Comment on New Books

Poetry and the Drama. In Russet and Silver, by Edmund Gosse. (Stone & Kimball.) The truest note of this volume is struck in the verses of lament for lost youth and opportunities. Such lines as The Prodigal and Revelation convey something of the genuine feeling of poetry, if not its whole reality. Now and then the lack of any definite sense of humor stands in the way of success. The possessor of such a sense would hardly have written seriously,

nor would he have been likely to speak of the Opium Harvest as gathered up “ in bales of solid sleep.” Yet the verses always show the trained craftsmanship of the pen, and if for the most part they are the product more of a cultivated mind than of a poet’s, in the larger sense, they are nevertheless often agreeable reading. — Three single poems which come to us as separate books are : Lincoln’s Grave, by Maurice Thompson (Stone & Kimball) ; The TorchBearers, by Arlo Bates (Roberts) ; and Chant of a Woodland Spirit, by Robert Burns Wilson (Putnams). The first and second of these are occasional poems. Mr. Thompson’s was read before the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Harvard, and has its special interest in the fact that the writer fought for “ the lost cause.” None the less is he capable of seeing Lincoln as he was, and of producing, with the inspiration of the theme, some of the best work in verse that has yet come from his pen. Mr. Bates’s poem was written for the Bowdoin College Centennial last spring. It is, in effect, a mingled essay and homily on truth, with the text, of the author’s own creation, “ What man believes is truth.” The Chant of a Woodland Spirit is more difficult to define, as its aim is far less distinct. A poet strives to interpret nature, and to give voice to the futility of most of the satisfactions of man except those of Sorrow and Memory. Various metrical forms are essayed, often with success, and passages of poetic beauty are easy to find ; yet the effect of the whole poem is rather confused and confusing. — The Plays of Maurice Maeterlinck : Princess Maleine, The Intruder, The Blind, The Seven Princesses. Translated by Richard Hovey. (Stone & Kimball.) In his Introduction, Mr. Hovey says of Maeterlinck : “ He has been accused of a lack of humor, but it is rather a restriction to one kind of humor, —the hysterical mirth of tragic crises, the grin on the everlasting skull.” The idea of this “ grin ” as a form of humor will be as new to many readers as the quality of the plays must be to all those who have not before had at least a bowing acquaintance with Maeterlinck. Mr. Hovey has succeeded, perhaps, as thoroughly as the spirit of our language permits, in catching and reproducing the very atmosphere of the Belgian writer. The Introduction, moreover, shows the translator to be well in sympathy with the latter - day growth of which Maeterlinck is a most characteristic because a most individual development. — Vistas, by William Sharp. (Stone & Kimball.) This book, like the Plays of Maeterlinck, appears in the Green Tree Library, and like them, too, it keeps one listening so intently for sounds that are just beyond hearing, and trying so hard to see mystical presences which are not quite visible, that in the end one’s ears and eyes are really sensible of the strain. Mr. Sharp’s dedicatory letter tells Mr. Alden and the world at large how he came to write these “dramatic interludes,” and why they are not, as some have thought, “an English reflection of the Maeterlinckian fire.” Their kinship with the Belgian’s work, in purpose and in method, is nevertheless beyond question. Whether one cares to subject one’s self to the effect of such work is a matter for private decision. The effect is palpably wrought in the best of the Vistas.—•Narragansett Ballads, with Songs and Lyrics, by Caroline Hazard. (Houghton.) Many traditions of the southern part of Rhode Island are preserved in the ballads which make a large part of this book. They are stories worth keeping, and Miss Hazard has brought to her task the true zeal of the historian of localities. She is a Rhode Islander, too, in many of the Songs and Lyrics, though their themes have no distinct geographical limits. Some of the most attractive verses in the book, indeed, have the Californian coast for their scene. — Love-Songs of Childhood, by Eugene Field. (Scribners.) Mr. Field’s happiest vein heretofore has often been in juvenile rhymes, and so, apparently, it continues to be. Verses like “ Fiddle-Dee-Dee ” and The Ride to Bumpville, for instance, are amusing and clever. Yet too often the writer lets himself drop below his own better standards, and the result, as shown in many verses of this volume, is a cheap and common kind of rhyming, which can neither cultivate good taste in the children nor gratify it in the parents. — Heigh-Ho ! My Laddie, O ! and Other Child Verses, by William S. Lord. (The Enterprise, Evanston, Ill.) A small pamphlet of rhymes which, if the strictest truth be told, are neither here nor there.— From Time to Time, a Book of Verse, by S. W. Weitzel. (Anson D. F. Randolph & Co., New York.) There are two lines in the Bab Ballads about a person belonging to the class of men who are said to stand in “ the middle distance : ” —

