Comment on New Books

History and Biography. Life, Letters, and Works of Louis Agassiz, by Jules Marcou. With Illustrations. In two volumes. (Macmillan.) Mr. Marcou has passed in review the career of Agassiz, and has brought to his task the advantage of nationality and scientific training. He has also stood toward the great naturalist and his associates in the attitude of a critic, though his criticism is less formal and systematic than what might be called temperamental and personal. One needs to be somewhat on one’s guard in reading, if he is to form sound judgments as to the relationships which existed between Agassiz and his associates, or to reckon with accuracy the part which each played. Nevertheless, with this caution, the reader will find himself threading some intricate and interesting paths in recent scientific history. An air of minute knowledge and positive judgment pervades the work. — George Morland, Painter, London, 1763-1804, by Ralph Richardson. (Elliot Stock, London.) In the three years after Morland’s death no less than four lives of him appeared, all practically unattainable to-day; the best, on the whole, being that of George Dawe, R. A., which Mr. Richardson has wisely elected to follow, for the most part, in compiling this biography, — a book for which there certainly is a place, considering that the works of the artist it commemorates, those matchless studies of late eighteenth-century English rural life in its most prosperous and smiling estate, are found quite as admirable at the century’s end as they were at its beginning. The writer makes a brave plea for leniency in judging the errors of his hero, but an overstrict education or the convivial habits of his time can hardly be held entirely responsible for his shortcomings. Under any circumstances, it is doubtful if this reckless, wasteful “good fellow,” with his taste for “ sport ” in its lowest forms, would have led a very reputable life. The marvel of his career is the amount of work he accomplished in his few, ill-governed years. A great deal of carefully collated information regarding Morland’s pictures and the engravings therefrom is contained in an appendix. A few reproductions from these engravings are given in the volume, together with a portrait of the artist, after Rowlandson. — William the Silent, Prince of Orange, the Moderate Man of the Sixteenth Century ; the Story of his Life as told from his own Letters, from those of his Friends and Enemies, and from Official Documents. By Ruth Putnam. (Putnams.) We suppose that this work was begun with the intention that it should form a volume of the Heroes of the Nations Series, and that it grew in the author’s hands till it was thought better not to try to confine it to the rather strait limits of the original design, — a decision for which its readers have reason to be grateful. Of course, the writer, to her manifest advantage, and naturally to her disadvantage as well, must follow in the footsteps of Motley, and she at once acknowledges that “ through the labyrinth of partisan opinion . . . I have patiently followed his inspiring lead, with growing admiration for the untiring industry of his laborious researches, and for the accuracy and skill of his adaptations from the enormous mass of matter that he examined,”— no idle tribute, coming from so fair-minded, painstaking, and intelligent a student. In her aim to tell her story, so far as may be, in the very words of her hero and his contemporaries, she has selected liberally and judiciously from the great mass of William’s correspondence, giving many letters never before published in English. She has been particularly successful in illustrating the domestic annals of the Nassau family, and her conclusions regarding different aspects of the character and conduct of its head are so carefully considered that they will be received with respect, if not always with entire assent. Her style, if quite without distinction, is unaffected, clear, and straightforward, but it is sometimes unduly and even ungracefully colloquial, and it is to be wished that occasional allusions to supposed American historical parallels had been omitted. Though in certain chapters she shows that she has not mastered the rare art of smoothly flowing and effective condensation, her narrative is steadily interesting, and is always the result of genuine study and research. The work is abundantly and well illustrated. — Memories and Studios of War and Peace, by Archibald Forbes. With Portrait of the Author. (Imported by Scribners.) The veteran war-correspondent’s reminiscences make delightful reading, and there is not a dull page in his book. Besides the narratives of his professional experiences in the Franco - Prussian, Servian, Russo - Turkish, and Zulu wars, and other papers of a more general character relating to military affairs, Mr. Forbes gives us some genuine romances in miniature, which, since we are bound to believe them true stories, go to show that truth is indeed stranger than fiction. —The Rule of the Turk, a Revised and Enlarged Edition of The Armenian Crisis, by Frederick Davis Greene, M. A. (Putnams.) — Echoes of Battle, by Bushrod Washington James. (H. T. Coates & Co., Philadelphia.) — Life and Speeches of Thomas Corwin, Orator, Lawyer, and Statesman, edited by Josiah Morrow. (W. H. Anderson & Co., Cincinnati.) — Lucius Q. C. Lamar, his Life, Times, and Speeches, by Edward Mayes, LL, D. (Barbee & Smith, Nashville, Tenn.)

