Comment on New Books

Literature. Reflections and Comments, 1865-1895, by Edwin Lawrence Godkin. (Scribners.) Mr. Godkin has gathered into this volume a selection from the articles that he has contributed to The Nation during the thirty years of his editorship, on social, personal, and (in the larger sense) political subjects. The usual doubt of the permanent value of essays prepared for use in periodicals is lessened, if not removed, in this case ; for they are not editorials that were written for use in particular emergencies, but rather brief papers which, in spite of their brevity, go to the moral base of the subjects. They have a permanent quality, and some of them also an historical value. The volume is a very fair specimen of the work, both in its moral and in its literary quality, that has made The Nation a great power ; and it is an appropriate commemoration of a memorable period of editorial service, — a service that, happily, goes on with the same courage and helpfulness to our higher life that made its beginning, a generation ag’o, an event of national importance. — The Laureates of England, from Ben Jonson to Alfred Tennyson, with Selections from their Works, and an Introduction dealing with the Origin and Significance of the English Laureateship, by Kenyon West. With Illustrations by Frederic C. Gordon. (Stokes.) The editor of this selection is not deterred by the manifest artificiality of the scheme, and the plan is carried out with a just sense of the proportionate value of the several writings. Moreover, it gives an opportunity for some interesting oblique light on appreciation of poetry at successive courts, and the individual studies of the poets, though brief, are characterized by good taste and discrimination. The selections, too, are admirable, and the result is a book which surprises one by the felicity with which the editor has turned an apparently formal scheme into one natural and free. — Two more volumes of the pretty People’s Edition of Tennyson have been published : A Dream of Fair Women and Other Poems, and Locksley Hall and Other Poems. We do not understand why the publishers do not number these volumes, since they are designed to form, when completed, a full collection of Tennyson’s poems. (Macmillan.) — A great poem is developed, not made, and a close study of the development is likely to yield interesting and helpful results. In The Growth of the Idylls of the King, by Richard Jones (Lippincott), we have not only a minute record of the changes made in successive editions of the several Idylls (including even capitalization and punctuation), but also a discussion of the more important changes, an examination of the subject matter of the completed work, and an attempt to determine how far Tennyson followed Malory and how much he drew from other sources. The growth of the poet’s plan is traced with care, and incidentally some of his methods of work are brought to view in a very suggestive way. The book is a distinct addition to the equipment for the study of Tennyson. — Studies of Men, by George W. Smalley. (Harpers.) We are glad that Mr. Smalley has published a second selection from his Tribune letters, rescuing a chosen few from the oblivion into which even the best journalistic work swiftly passes; these excerpts being the more welcome because the correspondence, which the Spectator once aptly characterized as an excellent contemporary history of England, has come to an end, to the lasting regret and loss of many faithful readers. For years these letters held a position apart in American journalism, other regular work of the kind differing from them in quality as well as degree. Re-reading these Studies, one is impressed anew not only by the writer’s wide knowledge of men and affairs and highly trained powers of observation, but also by the vigor, lucidity, and precision of the style, — a style so easily and agreeably readable that the good qualities which go to make it so are almost forgotten. Of course, judgments on passing events and the actors therein, even by the keenest looker-on, are not likely to be in any sense final, but they have a very real value, nevertheless. — The series of Dickens’s novels in single volumes (Macmillan) is continued by the issue of Our Mutual Friend, with a brief introduction, giving a history of the publication, by Charles Dickens the younger, and forty illustrations by Marcus Stone. The type is good, and though there are eight hundred pages the book is not clumsy. — The fourteenth volume of that series of Defoe’s Romances and Narratives which is the eighteenth century in miniature is devoted to A New Voyage Round the World. A circumnavigation of the globe offers less chance for art than life on an island, and the unrestrained liberty of the narrator results in less effective story, but Defoe is at his best in adventure. (Dent, London ; Macmillan, New York.)It is no valley of dry bones through which one is led in Latin Literature, by J. W. Mackail. (Scribners.) A sense of life pervades it, which, aided by frequent comparisons with modern authors, makes it very readable. The reader must know more than a little Latin, however, or he will find embarrassment in some of the rather long untranslated quotations. The book is issued in the University Series, and takes the place of the volume which was expected from the pen of the late Professor Sellar, who was Mr. Mackail’s teacher.