Recent Literature

IF any reader of ours is at a loss what to read on the loveliest day in summer, let us counsel him to read Mirèio. He will be a little sad at the tragical end, but his heart will have been moved by the finest art, and his senses filled with the freshest pictures and with delicious music. He may have thought that Provencal poetry was dead with the troubadours and the ladies who listened to them, — it is a very natural and general error, — and here in this work of a contemporary poet, a farmer still living on his ancestral acres at Maillane, he will have a surprise so exquisite that the rude astonishment afforded by the novelties that the world most loves to wonder at — say Atlantic cables and Pacific railroads—ought to be nothing to it. For here is the careless grace, the frank vigor, the bold, tender, simple passion of a younger time, with now and then a touch, a sidelong glance of modern consciousness, such as a Provencal peasant, who was also a graduate of the college of Montpellier, could not help giving ; and here is that true naïveté of expression which makes an artificial artlessness like that of Mr. Morris or Mr. Rossetti so evident.

The story is that of Mirèio, the daughter of Ramoun, the rich owner of Lotus Farm, and her lover Vincen, the poor weaver’s son. Others come wooing her, but she will have neither Alari, the wealthy shepherd, nor Veran,

“ A keeper of wild horses from Sambo,”nor Ourrias, the mighty herdsman ; but when she tells her father that she will have none but Vincen, he furiously swears that she shall never see her lover again. Then, in the night, she remembers that Vincen once said if ever she was in trouble, she must go to the three Saint Maries of Baux ; and so she rises and flies, and crossing the wide sea-meadows to their chapel on the seashore is sunstruck and dies there, just as father, mother, and lover arrive in search of her. This purely conventional little plot is the ground from which springs a series of scenes and occurrences as fresh, as fragrant of country life, and as richly lit with sunshine and blossom as any May landscape, and yet no more overloaded than such a landscape with sweetness and color. That passage called the leaf-picking, where Vincen climbs into the mulberry-tree to help Mirèio gather leaves, and they find the young birds which she hides in her bosom, and the branch breaks under them and they fall to the ground together, we suppose must be the best of all. It is the most delicate, the tenderest; it is told with the most perfect grace, and yet there are many other episodes of the poem which almost equally attest the poet’s skill. The descriptions of the three different wooers and their vocations have a Homeric amplitude and fidelity and an antique confidence in the reader’s interest which are as good in their way as the Sicilian sweetness of the love-making in the mulberry-tree. Here, for example, is a picture of Alari’s flock : —

For passion and force, the — transfusion of Ourrias himself into the verse, — we must praise the cattle-branding scene ; and then comes that battle between Ourrias and Vincen, which is magnificent in its way, and all but visible before us. We mightily like also that interview of the two old men, Ramoun and Vincen’s father, where the latter comes to ask the former for his daughter and is scornfully denied ; and also all that there is about the mountaineers who come down to reap Ramoun’s harvest. How good is this scene which poor old Ambroi beholds as he passes through their camp away from the farm-house : —

The whole canto singing the muster of the farmer’s hands to help in the search for Mirèio is most admirable for its qualities of picturesqueness, strength, movement; and there is no part of the poem that lags, or that fails to interest, save the scene in the witch’s cavern and the legend of the three Maries. You feel throughout that the poet writes of all his homely themes because he loves them ; not loves them because he writes of them, as the modern mediæval sham-simple English poets do; and his poem is full of little delights, — birds chirping in covert, sun shining, flowers sweetly blowing, while the greater song flows on, — which the quotation of no single passage can reveal. We do not remember where the poem once passes the modesty of nature and feigns in its people thoughts or feelings above them; yet it abounds in graces of sentiment that forever take the heart. It is, in a word, charming.

