Comment on New Books
Poetry. Seventeenth Century Lyrics, edited by George Saintsbury. The Pocket Library of English Literature. (Macmillan.) We can hardly see how this selection of lyrics from England’s lyric century could be bettered. If there are omissions to be regretted, the limits set by the size of the volume must he remembered, and there is surely nothing included that could well be spared. The editor has wisely rejected no superlatively good poem because it was too familiar, nor admitted those of less account simply that they might give an air of novelty to his selection. He has drawn from the works of some threescore poets, and he can rightly claim that his selection is richer and more varied than any previous one on a similar scale and plan. To turn to this book from our workaday world is to find rest and refreshment, not only from the exquisite music of the verse, but from the spirit of youth and springtime, of buoyant hope and gay courage, — in short, of that joy in living which the later poets of our race seem to have wellnigh lost. — City Festivals, by Will Carleton. (Harpers.) A poet who boasts his millions of readers and dedicates his book to God and others may be pardoned for reciting his poetic creed by way of preface, and the reader, after thoughtfully studying it, wonders why more do not take to poetry, — the recipe is so simple. — Poems, by Edith Willis Linn. (C. W. Moulton, Buffalo, N. Y.) There are two poems in this little book, Husband of Wife and Wife of Husband, which, though not very finished in form, are noticeable for their insight, and are of a kind likely to be remembered by the careless reader. For the most part, the verses are simple, unaffected, and fluent. — Songs of a Day and Songs of the Soil, by Frank L. Stanton. (John B. Alden, New York.) A collection of newspaper-printed poems, introduced generously by Joel Chandler Harris. They are marked by affectionate sentiment, sometimes by a fervid but not unseemly passion, by religious feeling, and in general by a warmth which is under the restraint of a simple diction. — The Wings of Icarus, by Susan Marr Spalding. (Roberts.) A hundred pages of verse, largely in the sonnet form, characterized by a fine perception of the harmonies of life. Delicate understanding of common things and a power to detect subtle grace give the writer’s voice a penetrating sweetness. Such little poems as Dear Hands, Byways, Fate, A Battle-Ground, and others that might be named reflect states and not merely moods of mind, thus giving the book a value more than individual, since the verse becomes the poetic expression of many. — Flower o’ the Vine, by William Sharp ; with Introduction by Thomas Janvier. (C. L. Webster & Co.) Mr. Janvier has written a delightful introduction, with its sincere spirit and its prettily affected manner. In spite of his deprecatory words, the reader will not go amiss who reads it before he settles himself to the enjoyment of Mr. Sharp’s poetry ; for while the latter may stand on its own high merit, it is helped by the personality of the poet. Sincerity of poetic feeling, in spite of much commerce with poets, living and dead, spontaneity, freedom, grace,— these are marks of this new poet. — The Queen’s Quire, being a Book of Songs, Sonnets and Ballads, written by Elisabethe Dupuy. (St. Louis News Co.) A little book of less than fifty pages, written apparently after a full course of Rossetti. There is occasionally a felicitous phrase, but the poet always seems to be somebody else.—The Song of America and Columbus ; or, The Story of the New World. A Greeting to Columbus and Columbia, and Descriptive Narrative of the Voyages and Career of Columbus and the Precursors of his Great Discovery, with the Sequel as seen in the United States. By Kinahan Cornwallis. (The Daily Investigator, New York.) It ’s all in rhyme, and there’s more to come. The style of the work tempts us to the use of the apostrophe. When we have read the book through, we are ready to burst forth in the same spirit and sing, O Kinahan Cornwallis, not even the great Corliss ever got up so much steam as you on the Columbian theme ! — Messrs. Scribner’s Sons have brought out in their beautiful Cameo Edition Dr. J. G. Holland’s two long poems, Kathrina and Bitter Sweet. — The Merrimack River, Hellenics and Other Poems, by Benjamin W. Ball ; edited, with an Introduction, by Frederick F. Ayer. (Putnams.) Mr. Ball is a thinker, a scholar, a brooder over life, and he is a man of poetic mind. Thus his poems are to a large extent notes on life, reflections of study and thought, and sometimes contain penetrating expressions full of meaning ; the form is often fine, and the reader gets the impression of a wealth of poetic resources.
