Comment on New Books

Poetry. It is only fair to judge a poet who publishes two volumes within a single year by the second, especially when he says of its contents that “ he has endeavored to exercise a critical discrimination, and, to the best of his ability, to correct or expunge the frequent obscurity, superfluity, and exaggerated expression of the earlier works.”It is thus that Mr. Madison Cawein introduces his Poems of Nature and Love (Putnams), which follows close upon the heels of Red Leaves and Roses (same publishers). The faults of this earlier volume, and indeed its predecessors, could hardly be better defined than in the author’s own words. The latest book is not so heavily burdened with them, but a great many red leaves are still left among the roses. The author has even now before him great opportunities for the exercise of self-restraint, to the end that his really poetic imaginings may be less often obscured by a too abundant gift of words. — Athelwold, by Amélie Rives. (Harpers.) “Kissing on a hill,” or wherever else need be, plays a prominent part in this drama of old England. It is but another reading of the favorite old story of a king’s deputy lover who takes heart to “ speak for himself,” and falls upon destruction in consequence. The attempt at archaic diction is not wholly a success, as the phrase,

will testify. Nor does the strength of the tragedy lie in its dramatic construction. The best things about it are occasional bits of pretty phrasing, such as Elfreda’s when she says, —

— The Great Remembrance, and Other Poems, by Richard Watson Gilder. (The Century Co.) A canon of poetry might be made to read — all poems are occasional, but some are more occasional than others. Somehow it happens that when the occasion is of the spirit, and not of outward circumstance, the poem seems more usually a thing to be desired. In so small a book as this last one of Mr. Gilder’s, it is not quite encouraging to discover a sort of poetical Topics of the Time. A Grand Army reunion, various aspects of the World’s Fair, the deaths of great men, the playing of Paderewski and of Duse, —these give the main occasion to Mr. Gilder’s Muse. Magazine subjects, it is almost fair to call them ; and certainly it is fair to say that they are touched upon often with grace, and sometimes with force. As for permanence in poetry, it is perhaps fairer still to say that, from the nature of things, such themes, except under the touch of genius, are wont to be “ embalmed in verse ” in a sense not contemplated by the hopeful poets of old. — Poems Here at Home, by James Whitcomb Riley. (The Century Co.) How much of the success of Mr. Riley’s verses depends upon their dialect may be inferred from the fact, which nobody can help observing in this book, that most of the rhymes in plain English which it contains are in no marked manner distinguished from the rhymes of other good men — whose books do not sell. That, however, is merely to say that Mr. Riley is far more at home in the poems for which the uncouth speech of children of smaller and larger growth is the best vehicle of expression. With how quaint a fancy he does these things very few readers need be told. Whether such verses shall be skipped in books — as they sometimes are in magazines — depends upon individual tastes. Certain it is that nobody will quarrel with the fitness of illustrating Mr. Riley’s rhymes with what may be called Mr. Kemble’s dialect drawings.— The Other Side, an Historic Poem, by Virginia Frazer Boyle. (Printed at the Riverside Press.) A Southern woman’s vigorous expression of memories of the past and conditions of the present. The little book is hardly of equal poetical strength throughout, but it possesses the serviceable merit of ending quite strongly enough to leave one with a last impression that is favorable. — Songs for the Hour, by D. M. Jones. (Lippincott.) The audience for which Mr. Jones has done most of his singing is evidently the Welsh population in and about Wilkesbarre. It is well, therefore, that there is music in some of the verses, even if they do not possess the qualities of greatness which might interfere with Mr. Jones’s career as a local bard. — Bay Leaves, Translations from the Latin Poets, by Goldwin Smith. (Macmillan.) The peculiar merit of this collection of bits translated here and there from nine Latin poets is that each poet retains something of his original flavor. Regarding them simply as English verses, it is almost as if they were by nine different persons, and all of them writers of agreeable verse, — and that is no mean achievement. One may quarrel occasionally with a rhyme, as of now with no, and may question one point of propriety which presents itself with some frequency : in putting the Latin poets into English is one at liberty to draw freely from the phrases of English poets ? Of Lesbia’s sparrow, for example, it is a little surprising to read : —

Possibly the spirit of a poem’s new language is caught by the use of phrases which have entered into the very substance of English speech ; but the effect upon the reader is somewhat bewildering. He cannot be quite sure whether he is reading Catullus, let us say, or Mr. Smith, or somebody else. Getting away from familiar translations is probably as great a difficulty ; else the happy man of Horace would never have been described as he “ who tills his old paternal lot.” But, trivialities aside, the translations as a whole are excellent, and the book deserves very well of the class to which it will appeal.