—A welcome reprint is an attractive edition of The Household of Sir Thomas More, illustrated by John Jellicoe and Herbert Railton, and with an introduction by the Rev. W. H. Hutton. (Imported by Scribners.) Mr. Hutton, in his interesting if somewhat rambling preface, which is, properly enough, mainly historical, tells us almost nothing of the author of this charming book, and her name does not even appear on the title-page. Surely, in regard to so voluminous, and in the case of her best tales so popular a writer, a few facts might have been easily collected for those readers to whom Margaret More’s diary was a dear early friend. Mr. Hutton says that Miss Manning never married, yet in Allibone she is recorded as Mrs. Rathbone; one of the few personal references to her we have encountered is in a letter of Miss Mitford’s, written in 1854, where Miss Manning is positively declared to be dying, yet she undoubtedly lived and wrote books for more than a score of years thereafter. Her name does not appear in the Dictionary of National Biography, yet she is spoken of in the past tense. These things are sufficiently confusing to strivers after accuracy. — Long’s translation of the Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus has been added to the beautifully printed and bound Elia Series. (Putnams.) - Commemorative Addresses, George William Curtis, Edwin Booth, Louis Kossuth, John James Audubon, William Cullen Bryant, by Parke Godwin. (Harpers.) — Eugénie Grandet, par Honoré de Balzac. Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Eugène Bergeron. (Holt.) — Modern German Literature, by Benjamin W. Wells, Ph. D). (Roberts.) — Gallica, and Other Essays, by James Henry Hallard. (Longmans.) — A Happy Life, by Mary Davies Steele. (United Brethren Publishing House, Dayton, Ohio.) — Fables and Essays, by John Bryan. (The Arts and Letters Co., New York.) History and Biography. Julian, Philosopher and Emperor, and the Last Struggle of Paganism against Christianity, by Alice Gardner. Heroes of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) An admirably clear, temperate, and impartial estimate of a singularly interesting and even fascinating personality. Miss Gardner shows that easy mastery of her subject which comes not only from a careful study of the central figure in her work, but also from a comprehensive and accurate knowledge of the age in which he lived ; while her monograph is always excellent in arrangement, and lucid and readable in style. She handles skillfully the difficulties in the way of understanding and defining the religious position of Julian, and makes plain how to his ardent and devoted soul any compromise between Christianity and Hellenic culture was impossible. He could not divide his allegiance. “ In the triumph of Christianity he foresaw the Dark Ages. We cannot wonder that he did not see the Renaissance on the other side.” Only less profound than the Emperor’s mistake in believing in the speedy extinction of the new faith from Palestine was that of those who deemed that Hellenism had died with him. And there is much truth compressed into the closing sentence of the biographer’s final survey of her hero’s character and position in history : “ It. is the Christ, and not the Galilsean, that has conquered.” — My Sister Henriette, Renan’s touching tribute to the sister whose devotion and self-sacrifice may almost be said to have made his career possible, has been excellently translated by Miss Abby L. Alger, and brought out in an attractive form by Messrs. Roberts. The illustrations, from paintings by Henri Scheffer and Ary Renan, have been reproduced from the original work. These include an interesting portrait of Renan as a young man. The monograph, now first given to the public, was written and privately printed in 1862, a year after the death of its subject. — Some Memories of Paris, by F. Adolphus. (Holt.) An entertaining book, covering the recollections of a correspondent of the London press, and containing some specially graphic pictures of the days of the Commune. — A Working Manual of American History, for Teachers and Students, by William H. Mace (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse), is intended primarily to help teachers in making clear the process by which our institutional life has come to be what it is. Curiously, it has neither table of contents nor index. — Essays in American History, by Henry Ferguson (James Pott & Co.), contains four papers on important subjects in New England History, — the Quakers, the Witches, Sir Edmund Andros, and the Loyalists. They are clear and sane, and the author has studied to be strictly accurate.— Genesis and Semitic Tradition, by John D. Davis, Ph. D. (Scribners.) — An Old New England Town, Sketches of Life, Scenery, Character, by Frank Samuel Child. With Illustrations. (Scribners.) — A Great Mother, Sketches of Madam Willard, by Frances E. Willard and Minerva Brace Norton. With an Introduction by Lady Henry Somerset. (Woman’s Temperance Publishing Association, Chicago.) — Etudes Archéologiques et Variété’s, par Alphonse Gagnon. (Mercier & Cie, Levis, Canada.) — The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, by Thomas Lindsley Bradford, M. D. (Boericke & Tafel, Philadelphia.)

