Comment on New Books

ESSAYS.

Cousin Anthony and I, Some Views of Ours about Divers Matters and Various Aspects of Life, by Edward Sandford Martin. (Scribners.) It is a common lament that the writing of essays is a lost art, especially in America ; and it is a common belief that the writers without signatures, for the last pages of magazines, are the writers least worthy of consideration. Yet here is a volume of admirable little essays which, if we mistake not, have in many instances first seen the light in close proximity to magazine advertisements. Nevertheless, they are clever, wise, and true. Their writer has observed our contemporary life with shrewdness and justice, and talks most entertainingly of our weaknesses and virtues. He has breathed the spirit of modernity, and, putting a fair value upon its advantages, feels also the losses we shall suffer if we permit ourselves to lose some of the older things. The book is likely to render a double service to those who read it; for after enjoying the pleasure which it is sure to afford them, they will turn yet again, if they are of the judicious, to Mr. Martin’s earlier and almost equally readable book of essays, Windfalls of Observation. — Eighteenth Century Vignettes, Third Series, by Austin Dobson. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) On the title-page of this volume Mr. Dobson prints a couplet from the highly characteristic lines, By Way of Prologue, which stand before the fourteen little essays of the book : —

Any reader of the first and second series of Vignettes will remember them well, and will feel the fitness of the emphasis the author has put upon these two lines. Old magazines and pamphlets, random notes, personal and bibliographical, in memoirs of the last century, chance allusions to this, that, and the other thing, are the materials in which he deals ; he weaves them together with the skill of one who has long known “the joy of the working,” and his finished products are small tapestries on which the scenes and the people of old London are pictured with a clearness which often evades a larger handiwork. — Mr. Gamaliel Bracford, Jr., published several months ago in The Atlantic three essays on The American Pessimist, The American Idealist, and The American Out of Doors ; he has added four papers, and brought the whole into a volume entitled Types of American Character. (Macmillan.) The book is not only the suggestive work of a good observer and reflector, but also a sign of the growing interest in the differentiation of Americans. It marks not so much the self-conscious age as the age when a student is released from the constraint which has rested on most thinkers. Why should not the human naturalist study types of the species nearest to him?—There is no obvious unity in the group of essays which Mr Howells collects under the broad title of Impressions and Experiences (Harpers), yet there is a contrast in the volume which, to one interested in the writer, is rather expressive. The first paper, The Country Printer, is a delightful reminiscence of Mr. Howells’s boyhood ; the second, that grimly humorous Police Report, which shows his attitude toward the subjects of low life when he was only a novelist looking on ; the third, I Talk of Dreams, a whimsical foray into the shadows of real life ; the sixth, The Closing of the Hotel, a felicitous sketch of public sociability. The remaining four papers are the curiously futile efforts of a humane humorist not only to sketch the sordid, but to bring to near a vague economic philosophy to account for conditions and to suggest remedies. We must except the Tribulations of a Cheerful Giver, which by its subjective character is no less sympathetic, but much more intelligible and interpretative. — Aspects of Fiction, and Other Ventures in Criticism, by Brander Matthews. (Harpers.) This volume of essays reveals no extraordinary powers of penetration, but it is appreciative of its various themes and generally readable. A good little distinction is drawn at one point between humor and sense of humor, for which latter, we are well reminded, the English language needs a single word ; and throughout the book there is the interest which always attaches itself to the critical work of a maker of fiction. The opportunity to compare theory and practice is prized no less highly in letters than in life. If we care more for the best stories by Mr. Matthews than for his criticisms, it is as it should be, for is not creation the higher faculty, and the exercise of it the thing that is best worth while ? — The Evergreen, a Northern Seasonal ; The Book of Winter. (Patrick Geddes and Colleagues, Edinburgh ; Lippincott, Philadelphia.) With this, its fourth number, a remarkable quarterly ends its career. The editors’ way of saying it is that “ the loosely grouped initiatives of this first venture have now to separate, to develop apart for a season.” The Celticists, we read, will “ listen alone to the elemental voices,” yet it appears that The Interpreter, a new mouthpiece, will soon begin to speak for the Evergreen confraternity.

ARCHITECTURE.