Literature. The seventh volume of the complete edition of Pepys’s Diary (Bell, London ; Macmillan, New York) begins in July, 1667, that time of humiliation in which the diarist records that “everybody do now-a-days reflect upon Oliver and commend him, what brave things he did, and made all the neighbor princes fear him;” and ends in April, 1668, until public affairs in no better state, for “ we are all poor, and in pieces — God help us ! ” Still, Mr. Pepys, in spite of much hard (and very efficient) office work and serious worries connected therewith, manages to be “ mighty merry ” as frequently as usual, — how cheerfully he and his friends take their pleasure ; indeed, even that ever-to-be-deplored malady of the eyes which has come upon him gives him an excuse for a careless keeping of his vows in the matter of play-going. But it is with a pang of sympathy, as well as with selfish regrets, that the book-lover comes upon ejaculations such as this : “ My eyes very had, and I know not how in the world to abstain from reading.” The volume contains five illustrations, including a portrait of Lord Brouncker, after Lely, and views without and within of St. Olave’s, Hart Street, where on so many Lord’s Days Mr. Mills preached sermons, dull or lazy. — The closing volumes of the Messrs. Roberts’s edition of Balzac, in Miss Wormeley’s always admirable translation, follow each other in quick succession. A late issue contains two of the minor tales, both belonging to Scenes from Provincial Life: The Gallery of Antiquities, and An Old Maid. — Four more numbers of the neat little Tennyson have reached us: Maud, In Memoriam, The Brook and Other Poems, the first number of Idylls of the King. (Macmillan.) — Amiel’s Journal, translated by Mrs. Humphry Ward, forms two volumes of Macmillan’s (paper) Miniature Series. — Notes of a Professional Exile, by E. S. Nadal. (Century Co.) The exile is an expatriated American, who talks about American women and some other, less important topics. It is a pretty little volume, bound in embossed leather. — Old-World Japan, Legends of the Land of the Gods, retold by Frank Rinder. With Illustrations by T. H. Robinson. (Macmillan.) The legends are mostly rambling and incoherent ; and presented as they are, without explanatory notes or any attempt to show the relations they bear to the myths of other peoples, they contain little that will interest Occidental readers. The illustrations are rather effective as pieces of decorative work, but are too distinctly English to illustrate properly a Japanese hook.

Religion, Theology, and Ethics. Responsive Readings, Selected from the Bible and arranged under subjects fur Common Worship, by Henry Van Dyke. (Ginn.) Dr. Van Dyke compiled this book for use in the chapel of Harvard, and we hope it may come into general collegiate use, both because it is admirably arranged, and because, by its inclusion of other passages besides the psalter, it will enrich the service and add to the value of what always is in danger of being a formal operation. — Readings from the Bible. Selected for Schools and to be read in Unison, Under Supervision of the Chicago Woman’s Educational Union. (Scott, Foresman & Co., Chicago.) A small volume, with short selections judiciously chosen from narrative, poem, prophecy, epistle. There is no obvious order, but the matter is taken topically, so that under such a head as Glorious in Holiness there are excerpts from Revelation, Matthew, Chronicles, Isaiah, and Exodus. Something is lost by this arbitrary grouping, and we wish the compilers had borne more in mind the continuity of passages ; the arrangement emphasizes too much the textual scheme of the Bible. It was needless, also, to preserve the old italicization of the King James version. But the book is a step in the right direction, and Mr. Moulton’s suggestions as to literary form have been of excellent service. We do not see why this little volume should not solve some of the perplexities growing out of the exclusion of Bible-reading in schools. — Dogmatic Theology, by William G. T. Shedd, D. D. Volume III. Supplement. (Scribners.) — St. Paul’s Conception of Christianity, by Alexander Balmain Bruce, D. D., Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the Free Church College, Glasgow. (Scribners.) — Fallen Angels : A Disquisition upon Human Existence. An Attempt to elucidate Some of its Mysteries, especially those of Evil and of Suffering, By One of Them. (Gay & Bird, London.)—The Power of an Endless Life, by Thomas C. Hall. (McClurg.) — William B. Hayden, for FortyTwo Years a Minister of the New-Jerusalem Church. Selected Essays and Discourses, with Memorials of his Life and Services. (Mass. New-Church Union, Boston.)— The Church and Secular Life, by Frederick William Hamilton. (Universalist Publishing House, Boston and Chicago.) — The Law of Service, a Study in Christian Altruism, by James P. Kelley. (Putnams.)— The Leisure of God, and Other Studies in the Spiritual Evolution, by John Coleman Adams. (Universalist PublishingHouse.) — A Creedless Gospel and the Gospel Creed, by Henry Y. Satterlee, D. D., Rector of Calvary Church, New York. (Scribners.) — Light on Current Topics. Beunett Lectures for 1895. (Mass. NewChurch Union.) — The Religious Training of Children, by Abby Morton Diaz. Reprinted from the Metaphysical Review by Special Request. (The Metaphysical Publishing Co., New York.) — Metaphors, Similes, and other Characteristic Sayings of Henry Ward Beecher. Compiled from Discourses reported by T. J. Ellinwood, with Introduction by Homer B. Sprague, Ph. D. (Andrew J. Graham & Co., New York.) — Progress in Spiritual Knowledge, by the Rev. Chauncey Giles. A Memorial Volume. (American New-Church Tract and Publication Society, Philadelphia.) — Heredity and Christian Problems, by Amory H. Bradford. (Macmillan.)