Nature and Travel. Dog Stories from The Spectator, with an Introduction by J. St. Loe Strachey. (Macmillan.) It was a happy thought to bring together these stories from the correspondence columns of the Spectator ; for though many of the anecdotes were sure to be recalled by interested readers, few would be likely to go through some twoscore volumes of the paper in search of them. Besides, as the editor soon found, the stories gain greatly by being arranged in groups, thus giving us, not one, but half a dozen instances of some special form of intelligence. We have, among others, sympathetic, humane, jealous, humorous, and cunning dogs, as well as prudent and businesslike ones, who go a-shopping, knowing exactly what they want, and also understanding the purchasing power of different coins. The book will be full of interest for dog-lovers, who each and all will be eager to match some one of the tales from their own experience, and for students of animal intelligence as well ; while, better still, the volume so makes for humanity that it deserves to be crowned by the S. P. C. A. — Poets’ Dogs, collected and arranged by Elizabeth Richardson. (Putnams.) A comprehensive collection of dog-poems, from the Odyssey’s commemoration of the dog Argus to the latter-day tender tributes to Geist and Kaiser. Even the dogs of Mother Goose are not forgotten. — British Birds, by W. H. Hudson. With a Chapter on Structure and Classification, by Frank E. Beddard. (Longmans.) Besides reaching the British audience for which it was especially intended, it will be strange if this book does not find its way into many American libraries. Not only amateurs in ornithology, but many others, readers of English literature, will be glad to have these admirable life-histories of nightingale, lark, cuckoo, blackbird, robin, throstle, wren, and other less famous but hardly less interesting birds. Mr. Hudson very properly gives special attention to the songs, though no imitations are attempted ; and in this particular we notice that Mr. John Burroughs is quoted several times, usually with approval of his close observation and happy description. Two hundred and odd species are treated at some length, and about two thirds of these are figured. Accidental and irregular visitors are included, but not described. The eight colored plates are by Mr. A. Thorburn, and most of the other illustrations are by Mr. G. E. Lodge. They are all artistic, and are apparently good portraits. The descriptions of Species are short and untechnical. Unfortunately, no dimension but length is given, so that the picture, when present, is the only guide to the proportions. The heron, whose length is said to be thirty-six inches, may be supposed to resemble in form the pheasant, which measures three feet long. In his introductory chapter, Mr. Beddard fails to give due credit to many batrachians, mammals, and non-passerine birds for their vocal accomplishments when he limits their utterances to screams, growls, and “ dull notes.” — The Pheasant : Natural History, by the Rev. H. A. Macphorson ; Shooting, by A. .J. Stuart-Wortley ; Cookery, by Alexander Innes Shand. (Longmans.) In this third volume of the Fur and Feather Series Mr. Stuart-Wortley describes what he aptly calls the “pastime” of pheasant-shooting. He cannot give it the name of sport. And yet, killing the bird in the sportsmanlike manner which he insists upon requires a certain degree of skill. Indeed, the pastime would be a sorry one if it did not. The book states the raison d’être of pheasant-shooting very well and sets forth all its good points, but it is easy to see that Mr. Stuart-Wortley’s heart is not in that kind of sport. It cannot take the place of grouse-shooting with him or with any other true lover of nature and outdoor life. But though as game it must yield the front rank, the pheasant is in many respects an interesting bird, and has a pedigree extending back to the time of the Argonauts. Its history, early and late, and its natural history besides, is well told by Mr. Macpherson. Finally, the bird is served up in an almost distractingly appetizing style by Mr. Alexander Innes Shand, whose treatise on its table virtues is well seasoned with anecdotes. The illustrations, by Mr. A. Thorburn, are excellent, as usual. — Little Rivers, a Book of Essays in Profitable Idleness, by Henry Van Dyke. (Scribners.) The most delightful sketch in this collection is that which gives its title to the book. That and the second arc written in a tender and reminiscent strain which seems so spontaneous that the reader is fain to let himself drift back into his own past, especially if he is so fortunate as to have a past well watered by little rivers. The other sketches are entertaining narratives of excursions in the Adirondacks, Scotland, Canada, the Tyrol, and Germany, accompanied by a faithful troutrod, which on occasions gives place to a two-handed salmon-rod. In A Handful of Heather the author writes charmingly of his literary loves. We suspect he is not the only man who has fallen in love with Sheila, though few have had such opportunities as