They are lines which a book of verse often has the power to recall. It is the more refreshing to find this paper-covered volume of the family to which the quotation does not refer, for there is a very clear note of simple religious faith constantly recurrent in the collection, and the verses are better written than many others.—On the Wooing of Martha Pitkin, being a Versified Narrative of the Time of the Regicides in Colonial New England, by Charles Knowles Bolton. (Copeland & Day.) If an unvigilant proof-reader had let the 1894 on the title-page of this smallest of small books twist itself into 1694, nobody would have been much the wiser, so successful is the reproduction of the garb of antiquity for the little volume. The Versified Narrative which it contains is pleasant enough, but hardly so conspicuous in its success. — Songs from Dreamland, by May Kendall. (Longmans.) On the whole, the better verses in this book are those of the lighter sort, and, curiously enough, the light method often finds its way into the treatment of serious themes. At their very best, the better verses of each kind are good, but of these there are hardly enough to give the collection any positive distinction. — Philip of Pokanoket, an Indian Drama, by Alfred Antoine Furman. (Stettiner, Lambert & Co., New York.) Mr. Furman has no hesitation in following the best dramatic models, for in a sort of balcony scene for Captain Church and Wenonah, “ Squaw - Sachem of the Seconets,” the Indian fighter, not hitherto credited with love passages with squa ws, exclaims, “ But see! the dawn! ” and Wenonah replies,

Then Church again cries out against “ those jealous streaks that hem the dress of day,” and one is not quite sure whether the age is that of the sewing-machine or of .Shakespeare. There are five acts in the play, and twenty-two speaking parts. The scene is said to be laid “ dispersedly in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.” — The Wine of May, and Other Lyrics, by Fred Lewis Pattee. (Republican Press Association, Concord, N. H.) There is a pleasant facility of pen and imagination in many of the verses here, but no insistent note of individuality.— Watchers of Twilight, and Other Poems, by Arthur J. Stringer. (T. H. Warren, Printer, London, Ont.)—Among the Muses, by Miles A. Davis. (Published by the Author.)

Literature and Literary History. The fifth volume of the new edition of Pepys’s Diary, which is appearing under the charge of Mr. Henry B. Wheatley (Macmillan), runs from July, 1665, to October, 1666. It is worth while to read in this faithful chronicle how he and other Londoners lived and quaked during the plague. Pepys is as amatory as ever, always applauding modesty, and always apparently ready to take liberties with it. His taste for music leads him to give many references to songs by Lawes and others, and to convey the impression that England had more real music in her in the middle of the seventeenth century than she has now. — The Aims of Literary Study, by Hiram Corson. (Macmillan.) An admirable little treatise, which, read attentively, would go far to enlightening teachers as to what they may and may not do in teaching English. If it were possible to examine teachers in Dr. Corson’s tract, we might look to see the ordinary examinations of pupils in English abandoned. The truths which he sets forth are of the kind that enter the mind like light ; they do not knock like an officer of the law. — The second of the three volumes of Ben Jonson, in the Mermaid Series (Imported by Scribners), has, as an appropriate frontispiece, an etching of the portrait of Richard Burbadge in the Dulwich Gallery. The book contains Bartholomew Fair, Cynthia’s Revels, and Sejanus.

Essays. The Use of Life, by Sir John Lubbock. (Macmillan.) This volume contains so many truths that it is a maddening thing to read. The trouble is that the truths are for the most part also truisms. According to his previous practice, Sir John has clipped and copied from every source the more familiar dicta of great minds regarding the virtues. On threads of his own spinning, wrought wholly from the bourgeois “ be - good - and - you - will-tbehappy ” philosophy, the author — and compiler — has strung these extracts together. To find a perfectly familiar couplet from Shakespeare misquoted, and then attributed to Burns, shakes one’s faith in all the less easily verified citations. But Sir John is not content merely with repeating what others have said ; he also repeats himself. On page 83, in the chapter on Health, one finds, “ The senses — full of innocent delight as they are — will no doubt, if we yield to them, wreck us like the Sirens of old [by the way, were the Sirens wrecked ?] on the rocks and whirlpools of life.” On page 290, when Peace and Happiness are reached, the same original sentiment is expressed, only here it is “ true delight,” and “ no doubt ” is omitted. Can it be that the wreck and the rocks and the whirlpools have become in the interval any less a certainty ? A particularly fresh quotation ends the book : “ Be good, in the noble words of Kingsley,

Such tricks as these we have pointed out may be good, indeed, but surely they are not clever. -The Alphabet and Language, Immortality of the Big Trees, Wealth and Poverty of the Chicago Exposition, Three Essays by Thomas Magee. (William Doxey, San Francisco.)