Fiction and the Drama. A Monk of Fife, by Andrew Lang. (Longmans.) Mr. Lang’s readers do not learn for the first time from this chronicle that he is one of the most earnest and sincere of the latterday devotees of Jeanne la Pucelle. With an admirable assumption of the manner and feeling of the time, he tells by the pen of Norman Leslie, a Benedictine monk of Dunfermline, who in his youth had been one of the French king’s Scottish Archers, of the adventures that befell the narrator on first coming into France, and especially of his intercourse with the Maid, from the glorious beginning to the tragic ending of her career. Though her name and fame pervade the story, by a wise art she is not too often brought upon the stage ; but her character is clearly conceived, and, even in its aloofness, is drawn with firmness as well as grace. For the rest, there is a genuine black-browed villain, a charming, goldenhaired Scots lass, many men-at-arms, much fighting, and thrilling hairbreadth escapes, all set forth with an abundance of clerkly skill. — The X Jewel, by the Hon. Frederick Moncreiff. (Harpers.) There is no present lack of either Scottish or historical fiction, and this romance combines both qualities, being a tale of the days when James VI. was yet a lad. The author has a good working knowledge of the turbulent politics of the time, and can reasonably well adopt its manner of speech ; but if he himself thoroughly understands the convolutions of his plot, he will hardly find many readers acute enough to share the knowledge with him. For ourselves, we very early in the narrative gave up trying to really comprehend the motives for the actions of Andrew Eviot and his friends or enemies, though, as we recognized in him a hero predestined to success, we take his final triumph for granted ; for even this, as well as the last disposition of the X Jewel, remains a little obscure. — In the Smoke of War, by Walter Raymond. (Macmillan.) A contrast to the author’s idyllic tales of peaceful country life is this story of civil strife ; but the villagers, who hardly know whether they are for king or Parliament, though they suffer sorely in person or in goods when war comes to their doors, are drawn with the same true and sympathetic touch as are their descendants of to-day. Among these uncomprehending victims are the miller, John Durston, and his pretty daughter Cicely, whose history is told with perfect simplicity, and yet always with vividness and force. The fight at Langport closes the tale ; for, the mill burned and her father slain, the heroine goes not unwillingly with her better born Puritan husband to seek a new home oversea. We are glad to say that Mr. Raymond does not use the Somersetshire speech to any needless or unintelligible extent. — Hippolyte and Golden-Beak, Two Stories, by George Bassett. (Harpers.) Outside of the novels of Norris, we very rarely find the experienced, observing, cynical, but not unkindly man of the world so excellently presented as in the supposed narrator of these tales. Both stories — the first, the evolution and career of a hardly typical Parisian valet ; the second, the strange history of the pretty, underbred, fluent, and amusing young San Francisco divorcée, Mrs. Potwin, and her Japanese and English suitors — are exceedingly well told ; so well, indeed, that the improbabilities, to speak mildly, of the latter tale trouble the reader not at all. From internal evidence it would be difficult to say whether the author were a cosmopolitan Englishman, whose knowledge of America was mainly Western or Californian, or a much-traveled and somewhat Anglicized American, as a plausible case could be made for or against either assumption. — A Madeira Party, by S. Weir Mitchell. The Rivalries of Long and Short Codiac, by George Wharton Edwards. Both are attractive pocket volumes, so to speak, tastefully bound in embossed leather, and published by the Century Company. In the first, Dr. Mitchell’s party of old-time gentlemen celebrate the glories of their “ noble old wine ” in the quiet and dignified conversation which befits so respectable a subject. Under the same cover, the reader is offered A Little More Burgundy, with its story of the French Revolution. Long and Short Codiac are, of course, inhabited by down - east fisherfolk, who have joys and sorrows much like other people’s, in spite of the fact that they say “ I cal’late ” and “ what say,” and use dories to get about in instead of bicycles. — The Messrs. Scribners have issued two new volumes by Q : Wandering Heath, a collection of stories, studies, and sketches ; and la, which appears in the pretty Ivory Series. There is no need to Speak of the charm and veracity of Mr. Quiller-Couch’s tales of Cornwall, and if a few waifs and strays have been gathered into Wandering Heath, whose republication was hardly essential, we are grateful for so heroic a sea-sketch as The Roll-Call of the Reef, and for the pleasant humor of those studies of village politics, Letters from Troy. The Bishop of Eucalyptus is a creditable essay in the manner of Bret Harte, but we prefer the writer on his native coast. The history of Ia, the handsome, strong-natured, untutored serving-maid, — her courting, in very summary fashion, it must be said, of the gentle, refined, weak young Second Adventist preacher, and the consequent results in the