his for indulging their sentimental passion. — The Last Cruise of the Miranda, a Record of Arctic Adventure, by Henry Collins Walsh. With Contributions from Prof. Wim. H. Brewer and fifteen others. Profusely illustrated from Photographs taken on the Trip. (Transatlantic Publishing Co.) An account of the unlucky Arctic expedition conducted by Dr. Frederick A. Cook in the summer of 1894. The narrative is in many respects an interesting one, but there is an amateurish air about the book, which is not entirely dispelled by the valuable papers of Professor Brewer, Professor G. Frederick Wright, and others, on the subjects of their special studies. Mr. Walsh tells us that the proceeds of the sale of the volume are to be devoted to reimbursing the captain and crew of the rescuing schooner Rigel, who, on account of the sinking of the disabled Miranda, were unable to recover the entire sum due them. — From the Black Sea through Persia and India, by Edwin Lord Weeks. Illustrated by the Author. (Harpers.) This rather imaginative title appropriately introduces a book which depends for its interest more upon what it tells than on any charm in the telling. It was after reaching India that Mr. Weeks found most to attract him, and from that point his book becomes something more than a mere narrative of his journey. The illustrations, which are very good throughout, are also especially interesting when the subjects are the streets, the people, and the temples of Hindostan. Japan is picturesque and charming, but India is something more. She is built on a larger scale than the island empire. Pictures like these of Mr. Weeks’s will help stay-at-home travelers to an appreciation of her magnificence. The author writes at some length of the art of India as shown in architecture, wood-carving, and painting. The condition of the country under English rule engages his attention, also, and he has a good deal to say about the native regiments. The first third of the book is the story of an ill-timed journey through a cholera-smitten country. The sad circumstances attending the death of Mr. Weeks’s traveling-companion, Mr. Theodore Child, are only very briefly touched upon. — William Winter’s Gray Days and Gold has been added to Macmillan’s Miniature Series in paper.

Poetry. The Cambridge Holmes (Houghton) is the short title by which will be known the new single - volume edition of Dr. Holmes’s complete poetical works, uniform with the Cambridge Editions of Longfellow, Whittier, and Browning. The bulk of Holmes’s poetry is not too great to be brought well within the scope of a two-column octavo volume, and the equipment surely is all that could reasonably be asked. A portrait, a biographical sketch, headnotes, dates, poems depressed to the level of small type because discarded from the company of the poet’s more determined work, chronological list, indexes, — here is a compact, well-ordered accompaniment which will last long as an adequate critical apparatus. Echoes from the Sabine Farm, by Eugene and Roswell Field. (Scribners.) Whether these Echoes be called versions of Horace or diversions of two brothers, it is palpably clear that they cannot he called translations. They are, rather, fluent, highly Americanized paraphrases of the Latin poet, emphasizing with special stress all the more convivial notes from his songs, and displaying an intimacy with the terms of our most modern Occidental speech which may be held the least classic. Yet who shall say that Horace brought to life would not lament his returning too late to meet both of these last worshipers at his shrine ? — Mimosa-Leaves, hy Grace Denio Litchfield. Illustrated by Helen and Margaret Armstrong. (Putnams.) The note of courage and brightness is struck more persistently in this little volume than that of sorrow, yet nowhere more truly than in the vigorous and unflinching poem Pain is the writer’s strength shown. These are lines of more than common power, and with others of their kind give the book a quality of realness more intense than its graceful garb and the decorations lead one to expect. — The Magic House, and Other Poems, by Duncan Campbell Scott. (Copeland & Day.) These poems, under the same title, but with a titlepage bearing the imprint of a Canadian publisher, have come to us before. The volume in its new hands has lost none of the beauty which we remarked on its earlier appearance, and the poems, need we say, have their same graceful quality. — The Legend of the White Canoe, by William Trumbull. With Photogravures from Designs by F. V. Du Mond. (Putnams.) — Shakuntala, or, The Recovered Ring, a Hindoo Drama, by Kalidasa. Translated from the Sanskrit by A. Hjalmar Edgren, Ph. D. (Holt.) — Mariana, an Original Drama, in Three Acts and an Epilogue, by José Echegaray. Translated by James Graham. (Roberts.)—The Treasures of Kurium, by Ellen M. H. Gates. (Putnams.) — Ernest England, or, A Soul laid Bare, a Drama, for the Closet, by J. A. Parker. (Imported by Scribners.) — Pebbles and Boulders, selected from Poems written at Moments of Leisure, by Nathan A. Woodward. (Charles Wells Moulton, Buffalo.)

