teaching and History of Mathematics in the United States, by Florian Cajori, is one of the recent Circulars of Information issued by the Bureau of Education (Government Printing Office, Washington), and far more interesting than documents of the same class have been heretofore. It is a little singular that a subject which one would suppose much more limited in its humanity than classics or history should have given rise to a report full of juice and richness. The personal reminiscences of Sylvester alone have a singular attraction, but the writer has derived from the history of the teaching of mathematics in this country a fund of interesting material. O si sic omnes who compile reports for the Bureau of Education I— Maroussia, a Maid of Ukraine, from the French of P. J. Stahl by Cornelia W. Cyr. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A story of devotion and heroism such as flowers out of Russian despotism. The end is sorrowful enough, but the sacrifice which it records is the fit end of a most beautiful and significant life. Such a story of patriotic martyrdom is like a trumpet call. — Laurette, on le Cachet Rouge, by Alfred de Vigny; edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by Alcée Fortier (Heath), is one of Heath’s Modern Language Series. A pathetic little story, with just enough manner about it to make the reader feel that he is reading, not a bit out of real life, but a wellconceived piece of literature. The notes are full and serviceable.—Education and the Higher Life, by J. L. Spalding, Bishop of Peoria. (McClurg.) Although this book has eight chapters, the style in which it is couched intimates that the chapters were first lectures. It is a book largely of generalities, with which one can find little fault ; but now and then one strikes a passage which seems to cover a thought not wholly expressed. “ What a sad book,” exclaims the bishop, “ is not that recently issued from the press, on the poets of America ! It is the chapter on snakes in Ireland which we have all read, — there are none. And are not our literary men whom it is possible to admire and love either dead or old enough to die ? ” This is literary cant. Again, in his final chapter the bishop dwells with admiration upon the growth of the Roman Catholic Church in America. “ It counts its members here by millions,” he says, “ while a hundred years ago it counted them by thousands.” Yet how much of this growth is due to the expansion of the church over new territory, and how much to its reception of vast hordes of its members from Europe ! He has, however, an interesting passage on the freedom of the church from state connection. — Landmarks of Homeric Study, together with an Essay on the Points of Contact between the Assyrian Tablets and the Homeric Text, by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone. (Macmillan.) Mr. Gladstone thinks that Achaian nationality supplies the motive of the Iliad; but if a poet is to be trusted when he tells his own intention, Homer seems to have had something to say on this point in the first paragraph of this great poem. The little volume is interesting not only for its somewhat desultory treatment of several large subjects, but incidentally for its illustration of the author’s mind, which is marked by multifariousness rather than by critical insight. — Indications of the First Book of Moses, called Genesis, by Edward B. Latch. (Lippincott.) The signposts which Mr. Latch reads in Genesis may point the road, but the road, so far as the ordinary reader can see, leads into the jungle of apocalyptic dreams. — A Shorter History of the United States for Schools ; with an Introductory History of the Discovery and English Colonization of North America. With Maps, Plans, and References to Supplementary Reading. By Alexander Johnston. (Holt.) This book is not designed for younger readers than those for whom Johnston’s larger school history was written, but is an attempt at a more compact presentation of the subject on much the same lines. It is, a hasty survey leads us to believe, fresher and better than the same author’s former book, chiefly because it selects the salient points with better judgment. It has no pictures, not even portraits, which we think add to the worth of such a book ; but it has a great many useful maps, and its references to further reading are admirable. — An Elementary Latin Dictionary, by Charlton T. Lewis. (Harpers.) A most desirable book, since it may well lead teachers to discourage the use of vocabularies at the end of textbooks. The large dictionary prepared by Dr. Lewis is inconveniently large for the use of young students, but this volume, condensed, yet clear in typography and with good discrimination of letter, will tempt the one who uses it into a fuller and more comparative knowledge of words than he will ever get by the help of vocabularies. The vocabularies are conveniences, but they are only such; they fail to render the important service which such a dictionary as this offers ; for in ancient languages, as in our own tongue, words are living members, and even casual study will set the student to thinking, whereas the vocabularies suggest only that words are part of a puzzle. — The Bible Abridged; being Selections from the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, forming a reasonably Complete Outline of the Important Events of Sacred History in their Proper Setquence, and in the Closest Connection practicable. For Families and Schools. Arranged by the Rev. David Greene Haskins. (Heath.) The selections are taken from the King James version, so called, and in the lessons from the Gospels the editor has made practically a harmony. Naturally, the narrative portions of the Bible are most freely drawn from, but there are a few selections from the prophets and from the apostolic Epistles, and a judicious use has been made of the Psalms and book of Proverbs. The book will be found a convenience by those who desire to use the old English Bible in school exercises, and have not the patience or judgment to make their own selections.—The University of Pennsylvania is doing a good service by entering the field of Philology, Literature, and Archæology with a series of monographs. The triple connection is not unphilosophical, and intimates, we suspect, that the strength of the series will lie, not on the æsthetic, but on the scientific side of literature. Two numbers have appeared : Poetic and Verse Criticism of the Reign of Elizabeth, by Felix E. Schelling, in which the sketch of the critics of that time of creation suggests many considerations for a student of to-day ; and A Fragment of the Babylonian “ Dibarra ” Epic, by Morris Jastrow, which contains the odds and ends of a piece of verse painfully put together, and serving rather to elucidate history than poetic art. (Hodges.)