Books for the Young. Two more volumes have been added to the not inconsiderable collection of boys’ books called forth by the Year of Columbus. Westward with Columbus, by Gordon Stables, R. N. (Scribners), follows its hero’s life from his childhood till his death, and the author shows a genuine enthusiasm for his subject that will be apt to prove contagious. Columbus is really the central figure of the story, most of the fictitious characters being introduced merely to fill the scene. The tale keeps very close to history, and is written with simplicity and good taste. — Diccon the Bold, by John Russell Coryell (Putnams), is the story of a sturdy, honest English lad who is the sole survivor from a ship destroyed by Mediterranean pirates. Cast upon the Spanish coast, he is kindly cared for by a Jewish family, and thus becomes a suspect of the Inquisition. After various haps and mishaps, he sails with Columbus, and has the proper modicum of New World adventure before returning in safety to his native land. A well-constructed and readable tale, wholesome in tone, and in the main notably free from exaggeration and undue sensationalism. — Recent additions to what may be called the Kirk Munroe Boys’ Library of Adventure are, Raftmates, a Story of the Great River (Harpers), and The Coral Ship, a Story of the Florida Reef. (Putnams.) The former is a companion volume to Dorymates, Campmates, and Canoemates, and, like its predecessors, it is a breathless succession of exciting incidents, hairbreadth escapes, and overwhelming catastrophes, all leading to the fortunate ending which comes at the latest practicable moment. The Coral Ship, on the whole the best tale yet issued in the Rail and Water Series, tells how a Spanish galleon, laden with the spoils of Mexico, is wrecked on the Florida Reef, and an English prisoner, Sir Richard Allanson, and some negro slaves alone are saved. A youthful descendant of Sir Richard is wrecked in the same Spot, and, need we say, discovers the remains of the Spanish ship, incrusted with coral, and also a devoted servitor in the living representative of the chief of the rescued slaves. We commend, while we wonder at, the moderation which makes the salvage from the richly freighted galleon but a single golden vase and a few bars of silver.