Fiction. Uniform with the reissue of Thomas Hardy’s earlier novels in a neat library edition comes his latest, Jude the Obscure, with a most unpleasantly deprecatory shrug in the preface. (Harpers.) It is melancholy to see how Mr. Hardy has allowed himself to brood over unwholesome scenes, until he sees everything, including the sun in the heavens, through smoked glass. All has gone awry, but he does not appear to suspect his own squint. — The Life of Nancy, by Sarah Orne Jewett. (Houghton.) The title story of this collection of ten tales might well stand as a representative title for a very large part of Miss Jewett’s work. She has done precisely this,—got at the life of “Nancy,” the homely New England maiden whose city sister is “ Annie ; ” not at the mere external circumstance of Nancy, but at her life, what she thinks about, dreams about, knows in her soul ; not, again, at some sharp moment in Nancy’s experience, some acidulous drop into which her life has been distilled, but at her common experience as it flows on year after year. With each new volume Miss Jewett shows a finer power over language, while preserving the old, simple flavor of sympathy and strong sense of what is humanly probable in the characters she portrays. — From the Memoirs of a Minister of France, by Stanley J. Weyman. (Longmans.) It will surely be to the great contentment of all his readers that in this book Mr. Weyman returns to the time and scene of his most successful tales, the France of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The dozen stories which make up the volume are in their form episodes from Sully’s Memoirs, the personality of the narrator serving as a connecting thread. Not only is the great minister a singularly lifelike figure, but his still more famous master is drawn with an ease and a sureness of touch altogether admirable. Again, we must note how, without carefully, not to say painfully elaborated descriptions or archaisms of manner and phrase on the one hand, or impertinent intrusions of the life and thought of to-day on the other, we are, by means apparently the simplest and most natural, given the atmosphere and feeling of the time. Remarkable, too, is the variety of motive and incident to be found in these sketches. Indeed, viewing him only as an excellent story-teller, we think this volume often shows the author at his best — The Stark Munro Letters, by A. Conan Doyle. (Appletons.) It is easy to imagine the feelings of the ordinary devourer of fiction when he finds that this book is not an exciting historical romance, nor an ingenious detective story, nor even thrilling episodes in a physician’s life, but the plain, unvarnished tale of the struggles of a young doctor, without money or influence, to build up a very modestly remunerative practice. We have no right to infer that the work is autobiographic, but it is certainly realistic in a good sense, and will, we think, interest a not inconsiderable number of readers. The sketch of the narrator’s unfriendly friend, Cullingworth, part genius, part charlatan, part knave, and potentially wholly a lunatic, may not be a life-study, but it is an exceedingly vivid piece of character-drawing, and would alone give value to the volume, whose weakest feature is the stress laid upon the hero’s rather boyish and quite commonplace agnosticism. —The Wonderful Visit, by H. G. Wells. (Macmillan.) This agreeably readable fantasy tells of the haps and mishaps, usually the latter, of an angel who accidentally finds himself on the earth, the place of his involuntary descent being an English village, where dwell a collection of Philistines not differing greatly from other coteries to which we have frequently been introduced. The satire of the sketch is also of a rather familiar kind, hut the little tale is told with originality of manner if not of thought, and with wit and humor as well. Nor does it lack a touch of pathos. — My Japanese Wife, by Clive Holland. (Macmillan.) The tale fitly contained in this pretty booklet is told with a charming and dainty grace quite worthy of the fascinating child-woman who is its heroine. It is impossible to imagine Mousmé in any but a Japanese setting, and her possible English experiences would cause some