Literature. Lorna Doone, a Romance of Exmoor, by R. D. Blackmore, with a preface written by the author for this edition ; in three volumes. (Putnams.) An exceedingly pretty edition of this unusual piece of fiction. The type is clear, the page well proportioned, the paper good, and the binding agreeably simple. The story is so leisurely in its flow, it lingers so over the charm of Devon nature, that it is entirely fit that it should be read in this liberal form. One may find Sir John Ridd a trifle affected at times, and may question also a little the art of a book when the storyteller, who knows the end from the beginning, narrates it as if he did not know ; but Lorna Doone is a book sui generis, and evidently the work of love of a writer who is too careless and whimsical ever to justify fully the hopes he raises. — In the Footprints of Charles Lamb, by Benjamin Ellis Martin ; illustrated by Herbert Railton and John Fulleylove ; with a Bibliography by E. D. North. (Scribners.) Of all the subjects which have been taken for the pious pilgrimage of loving readers, this is the fittest, because the personal element is sweetest and most exclusive. To follow Dickens and Thackeray is to keep company with the shadows of these authors as projected in their characters ; to follow Lamb is to keep close to a person whose few inventions were thinly disguised images of himself and family, and who suffused all the critical and playful work which he did with the warmth of his own nature. Dr. Martin has written affectionately, and with a nice use of the tidbits of Lamb’s correspondence and essays ; he is, perhaps, a little too much of a champion, as if he were bound to resent even indirect Philistinism. The pictures and portraits are all interesting, and Mr. North has added to the value of the book by his carefully prepared bibliography. It is a pleasure to readers of Lamb to have so genuine a souvenir as this. — The Best Letters of Horace Walpole, edited, with an Introduction, by Anna B. McMahan. (MeClurg.) The great collection of Walpole’s Letters is here winnowed and sifted to excellent advantage. Nowhere else can one get so readily, and almost with the pleasure of reading fiction, so good an interior view of English life just at the most interesting period to American readers, and the comments which Walpole makes on American affairs frequently suggest striking comparisons. — The Best Letters of Madame de Sévigné, edited, with an Introduction, by Edward Playfair Anderson. (McClurg.) Another delightful volume of selections from a delightful correspondence. These graceful letters ought to do much toward preserving the ideals of womanly grace in an age which has the refinement of the writer, even if it has not the special style in which she wrote.

Fiction. The Crystal Button, or Adventures of Paul Prognosis in the FortyNinth Century, by Chauncey Thomas ; edited by George Houghton. (Houghton.) This frank title-page at once advises the reader that he has encountered another of the systematic dreams with which the world seems just now to have waked from its restless slumber of the nineteenth century. One does not get far past the introductory explanatory chapter, however, before he discovers that he is not invited to an irrational guess of future civilizing expedients, but to a methodical projection of present mechanical thought into possible results. There is a deal of ingenious thinking that starts into action as soon as one sets out to press the Crystal Button. — Patience, by Anna B. Warner. (Lippincott.) It gives one an odd start to take up a new book by this author, and find the old story in new guise : the penetration of the village drama by the religions spirit, veiled under quaint phrase ; the natural man with his naturalness set just a little on edge ; the fencing with language and the high purpose ; the strain for small effects ; and the frequent lapses into a familiar portrayal of familiar scenes and personages. — The fifth number of Good Company Series (Lee & Shepard) is J. T. Trowbridge’s The Three Scouts. — Aunt Dorothy, an Old Virginia Plantation Story, by Margaret J. Preston. (Randolph.) A pleasant little tale, told with humor and grace. It is a pity that the pictures are not as distinct as the story makes the characters to the imagination. — Told after Supper, by Jerome K. Jerome ; with 96 or 97 Illustrations by Kenneth M. Skeaping. (Holt.) An amusing burlesque on conventional ghost stories, with ever so much sly gibing at the entire class of Christmas literature. The pictures are most of them possessed of the same drollery as the text. — Murvale Eastman, Christian Socialist, by Albion W. Tourgee. (Fords.) The story and the sermon struggle with each other in this book, and the sermon gets the worst of it. Christian socialism easily furnishes plenty of material for zealous and indignant writing, and in a story book the rich and the poor meet together ; the novelist is the maker of them all, and it is not strange if he makes them fit his doctrine. But Mr. Tourgee cannot resist the opportunity of producing startling situations, and as it is he, and not his characters, at work, the result is a melodramatic story for any one who wants it, with but slight contribution to real Christian socialism on the part of the people in the book.