Travel and Chorography. From the Arctic Ocean to the Yellow Sea : the Narrative of a Journey in 1890 and 1891, across Siberia, Mongolia, the Gobi Desert, and North China. By Julias M. Price. (Imported by Scribners.) Mr. Price made a ten-months’ journey from London to Shanghai, in the service of the Illustrated London News ; but he took a most unfamiliar route, going by sea along the north coast of Russia and Siberia to the port of Karoul at the month of the Yenisei, thence up the river to Irkutsk, then through Mongolia and the Gobi Desert to Peking, and from there to Shanghai. It was a most untraveled route for the tourist, and Mr. Price sent back a large collection of pictures with his journal. The book is thus profusely illustrated, and the narrative itself is a good newspaper report of the progress. Beyond this statement we should hardly care to go, for if Mr. Price had undertaken to write an account of his journey over well-trodden ways, we doubt if he would have said anything worth much attention. — Folly and Fresh Air, by Edw. Philpotts. (Harpers.) A humorous description of a trout-fishing excursion to Devonshire, written somewhat in the manner of Mr. Burnand of HappyThought Hall. The author, who is, we are sure, an Englishman, has a keen sense of the ridiculous, and a real feeling and love for nature. The book is very well written, and will be a pleasant companion for the lovers of “ out of doors ” in these United States.—Russian Traits and Terrors, by E. B. Lanin, with an Ode by A. C. Swinburne. (B. R. Tucker, Boston.) A collection from the Fortnightly Review, in which Lying, Fatalism, Sloth, Dishonesty, Sexual Morality, Prisons, Jews, Finance, and the Census are discussed. The arraignment of a nation in this fashion is so uniformly, monotonously severe that the reader almost necessarily puts himself into an antagonistic frame of mind. — Abroad and at Home, Practical Hints for Tourists, by Morris Phillips. (Brentano, New York.) Mr. Phillips gives in a brisk manner, and in a friendly rather than guidebook fashion, information about hotels, cabs, railways, restaurants, and other necessities for travelers in London, Paris, and winter resorts in the United States. He aims to make the inexperienced traveler a little more at home than he can be by the study of the ordinary guidebook. Interspersed are slight sketches, like An Hour with Spurgeon, A Visit to Bleak House, The Rt. Rev. the Moderator, James McGregor, D. D. —Chicago, the Marvelous City of the West : a History, an Encyclopædia, and a Guide. Written and compiled by John J. Flinn. (The Standard Guide Co., Chicago.) A flexibly bound book of more than six hundred and fifty pages, devoted to the Glorification of Chicago and the Enlightenment of the Stranger. A brief section treats of the city historically ; then follows, by topical and alphabetical arrangement, a survey of the city. The third section, entitled The Encyclopædia, is on the plan of the various city dictionaries, and is followed by a chapter on the World’s Fair, and finally by The Guide, which is a systematic inventory of the city, requiring thirty-one days for its execution. The Keeley Gold Cure figures very conspicuously, but perhaps the most delightful piece of brag is the list of Tributary Cities and Towns, beginning with Cincinnati and Cleveland, and not overlooking St. Louis. The large number of illustrations and the full map render still more complete this exultant and extremely interestnig advertisement of the business of a great city. — Annuaire des Îles SaintPierre et Miquelon pour l’Année 1891. (Imprimerie du Gouvernement, SaintPierre.) This year-book, besides giving the official directory, contains a long preface setting forth the geographical position, the geological formation, the natural productions, the fisheries, the commerce, meteorology, and finally an historical sketch. — The Barren Ground of Northern Canada, by Warburton Pike. (Macmillan.) A hunter’s record of experiences in the vast untrodden region where the caribou is found in innumerable herds, and the musk-ox still lifts his shaggy front. Mr. Pike made two journeys from Lake Athabasca, in the second pushing far to the north, bringing to light a chain of lakes, and coming very close to starvation. He is a rough-and-ready writer, with a manner which is dogged almost to moroseness ; but evidently he understates the hardships he encountered, as if he had a slight contempt for his reader.