History and Biography. Sefton, a Descriptive and Historical Account, comprising the Collected Notes and Researches of the late Rev. Engelbert Horley, together with the Records of the Mock Corporation, by W. D. Caröe and E. J. A. Gordon. ( Longmans.) One of the most remarkable churches to be found in Lancashire — a church peculiarly rich in archæological and historical interest — is that of Sefton, a village so near to Liverpool that it should be an easy resource to those Americans who, eager for the older England, are unwillingly detained in that very modern city. This exceedingly handsome volume, designed as a tribute to the late rector of Sefton, contains a description of the church, and a sketch of its history largely founded upon material he had collected. This also included notes on some of his predecessors, and on certain members of the two great families of the neighborhood whose effigies are to be found in the Molyneux and Blundell chapels. The earlier division of the work, which is very well illustrated, is interesting and readable, though probably less complete than it would have been in the hands of its originator; but we think the editors were ill advised in not confining the notice of the Mock Corporation to the two papers written by Mr. Horley. As it is, the annals of this eighteenth-century convivial club occupy an inordinate amount of space in comparison with the really valuable portions of the book. — Personal Recollections of Nathaniel Hawthorne, by Horatio Bridge. (Harpers.) Mr. Bridge has done excellent service in giving permanent shape to his recollections ; for not only does he publish some very interesting correspondence with Hawthorne, but in a simple, unaffected fashion he gives agreeable hints of Hawthorne’s personality among those who were not distinctively literary. — Abraham Lincoln — Was he a Christian? by John B. Remsburg. (The Truth Seeker Company, New York.) Mr. Remsburg prints on his title-page these words, “ I am not a Christian. - LINCOLN,” and then devotes more than three hundred pages to proving this negative. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles ? — The Baroness Burdett-Coutts, a Sketch of her Public Life and Work, prepared for the Lady Managers of the World’s Columbian Exposition by Command of Her Royal Highness, Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck. (McClurg.) The letters at the beginning of this little book show how Mrs. Potter Palmer requested it, and the Duchess of Teck commanded it. It is apparently thought superfluous to give the author’s name, but as he claims nothing more than the distinction of having hastily put together the main facts of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts’s service to mankind, it is perhaps as well. The facts, to any reader skeptical of the use that can be made of great wealth, must be amazing. — My Year in a Log Cabin, by W. D. Howells. (Harpers.) One of the little Black and White Series, and a delightful bit of recollection of youth. It is not so much what happened as the effect upon the boy’s consciousness here reflected, possibly refracted in memory, that interests both writer and reader. Yet we sigh a little over these autobiographic bits. Can it be that Howells thinks he is an old man ? — Historical Tales, The Romance of Reality, by Charles Morris. (Lippincott.) A series of four volumes, devoted respectively to American, English, French, and German history. The author says that his design has been “ to cull from the annals of the nations some of their more stirring and romantic incidents, and present them as a gallery of pictures that might serve to adorn the entrance to the temple of history, of which this work is offered as in some sense an illuminated antechamber.” Less rhetorically, we may state that each volume contains from twenty-five to thirty such incidents, usually well selected, and narrated in a concise and fairly readable fashion, and with more simplicity of style than the writer’s preface would lead one to expect. The chief merit of the books is that possibly these fragments may excite in some readers a desire for the whole story, well told. — Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantès. (Scribners.) A new edition of a translation which in its earlier form appeared in London in 1831-35, the volumes closely following the publication of the originals in Paris. In the English version the opening portion of the work was but slightly abridged, but probably its length proved alarming, and omissions multiplied in the later volumes. As, afterward, the same plan was pursued in preparing the abridgment of this translation, which is now reprinted, the later chapters are naturally fragmentary in effect, — the account of so important an incident, for example, as the tragic death of Junot, with the melancholy attendant circumstances, being reduced to a few incoherent paragraphs. Madame Junot was such a gossiping, discursive, and voluminous chronicler that a rather severe condensation was inevitable ; and while we wish that it had been better proportioned, and her personal history less summarily dealt with in the last volume, we are thankful for the good provided us, and glad that so handsome a reissue of the memoirs has been placed in the hands of a new generation of readers. These will probably find the work “ full of quotations,” so largely, during the last sixty years, has it been drawn upon by writers treating of the social life of the Consulate and Empire. Madame Junot wrote from an exceptionally intimate knowledge of the Bonaparte family and the imperial court, and if her entertaining pages must occasionally be taken with certain reserves, the various reminiscences, written from widely differing standpoints, which have followed hers, attest, on the whole, her graphic power and substantial accuracy. It is greatly to be regretted that a sketch of the later years of the author’s life should not have been prefixed to this edition. There could be no sadder contrast