misgivings if we were able to take her pleasing history very seriously. — The Red Star, by L. McManus. The Autonym Library. (Putnams.) The history of a high-born Polish girl, in the days when the battle of Eylau was fought, who, when the only man of her house declines to join the French, disguises herself as a boy and leads some of her vassals to the war, where her fate becomes intertwined with that of her nominal husband, a Russian officer, to whom she had been forcibly wedded. The tale is told with so much spirit, and here and there so graphically, that it is quickly read, and for the moment its rather startling improbabilities are overlooked. — Lady Bonnie’s Experiment, by Tighe Hopkins. (Holt.) A sketch rather than a story, of the flimsiest texture, but sometimes brightly and always smartly written. — Moody’s Lodging House, and Other Tenement Sketches, by Alvan Francis Sanborn. (Copeland & Day.) A baker’s dozen of sketches of the mud age of civilization. Other writers go to this source for realistic sketches or for philanthropic designs. Mr. Sanborn seems to take the ground that he is to be a close reporter of men and things as they are on this low level. He has not the power of Stevenson to get at the real man behind his rags ; and after all, what is the use of the book ? It has all the outside air of literature and not of a sociological report, but is in reality nothing more than an author’s studies, and should no more be published than the sketches of an artist who is studying to make pictures. — The Adventures of Jones, by Hayden Carruth. (Harpers.) The spirit if not the genius of Baron Munchausen fell upon Jones. He struggles manfully, but the burden is heavy, and sometimes he is near sinking under it. His stories of wonderful inventions are only moderately wonderful inventions themselves, but the book can at least be commended as a terrible warning to young liars, and also for its entire freedom from vulgarity. — The Price of Peace, a Story of the Times of Ahab, King of Israel, by A. W. Ackerman. (McClurg.) — The Pan glim a Muda, a Romance of Malaya, by Rounseville Wildman. (Overland Monthly Publishing Co.).—Transplanted Manners, a Novel, by Elizabeth E. Evans. (Swan Sonnenschein & Co., London.) — Garrison Tales from Tonquin, by James O’Neill. (Copeland & Day.)

Books for the Young. A Life of Christ for Young People, in Questions and Answers, by Mary Hastings Foote (Harpers), covers the events from the Annunciation to the Ascension, as nearly as possible in what is now believed to be the true chronological order. There are more than eighteen hundred of the questions and answers, generally brief, clear, and pointed, many of them couched in the exact language of the Authorized Version. The author is orthodox and devout, and makes good use of the fruits of the latest scholarship. — A Midsummer Night’s Dream : illustrated by R. A. Bell ; edited, with an Introduction, by Israel Gollancz. (Dent, London ; Macmillan, New York.) Mr. Gollancz, though possibly a little too much affected by the idea that he is writing to children, puts in capital form a scholarly and imaginative account of the origin and meaning of the great play. The illustrations are playful and suggestive in a modest, agreeable fashion. — Two Little Pilgrims’ Progress, a Story of the City Beautiful, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Scribners.) “ Perhaps theirs was a fairy story,” says the writer regarding the history of the twins, Robin and Meg, orphans of twelve years, who by months of hard, persistent work earn enough to go to the Chicago Fair, and there meet their destiny, a rich, lonely, unhappy man, whom they comfort and cheer, and who of course adopts them. We fear that a stern Realist would agree with the writer, but for ourselves, we are quite willing that children should still have a good ending to their tales ; and as they will instinctively feel that the boy and girl who go to the City Beautiful are an exceedingly uncommon pair, the good fortune that attends them will be accepted as, in their case, altogether natural. We should be more disposed to take exception to the author’s habit of occasionally writing of rather than for children, though this is less marked here than in some of her recent