Philosophy and Science. In the series of Modern Philosophers, edited by E. Hershey Sneath (Holt), a recent volume is The Philosophy of Spinoza, by G. S. Fullerton. The plan of the series is held to, of taking certain continuous writings of the philosopher which hold the main content of his system, and giving these with notes and such introductory matter as is required to set forth the personal history of the philosopher, and to indicate the place of his system in modern philosophy. — In the Evolution series (Appleton), two new numbers are, Form and Color in Nature, by William Potts, and Optics as Related to Evolution, by L. A. W. Alleman. These numbers are separate lectures delivered before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, and the discussion which followed the delivery is also given in a condensed form. The speakers are all apparently believers in the absolutely mechanical structure of the universe. — TheOak,aPopular Introduction to Forest-Botany, by H. Marshall Ward, is one of the volumes in Lubbock’s Modern Science series. (Appleton.) It treats, in untechnical language so far as possible, of the acorn and its germination, the seedling and young plant, the tree in its root-system and its shoot-system, its fruit and seed, and then discourses of oak timber, of the cultivation of the oak, and of its relationships. The book is abundantly illustrated, and has a special interest for foresters. — Materialism and Modern Philosophy of the Nervous System, by William H. Thomson. (Putnams.) A lively and interesting consideration of the problem of the brain and the fact of intermittent consciousness. — First Steps in Philosophy, Physical and Ethical, by W. M. Salter. (C. H. Kerr & Co., Chicago.) Mr. Salter aims to clear thought of obscurity and assumption, whether in the realm of the outer world or in the domain of human consciousness. Thus he seeks to set forth the true relation to thought of matter and duty. — The Grammar of Science, by Karl Pearson. (Walter Scott, London ; Scribners, New York.) The author’s apprehension of science as the interpretation of the universe renders his book, in his conception, an inquiry into the fundamental processes by which life in all its forms is classified, He is a most resolute agnostic, and the determination with which he will have nothing to do with any but sense impressions and the world constructed out of them is present from first to last. He handles biological and physical facts with great freedom as illustrations of his inquiry into the fundamental concepts of modern science, and the reader cannot complain bf looseness of statement or reasoning. — Mineral Resources of the United States, 1889, 1890, by David T. Day, is a volume of the reports of the United States Geological Survey. (Government Printing Office, Washington.) It is arranged topically, and under topics by States, and a full index makes the work very available from every point of view.— A Guide to Electric Lighting, for the Use of Householders and Amateurs, by S. R. Bottone. (Macmillan.) A liberally illustrated small volume, in which the various batteries, dynamos, lamps, accumulators, leads, switches, holders, fuses, ammeters, voltmeters, motors, are described and characterized, and the application of electric lighting with its cost is considered. A householder needs to be a somewhat proficient amateur to make much use of the book. — Matter, Ether, and Motion, the Factors and Relations of Physical Science, by A. E. Dolbear. (Lee & Shepard.) A notable attempt at simplifying the complexities of physical science, and setting forth the essential unity which underlies the diverse manifestations of the material world.
The author undertakes, as he says, to present in a systematic way the mechanical principles that underlie the phenomena in each of the different departments of the science, in a readable form and in an untecbnieal manner. The reader must not suppose that Mr. Dolbear is merely a colorless medium for the transmission of accepted views. He is an independent thinker, with acute powers.
Hygiene and Domestic Economy. First Aid in Illness and Injury, comprised in a Series of Chapters on the Human Machine, its Structure, its Implements of Repair, and the Accidents and Emergencies to which it is Liable, by James E. Pilcher. (Scribners.) The notion of mechanism is sustained throughout, and the author manages by this means to relieve his work of too technical a character, and to convey to the lay reader a somewhat more vivid conception of the parts of the human body and their functions than an ordinary physiological treatise would suggest. The main object is to furnish a handbook for soldiers, hunters, travelers, and others likely to be remote from surgeons, physicians, and hospitals ; but the book is so clear, so well illustrated, and so comprehensive that it might well serve for family use, especially in the country. — Earth - Burial and Cremation: the History of Earth-Burial with its Attendant Evils, and the Advantages Offered by Cremation. By Augustus G. Cobb. (Putnams.) Mr. Cobb points out the causes of the substitution of earth-burial for cremation in the early Christian centuries, though his discourse on that point is somewhat rambling and inconsequential. He is more at home when he comes to treat of the scientific aspects of the question, and presents his case strongly ; but his book is not a dispassionate examination of the subject ; it is the plea of an attorney. — Temperament, Disease, and Health, by French Elisor Chadwick. (Putnams.) A small book, in which the author, maintaining first that there is associated with temperament a specific rate of change, and secondly that the failure to keep up that rate is the primal cause of organic disease, enlarges upon the bacterial theory of disease, and then makes the practical application that one should attend to his skin. Whether or no one accepts the author’s somewhat comprehensive theory of disease, one is ready to admit that his prescriptions for prevention are efficacious, though they may not be exclusively so. — The Problem of Domestic Service, by Mrs. C. H. Stone. (Nelson Printing Co., St. Louis.) A sensible little pamphlet, in which the writer makes practical suggestions, all looking toward the training of girls in service. She has no pet scheme to urge, but seeks, by going to the root of difficulties, and taking into account the facts of human nature, to point the way to needed reform. — The Technique of Rest, by Anna C. Brackett (Harpers), is the outgrowth of an article bearing the same title, which appeared in Harper’s Magazine for June, 1891, and which the author called “an attempt to help some of the women who are tired.” The result is an admirable little book, full of wise counsel based on the idea that “ rest is only harmony between the inside and the outside conditions of life,” between the divine freedom within us and the hard necessity which surrounds us.