than that between the young, brilliant, elegant, and, it must be added, incurably extravagant Gouvernante de Paris and the woman, poor, ill, and harassed by debts, who spent her failing strength in writing with feverish rapidity volume after volume of her recollections of happier times, — Women of Versailles, The Court of Louis XV., by Imbert de Saint-Amand. Translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. (Scribners.) The miserable story of the sovereign who should have been called Louis the Weak is here followed from the accession of the childking in 1715 to the death of the queen in 1768. Louis XV. and the women of his court have been so often depicted by keen observers with the true Gallic skill in pen portraiture that M. de Saint-Amand has had no difficulty in presenting a series of vivid character sketches. If the lights in the king’s picture, such as they are, are given their full effect, the likeness of the timid, irresolute, ennuyé sensualist is in the main a faithful one. As a wholesome relief, and in sharpest contradistinction to the presentments of the sisters de Nesle and the Pompadour, we have in her simple dignity the figure of the long-suffering Marie Leezinska, — the last woman who lias died queen of France, — who, with her like-minded son and daughters, led a decorous and pious life, unaffected by the surrounding pandemonium. — Old Court Life in France, by Frances Elliot. (Putnams.) That this work should be thought worthy of republication, twenty years after its first appearance, may be sufficient justification for the complacency of the author’s preface to the new edition. But, except that she has read many French memoirs, she shows few qualifications for, in her own words, portraying “ the substance and spirit of history, without affecting to maintain its form and dress.” Even as a purveyor of historical gossip she evinces small insight into character, and little sense of the distinction between possible fact and the idle rumors which crystallize into legends. Her style is commonplace, and the imaginary illustrative incidents and conversations scattered through the book cannot be commended either for literary grace or as bits of historical fiction. But there is a large number of readers who like a réchauffé of this kind, and care not at all whether or no it be really history or literature. The volumes are well printed, handsomely bound, and liberally illustrated.—Louis Agassiz, his Life and Work, by Charles Frederick Holder. (Putnams.) We cannot help feeling that this book was written more because a Life of Agassiz was a necessity in a series on Leaders of Science than for any intrinsic need of such a volume. It is not so much shorter than Mrs. Agassiz’s Life of her husband as to take the relative position of a handbook, nor does it attempt, except in the direction of unnecessary pictures, to cover more ground than that established book of authority upon the subject. It does survey with comprehensive view the great scientist’s career from Switzerland to Brazil, and as one volume in a series takes its place creditably enough.— Clarke Aspinall, a Biography, by Walter Lewin. (Edward W. Allen, London.) Mr. Lewin’s excellent introduction, in which he makes a study of biographical writing, encourages one to hope for more than he gets in the rest of the book. Mr. Aspinall was a well-known figure in Liverpool, and a man plainly of marked individuality, but the narrative of his life scarcely goes beyond the demands of a local audience who already knew him. — The third volume of J. R. Green’s A Short History of the English People in its illustrated form, as edited by Mrs. Green and Miss Kate Norgate (Harpers), follows hard upon the second. It contains the eighth and ninth chapters, covering the century which saw Puritanism regnant and then supplanted by the Stuart restoration, which is just about to give way, as the volume closes, to the Orange revolution. The portraits, the reproduction of contemporaneous prints, the architectural bits, copies of coins, and a variety of other objects illustrative of the period continue to show the good judgment and taste of the editors. The frontispiece, a folding sheet in colors, is a very interesting view of London Bridge, the earliest genuine view known. If anything could add to the charm of Mr. Green’s writing, it is these serviceable illustrations. — Leaves from the Autobiography of Tommaso Salvini. (The Century Co.) It is refreshing to find somebody “ who is somebody ” taking himself with thorough seriousness, in this day and generation. When Salvini has to tell of his dramatic triumphs, is he beguiled into treating them as matters of small concern ? Far from it. “I was receiving the ovations of the public, and was almost buried in the flowers that were thrown to me.” Such an occasion he delights especially to chronicle. When most of the world acts so well in hiding through very self-consciousness the things which are most grateful to personal pride, here is the actor tossing the mask away, acting not at all, but speaking with utter childlike frankness of the joy of his successes. The book, moreover, owes a large share of its interest to Salvini’s remarks regarding his greatest contemporaries on the French, English, and American stage ; but, with due deference to the Century Company’s habits of spelling, we must believe that he formed his opinions in a theatre, and not a theater.—Sam Houston and the War of Independence in Texas, by Alfred M. Williams. (Houghton.) Mr. Williams had a picturesque subject to deal with, and one, moreover, tempting to the pictorial writer. He has resisted any temptation to make a brilliant book, and has made a thoroughly reliable one. His narrative is clear, straightforward, and close to facts. Its temperateness of tone might mislead some, but any one who knows the rubbish that has been raised over the subject will be grateful to an author who has sought so steadily for the actual facts of history and biography.