character and life of each, —is told with force and feeling, and also with a reticence which is good artistically as well as morally. Some of the fisherfolk who are of the Elect are lightly but very happily sketched. — A Cumberland Vendetta, and Other Stories, by John Fox, Jr. (Harpers.) Tales of the Kentucky mountains, whose inhabitants do not differ greatly from Our familiar acquaintances the mountaineers of the neighboring States, unless it is in a more pronounced element of lawless brutality, and in certain differences in their uncouth English, — of which the author spares us nothing, — notably the use of superfluous aspirates. Perhaps the best sketch in the book is A Mountain Europa, the usual tale of a wondrously beautiful mountain maid who is loved by a wanderer from civilization, — the love in this case ending in marriage. But the writer does not venture to carry the hazardous experiment farther than the wedding-day, when the bride, in shielding her husband, is killed by her drunken father. It is pleasant, to turn from the actors in these dramas to the mountain region which forms their majestic setting, and which is vividly depicted by a writer fully sensitive to its every aspect, whether of severity, grandeur, or beauty. — A Son of the Plains, by Arthur Paterson. (Macmillan.) A story of the Santa Fé trail in the early seventies, when the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railway was not, and travelers journeying across the plains carried their lives in their hands. In such case is the hereof this exciting tale, and he amply proves his right to that position, as he escapes from perils, each deadlier than the last, which follow one another with breathless rapidity, — perils from Indians, and from white men quite as lawless and savage. As the book appeals rather to the young reader, it is in place to say that it is neither vulgar nor unwholesome in tone. The story is told with spirit, and not infrequently with genuine graphic power. — Irralie’s Bushranger, by E. W. Hornnng. Ivory Series. (Scribners.) Great ingenuity has been shown in the construction of this entertaining story of Australian adventure, and there is generally no lack of life in the characters. A case of mistaken identity is far from a new theme, but there is freshness in the treatment, and the surprises are cleverly managed. — An Unlessoned Girl, a Story of School Life, by Elizabeth Knight Tompkins. (Putnams.) Two years of school life have an ameliorating effect on the pert, unfilial girl, wise in her own conceit, to whom we are introduced in the opening chapters of this book, though we can hardly say that we find her very attractive even at the close of this stage of her experience, and for her cleverness we must take the author’s word. A distinct impression is given, however, by the young women connected therewith, that slang was the art chiefly cultivated in Miss Healey’s superior academy.—Miss Jerry, by Alexander Black. With Thirty-Seven Illustrations from Life Photographs by the Author. (Scribners.) Mr. Black has made a selection from the two hundred and fifty photographs of his “ picture play,” and has adapted his text to book publication. The experiment was an interesting one, but yet it is easy to see that these are tableaux vivants, not actual scenes. Like the photographs displayed at the, entrances of our theatres, they show the inadequacy of photography to the task of reproducing situations. Any illustrator of moderate ability can make a more truly lifelike picture. — Magda, by Hermann Sudermann. Translated from the German by C. E. A. Winslow. (Lamson, Wolffe & Co., Boston.) If modern realistic dramas and stories have no other value, they have at least a sociological interest, and the reader of Magda falls to speculating on the curiously German provincialism of the plot. Everything is provincial which differs from our continent, and even Sudermann fails to make the iron despotism of society suffice to explain Magda’s submission to her father, up to the last point, without the aid which the special German variety of social tyranny affords him. How entirely, moreover, the play supposes acting must appear to any one who reads the dead level of this dialogue after seeing Duse in Magda’s part. — Cable’s Madame Delphine has been republished in the Ivory Series (Scribners), with an interesting introduction by the author, which tells how the story came to be written. — Mrs. Deland’s Philip and his Wife and Bret Harte’s Clarence have appeared in the Riverside Paper Series, (Houghton.) — Mrs. F. A. Steel’s Miss Stuart’s Legacy and Crawford’s A Roman Singer have been added to Macmillan’s Novelists’ Library.— The Things that Matter, by Francis Gribble. Hudson Library, (Putnams.) — Doctor Cavallo, by Eugene F. Baldwin and Maurice Eisenberg. (Press of J. W. Franks & Sons, Peoria, Ill.) — On Shifting Sands, a Sketch from Real Life, by Harriet Osgood Nowlin. (Donohue, Henneberry & Co., Chicago.) — The Hidden Faith, an Occult Story of the Period, by Alwyn M. Thurber. (F. M. Harley Publishing Co., Chicago.) — Hardy’s The Woodlanders ; A Gray Eye or So, by E. F. Moore ; A Hidden Chain, by Dora Russell ; The Sea-Wolves, by Max Pemberton ; and Stanhope of Chester, by Percy Andreae, have been issued in Rand, McNally & Co.’s Globe Library. — A Mormon Wife, by Grace Wilbur Trout. (E. A, Weeks & Co., Chicago.)