Linguistics. Max Müller and the Science of Language, a Criticism by William Dwight Whitney. (Appleton.) Professor Whitney takes up the latest revised edition of Müller’s book and criticises it in detail, returning to the strictures he has previously made, and bringing into one vigorous arraignment his charges against the author’s scholarship. He denies that the work is a scientific one, and asserts that it should rather be called “ Facts and Fancies in Regard to Language and Other Related Subjects.” — English Words, an Elementary Study of Derivations, by C. F. Johnson. (Harpers.) Those who, forty years or so ago, were delighted with Trench’s Study of Words and his other books of the same sort were not so well off as are the readers of this day who pick up Professor Johnson’s book ; for the latter are not worried by too much moralizing, and they get the benefit of the numerous researches in the subject which have followed Archbishop Trench’s early popularization of an infant science. The book is less adapted to textbook use than it is to the edification of the general reader. — The English Language and English Grammar: an Historical Study of the Sources, Development, and Analogues of the Language and of the Principles governing its Usages ; illustrated by Copious Examples from Writersof all Periods. By Samuel Ramsay. (Putnams.) Mr. Ramsay has written a very interesting book, presenting in the first halt a readable, not too learned, yet close account of the sources of English word-making, the alphabet, Grimm’s Law, pronunciation, and spelling, and in the latter a systematic statement of English grammar as based upon usage. The work is especially valuable because of its abundant reference to the best English ; for the author does not determine his principle and then look about for examples to prove it, but deduces his principles from the most authoritative usage.
Economics and Sociology. The Farmers’ Tariff Manual, by Daniel Strange. (Putnams.) The seventy-third number in the Questions of the Day series. The author passes in review the various commodities affected by protection, and decides that in no case is the result of common benefit. He then turns to the farmer, and seeks to demonstrate that, as there is no protection for exports, he gains nothing in what he sells, and loses on all that he buys. — Taxation and Work, a Series of Treatises on the Tariff and the Currency, by Edward Atkinson. (Putnams.) Mr. Atkinson is unfailingly lively and hopeful. His studies, which range over a wide field, are presented in a direct, personal manner which attracts the reader, and the situation is rendered more interesting by the answers which Mr. Atkinson elicited from various public men to the question “ What is the principle of protection ? ” —Annals of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, 1795-1892. (Press of Rockwell & Churchill, Boston.) An octavo volume of over six hundred pages, in which the proceedings of the association through its long and serviceable career are succinctly recorded, and the lives of the men who have made it what it is, the stronghold of New England workmen, are narrated, some at length, but most in single paragraphs. There is a sturdiness about this labor institution that at once impresses one, for its foundations are laid in work, and not in windy agitation. — Property, its Origin and Development, by Ch. Letourneau. The Contemporary Science series. (Imported by Scribners.) The author styles himself an “ evolutionary sociologist.” His book is a statement of the facts revealed by archæology and history as to the ways in which property has been held and transmitted up to the present time. Incidentally, considerable light is thrown on the position of women in different countries and times. As was to be expected, the treatise ends with a consideration of the social problem relating to property in our own days ; and in this part, though the author endeavors to avoid all personal theories and views, it is evident that he considers the accumulation of property in few hands the most threatening of the tendencies of the present time, and has grave fears that our civilization will end as all preceding ones have ended, because of the striking inequalities in the social position of people. His remedy for the present troubles lies in heavier taxes on inheritances. He does not consider a method of preventing the accumulation of great properties by a sliding scale of taxation according to income, though he refers to such a plan. The book is a very readable presentation of the views held at this time by scientific sociologists in regard to the relation of capital to labor, a subject which the author shows to be as old as history.