Education. Outlines of Pedagogics, by W. Rein. Translated by C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew. (Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London ; C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.) Professor Rein is the Director of the Pedagogical Seminary at the University of Jena, and externally and internally this work gives evidence of having been delivered in the form of lectures. Like objects imported under the McKinley tariff, it might well bear the label of Germany as the country of origin. The subject is approached from the philosophical rather than the immediately practical side, and the book will appeal to the increasing class which studies the problems of education as problems of pure science. — The Kindergarten, edited by Kate Douglas Wiggin. (Harpers.) Mrs. Wiggin introduces this collection of papers with one of her own on the Relation of the Kindergarten to Social Reform, and the half dozen other writers all struggle more or less successfully with the philosophy of the system. Mrs. Rollins, however, in her Seed, Flower, and Fruit of the Kindergarten, brings her matter into a pretty direct and concrete form by her amusing contrast of the old-fashioned teacher and the kindergartner in their dealing with specific cases.

Textbooks. The Classic Myths in English Literature, based chiefly on Bulfinch’s Age of Fable. Accompanied by an Interpretative and Illustrative Commentary. Edited by Charles Mills Gayley. (Ginn.) This book may be regarded as a pioneer, and also a most useful handbook. It marks the deliberate attempt to incorporate the study of myths, chiefly as elements of literature, but also in their comparative significance, into a liberal education. Under present conditions this seems almost requisite ; yet if we could have our way, every child would become familiar with these myths from reading them in childhood as stories and legends, so that when he came into the analytical study of English literature he would have no more trouble with these allusions than he would with references to the games he had played at recess.

Literature and Literary History. The new edition of Thoreau (Houghton), of which we spoke last month, has been brought to a conclusion by the publication of six more volumes : Excursions, Miscellanies, and the four seasons, Early Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. The new grouping of the volumes of fragments is more orderly than before, and in the Miscellanies some uncollected matter is for the first time made convenient to the student of Thoreau. We say “student” advisedly, for we greatly doubt if the idle reader will attempt his translations from Pindar. A general index in the final volume is ail admirable appointment, for one’s recollection of Thoreau is of bits which it is hard to localize. Each volume besides has its own index. In re-reading one discovers single sentences which ought to be proverbs, so compact are they of rare wisdom. — The Scribners’ series of Cameo books has a charming addition to its numbers in Mr. Stevenson’s Virginibus Puerisque. There is no better test of a friend than to find him, after an absence, in strange apparel, and to prove that, in spite of new appearances, the old companionship may be taken up without a regret. Nothing of Mr. Stevenson’s is old enough to have outgrown utterly the reigning fashions of its first days, but to come upon Virginibus Puerisque in the best clothes of this our own year of grace is to ask afresh whether its wisdom, its cleverness, and its enchanting verbal texture can ever become “out of date.” — The Cloister and the Hearth, illustrated from drawings by William Martin Johnson. (Harpers.) Charles Reade’s wonderful and opulent romance is here presented in two shapely volumes, illustrated, decorated, embellished with side-note pictures, borders, portraits of Reade and Erasmus, headpieces, tailpieces, all manner of single figures and buildings and bits of landscape, but with scarcely anything that can be called composition. The book is