Music. The Evolution of Church Music, by the Rev. Frank Landon Humphreys, Mus. Doc. With Preface by the Rt. Rev. H. C. Potter. (Scribners.) Lectures delivered by the author before the students of various church colleges and seminaries are here recast and extended, but have not in the process lost the qualities which must have made them notably interesting and effective in their original form. Writing with abundant technical knowledge, and inspired by a high ideal and an earnest and well-defined purpose, he has also so well succeeded in popularizing his theme that it is to be wished his volume might be scattered broadcast among the music committees of our churches. The good sense of the book is as conspicuous as its good taste and breadth of view, and it should be as useful for reproof as for instruction. In such a work it is justifiable to quote freely, and the quotations here are generally very much to the point, but we wish their origin had been oftener indicated ; and we must regret, in so handsomely printed a book, that the types should have perversely transformed the name of a writer of the Rev. Dr. Jessopp’s repute into “Jessup.”

Nature and Travel. The Mediterranean Trip, a Short Guide to the Principal Points on the Shores of the Western Mediterranean and the Levant, by Noah Brooks. With Twenty-Four Illustrations and Four Maps. (Scribners.) A convenient little volume for vacation tourists. The Preliminary Suggestions give good advice to all sea-going travelers, though intended especially for those Mediterranean-bound. The illustrations are from photographs, and the guidebook red is toned down to a pleasing and unobtrusive shade. — Part XIII, of Mr. Nehrling’s North American Birds (George Brumder, Milwaukee) has been issued, containing biographies of the Rose-Breasted Grosbeak, the Blue Grosbeak, the Indigo Bunting, the Painted Bunting, the Bobolink, and others.

Books of Reference. The Animal Literary Index, 1895 (The Publishers’ Weekly, New York),affords ready reference not only to articles in periodicals, American and English, but to essays, chapters in books, and other indexible publications. A convenient index of authors follows, a section of bibliographies, a necrology, and an index to dates of principal events for 1895. Rather a queer combination, but a useful one. The editors are W. T. Fletcher and R. R. Bowker, both experienced workmen. — List of Books for Girls and Women and their Clubs, edited by Augusta H. Leypoldt and George Iles. (The Library Bureau, Boston.) This is a classified list, and there are added Hints for a Girls’Club, an outline constitution, suggestions for literary clubs, and the like. The list contains well-chosen books, though one is a little curious sometimes to know how reading for girls and women is differentiated from that for boys and men.

Humor. A House-Boat on the Styx, being some Account of the Divers Doings of the Associated Shades, by John Kendrick Bangs. Illustrated. (Harpers.) Through the more or less kind offices of Mr. Boswell, one of the Associated Shades, Mr. Bangs is enabled to present to his readers the reports of several entertaining and unprofitable conversations between members of their exclusive club, who in the tipper world were the great men of all times and countries, from Noah to Barnum, from Horner to Tennyson, from Jonah to Munchausen.

Games. Whist Laws and Whist Decisions, with upwards of One Hundred Cases illustrating the Laws. Also Remarks on the American Laws of Whist, and Cases by which the Reader’s Knowledge of the English Laws may be tested by himself. By Major-General A. W . Drayson. (Harpers.) — The Evolution of Whist, by William Pole. (Longmans.)