History and Biography. England in the Nineteenth Century, by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer. (McClurg.) This book follows the same plan as the author’s previous volumes on France and Russia, and has the same readable quality. Mrs. Latimer’s first thought of calling her work of this kind Historical Gossip would have given the series a good descriptive title. Her personal reminiscences are always interesting-, and she is an entertaining compiler ; but she should follow her authorities more closely, and revise more carefully. Even for gossip the volume contains too many inaccuracies and blunders of the most obvious kind, such as, to note a few instances, the statement that George III. was the first sovereign English born and bred since Queen Elizabeth ; or that Lord Beaconsfield was refused a grave in Westminster Abbey, the exact opposite being the fact ; while sometimes a curious confusion of persons and things is shown, as where the youngest of the three beautiful Sheridans is said to have been Lady Eglintouu, and the Crown Prince of Roumania is married simultaneously, as it were, to his wife and his wife’s sister, the ignoring of the authentic marriage of the latter, with its rather important attendant circumstances, being a clear loss of excellent material. But these infelicities will trouble not at all that large class of readers who will not take history and biography except in the form here offered, and who are certain to find the volume entertaining. — Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, by Esther Wood. (Scribners.) The writer disavows the intention of producing the authoritative life of Rossetti, or of entering fully into the domain of art criticism. Her purpose is rather to give expression to the meaning, ethical even more than æsthetic, of the PreRaphaelite Movement. To this end she does, in effect, present us a biography of Rossetti, and many interesting glimpses of the men and thoughts with which he had most to do. One of the most valuable elements of the book is its showing of the influence that English poetry—not his own, but Keats’s, Tennyson’s, and Browning’s in turn—had upon Rossetti’s work as a painter. The consideration of the painter’s own verse is sane., and sympathetic. Indeed, throughout admirable judgment is shown, in spite of the writer’s somewhat diffuse method. Notwithstanding her good resolutions at the outset, she permits herself many pages that might have been more reasonably looked for elsewhere.— The Annals of a Quiet Valley, by a Country Parson. Edited by John Watson, F. L. S. (Macmillan, New York; Dent, London.) Besides being an attractive book to look at, this is a pleasant one to read. In a very simple, straightforward style the writer describes the life of the dalesmen in the Wordsworth country, — more, be it said, as it was fifty and a hundred years ago than as it is now. For, unhappily, the eucroachments of the outer world are changing even the ways of the Quiet Valley, and all the best things of anecdote and fact about strange old clergymen and parish clerks, the customs of indoor and outdoor life, indeed all the most individual bits in the folk-lore of the region, are brought to us out of a past that is truly gone.— Reminiscences of a Portrait Painter, by George P. A. Healy. (McClurg.) Mr. Healy tells without affectation or vainglory the story of his own life, and many anecdotes about his friends and sitters. No one more than the successful painter of portraits has the opportunity of seeing a variety of interesting people at short range, and when, as here, the memorable points of the interviews are preserved without making the narrator the principal character in each scene, the artist must have a second pleasure in leaving behind him the pictures of his pen. — The Egyptian Book of the Dead, the most Ancient and the most Important. of the Extant Religious Texts of Ancient Egypt. Edited, with Introduction, a complete Translation, and various chapters on its History, Symbolism, etc., by Charles H. S. Davis. With 99 Plates reproduced in facsimile from the Turin papyrus and the Louvre papyrus. (Putnams.) A big quarto with quite an air of erudition about it. The reproductions are blurred, process copies of those published long ago by De Rougd and Lepsius. The translation is from the French of Pierret. In the editor’s own work of introduction there is apparently no recourse to Maspero or E. Meyer, and Naville’s critical edition seems not to have been used. In a word, the book adds nothing to the subject, and does not set forth intelligently what is known. Any one who can read French can dispense with the book ; and if one is really eager to become versed in hieratic learning, he had better first learn French. — In the Cornell Studies in Classical Philology (Ginn), an historical treatise on The Cult of Asklepios, by Alice Walton, has appeared.