a mediæval museum, at the hands both of author and designer, though the author also has made the story strong by his frequent groupings and his vivid narrative. There is more character, often, in the faces in the drawings than there is strength of art in the strictly decorative treatment, which is rather copious than choice. — Early Printed Books, by E. Gordon Duff. (Imported by Scribners.) This is one of the best contributions to the series of Books about Books. Recognizing the fact that “ small books on large subjects are, for the most part, both superficial and imperfect,” the author has tried to avoid the danger involved, and is helped in his endeavor by the nature of his subject. Of the very beginnings of printing, with which the book has to deal, there is of necessity a limited amount of knowledge accessible. Mr. Duff has sifted the facts relating to the early printers of various countries and towns, and, preserving some of the least obvious and most significant, has attained very satisfactory results. It is fitting that all of these Books about Books represent so well what the best book-makers, merely as such, can do to-day. — Messrs. Charles Scribner’s Sons have put up five of Mr. George W. Cable’s books, Old Creole Days, Dr. Sevier, Bonaventure, Strange True Stories of Louisiana, and the Grandissimes, in a neat uniform style, in anticipation of the day when Cable’s Works shall be recognized as belonging to what is commonly called standard American literature. — An Index to Harper’s New Monthly Magazine covers the first eighty-five volumes, from June, 1850, to November, 1892. By an ingenious device, the pages of the former index, covering seventy volumes, have been used, but made to alternate with pages partly filled with the index to the later fifteen volumes. This is a better arrangement than to make the supplementary index in a body at the end of the book. (Harpers.) — Messrs. Putnam’s Sons have reprinted, in the same style as last year’s Hildegarde Edition of The Initials. Fredrika Bremer’s The Home, in Mary Hewitt’s excellent and sympathetic translation. It is pleasant to meet this old friend in so attractive a guise, and the volumes might well be regarded as a Jubilee edition, fifty years having passed since the appearance of this English version of what has probably proved the most enduringly popular of its author’s novels. — Messrs. Little, Brown & Co. have brought out, in their beautiful edition of Dumas’s novels, Olympe de Clèves, not one of the most widely known of its author’s historical romances, but taking a sufficiently high rank amongst them to make it a little surprising that this excellent translation should be, as is claimed, the first English version of the tale.

Books of Reference. A Dictionary of Foreign Phrases and Classical Quotations, edited by R. D. Blackman. (Putnams.) This is one of the books that might perfectly well have been very good, if only the trouble had been taken to make them a few degrees better. Its material is abundant, but rather ill arranged. “ Where the meaning of Foreign Idiom can be better so conveyed, ordinary colloquialisms,” according to the preface, “have been employed.” This is doubtless a good principle, but why enforce it in such an absurd way as to translate “ Tout chemin va a Rome “ into “ By hook or by crook ” ? — just as if the English tongue had not a saying of its own about roads and Rome. — How Do You Spell It? or Words As They Look, by W. T. C. Hyde. (McClurg.) This is called “ a book for busy people,” and is based upon the assumption that most of them do not know how to spell. A long list of debatable words is therefore printed, with the doubtful letters in bold-face type. The plan is good, in detail it is well carried out, and all unsteady followers of Webster who will keep this book near at hand need have no excuse for stumbling. We cannot help remarking, however, that “Words as they look” is hardly the fairest definition of a procession of innocent words, each and all marked for life, as it were, with a black eye.