History and Biography. Centennial Celebration of the Inauguration of Washington, edited by C. W. Bowen. (Appleton.) This ponderous volume is the most elaborate record of any given to our recent commemorations. In the account of the ceremonials of 1789 and 1889, the contrast is not unfavorable to the earlier one. There was more parade, larger numbers, and a more lavish expenditure of money in the later one, but the result hardly exceeded the impressive dignity of the original celebration. The wealth of the book is in the photo-reproductions of portraits of the Washington period ; and in this respect it easily takes the leading place as a portrait gallery of the first days of the republic. The pictures are grouped on the ample page, but the insets are scattered somewhat arbitrarily through the volume, and a few of the portraits, capitally executed, are inserted in the text. The portion of the volume likely to be most resorted to is the elaborate and long final Chapter, in which the editor has used the notes accumulated in his search for pictures of the prominent men and women of that time. The task involved long-continued and perplexing investigations and correspondence, and Mr. Bowen was properly not content with using anything but an original for his reproductions, if access to such was possible. In hunting down the artists of anonymous or doubtful pictures, he has been abundantly successful. Washington and Franklin take the first places in the number of portraits. There has been a good deal done before for those of Washington, and the additional detail about them here is not very great ; but of those of Franklin there has never been so large a gathering before. There are a good many persons who find delight in the study of these old portraits, and Mr. Bowen has given them admirable help. — The Duchess of Berry and the Court of Louis XVIII., by Imbert de Saint-Amand ; translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. (Scribners.) All the brightness and gayety in the life of the French court during the first years of the Restoration centred about the young wife of the Duke of Berry, so entirely happy in the present, so confidently hopeful as to the future. M. de Saint-Amand sketches these years in his usual picturesque, readable fashion, if a little after the manner of a court-newsman, but the mam interest of his work will be found in the vivid account of the cruel tragedy with which they ended, and of the public unrest which followed, culminating in the excitement and almost frantic joy which attended the birth ot the child of miracle, Henri Dieudonné. This story, which for several reasons is well worth the telling, closes here with the death of Louis XVIII., but future volumes will continue the tale. Owing to haste or carelessness on the part of either author or translator, very obvious blunders arc occasionally evident throughout the book, as, for instance, when the future Queen of the French, miscalled Queen of France, is declared to be a sister of Marie Antoinette, and when, by some inexplicable confusion of words, the same lady and her sister, the Queen of Sardinia, are, so to speak, rolled into one. — The Two Republics of Rome and the United States of America, by Alonzo T. Jones. (Review and Herald Publishing Co., Battle Creek, Mich.) A volume of nearly nine hundred pages, in which the author, reviewing the history of Rome and the transition from a civil to an ecclesiastical government, as also the rise of Protestantism, aims to show that the system imbedded in our civil polity is diametrically opposed to that of Rome. The whole weight of this ponderous book appears to be lent to the abolition of Sunday laws. It looks as if the mountain were called in to crack a nut. — The New Empire, Reflections upon its Origin and Constitution, and its Relation to the Great Republic, by O. A. Howland. (Baker & Taylor Co., New York.) A thoughtful and interesting study, by a writer of eirenical temper, of the development of Canada as a part of the British Empire, its present tendencies, and the possible relations it may hold with the United States. He is at once opposed to Imperial federation as it is commonly preached, and to organic union with the United States.
—Diary of George Mifflin Dallas, while United States Minister to Russia, 1837 to 1839, and to England, 1856 to 1861 ; edited by Susan Dallas. (Lippincott.) Mr. Dallas was a dignified, urbane gentleman who represented our government acceptably at two courts. He kept a full diary, in which he recorded not only those incidents which pertained to his official relations, but a great deal of current history. If there were no newspapers of the period covered by his diary, the book would be more useful. As it is, a good deal of the matter is somewhat superfluous, and the reader will not often stumble upon very acute reflections ; but the fullness oi the record makes the work a fairly readable survey of the social and political life of two countries for two short periods. Mr. Dallas’s personality is not very vivid in this diary. — Spurgeon our Ally, by Justin D. Fulton. (H. J. Smith & Co., Chicago.) Mr. Fulton, who always has his sleeves rolled up, recognizes in Mr. Spurgeon a congenial spirit, and he has written a fighting book, not only to demonstrate that Spurgeon was at one with him in his hostility to the Roman Church, but to break the force of his supposed indulgence in lax views on the communion question, and to use him as a club with which to knock down his adversaries.
Theology, Ethics, and Ecclesiology. The Christian Literature Company of New York deserves well of the Church and of all students for its enterprise in bringing within reach the writings of the Nicene and PostNicene Fathers. The fourth volume of the series contains the Select Works and Letters of St. Athanasius in an octavo volume of six hundred pages. The admirable prolegomena furnished by Principal Archibald Robertson, learned in form and appearance, not only put the reader in possession of the essential historical facts, but provide a lucid clue to the understanding of the situation. The text itself is put into intelligible though not always luminous English, as witness such a sentence as this : “ For evil does not come from good, nor is it in, or the result of, good, since in that case it would not be good, being mixed in its nature or a cause of evil,” where by substituting the word “ good ” for the latter “ it ” the meaning is at once cleared. The whole subject of the Arian controversy is so vital that the opportunity which is here offered for an historical study ought to be valued highly by theological and historical students. Much is involved beyond a dialectic. — Indications of the Second Book of Moses, called Exodus, by Edward B. Latch. (Lippincott.) As in previous books by Mr. Latch, there is an attempt at discovering a cryptic sense of Scripture, by which the Hebraic annals are made to involve a prophetic history of the world.—The Evolution of Christianity, by Lyman Abbott. (Houghton.) From the point of view which one takes, the earth is now a solid, now a gas ; and so in a survey of Christianity, to one the most apparent element is its positiveness, to another its mobility. Where shall one put the emphasis ? Was the faith delivered once for all to the saints, or was it once delivered to them to be expanded, to grow, to enlarge them and be enlarged by them ? Dr. Abbott is one of those who are most impressed by the everlasting dynamics in Christianity, and, dwelling upon that, he may appear to some to ignore the everlasting statics. Happy he whose poise of thought is not thereby transmuted into immobility. — God’s Image in Man, by Henry Wood. (Lee & Shepard.) Mr. Wood, accepting the fundamental truth that man was made in the image of God, proceeds in a series of thoughtful chapters to consider the being of God as disclosed through nature, law, the Scriptures, the Christ, the consciousness of man himself, and everywhere finds it possible to translate the idea of fatherhood into these various terms. He aims to get at the reality of this relation, and he succeeds certainly in clearing away much of the scholastic and traditional incumbrance. His insight is often keen and illuminating, and though his thought is not always pitched at the same high key, his writing is sure to interest the growing number of persons who, at one with historic belief, are dissatisfied with much of the theological reasoning which undertakes to substantiate this belief.