Textbooks and Education. Cinq - Mars, on Une Conjuration sous Louis XIII., par le Cte Alfred de Vigny. Abridged and edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Charles Sankey. (Heath.) The Historical Introduction to this number of Heath’s Modern Language Series is a capital sketch of the reign of Louis XIII. and the career of Richelieu. Besides, there is a biographical account of Alfred de Vigny, and the notes upon the text are ample without being overpowering. — A Text-Book of Modern Spanish, as Now Written and Spoken in Castile and the Spanish-American Republics, by Marathon Montrose Ramsay (Holt), is not too late, we hope, to profit by the interest in Pan-American affairs of which so much was said a few years ago. — From D. C. Heath & Co. we have A Danish and Dano - Norwegian Grammar, by P. Groth. — Four new books for classes in French are : Hernani, edited, with Notes and an Essay on Victor Hugo, by George McLean Harper (Holt.) ; Colomba, par Prosper Mérimée, edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Bibliography, by A. Guyot Cameron (Holt) ; Episodes from François le Champi, par George Sand, edited, with Notes, by C. Sankey (Longmans); and A First Lesson in French, by François Gouin, translated from the French by Howard Swan and Victor Bétis (Scribners). — Another book for beginners is A First Year in Drawing, by Henry T. Bailey. (Educational Publishing Co., Boston.) —In the Standard Teachers’ Library (Bardeen, Syracuse) have appeared a second edition of Roderick Hume, the Story of a New York Teacher, by C. W. Bardeen, and two books not distantly related to each other, The School Room Guide to Methods of Teaching and School Management, by E. V. De Graff, and The Teacher’s Mentor, including in one volume Buckham’s First Steps in Teaching, Huntington’s Unconscious Tuition, Fitch’s Art of Questioning, and Fitch’s Art of Securing Attention.— In Hutchison’s Physiological Series, Maynard, Merrill & Co. have issued Our Wonderful Bodies, and How to Take Care of Them, the First Book for Primary Grades, the Second for Intermediate and Grammar Grades.

Books for and about the Young. Piccino, and Other Child Stories, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Scribners.) Mrs. Burnett has hardly done better work than in the delightful history of two memorable, not to say dreadful days in the life of Piccino, a six-year-old Italian peasant, whose wonderful beauty attracts the attention of an idle English lady, who, as an amusing distruction, takes charge of the boy. The lovely little savage is introduced to bewildering habits, strange food, and, worst of all, “ put into water,” and after forty-eight hours of misery he runs away, returning to the congenial squalor of his parental hovel. The story will be eagerly read and re-read by children, but will be better appreciated by their elders. The Other Child Stories are properly so called, for they are not a child’s stories, even though children find them attractive. This is emphatically the case with The Captain’s Youngest, and so, in a less degree, with the graceful, pathetic sketch Little Betty’s Kitten Tells her Story, and with How Fauntleroy Occurred, some notes on the babyhood and childhood of the writer’s younger son, the model of that picturesque and popular juvenile hero.— Twilight Land, by Howard Pyle. (Harpers.) The plan of this fairy-book is to have various persons of nursery lore, such as Cinderella, Ali Baba, and Boots, tell stories to be illustrated by Mr. Pyle. This part of the work he has done charmingly. Whenever the aerial motion of a flyingcarpet or wishing-stool is the subject, the design is peculiarly happy, not to say flighty. But the text, — there one wishes Grimm and Scheherazade might have been left to their own devices of speech. To them can most of the substance of the tales be traced, and the transfer to the lips of new tellers does not add greatly to their charm. — Sirs, Only Seventeen ! by Virginia F. Townsend. Mollie Miller, by Eiffle W. Merriman. (Lee & Shepard.) In the first of these volumes, two well-to-do young folk rescue and befriend a boy from the slums ; in the second, a family of poor orphans, while struggling to rise in the world, do good to those still more helpless than themselves. Both authors have a certain skill in story-telling, and their tales, though ordinary in quality, are neither unwholesome nor unreadable. — The Little Old Man, a Story written on Request, by Uncle Charley. (Bardeen, Syracuse.)