Fiction. Sally Dows, and Other Stories, by Bret Harte. (Houghton.) The story which fills half of this volume and provides the title takes the reader to a country where he is a little surprised to find Mr. Harte. It is the South in the days of reconstruction. and the hero of the tale plays his part in the process by winning the heart of an incomprehensible Southern girl. The story has scenes of genuine spirit, yet as a whole it does not carry a great weight of conviction with it. The three remaining stories are of the "West, and in the absence of a signature, we are strongly inclined to think, would strike many readers as the work of a clever person who was or was not born in the West, but for the purpose in hand had gained most of his impulse by reading the stories of the Mr. Harte of twenty years ago. — Ivar the Viking, by Paul Du Chaillu. (Scribners.) The author calls his book “a romantic history based upon authentic facts of the third and fourth centuries ; ” and indeed, the story, such as it is, is merely a peg whereon to hang a picture, intended to be carefully correct in all its details, of the life of the Norse chiefs. In short, the writer aims to give in a popular form the historical and archæological researches more elaborately and technically treated in The Viking Age. Mr. Du Chaillu holds with unabated ardor his belief in the Scandinavian origin of the English race, and the accepted view is still to him “ the Anglo-Saxon myth.” His latest volume has the not altogether unusual prefix of a letter from Mr. Gladstone. This letter, a very characteristic one, is given both in type and facsimile ; and the writer, while disclaiming any special knowledge of the subject, declares himself favorably inclined Norseward, as when among Scandinavians he has felt something like a cry of nature asserting his nearness to them. — The Love Affairs of an Old Maid, by Lilian Bell. (Harpers.) The Old Maid of this narrative maintains a discreet silence regarding her own Love Affairs, but imparts to her eat all the confidences of her friends on the road towards matrimony and established within the blessed estate. The plan of the story, therefore, gives a capital opportunity for observing the ways of men with maids, and of maids with men. The more difficult characters, the less superficial, Miss Bell has drawn with shrewd understanding and humor and many admirable touches. The weakness of the book lies in its attempt to dispose of too large a number of types ; the result is a little weariness and confusion. But as an evidence of a new writer’s possibilities it gives excellent promise. — Thumb-Nail Sketches, by George Wharton Edwards. (The Century Co.) A miniature book, with stories and pictures in proportion. The little stories are entertaining incidents of travel, mainly in Holland, and the little pictures are such as a man clever with his pencil might adorn the margins of his home letters withal. Of course the maker of the little volume does not expect it to be taken too seriously ; and for what it is, it is quite good enough. — The descent into paper from cloth, in the case of a novel already published, frequently means that the book is rising in favor, and so throws off some of the impedimenta of price and weight. Among these may be named : The World of Chance, by W. D. Howells (Harpers) ; Pratt Portraits, by Anna Fuller (Putnams) ; An Imperative Duty, by W. D. Howells (Harpers) ; Paul Bourget’s Love’s Cruel Enigma and The Son (The Waverly Co., New York); West and East, by Laura Coates Reed (Chas. H. Sergel & Co., Chicago) ; The Aztec Treasure House, by Thomas A. Janvier (Harpers) ; The Captain of the Janizaries, by James M. Ludlow (Harpers). — On the other hand, there are paper-covered books which appear to begin life thus, as if they had to fight their way in their shirt sleeves, as A Terrible Family, by Florence Warden (International News Co., New York); The Vyvyans, by Andrée Hope (Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago) ; The Reverend Melancthon Poundex, by Doren Piatt (Robert J. Belford, Chicago) ; Poseidon’s Paradise, the Romance of Atlantis, by Elizabeth G. Birkmaier (The Clemens Publishing Co., San Francisco) ; Beyond Hypnotism, by David A. Curtis (The Literary Casket Publishing Co., New York) ; Clear the Track, by E. Werner, translated by Mary Stuart Smith (International News Co.). — In Harper’s Franklin Square Library are : Dr. Mirabel’s Theory, a Psychological Study, by Ross George Dering ; The Burden of Israel, by J. Maclaren Cobban ; and The Transgression of Terence Clancy, by Harold Vallings. — Mr. Howells has added another to his little farces, Evening Dress (Harpers), which is as delightful, as gossamer-like in texture, as humorous, as any of the rest. Even the slang of the day melts in Campbell’s mouth.—Late additions to the uniform reissue of William Black’s works (Harpers) are : In Far Lochaber, doubtless the most powerful and impressive of his recent novels ; and The Strange Adventures of a House-Boat, a pleasant Thames chronicle, which introduces that agreeable American heroine, the ever-charming Peggy.