Miss Preston has done her part very praiseworthily indeed. She does not, it is true, keep the verse of the original ; but she may be right in thinking it presented too many difficulties for an easy English version. We are more concerned to find that she does not always manage the English heroic verse perfectly, and can give us such a line as

“ Yet no one holds it in remembrance ” for a good pentameter. There are other small blemishes which we do not care to note, seeing that as a whole her diction is so sweet and musical, and apparently so responsive to the spirit of the original. Hers is the third English version of Mirèio, which was first published seventeen years ago ; the earliest was literal and unrhymed; the second, which was metrical, failed of the favor which this excellent translation will certainly win.

The ever-rising generation will like Mr. Longfellow’s new book, we suppose, because it is beautiful and fresh as this brave young summer upon which our poor old world has just entered; but many and many maturer readers will be most tenderly and sweetly entreated by it because it is so like Longfellow, — so like the lovely summers they have lived, with the ever-new familiar harmony and color and light. They do not like the poets who have been their lifelong companions to change ; they are very jealous of any difference in them, and ready, too ready, to cry out that it is deterioration. Let them give us, they say, such songs as have always pleased us, and leave all new-fangled stops for those who shall afterwards sing and listen. They are doubtless wrong ; it is human nature to be so ; nevertheless we can sympathize with those who turn from the pleasant translations and the grave majesty of “Judas Maccabæus,” the tragedy in this book, to read and read again and lingeringly return to “ The Tales of a Wayside Inn,” here told on a “ Second Day.” The poet never has written anything more characteristic than these pieces, as our readers well know, for most of them have appeared in our pages. His delicate gayety and gentle humor have never more winningly appeared than in the Poet’s tale of Lady Wentworth ; the Sicilian’s story of the Bell of Atri, through which glimmers the same humorous spirit, is warm with the humanity that always colors his verse; “ The Legend Beautiful ” exquisitely embodies his religious sense : when were ever tales told more enchantingly or with more of the author’s love of Old World lore than the Cobbler of Hagenau, Carmilhan, the Baron of Saint Castine? Conception, diction, music, — it is all Longfellow ; and how good it is; and who else will ever give us the like? We dare say every one greatly pleased with a poem dreads that others may overlook its principal charms; and we must ask our readers here if they remember in the Baron of St. Castine, that picture of the curate going with his lantern every night to play lansquenet with the old Baron ; or that of Mistress Stavers,

at the beginning of “ Lady Wentworth ” ; or those of the skippers talking together in the cabin of the Carmilhan, and of the sailing of the ship, and of the coining on of the storm ; or all those touches with which the poor are painted at the convent gate in the “ Legend Beautiful ” ? Yes, doubtless, you remember all these, and doubtless you remember nothing better of the kind in literature ; and after all as we think again they are not the best, but only of the best in these Tales. The whole group of stories is

and those interludes in which is resumed the slight thread of narrative, binding them together, are full of quiet delight. With what a consummate art is this opening scene portrayed: —

And here is the pendant almost as perfect : —

But we must not reproduce the whole book. When you have read Mirèio, gentle reader, take up these “ Three Books of Song,” and learn that there are ways out of the oldest literature into naturalness as sweet as that of the newest.

Mr. Hudson’s two volumes on the “Life, Art, and Characters of Shakespeare,” though they do not as a whole strike us as in the nature of a revelation, contain much that is interesting and useful, and place him, we think, in the picket-line of those who are campaigning against error in criticism. His work, however, does not seem to be so much the result of a genius for criticism as a carefully trained, conscientious, and often delicate perception. The irritating repetition of the same leading ideas, too, throughout the volumes, suggests that the author has had a hard battle with himself to attain to them, and still feels the necessity of bringing them before his own and the reader’s mind. His style presents a mixture of verbiage which has evidently sunk into him from long study of Elizabethan authors, with very striking and colloquial Americanisms of speech. This conflict between adherence to a style received from our mothercountry and a desire to cut away into something fresh and idiomatic we take to be symbolic of that tendency in the author’s mind which has led him, in spite of evident natural drawbacks, to pursue the study of Shakespeare with utmost devotion and a studied liberality of thought.