A Text-Book of the History of Architecture, by A. D. F. Hamlin. (Longmans.) This work is one of the series of College Histories of Art, prepared under the editorship of Dr. Van Dyke. It is essentially a textbook, covering the whole history of architecture within a compass of four hundred and forty closely printed pages. Such a condensation gives to the work somewhat the character of a catalogue raisonné ; but Professor Hamlin has brought to the task the experience of a trained instructor, and, by lucid arrangement, intelligent comment, and a good sense of proportion, has succeeded in presenting his subject in a manner at once intelligible and interesting. Each chapter is preceded by a bibliography, and is subdivided into sections treating ot history, of constructional characteristics, of decoration, etc., followed by brief descriptions of examples, with critical estimates. It is thus not merely a book of reference, but an orderly historical treatise,—the product of a full mind which knows the art of being coucise without obscurity. The copious illustrations are for the most part photographic reproductions, accompanied by wellexecuted plans and diagrams. The necessity of a comprehensive work of this sort has been long felt, and Professor Hamlin, with his wide experience in the architectural department of Columbia College, is admirably equipped to meet it. — European Architecture, a Historical Study, by Russell Sturgis. (Macmillan.) The new scientific study of the evolution of the styles has thrown such fresh light upon architectural history, and there have been so many archaeological revelations within the last twenty years, that all preceding works on this fascinating subject have become more or less doubtful authority, and the old classifications have been found in some important respects arbitrary and unreasonable. Mr. Sturgis’s study is based upon these safer and more scientific lines, and has therefore a distinct raison d’être. Because it deals with essential principles rather than with external phenomena, the transitions of architecture are made to assume a new significance, and to appear no longer unaccountable and accidental, but as reasonable as the transitions in the intellectual or moral growth of mankind. Under this treatment the subject necessarily takes upon itself a new unity, and as such must appeal more successfully to all intelligent minds. Mr. Sturgis makes good use of the obvious advantages gained in surveying the broad European field from an American and consequently from an unprejudiced point of view, and he is enabled from this vantage-ground to show without bias not only the general development of architectural forms throughout Christendom, but the local distinctions created by the social, political, and moral conditions of each nation. This of course adds greatly to the intelligibility and interest of the story. It seems a pity, however, that in taking so comprehensive a survey his scheme should exclude two large and important branches of Byzantine art: the one extending northward and taking definite shape ultimately in the style of Russia ; and the other southward, to become the styles of Arabia and northern Africa. The Western extension, with its far more important results in Christian architecture, is treated as adequately as his limits would permit. The illustrations are abundant and by no means hackneyed or commonplace, the index is full, and the whole work, in plan and execution, in breadth of view and thoroughness of knowledge, is a credit to American scholarship. It is easy to criticise, for its inclusions or its exclusions, so brief a summary of so great a theme, but on the whole we are not likely soon to have an exposition so impartial, so philosophical, and so clear. — Architecture for General Readers, a Short Treatise on the Principles and Motives of Architectural Design, with a Historical Sketch, by H. Heathcote Statham. (Imported by Scribners.) The professed object of this book is to persuade the general reader to bestow some thought upon the meaning and raison d’être of architecture, rather than to regard it merely as the history of a succession of various buildings in various styles. Two thirds of this work are devoted to a popular demonstration of the principles involved in the evolution of architecture from construction, and to an explanation of the growth of distinctive architectural systems or styles ; only one third is occupied by an historical sketch, which includes a glimpse of Indian and Saracenic forms as well as Christian, following a brief study of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine art. This portion of the book, though excellent iu its way, is inferior in value to that concerned with the principles of the art, because one cannot elsewhere find these principles set forth in a manner so intelligible to the general reader. Mr. Statham, as editor of the London Builder, one of the oldest and most celebrated of architectural publications, has had a long and intimate connection with the literary side of the art, and makes an excellent use of his experience in this new exposition. The illustrations, which are all by his own hand, are in every respect an illumination of the text, and the comparative views exhibited in the twelve full-page plates are especially clever in selection and arrangement.

FICTION.