Music and Æsthetics. Studies in Modern Music, Second Series, by W. H. Hadow. (Macmillan.) The writer makes his way across the quicksands of musical criticism as if they were solid ground. Without too much affirmation and contention, he deals with his themes in such a way as to give a full impression of sureness and sober judgment. The book opens with a long paper on Outlines of Musical Form, dealing in turn with Faculties of Appreciation, Style and Structure, and Function. For the less technical music lover, the three biographical and critical papers that follow are of still greater interest. Their subjects are Chopin, Dvoràk, and Brahms. This last master is held to have taken his place with Bach and Beethoven. — Rhythm and Harmony in Poetry and Music, together with Music as a Representative Art, Two Essays in Comparative Æsthetics, by George Lansing Raymond. (Putnams.) A long preface is devoted to defending the author against the critics of his previous books, and showing wherein they were mistaken and unintelligent. A chapter in the first essay of the present volume is entitled Musical Harmony as developed by the Art-Method of Grouping Like Partial Effects of Unlike Complex Wholes. This alone may be taken to indicate the writer’s fashion of dealing with the purely technical side of artistic production, and it is hardly to be wondered that mortal critics have failed to sound the depths of such work.

Fiction. Sir Robert’s Fortune, by Mrs. Oliphant. (Harpers.) Before now Mrs. Oliphant has shown how easily and vividly she can reproduce the Scottish life of the early years of this century, and though Sir Robert’s Fortune is in no wise equal to her best work, the story of Lily Ramsay’s gradual and hopeless entanglement in a net of falsehood and deceit, despite her own frankness and truthfulness, never fails in interest. The girl, with her willfulness, petulance, occasional foolishness, and constant lovableness, is a very lifelike study, while the humbler personages of the tale have every one the distinct individuality which belongs to the author’s sketches of her country folk. It is a thing to be grateful for, as the larger part of the story is laid in a region remote from the Lowlands, that, though all the characters, high and low, have properly what may be called a Scottish flavor in their speech, dialect is used scarcely at all. — Who was Lost and is Found (Harpers), both in length and in quality, will rank among Mrs. Oliphant’s minor tales ; but the picture of Mrs. Ogilvy and her household is in the writer’s best manner, — the gentle widow, with her habit of well-ordered, decorous living, to whom returns the unrepentant prodigal, being drawn with most delicate and sympathetic insight. — The Parasite, by A. Conan Doyle. (Harpers.) The hero and narrator of this brief tale is a young scientist, who, in the way of experiment, puts himself in the power of a very potent hypnotizer, a woman neither young nor attractive, who is at once amorous, malignant, and merciless. When we add that her victim is betrothed to a charming girl, we have given the materials for a thrilling history which the author may be trusted to use skillfully and effectively. — Messrs. Harpers have brought out a handsome new edition of The White Company, Dr. Doyle’s spirited and easily readable tale of the days when Edward III. was king, the volume being in the same general style as the publishers’ issues of Micah Clarke and The Refugees. We do not know whether it was a slip of the writer’s pen or a perversity of the types which, in the last chapter, makes the fourth Edward the successor of the second Richard. —Messrs. Holt have published two more little volumes by Anthony Hope, The Dolly Dialogues and The Indiscretion of the Duchess. As to the former book, easy facility in writing bright, epigrammatic dialogue, almost always nicely adapted to the occasion, has been an important element in the making of Mr. Hope’s rapid and rather exceptional success, and the gift is here displayed often with much cleverness and humor. The essentials of a social skit of this sort, a wellbred tone, lightness in the satiric touches, and cynicism of not too dark a dye, can be found in the book. Altogether the author is a not inapt pupil of the vivacious, and unequaled, Gyp. The Indiscretion of the Duchess is of the same class as The Prisoner of Zenda. Though the later tale is on the whole inferior to its predecessor, it has the same ingenuity of construction, is as brimful of incidents, as rapid in movement, and as entertainingly improbable. The characters who disport themselves in its pages will excite only moderate interest, but the story of their adventures will be read at a sitting by a multitude of romance lovers. — The Vagabonds, by Margaret L. Woods. (Macmillan.) The vagabonds are the members of Stockwell’s Giant Circus, and the motley crowd and their wandering life are drawn with rigidly truthful, yet at the same time kindly and sometimes humorous touches. But the sketches of life in the ring and on the road are but secondary to the story of the clown joey, an ugly, goodhearted middle-aged man, married to a pretty girl-wife whom he loves passionately, while she accepted him as a husband simply as her only escape from a disreputable father. When we say that she is a good but commonplace young woman, with the selfishness of utterly unimaginative youth; that she falls in love with one of her fellow-workers; that when circumstances for which no one is to blame make her remarriage necessary, she accepts her freedom at Joey’s hands and sails for America with her new husband, where both, we may be sure, will quickly forget the man who has saved the life of one, and resigned for the other all that made his own life of value, we indicate a humble tragedy which Mrs. Woods has treated with strength and tenderness. The book is interesting from beginning to end, but will hardly make so deep an impression as the author’s earliest and as yet best novel. — A Drama in Dutch, by Z. Z. (Macmillan.) A study of a community of Dutch shopkeepers in London, apparently written by one of the same nationality, who is able, at least partially, to look at the little world he describes from the outside. His sketches are uncompromisingly realistic, and the men and women he depicts so graphically can win but scant regard from the reader, so narrow-minded, sordid, and vulgarly materialistic are most of them. The