juvenile stories. — A Boy of the First Empire, by Elbridge S. Brooks. (Century Co.) The revival of the Napoleonic legend was sure to produce a tale belonging thereto concerning the fortunes of some ardent boy Bonapartist to whom the Emperor plays the part of earthly providence, and in this handsome, profusely illustrated volume we find such a history. The author has brought out a good deal of juvenile historic fiction, and though he quite lacks a distinction of style very desirable in writing of this class, or any vivid imaginative power, he is generally spirited and readable, and follows his authorities with reasonable accuracy.The want of distinction of which we speak is more sensibly felt in another book from the same hand, Great Men’s Sons, Who They Were, What They Did, and How They Turned Out : A Glimpse at the Sons of the World’s Mightiest Men, from Socrates to Napoleon. (Putnams.) This volume is also generously, and on the whole well illustrated. — A Child of Tuscany, by Marguerite Bouvet. (McClurg.) An entirely conventional tale of a lost child, brought up by a peasant woman; the distinguishedlooking old gentleman and lovely young lady, with sad faces, whom the boy has admired from a distance, naturally proving to be his own high-born kinsfolk. The writer loves Florence, but this fact, and calling a child a bimbo, or scattering a few other Italian words through the dialogue, do not make the little hero and his friends Tuscans, or indeed the living denizens of any other land. The publishers have brought out the book in an attractive guise.-Guert Ten Eyck, a Hero Story, by W. O. Stoddard. (Lothrop.) — English Men of Letters for Boys and Girls, Chaucer, Spenser, Sidney, by Gertrude H. Ely. (E. L. Kellogg & Co.) —Polly Button’s New Year, by Mrs. C. F. Wilder. (Crowell.) — Oscar Peterson, Ranchman and Ranger, by Henry Willard French. (Lothrop.)

Year-Books and Calendars. The beginning of the year brings a variety of prettily bound and otherwise attractive year-books and volumes of selections from favorite writers. In white and gold are Helpful Words, from the Writings of Edward Everett Hale, selected by Mary B. Merrill (Roberts), in which a single page is given to each extract, with a small picture opposite ; and Messages of Faith, Hope, and Love, Selections for Every Day in the Year from the Sermons and Writings of James Freeman Clarke, with a portrait of Dr. Clarke as a frontispiece. (Geo. H. Ellis.) — The Helen Jackson Year-Book, Selections by Harriet T. Perry. Illustrated by full-page designs by Emil Bayard, and vignette titles by E. H. Garrett. ( Roberts.) — About Men : What Women Have Said. An Every-Day Book. Chosen and arranged by Rose Porter. (Putnams.) Selections from the writings of twelve women (one for each month), from Maria Edgeworth to Mis. Humphry Ward. — Thoughts from the Writings of Richard Jefferies, selected by H. S. H. Waylen. One of the handsomest of this season’s books of the kind. Finally, and somewhat out of the ordinary course of these volumes, comes The Proverbial Philosophy of Confucius, Quotations from the Chinese Classics for Each Day in the Year, compiled by Forster H. Jenings, with Preface by Hon. Pom Kwang Sob, Minister of Justice to H. M. the King of Korea. (Putnams.) — L. Prang & Co., Boston, send an assortment of things to give away, because of their holiday air and general attractiveness : Our Poets’ Calendar for 1896, with heads of Whittier, Longfellow, Bryant, and Emerson ; A Posy of Forget-Me-Nots, half a dozen cards, with the flower in various combinations and verses from various poets, the cards tied by a blue ribbon ; another Calendar, composed of violets and figures ; A Handful of June Pansies, the same kind of fancy on a larger scale and with more range to the poetry ; A Posy of Sweet Peas, on the same plan ; a Calendar, with infantile figures presiding over each quarter; a Happy Childhood Calendar, a little more elaborate ; Roses, Roses all the Way, dedicated to Rose, and a mingling of flowers and verse ; and finally, Six British Authors, ribbon-tied cards with portraits of Shakespeare, Tennyson, Wordsworth, Byron, Burns, and Browning, verses from these poets, and idealized houses in which the equally idealized portraits may be hung.