Meg McIntyre’s Raffle, and Other Stories, by Alvau F. Sanborn. (Copeland & Day.) The pathos and tragedy of the poorest city life are portrayed with a ghastly reality in these tales. They make their appeal as documents, horribly human, rather than as pieces of fiction. Nothing is set down with a perceptible wish to make things seem better, or indeed other, than they are. Episodes in the Career of Shuffles, a Lodging-House Bum, take up a considerable portion of the volume, and in their showing of all that is worst and best in a man purely “ degenerate ” by birth and circumstance are fairly typical of the skill and value of Mr. Sanborn’s work. The short opening tale, from which the volume takes its name, stands apart as a strange sort of tenement-house idyl. When another Irish vaudeville song is wanted, here is the prose from which it may be made. —Tales of Fantasy and Fact, by Brander Matthews. (Harpers.) This is a collection of stories, some of which have appeared previously in magazines and some in newspapers, as is explained in the Confidential Postscript at the end of the volume. The author does not seem quite on familiar ground in the first four stories of fantasy, and though the idea is often original, he fails in leaving the impression he strives to produce. The Kinetoscope of Time is perhaps the best of these. Here the well-known characters that have been already immortalized by other hands pass before our vision once more, illuminated by the magic-lantern Mr. Matthews flashes upon them. The Twinkling of an Eye is the most noticeable of the tales of fact, and it has become pretty generally known as the winner of the second prize offered by a newspaper, some time ago, for the best detective story. — In The Quest of the Golden Girl, a romance by Richard Le Gallienne (John Lane), we follow the adventures of a latter-day troubadour in search of his ideal bride. The subject is entirely congenial to the author, and all his happiest characteristics are conspicuous. The fantastic tale is full of poetry and fancy, and on laying the volume down we confess that the key of Arcadia is in the possession of this writer with the Greek soul and the artist’s touch. We should feel surfeited with sweetness after a steady diet of Le Gallienne,—man cannot live on roses and honey alone, — but in this prosaic age it is peculiarly refreshing to find a writer who extracts the essence of poetry from life, and discards the rest as mere dross. There are the usual few things we wish Mr. Le Gallienne had not said, or had said differently, things which show him at his worst as a vulgar poseur, but these rare discords are quite forgotten in the pastoral beauty and harmony of the whole. — In Buncombe County, by Maria Louise Pool (Herbert S. Stone & Co.), is an informally written little sketch of Southern sordidness and squalor, laid among the beautiful North Carolina mountains, where we are given to understand that every prospect pleases, and not only man is vile, but women and children surpass their male relations in degradation. It is an unpretentious account of the impressions and experiences of two “ Yankee ” girls visiting a Southern friend, but if the story were condensed into half its present bulk it would be read with more enjoyment, and we should not miss the vein of forced humor which runs through the book and blinds us to a genuine liveliness of description often found in its pages. — A far more ambitious production by the same author is In the First Person (Harpers), which deals by turns with simple New England folk and a company of far from simple opera-singers. In describing the evolution of a farmer’s daughter into a prima donna there is too much dwelling on unimportant detail, and a lack of selection is shown all the way through. If the sketchy and impressionistic touch which we find in the last pages were more in evidence in the first part of the volume, we should be less wearied by the village Trilby’s many vicissitudes with amatory tenors, jealous rivals in art, and uncomprehending parents. — Jack, by Alphonse Daudet. Translated by Laura Ensor. (Dent, London ; Macmillan, New York.) The characters in this tragic tale of a boy’s childhood and youth are so distinctively French that it is difficult for the Anglo-Saxon mind to conceive of their actual existence when presented in an English form, and there is no denying that the book loses by translation. But Laura Ensor has done her work most satisfactorily, and has kept the French atmosphere and characteristics as far as it was possible to do so. Those who are to be condoled with on not reading French are to be congratulated on having a modern masterpiece presented to them in a form which preserves the spirit, if not the letter, of Daudet. — Virgin Soil, translated from the Russian of Ivan Turgenev by Constance Garnett. (Macmillan.) This was the last of Turgenev’s great novels, and this latest translation is more satisfactory than the one which was made some twenty years ago from the French Terres Vierges, as being nearer the original. The novel is of interest to the general reader, having much of human as well as political concern ; and if the many-syllabled Russian names could only be put into as good English as the rest of the book, we should have no complaint to bring against the smoothness of the whole.

BOOKS OF AND FOR THE YOUNG.