Travel and Society. London Letters and Some Others, by George W. Smalley. (Harpers.) These two octavo volumes, in large, handsome type, contain reprints from the frequent letters which, as correspondent of the New York Tribune, Mr. Smalley has for the past few years been sending from London. During his service in this capacity he has had the opportunity of commenting upon persons and events of historic significance, and it is not to be wondered at that he should wish to preserve from the wreck which all things journalistic suffer the more permanent part of his work. The selections are in good taste, and do not suggest scrappiness. On the contrary, Mr. Smalley’s fluency is one of the agreeable qualities of his work. He is most successful in the portrayal of what one may call the superficial traits of society and persons ; his accounts, for example, of the Queen’s Garden Party and of the discussion over international matches show him at his best. In his portraitures of persons he catches at salient points, and, though rarely epigrammatic, often hits off his subject with clever phrases. Beyond this not much is to be looked for. Collector as he is of the opinions of a cultivated set of people, and sane as he is in his general judgments, he does not impress the reader as a person of singular insight, and his book is hardly likely to make its mark as a valuable record of fleeting shows. — How we Went and What we Saw, a Flying Trip through Egypt, Syria, and the Ægean Islands, by Charles McCormick Reeve. (Putnams.) A flying trip may be taken by various kinds of birds, and each will see after his kind. Here are lands rich in all that tempts a scholar’s, a poet’s eye, but our bird looks at it all with something of a wink at the bystander. His breakfast counts for much ; now and then he remains serious long enough to give in some detail the scenes which he confronts without interjecting some mal à propos attempt at witticism, but the reader must be warned that unless he is in a mood for small jokes he will find little that is attractive in the book. Even the vivacity which might have told in animated description constantly suffers from this necessity laid upon the writer to take great thing lightly.

Poetry and the Drama. Short Flights, by Meredith Nicholson. (The Bowen-Merrill Company, Indianapolis.) There is a pleasing simplicity of sentiment in these verses, which attracts one pulled about by the straining poetry which chiefly has the field. The writer has a singular liking for dropping his voice, so to speak, at the end of stanzas. There is considerable variety of form, but a large number of the poems are characterized by this short line or couplet ending. — Dreamy Hours, by Franklyn W. Lee. (Sunshine Publishing Company, St. Paul, Minn.) A small volume of sentiment, drawn chiefly from the poet’s fireside. The writer has scarcely the skill to make his personal verse express a common feeling.—The Fruits of Culture, a Comedy in Four Acts, by Count Leo Tolstoï ; translated by George Schumm. (B. R. Tucker, Boston.) An inextricable medley of peasants, fine people, and spiritualistic performers. While one is untangling the knots he forgets what the story is about, and when searching for the story he falls into helpless confusion over the people.

Art. It is interesting to find in L’Art for 15 December (Macmillan) an etching from Henry Bacon’s painting, A Christmas Breakfast. Other full-page designs are L’Éloiquence, from Paul Veronese’s picture in the museum at Lille; and in the number for 1 January an etching by Quarante of L’Age d’Or, by Ch. Chaplin, an extremely rich, sumptuous head, yet neither voluptuous nor haughty, which is placed over against Le Retour des Champs, by Millet, — an unwitting contrast, apparently, for the contrast is not only in subject, but in treatment, and Chaplin, who began as a disciple of the Barbizon school, died its enemy.

History. Annual Report of the American Historical Association for the year 1889. (Government Printing Office.) The attachment of the Historical Association by a very slender tie to the Smithsonian Institution gives the advantage to the society that it can get its printing done for nothing, but it is a pity that it could not at the same time have bestowed a little grace on the Government Printing Office ; for though really good printing can be done at Washington, really tasteless work is done, as in the case of this unattractive report, which contains President Adams’s Inaugural Address, Mr. Schouler’s The Spirit of Historical Research, Dr. Goode’s curious monograph on The Origin of the National Scientific and Educational Institutions of the United States, and Mr. Paul Ford’s Bibliography of the published works of members of the association, which strikes us as showing a good deal of hard work expended upon a somewhat arbitrary and artificial basis.

Science. War and the Weather, by Edward Powers. (E. Powers, Delavan, Wis.) An ingenious and interesting tractate, intended to show the strong probability that the use of heavy artillery brings on a rainfall, and carrying the proposition that the United States government should engage in a series of experiments with a view, if successful, to establishing a method by which drought may be overcome on Western farms. Surely here is the millennium, when not only swords are to be beaten into ploughshares, but it is to rain great guns.

Religion and Theology. A Washington Bible-Class, by Gail Hamilton. (Appleton.) A lively, fatiguingly lively, study of the Bible with reference to those parts which have been the cruces of criticism. The book purports to be in effect a record of talks and discussions led by the writer. There is a discursive character about the work which answers well to such an origin, and there are a good many clever hits in it at all manner of weaknesses. Perhaps for some minds such a shaking up as it gives may be desirable, but we confess to preferring a treatment of great subjects which runs the risk of dullness.