Fiction, Roweny in Boston, and Mrs. Keats Bradford, by Maria Louise Pool. (Harpers.) These two books form really the first and second volumes of a novel which centres about the experience of a young New England girl with a genius for painting, who goes to Boston in a self-reliant spirit, makes so strong a beginning in her art as to be sent by her teacher to Paris, marries there a cultivated Bostonian, finds life with him intolerable because of the subordination of her real vocation, returns to Boston and her home, and finally, on the last page of the second volume, enjoys a reconciliation with her long-suffering husband. The merit of the work lies chiefly in the close portraiture of New England country life, and in the humorous delineation of character. Miss Pool finds it difficult, we should say, to restrain her tendency to caricature, but the pictures both of Mrs. Tuttle and of Sarah Kimball, as well as of some minor characters, are exceptionally faithful. So also is the character of Miss Phillips, with her successive fads amusingly sketched. It is when Miss Pool resorts to the conventionalities of the fashionable novel that she fails, as in the dealings between Mrs. Bradford and Mr. Soule. But the two books are worth reading for the many touches of nature. With more constructive skill the author may well produce a sustained piece of fiction. —In their series of translations from Balzac, Messrs. Roberts Brothers have published Pierrette, including also the Viear of Tours. Both stories are in the section Scenes from Provincial Life. Twentytwo volumes, counting the Life, have now appeared. — There have been those who tested new acquaintances by their appreciation of Jane Austen’s works, and there are some who, in a lesser degree, are influenced by expressions of opinion in regard to the novels of the Baroness Tantphœus, who has been personally almost as little known to the literary world of her time as Miss Austen was to hers, and whose list of works is even shorter. Of her four novels, Cyrilla achieved but a moderate success, and At Odds was, comparatively speaking, a failure, but The Initials, first published in 1850, and Quits, seven years later, have a perennial freshness and a never-failing charm. Their American admirers have long regretted that no good edition of these books could be easily found here, and so the altogether attractive reprint of The Initials issued by Messrs. Putnam’s Sons will be as welcome to them as to a new generation of readers.
— Sybil Knox, or Home Again, by Edward E. Hale. (Cassell.) One gets a good many things in this lively story. He gets the story itself, with all its involutions and clever dovetailing of remote incidents ; he gets the adventures of an expatriated American woman returning to her homestead and finding a new life among American women ; he gets a narrative of rascality among railway managers ; and off and on he gets bits of shrewd wisdom about life in America under American conditions.
— When a Man’s Single, by J. M. Barrie. (The Waverly Co., New York.) The adventures of a young Scotsman who has a turn for journalism, and makes his career first in the provinces, then in London. There is a teasing quality in the tale, as if Mr. Barrie were half afraid of disclosing too much. The story is slight ; the entertainment is in the glimpses of journalistic experience. — A Maiden of Mars, by General F. M. Clarke. (C. H. Sergel & Co., Chicago.) When novelists, by one device or another, betake themselves to the favorite hunting-ground of some minds, they seem somehow to take leave of human interests. These manufactured folk are a dull lot.—A reissue of Herman Melville’s works has been begun, and Typee and Omoo have appeared. (United States Book Co.) Mr. Arthur Stedman writes a biographical and bibliographical introduction to Typee, in which he sets forth Melville’s personality in a clear and discriminating manner ; telling the little that is to be told frankly and unaffectedly. It is difficult to believe that Typee will not enjoy a new life and captivate another generation. Indeed, it is so pagan in its way that we fancy it may find readers who will like it especially for this element. Moreover, it holds in solution a South Sea life never again to be seen. Melville saw it as Powers saw the Greek Slave. Out of New England came the missionary and the artist, and the latter was moved to a certain abandon in his art because of his instinctive antagonism to the former. — A recent volume in the reissue of William Black’s novels (Harpers) is one containing the two tales of The Maid of Killeena and The Marriage of Moira Fergus. — The Wide, Wide World, by Elizabeth Wetherell. (Lippincott.) A new edition of this timehonored piece of American fiction is issued, with a large number of illustrations by Frederick Dielman. The story, aside from its strong flavor of evangelic teaching, has many intimate pictures of New England country life ; and though these have a somewhat glazed surface, they do hold characteristics of a life which is already becoming obsolete. There is, moreover, a certain gentle breeding about the story which has made it acceptable to many, and Miss Warner wrote the book out of a genuine conviction, so that its piety has salt. —Ruth Marsh, a Story of the Aroostook, by F. Bean. (United States Book Co.) A short novel of rustic scenes, the situations and characters exaggerated, and a strong effort made by the author to be effective at every step.