Mr. Joel Chandler Harris has a familiar. How else can we explain his ability to read the mind of horses and smaller cattle ? The charm of The Story of Aaron (Houghton) lies much in the crossing and recrossing of the belt which stretches between the natural and the supernatural, but always he is human, sympathetic, at home with unsophisticated children, darkies, and the animals which stupid people call dumb. — W. V., Her Book, and Various Verses, by William Canton. (Stone & Kimball.) The author of that exquisite little tale of the Seen and the Unseen, The Invisible Playmate, appears here as the recorder of the daily life and conversation of his altogether delightful five-year-old daughter ; telling of her birthday, a movable and frequently recurring feast, her friend Littlejohn, and her bedtime ; sketching vividly, delicately, and veraciously one of the most charming child-portraits we have seen for many a day. W. V. is much more interesting than the verses of Her Book, though these are not without their attraction for child-lovers ; or than the Various Verses at the end of the volume, though these at times show genuine poetic feeling. — Songs for Little People, by Norman Gale. (Constable, Westminster ; Macmillan, New York.) A tolerably large proportion of these songs are really for the fathers and mothers, or elder brothers and sisters of little people ; indeed, the book might be divided into songs for and songs of children. The verses of both sorts are vivacious and pleasing, and will be likely to prove more than passing favorites. The volume is profusely and often very happily illustrated by Helen Stratton, who also furnishes a charming cover design.— In Childhood’s Country, by Louise Chandler Moulton. Pictured by Ethel Reed. (Copeland & Day.) Mrs. Moulton has not been so fortunate as Mr. Gale in her illustrator, — or shall we say picturer ? — in whose drawings affectation is carried to the verge of grotesqueness or burlesque, the art of the poster as here exemplified being peculiarly out of harmony with the graceful verse. — Sonny, by Ruth McEnery Stuart. (The Century Co.) The hero of this little tale, which is not for children, is a small boy, who brings himself up, even in the matter of choosing his pastors and teachers, and its liveliness is comic rather than humorous. The narrator, Sonny’s doting father, uses a form of speech which we suppose must be called “ dialect,” though it seems only an exceedingly disagreeable and illiterate misuse of English. Such as it is, it goes far towards concealing whatever merits the book may possess. — From the same writer we have Solomon Crow’s Christmas Pockets, and Other Tales (Harpers), a collection of bright and pleasing stories, sufficiently varied in subjects, but all apparently of Louisiana, and with of course a liberal admixture of negro characters. — The Long Walls, an American Boy’s Adventures in Greece, by Elbridge S. Brooks and John Alden. (Putnams.) A spirited, well-told story of some exciting experiences of archæologists in the field, the setting and the Greek characters being studies at first hand. The authors have been exceptionally successful in combining instruction and entertainment, and the accuracy of their work, where it may be said to be founded on fact, is worthy of all praise ; but we wish the Grecian atmosphere had had an ameliorating influence on the American Boy’s speech. Being a well-born New Yorker, he can hardly converse in “ dialect,” but his persistent slanginess is, under the circumstances, quite as irritating. — Stories from English History, from the Lord Protector to Victoria, by the Rev. A. J. Church, M. A. (Macmillan.) The third and concluding volume of an excellent series, showing all the good qualities of its predecessors, — a wise selection of topics, an easy but always dignified style, condensation without dryness, and, we may add, competent knowledge, the last by no means a uniform characteristic of writers of children’s histories. —Pierrette, by Marguerite Bouvet. (MeClurg.) A tale ostensibly of Paris, but, despite its careful bits of local color, really of no particular city. Indeed, Pierrette, the charming little lace-worker her mother, Père Michel, and the amusingly naïve sinner and penitent Monsieur Le Page are all denizens of a not highly vitalized portion of story-book land. Their history, it should be said, is refined in tone and not unreadable. — Fairy Starlight and the Dolls, by Elizabeth S. Blakeley. Illustrated by Lucy F. Perkins. (McClurg.) The cheerful history of a little girl’s excursions into doll-land and her various experiences there, so vividly and pleasantly told that it will be sure to entertain all the small mothers of dolls who make the acquaintance of the adventurous Bianca and her family. —A Virginia Cavalier, by Molly Elliot Seawell (Harpers), is the title under which George Washington as a youth is presented to us. Some of the incidents of his boyhood and early manhood are told in a picturesque way, and the spirit and manners of the time are well shown forth. Mature readers nowadays prefer to take truth and fiction in separate doses, and though this narrative is by no means an unpleasing combination of the two, it is especially adapted for young readers who have been taught by history to consider Washington an inhuman prig, and who are now taught by fiction to consider him a human being. — The Century Book of Famous Americans, by Elbridge S. Brooks (The Century Co.), is a generous-paged, profusely illustrated narrative, in the form of imaginary walks and talks, treating of persons and incidents in Boston, Quincy, Plymouth, Marshfield, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Charlottesville, Washington, Chicago, and other places, all bearing witness to patriotism. The machinery creaks a little, but the wheels go round and the young people are carried along in brisk fashion. The book is in the right line, for it fixes attention on persons rather than on material prosperity.