Periodicals. The fiftieth volume of The Century is characterized in part by the infrequency of serial matter and the abundance of poetry. The leading serial is Mr. Sloane’s Napoleon Bonaparte. (Century Co.) — The two volumes of St. Nicholas covering the year from November, 1894, to November, 1895 (Century Co.), enable one to see how varied are the contents of the magazine, and that the editors endeavor to mix in as much introduction to literature and natural history and science generally as they think omnivorous readers of stories will stand. — The Yellow Book, Volume VII., October, 1895. (Copeland & Day.)

Household Economics. The Century Cook Book, by Mary Ronald. (Century Co.) The illustrations form the distinguishing and a distinctly valuable feature of this book. They are reproductions from photographs, showing various dishes, the garniture thereof, as well as utensils used in their preparation. The volume also contains chapters on dinner-giving, directions as to laying the table, serving, and kindred topics, — the directions and suggestions being usually clear and sensible. Viewed simply as a collection of receipts, the book should take a fair rank, though it is certainly neither better nor more complete than are several of the well-known compilations in general use. In its size and make-up this manual is probably the handsomest and most imposing cook book of the day, — Swain Cookery, with Health Hints, by Rachel Swain, M. D. (Fowler & Wells.) Intended, we are assured, “ to cultivate correct dietetic habits,” and dedicated “ to those who love the largeness of life and the bounty of good living.” — Food Products of the World, by Mary E. Green, M. D. Edited and illustrated by Grace Green Bohn. (The Hotel World, Chicago.)

Guidebooks and Handbooks. The Harvard Guide-Book, by Franklin Baldwin Wiley. (C. W. Sever, Cambridge.) It appears that for more than twelve years no comprehensive guidebook of the university at Cambridge has been newly published. Mr. Wiley’s is excellent in arrangement, and should be commended especially for the manner in which it brings forward the many lines our Cambridge poets, old and young, have written of the scenes they have loved. A useful appendix describes the windows in Memorial Hall. — Hand-Book of Sanitary Information for Householders, containing Facts and Suggestions about Ventilation, Drainage, Care of Contagious Diseases, Disinfection, Food, and Water. With Appendices on Disinfectants and Plumbers’ Materials. By Roger S. Tracy, M. D., Sanitary Inspector of the New York City Health Department. (Appletons.) The title sufficiently explains what the book is. In addition, it is only necessary to say that there are thirty-three illustrations and a complete index. — Ancestry, the Objects of the Hereditary Societies and the Military and Naval Orders of the United States, and the Requirements for Membership Therein, compiled by Eugene Zieber. (The Bailey, Banks & Biddle Co., Philadelphia.)

Science. Life and Love, by Margaret Warner Morlev. I llustrated by the Author. (McClurg.) “ ’T is love that makes the world go round.” This is Miss Morley’s text, although she does not announce it in these words. The book is a natural sequel to her Song of Life, published a few years ago. The present volume was written rather for the uninformed general reader than for children, but is so elementary in treatment and so elevated in tone that it could well be placed in young hands. The reproductive instinct and functions, as exhibited in all classes of animals and plants, are explained in a delicate and sometimes even poetic manner, yet without the slightest departure from strict scientific accuracy ; and the author’s idea of love, in the purest and most exalted sense of the word, as the underlying principle of life, is kept constantly in view. The book might well be used as an antidote for the teachings of the physiological novel. — Celestial Objects for Common Telescopes, by the Rev. T. W . Webb. Fifth edition, revised and greatly enlarged by Rev. T. E. Espin. In two volumes. (Longmans.) — Popular Scientific Lectures, by Ernst Mach, Professor of Physics in the University of Prague. Translated by Thomas J. McCormack. (Open Court Publishing Co.) — The Growth of the Brain, a Study of the Nervous System in Relation to Education, by Henry Herbert Donaldson, Professor of Neurology in the University of Chicago. (Imported by Scribners.) — The forces of Nature, a Study of Natural Phenomena, by Herbert B. Harrop and Louis A. Wallis. (Harrop & Wallis, Columbus, Ohio.)