story, though it has both tragic and pathetic elements, makes but a slight impression in comparison with the pictures of life and character so forcibly given, which show both insight and power on the part of the author. The weakest point in the book is the rapid conversion of Martin, the young hero, into a Dutchman. Heredity would hardly overcome in an instant, so to speak, the education and habits of a lifetime, and even falling in love would scarcely reconcile an English university-bred youth to some of the qualities of his new associates. — A Monk of the Aventine, by Ernst Eckstein. Translated by Helen Hunt Johnson. (Roberts.) A due amount of historical and archæological knowledge can generally be looked for in a German novel of this class, and it is not wanting here. But the author has hardly succeeded in giving a very vivid picture of the squalid, ignorant, degraded. and brutalized Rome of the tenth century, and most of his characters, though as carefully studied as their environment, lack vitality. Yet the story of the monk Bernardus is an interesting one, told throughout in a terse, straightforward manner, and usually with simplicity. It may not transport the reader to medieval Rome, but it will help him to reconstruct it in his own imagination. —An Altar of Earth, by Thymol Monk. (Putnams.) An end-ofthe-century tale, mainly devoted to the history of Daphne Cress well, a medical student, dangerously attractive to every man who approaches her nearly. Told that she has but two years to live, she seeks country air and quiet at Hiram’s Hill, the owner whereof, a coarse, rich City man, soon loves her unlawfully, while she is adored honestly by the rising young doctor who has pronounced her doom. The study of the girl’s state of mind, her passionate feeling for nature, her recklessness, her clinging to life, her brave endurance for the most part, though she has neither faith nor hope, is singularly vivid. The tone of the book is morbid, and at times unwholesome, but it is never dull, which last assertion cannot be made of another fin-de-siècle novel, Helen, by Oswald Valentine, a late addition to the Incognito Library. (Putnams.) George, the literary hero, begins life in a state of general discontent and disgust, marries Helen, and through her influence becomes somewhat more healthy-minded, takes up socialism for a while, leaving it rather suddenly to devote himself to a new form of writing, which in its final development leaves him a celebrated novelist. All this and more is narrated intelligently, but without grace or lightness of touch, and the reader, in turning the last pages, which are slowly reached considering the size of the book, wonders for what particular reason the story of George and Helen should have been told at all.—On Cloud Mountain, by Frederick Thickstun Clark. (Harpers.) A frontier tale of a strongly accented and highly colored sort, in which full justice is done to the uncouthness and eccentricity of certain inhabitants of the Colorado mountains, and more than justice, it is to be hoped, to their fearful and wonderful misuse and abuse of the English language. When the story is dug out of the mass of “dialect “ in which it is imbedded, it will be found far from uninteresting. — The Christmas Hirelings, by M. E. Braddon. (Harpers.) The author says that she has “ long wished to write a story about children which should be interesting to childish readers, and yet not without interest for grown-up people.” She has probably accomplished both objects in this book, which she yet rightly calls a novel. For cleverly drawn as are the little folk in this tale, especially the bright, original Moppet, their portraits will be much better appreciated by elder readers than by those of their own age. Miss Braddon has certainly proved in this volume that she can write charmingly and sympathetically of children. — A Kentucky Cardinal, by James Lane Allen. (Harpers.) This issue of the Little Novels Series has to do with a cardinal bird who lived in a bachelor’s garden, and the girl who lived just beyond it. He was fond of them both, and against his principles, to gratify the girl, he captured the bird. The little creature died, and a misunderstanding between the bachelor and the girl became more intense in consequence, but in the end resulted in his capture of her also. It is altogether a delightful little story, full of quaint, turns of construction and humor, and well apart from the beaten tracks of lighter fiction. — English Episodes, by Frederick Wedmore. (Imported by Scribners.) The writer of the five little stories that make this book knows his London and his Londoners well. He tells about a vicar, a probationer, a retired draper, a young poet with hopes for the laureateship, and a young woman in an Aerated Bread shop in a fashion as completely English as are the characters described. And in saying this we are not of those who would imply that the element of humor is quite lacking. There is something of it throughout the book, and even more of its sister quality, pathos. What some of our own writers have done for New England villages, Mr. Wedmore does for London in showing the quiet realities in the lives of a few separate inhabitants. — The Doctor, his Wife and the Clock, by Anna Katharine Green. (Putnams.) All about a blind physician, who, with deadly marksmanship, shoots a man he had had no wish or reason to kill. The story is told by the detective, who puts the scanty bits of evidence together, and in the end confronts the innocent criminal with all the details of the murder. What may be called the police fiction of recent years has raised one’s standards of the sensational so high that this number of the Autonym Library can hardly excite positive enthusiasm. — Writing to Rosina, by W. H. Bishop. (Century Co.) An amusing little tale of the complications that involved two matter-of-fact lovers and the two friends who undertook to carry on a romantic correspondence for them. There is something really pathetic in the bewilderment of the young New York “ hustler ” when called upon to write real letters, after a lifelong training in “ Yours rec’d, and contents duly noted.” — Sidney Forester, by Clement Wilkes. (H. W. Hagemann, New York.) — On the Hurricane Deck, a Novel, by W. H. Wright. (Mascot Publishing Co., New York.) — A Siren’s Son, by Susie Lee Bacon. (Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago.)