SCIENCE.

At last we have the first volume of what is to be a complete illustrated flora of northeastern North America. Students of botany and all who are in any way interested in our native plants have long wanted such a book as this, and it would be hard to imagine anything more generally satisfactory than this promises to be. The full title of the volume is An Illustrated Flora of the Northern United States, Canada, and the British Possessions, from Newfoundland to the Parallel of the Southern Boundary of Virginia, and from the Atlantic Ocean to the 102d Meridian, by Nathaniel Lord Britton, Ph. D., and Hon. Addison Brown. In three volumes. Vol. I. Ophioglossaceæ to Aizoaceæ, Ferns to Carpet-Weed. (Scribners.) It is, of course, eminently scientific in conception and treatment, and it must be regarded as in many ways authoritative, though it will doubtless not receive the unqualified approval of the more conservative — and perhaps less progressive — school of botanists, for it surely marks an advance in the science. The thorough revision of nomenclature, the adoption of trinomials for subspecific forms or “ varieties,” the use of the “ natural ” system of classification, beginning with the lowest and most generalized forms and working up to the highest or most specialized, — all this is in the line of advancement, and these reforms, which have worked so well for ornithology and other zoölogical sciences, cannot fail to accomplish as much for botany. No doubt beginners will miss tbe keys which assist them in Gray’s Manual, but for such persons it would be hard to overestimate the value of the figures, of which there is one for every species. While these figures are not all equally good, they are generally remarkably successful, all things considered. And here we may venture to express the hope that the second edition, which is sure to be demanded soon, will give us better representations of many of the oak leaves. It is sometimes hard to say what form of leaf is typical of a given species of oak, but one would be safe in saying that some of the forms in the book are not representative, in spite of the fact that they are not impossible, and perhaps not very unusual.

THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY.