Sport. Walter Camp’s Book of College Sports, by Walter Camp. (The Century Co.) Instead of a dozen graduates coaching one team, according to the present college custom, we have in this book one graduate talking to as many young athletes, from all institutions of learning, as will listen to him. After preaching a good little sermon on the text “ Be each, pray God, a gentleman! ” Mr. Camp tells many things in the history of American college athletics, and gives sensible advice on various points. If no other word were said of the book, it should at least be noticed that General Putnam’s Ride is to have two companions in the annals of America, Lamar’s Run and Bull’s Kick.

Religion and Social Science. Sermons, sixth series, by the Rt. Rev. Phillips Brooks. (Dutton.) A valuable addition to these sermons is the date of first delivery appended to each. The twenty here given range from 1865 to 1889 ; and though the note which Bishop Brooks struck a quarter of a century ago was in unison with that of his latest utterance, his friends and disciples will be glad to read his discourses now in the light of his personal history. They are so instinct with his individuality that no one can read them without almost seeing and hearing the preacher ; and yet how absolutely free they are from reference to the first person singular ! — Tools and the Man, Property and Industry under the Christian Law, by Washington Gladden. (Houghton.) An interesting little book, since it aims at formulating the law of love in its possible working through institutions. The premise upon which it proceeds is that, in revealing God to men, Christ laid bare a principle of life which already had been faintly perceived in human relations, as in that of father and son, husband and wife, but was destined to universal application. By that principle he would have us believe the world is finally to move in its conscious orbit, and he maintains that the function of Christianity is constantly to make active effort at hastening the time, reminding men that the law of their being calls for expression not only individually, but organically in society. Christianity, under Dr. Gladden’s preaching, brings indeed a sword, and not peace, for it aims at thorough revolution. — The Scientific Study of Theology, by W. L. Paige Cox. (Skeffington & Son, London.) A small volume, temperate but firm in spirit, which not only pleads for the study of theology as other sciences are studied, but proceeds to take up certain fundamental questions, as that of the nature of God, the future life, the miracles of the New Testament, and applies the principles laid down. The writer does not undertake to examine theology as a system, and his purpose is so plainly practical that one is not surprised to find him devoting a chapter to the scientific study of the nature and principles of worship, and dwelling at some length and with great good sense on the relation which the intelligent and even critical man bears to his Maker in the region of worship. What he says of music as a subtle correlative of sacrifice is admirable. — Socialism and the American Spirit, by Nicholas Paine Gilman. (Houghton.) Mr. Gilman, who has been an industrious collector of the facts regarding profit-sharing, asks himself the question, Is the socialism which is offered as the next stage in the development of government the same thing in Europe and in America ? and proceeds, by an examination both of theoretical socialism and of the characteristics of American life, social and political, to point out how obstructive is genuine Americanism to a doctrinaire socialism. It is refreshing to find a book dealing with its subject in so direct and manly a fashion as this. It brushes away a great many cobwebs ; and although its treatment is necessarily somewhat general, there is a constant and successful endeavor of the author to plant himself solidly on the ground of fact. — The People’s Money, by W. L. Trenholm. (Scribners.) The late debates in Congress have shown pretty plainly that, though a few men perceive clearly the function of currency, a great many, in Congress and out, are in a fog ; and the service which Mr. Trenholm renders such in this book is very great, for he writes of cash and credit, of confidence and of law, as bases of money, of the monetary unit, legal tender, paper money, the balance of trade, the volume of money, and the standard of value, in terms so definite, so perspicacious, and so forcible that one who commits himself to Mr. Trenholm’s leadership not only finds his way out of the fog, but learns the greater lesson of finding his own way through the mazes sure to offer themselves in whichever direction he turns.