—Manitou Island, by M. G. McClelland. (Holt.) This is a novel of “reconstructed ” Southern life. Were it not for the needlessly disagreeable plot, and the tiresome tangle of relationships involved by it, we should recommend the volume unreservedly. As it is, in spite of these defects we are glad to recognize it as a well-written and interesting story, which strikes a certain note of sombre reality that sets it apart from the rank and file of current fiction. — The Downfall (Cassell), translated from La Débâcle of Émile Zola, offers no new phase of this writer’s mighty talent. It is probably too late for that. The novel, which of course commemorates the sickening decline and fall of the Second Empire, ranks with neither the best nor the worst of its predecessors. It is wholly decent, — at least in translation, — and it abounds in savage details. These often defeat the author’s purpose in producing them, but occasionally aggregate in a powerful mass of impression, as when he describes the battle of Sedan. Another characteristic of this realistic romanticist, by the way, shows itself in the fact that the battle brings the reader to far the highest pitch of interest, although a long inclined plane has to be descended before the last page is numbered. — Recent paper-covered novels are : Verbena Camellia Stephanotis, and Other Stories, by Walter Besant (Harpers) ; Cynthia Wakeham’s Money, by Anna Katharine Green (Putnams) ; A Transplanted Rose, by Mrs. John Sherwood (Harpers) ; A Man’s Conscience, by Avery Macalpine (Harpers); Sarchedon, by G. J. Whyte-Melville (Rand, McNally & Co.).
Literature and Criticism. The predilection of Johnson, Boswell, and Lamb has been justified in the brilliant success of Mr. Laurence Hutton’s Literary Landmarks of London. (Harpers.) The book has become a standard work, as we had the pleasure of prophesying it might (in 1885, the year of original publication), and it has now passed into an eighth edition, with portraits added for the first time. Nothing has been too heavy or too light for Mr. Hutton’s patient investigation, from early insurance surveys to a manual by the younger Dickens ; and this edition of the Literary Landmarks has, so far as possible, been brought along to the last chronological milestone. — A well edited and fairly well chosen selection from Lamb’s Letters (MeClurg) and a collection of the Letters of Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins (Harpers) will let the comparativelyminded see how much better Lamb did the epistolary act than Dickens. — Old Shrines and Ivy, by William Winter. (Macmillan.) The first division of this book, Shrines of History, contains various English and Scottish travel - sketches, similar in style and tone to those which have gained such wide and favorable acceptance in the author’s earlier volumes, Shakespeare’s Country and Gray Days and Gold, The more noteworthy papers of the second part, Shrines of Literature, are the interesting and valuable introductions which Mr. Winter wrote for the stage-versions of certain of Shakespeare’s plays, edited and privately printed by Augustin Daly. The Forest of Arden is especially to be commended to those literalists who search in France for that Warwickshire woodland known to the poet from his childhood, and which, transfigured by his imagination, served as the enchanted scene of the most English of pastoral comedies, to be for all time the delight of readers of our race, and the despair of foreigners. — Messrs. Lippincott have brought out in five handsome volumes what may be called the Works of Lord Chesterfield ; for they have not only reprinted Lord Mahon’s edition of the Letters published in 1845, but also the supplementary volume issued in 1853, containing parliamentary speeches, miscellaneous addresses, essays from various periodicals, poems, etc. The omitted passages from certain letters first printed in this volume are in this edition inserted in the letters to which they belong. As this the standard edition of Chesterfield’s writings has for some years been a rather scarce work, the lovers of eighteenth-century literature, a not inconsiderable body of readers, will welcome this admirable reprint of Lord Mahon’s volumes.