Professor George P. Fisher follows up his History of the Christian Church with a History of Christian Doctrine (Scribners), in which he traces the rise, growth, and fixation of Christian dogma. He dissents from the German critics in so far as their conclusions tend to throw doubt on the trustworthiness of the gospel record, or to magnify the extent to which the real teaching of Jesus was changed in being formulated at Alexandria with the aid of current Greek philosophy. His aim is, however, to be thoroughly impartial, to be “objective;” that is, to exhibit the actual historical record in freedom from all sectarian bias. He brings learning to his task, and the book will be specially welcome to those conservatives who are repelled by the theological drift of Harnack’s standard work, and yet want a history which shall take into account the results of recent German criticism. In the history of dogma is incorporated a history of Christian doctrine which is brought down to most recent times. The book also includes a consideration of the effects which the doctrines of modern philosophy and science have had upon Christian theology, both in the opinions of the philosophers and scientists themselves, from Descartes and Bacon to Hamilton and Huxley, and in the opinions of the theologians, from Butler and Paley to Martineau and Romanes. The scheme is a good one, but there is a lack of proportion in the emphasis. —Samuel Harris, another Yale professor, follows up his Philosophical Basis of Theism with a treatise entitled God, the Creator and Lord of All. (Scribners.) In the former work he aimed to prove man’s capacity to know God, and the line of argumentation developed in it is presupposed in the present volumes, in which he would define : (1) God as he is in himself, and also as he is in his relations to the universe and especially toman ; and (2) the universe, and especially man, in their relations to God. He would show that “God is the only absolute Spirit,” and what this really means (omnipotence, omnipresence, etc.) ; that he is the “Creator ” of all, and here the genesis narrative is explained and defended ; and finally, that he is “ Lord of all in providential and moral government ” of the world created by him. In a word, Professor Harris has written a complete treatise on dogmatic, or, as he prefers to call it, doctrinal theology. There is presupposed in the argumentation not only religion “ with its spontaneous beliefs,” the existence of God and the reality of his various revelations of himself, but also the belief “in the reality of his revelation of himself in his action in human history, developing his kingdom and culminating in Christ and the Holy Spirit, the God in Christ reconciling the world unto himself as recorded in the Bible ; and continued through all generations in the Holy Spirit.” The author can be accused of liberalism only in so far as he adopts the theory (advocated, for that matter, in all ages, and even by Calvin) of the progressive nature of revelation, and by this means explains certain inadequacies of the record. One who has known the stress of doubt will scarcely find enough common ground between himself and his guide to serve as a point of departure. A doubter is in fact never helped save by one who has doubted more profoundly than he himself has. — The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought, by Alexander Francis Chamberlain. (Macmillan.) The aim of the book is to show what the “ primitive ” child did and said, and how he was regarded as a factor in the family and in society at large, and to point out the survival of some of these early child activities in modern times ; and in general to trace the influence of the “ child idea ” in the progress of civilization. Dr. Chamberlain has succeeded in emphasizing the fact that the children of “ primitive man ’ were not “ mere animals ” (who ever thought they were ?) ; that they were loved, worshiped, wondered at, and misunderstood, just as their modern representatives are ; and that they have exerted a great influence upon “language, religion, society, and the arts.” But just what this influence is, where it begins to be felt, and how it acts in the process of development is not brought out. The author stands in apparent helplessness before the facts he has collected.—The Sense of Beauty, by George Santayana. (Scribners.) How comes it that we perceive beauty ? What is the common element in beautiful things? How do we form our ideal or ideals, and with them compare given objects ? These questions, which the present volume seeks to answer, have been asked, in one form or another, ever since the dawn of reflection itself. The philosophy of art, more even than the philosophy of conduct, has resisted the modern tendency to seek purely natural explanations of all things, and to assume that a thing is accounted for by tracing its historical origin. The moral law comes to us with a command, and therefore, at least at first sight, seems to have its source in something beyond ourselves, and thus to admit of an “ objective ” treatment. But our judgment of beauty is so thoroughly self-inspired that the very proposal to “ give an objective account of the nature and origin of beauty ” seems paradoxical. It is like seeking such an account of the soul itself. Beauty is defined as “ pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing,” “pleasure objectified.” Does not this definition include too much ? Although undoubtedly beauty is “pleasure objectified,” is all “ pleasure objectified ” beauty ? We fail to see that our author has made his definition good. His treatise abounds in acute psychological observations and careful analyses. But when all is said, it is essentially an testhetic account of æsthetics, the effort of an artist to give an account of the nature of artistic values. One must not expect to find a philosophy of art here evolved. That would indeed have been impossible in a writer for whom feeling is the ultimate factor, who traces duty to dread, and holds that “ our whole intellectual life has its only justification in its connection with our pleasures and pains.” The book is not a treatise on the canons of taste: it is a consideration of our matter-of-fact æsthetic judgments from the standpoint of descriptive psychology.

BOOKS OF REFERENCE.