Sociology. The Boss, an Essay upon the Art of Governing American Cities, by Henry Champernowne. (Geo. H. Richmond & Co., New York.) The author’s attempt is, by assuming the Machiavellian attitude of a crafty adviser, to make a satiric showing of all that a New York boss does and might do. There is some real sagacity in the final appeal to him to use his great powers to promote the splendor of the city, and thus to win the love of the citizens. But for the most part the writer’s art does not lend itself readily to the methods of satire, and the results of his enterprise are rather cumbrous, — The first volume of J. Shield Nicholson’s Principles of Political Economy (Macmillan) deals with Production and Distribution. The author appears to be an independent disciple of Mill. In his closing chapter he has some interesting and vigorous criticisms to pass upon theoretical socialism.

Books of Reference. Woman in Epigram, Flashes of Wit, Wisdom, and Satire from the World’s Literature, compiled by Frederick W. Morton. (McClurg.) Mr. Morton has ransacked the libraries of the ages for observations on woman. He has even quoted from himself. Certainly he has brought together sentiments enough of every shade to please alike the misogynist, the lady-killer, and the silent worshiper. Furthermore, he has provided his book with an index of authors and of subjects, and altogether has made his work the Bartlett of Femininity. — Report of the Massachusetts Board of World’s Fair Managers. (Wright & Potter Printing Co., Boston.) An octavo volume, liberally illustrated, which clearly sets forth the exhibit made by Massachusetts. The state building formed an interesting part of the exhibit, both in itself and in its contents, and the illustrations of it are an attractive element in the report. — The Oxford English Dictionary, with the praiseworthy intention of regular serial publication, appears January 1, 1895, in a part of Volume III., covering the words DeceitDeject. (At the Clarendon Press, Oxford ; Macmillan, New York.) — A third edition of Phyfe’s Seven Thousand Words Often Mispronounced (Putnams) has recently come to us.

Travel and Nature. Six Months among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs, and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands, by Isabella Bird Bishop. (Putnams.) It is a curious intimation of English obstinacy which persists in giving the Earl of Sandwich’s name to the Hawaiian Islands. Mrs. Bishop’s book is not brought down to date, but represents her experience of a decade or so ago. She is a good traveler, a faithful recorder, and if she has not the art of eliminating the trivial from her record, she has at least some sense of proportion. For an animated picture of life in Hawaii, the book stands usage well. — Bread from Stones, a New and Rational System of Land Fertilization and Physical Regeneration, translated from the German. (A. J. Tafel, Philadelphia.)