Books for Young People. Little-Folk Lyrics, by Frank Dempster Sherman. (Houghton.) A little volume of playful verse, in which the writer almost unconsciously, one may say, for the most part dramatizes as an imaginative and fanciful child. He is not quite so original in this as Mr. Stevenson in his inimitable A Child’s Garden of Verse, but he is by no means without his own special skill and charm. The verses are such as a happy, healthy-minded child will enjoy in companionship with an older friend, and the older reader will find a common ground on which they may meet. There is a genuine touch of poetry in the book, and now and then, as in The Archer, a strong conceit. — The Clocks of Rondaine, and Other Stories, by Frank R. Stockton. (Scribners.) A baker’s halfdozen of stories which have the grave manner of this story-teller who has cultivated the art of seriousness until he has almost imposed on himself. We should like to watch some unsuspicious reader, unused to Mr. Stockton, at the moment when the author’s drollery began to dawn upon him. — Flying Hill Farm, by Sophie Swett. (Harpers.) A lively book, detailing with humorous minuteness the fortunes of various young people. Some of the situations seem a little strained, in the writer’s anxiety to make her story interesting, but there is a healthy tone throughout, and a keen sense of the amusing. Boys and girls alike will get a deal of honest entertainment out of it. — Young Lucretia, and Other Stories, by Mary E. Wilkins. (Harpers.) Miss Wilkins does not dub these “ stories for children,” and we suspect mature readers will get the greatest pleasure out of them. Nevertheless they will go straight to the heart — all of her stories take that road — of the young because of the inimitable skill with which in many of them she sets forth the fleeting sorrows and joys of her little people. It is noticeable that most of the stories turn upon some childish trouble, keeping in tune thus with her stories for the old, but there is more sunshine in these tales. The humor is delightful. — Kent Hampden, by Rebecca Harding Davis. (Scribners.) A skillful story of adventure some seventy years ago, the scenes of which are laid in and about Wheeling. A clever use is made of Henry Clay, but the hero of the book is a boy. We have really nothing to urge against a boy who saves his father’s reputation, except our old-fashioned dislike to putting boys on monuments. — It is perhaps hardly fair to include here East and West, a Story of New-Born Ohio, by Edward E. Hale (Cassell), but the story is so sure to interest young readers that we name it with books for them. It narrates the experience of two young Salem people who separately and in different ways found themselves in the northwest territory during the first occupation of it. The bright picture of Salem life with which it opens is succeeded by spirited sketches of frontier experience and Indian fighting. — An Affair of Honor, by Alice Weber. (Lippincott.) A novel for young people. The author has undertaken to make as complex a tale, with the elements of character, mystery, sentiment, and humor, as if she were appealing to mature readers, while the heroine is a mere child. A good deal of painstaking has gone into the work, but we question if it was quite worth while. — Uncle Bill’s Children, by Helen Milman. (Lippincott.) The story of the experience of a young man who carried off his sister’s children to the seashore to relieve his sister. There is a good deal of honest fun in the description of the plague they were to him, and mixed with the fun considerable childish piety of the kind which in books affects the uncle seriously. One has no objection to other uncles reading the book, but finds his refuge when he thinks of other children reading it in the thought that flesh-andblood youngsters will be likely to skip the religious innuendoes of Master Jack. The hook is of English origin. — Bimbi, Stories for Children, by Louisa de la Ramé ; illustrated by E. H. Garrett. (Lippincott.) This volume by Onida is so free from the qualities which possess her books for mature readers that one likes to believe he has stumbled here upon the real person, and that the Ouida of fame is a made-up character. There is, it is true, a sort of musk about these stories, even, but there is also a genuine sympathy with young life. The Nürnberg Stove and Moufflon will not readily be forgotten by young readers.
Humor and Fun. A Letter of Introduction, Farce, by W. D. Howells. (Harpers.) In the pretty little Black and White series. Mr. Howells’s yearly contribution to the gayety of the nation is this time built, as his light fabrics are, upon a very light foundation, but it enables him to work airily the familiar incident of the Englishman learning the American tongue. — The Dragon of Wantley, his Rise and his Downfall, a Romance, by Owen Wister ; illustrations by John Stewardson. (Lippincott.) There is a hint in the dedication that a more subtle significance attaches to this book than is apprehensible by the uninitiated reader ; but how much soever laughter it may hold for Mr. Wister’s playmates, the general public will get its full share of entertainment. It is a burlesque and grotesque piece of nonsense, told with spirit and fun and in good taste. It is mere fooling, and does not have the biting and lasting element of satire ; perhaps for that reason we must amuse ourselves with it now, and leave our descendants to their own sources of mirth. The pictures are as spirited and telling as the story. We are not sure but they deserve even higher praise. — The Bull Calf, and Other Tales, by A. B. Frost. (Scribners.) An oblong book, containing a series of jocular pictures with slight legends beneath. The process used occasionally leaves one in doubt what the lines of a figure mean, but the humor is generally forcible enough to knock the idea into the head without a previous surgical operation.—A Book of Cheerful Cats and Other Animated Animals, by J, G. Francis. (The Century Co.) A merry book, in which every quality of the eat save its grace is amusingly travestied, and the domestic animal, with a few of its friends and relatives, is made to masquerade in human scenes. There is genuine fun in the book, and not a little wit.