The increase of bazaars in the commercial world is hardly more striking than the multiplying of encyclopædias in the world of books. If all the latter were as good as Harper’s Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities, we might well delight in the tendency. Merely to examine such a volume is enough to make a middle-aged man feel that he was born too early. Far be it from us to speak slightingly of Lempriere or of the Smith-An thon-Drisler combination ; but here is a work which we may praise without offense to our old friends. It is more than its title claims. It is a real thesaurus of biography, mythology, geography, antiquities, literature, language, and history, with good bibliographies and a host of illustrations. Its scope is broad enough to include sketches of the chief Christian Fathers, and the most eminent classical scholars, philologists, and archaeologists down to the present century, and to take note of the discoveries made by such recent investigators as Dörpfeld and Lanciani. The editor, Professor Harry Thurston Peck, of Columbia University, has been aided by more than a score of well-known scholars, including a few Englishmen and Germans, but mostly Americans. A word should be said for the cross-references, which are unusually numerous, and seem to leave the student in no danger of failing to find ready access to all the contents of this encyclopædia of classical lore. — Dictionary of Quotations (English), by Lieut.-Col. Philip Hugh Dalbiac, M. P. (Sonnenschein, London ; Macmillan, New York.) Those who are so unfortunate as not to have access to Bartlett’s invaluable work, — unrivaled in its completeness, thoroughness, and even in its arrangement,—and so can avoid comparisons, will find this dictionary a commendably accurate and fairly full compilation. It is rigidly confined to English and American writers (the English Bible being, naturally, an exception), and it is intended that a volume devoted to the classics, and one to the modern Continental authors, shall follow. The quotations are arranged alphabetically, and indexes of subjects and authors are given. A dozen American writers, including Fitzgeorge Halleck, are represented, Emerson and Longfellow most frequently. A number of quotations from the younger living writers, are given, in this respect the book being exceptionally up to date, — though these excerpts, it must be owned, have not always crystallized into familiar quotations. — Quotations for Occasions, compiled by Katharine B. Wood. (The Century Co.) Miss Wood is the first compiler of a volume of quotations for menus, programmes, invitations, etc., and she has done her work so well that it would be somewhat venturesome for any literary delver to try to better it. Shakespeare, of course, is most largely drawn upon, but the lesser Elizabethans contribute their portion, as do a host of writers, great and small, down to our own day. A dinner is followed through all its courses, and every sort of festivity is awarded its share of quotations ; the latest of all, bicycle meets, receiving five or six pages of happy conceits, generally dating from the seventeenth century. Miss Wood says that her book is to create rather than supply a want, but it will surely at once be welcomed by the givers or managers of feasts, who have sought painfully, with more or less ill success, for what is to be found here in variety and abundance for the asking. —A Manual of Greek Antiquities, by Percy Gardner, M. A., Litt. D., and Frank Byrou Jevous, M. A., Litt. D. (Scribners.) A book that has come to fill an actual vacancy, and which is, fortunately for the many students who will make use of it, the work of men not only of profound scholarship, but of distinct literary ability as well. It is difficult to conceive of more information being crowded into seven hundred pages, but from first to last the manual is easily readable, often it is exceedingly interesting ; and even those who come to it merely to extract grains of desired knowledge from an authoritative textbook will find themselves returning to it as readers. Professor Gardner has written the first five books, devoted to The Surroundings of Greek Life, Religion and Mythology, Cultus, The Course of Life, and Commerce, while Dr. Jevons treats Constitutional and Legal Antiquities, Slavery, War, and Tlie Theatre. There is a good index, but not so exhaustive a one as a book of such importance deserves and needs. Illustrations are not numerous ; indeed, the authors state that limits of space compelled a sparing use of them, and they refer students to Anderson’s edition of Schreiber’s Atlas as an admirable companion to their volume. Though not arranged in dictionary form, the orderly grouping of the topics makes the work one to refer to quite as much as one to read.— A Handbook of Greek Sculpture, by Ernest Arthur Gardner, M. A. (Macmillan.) The first volume of a series of handbooks of archæology and antiquities, edited by Professor Percy Gardner and Professor Kelsey, and a more admirable beginning for such a Series could hardly be desired. It contains the introduction to its subject and its history to the time of Phidias, so that a second part, whose early publication is announced, is needed to complete the work. The author, formerly director of the British School of Archaeology at Athens, can write as a master, and not merely as an intelligent compiler, and his thoroughly scholarly and scientific method seems to make his book only the more interesting and readable. The volume is liberally and well illustrated.— A new and inexpensive edition of Murray’s Manual of Mythology has been brought out by David McKay, Philadelphia. The editor claims to have revised the work on the basis of the twentieth edition of Petiscus, and he has also followed Bulfinch, with somewhat less skill, in embodying illustrative extracts from the poets in the text. Some new pictures are also added. That the author of this popular book is cognizant of these changes is nowhere stated. — History of English Literature from the Fourteenth Century to the Death of Surrey, by Bernhard Ten Brink. Edited by Dr. Alois Brandl. Translated from the German by L. Dora Schmitz. Vol. II. Part II. (Holt.) Regret mingles with pleasure as we read these masterly pages ; for this is the last volume which we may expect from the indefatigable scholarship of Ten Brink. The very minuteness and evenness of treatment make the book a little colorless and dry, bat it is easily the most trustworthy account yet given of the beginnings of the English renaissance. It is curious to compare the method of Ten Brink with that of Jusserand, the other foreign explorer in our wide country of letters. The brilliant pages of the Frenchman lead us spellbound past a succession of vivid pictures, to large generalizations and inferences. They form in themselves an addition to literature. The detailed and moderate accuracy of Ten Brink produces simply a comment on literature. His book is good for reference, not for reading, while the student who can supply his own imagination finds in it an invaluable aid. But where are the English-speaking interpreters of our great English story ?