The biographical sketch gives a pleasant and acceptable picture of the Poet growing up into manhood and the mastery of his art, mated to a woman he really loves, and to whom, very properly and humanly it would seem, Mr. Hudson conceives the sonnets to have been addressed at intervals during their married life. But Mr. Hudson is needlessly piqued at Shakespeare’s withdrawal to Stratford, and cannot understand how Shakespeare could have had so little appreciation of his own works as thus to stop writing so soon as he had amassed the means for building a home in Stratford; and his manner of accounting for the Poet’s death at a comparatively early age on the ground that “ Providence, ’ in its wisdom, “ may have ruled not to allow the example of so gifted a man living to himself,” is hardly satisfactory.

The general attitude of the author’s mind in the series of commentaries on the plays, which make up the second part of the work, is perhaps best expressed in his own words. “ That criticism is best,” he says, “ which is rather born of what he (Shakespeare) makes us than of what we are without him. In some respects, indeed, it may be better to speak as independent of him, but yet, on the whole, I prefer to speak as he moves me.” From these two given lines of thought, Mr. Hudson has constructed such a parallelogram of forces as to set him in very much the direction he should pursue, and in general he is influenced by them to a well-tempered degree. His discussions of the comedies seem to us less indicative of power than those upon the tragedies and histories. The dramas founded on English history he comprehensively regards as one work, “ as it were, an historical poem in the dramatic form, of which the several plays constitute the rhapsodies.” Probably the freshest and most ingenious article, however, is that on Julius Cæsar. Herein he gives us a skilful explanation of the apparently inexplicable aspect under which Cæsar appears in the play. “ I have sometimes thought,” he says, “that the policy of the drama may have been to represent Caesar, not as he really was, indeed, but as he appeared to the conspirators; to make us see him as they saw him; in order that they too might have fair and good judgment at our hands..... This view, I am apt to think, will both explain and justify the strange disguise — a sort of falsetto greatness — under which Cæsar exhibits himself.” In regard to Hamlet Mr. Hudson wisely accepts the opinions which the scrutiny of medical men first found reason for, namely, that he is insane. “ Deranged not indeed in all his faculties, nor perhaps in any one of them continuously,” but still virtually insane. Those who yet delay, from mistaken sentiments, it seems to us, to adopt this view will find in Mr. Hudson’s chapter a forcible and dispassionate statement of the various theories.

We have not read lately any book that has given us greater pleasure, of a certain quiet and wholesome kind, than the lives of those good men, Robert and William Chambers, whose names have long been united in a most enviable fame, as publishers of popular literature of the best character. The book is written by William Chambers, and is the modest record of their career from earliest childhood to the death of the younger brother, last year. They were not rich to begin with; and their father, by mismanagement and generous errors, lost what fortune he had, and the family came from their native village in great poverty to Edinburgh, where, after long years of struggle and extreme selfdenial, the brothers achieved their noble success. It is a moving story how these two brave boys, William as an ill-paid bookseller’s apprentice, and Robert as a half-starved student of divinity, fought on till they united their destitution, set up a bookstall with the remnants of their father’s library, bought a decrepit press and wornout types, began to write, print, bind, and publish cheap books, and so laid the foundations of a prosperity that has been an incalculable benefaction to the whole English-reading world. They had from the first the honorable ambition to furnish the people with reading as good and high in kind as it was low in price, and they completely changed the character of popular literature in Scotland. Robert is known as a writer of taste and merit, and their enterprises had not only business energy, but were inspired by genuine love of letters. The whole history of their lives is interesting, but we enjoyed most the account of the village of Peebles and its people, which is all so delightful that we found it lamentably short. There was a saying, “ As quiet as the grave or as Peebles ”; but it was believed a lively as well as a “ bonny place” by its inhabitants. “An honest old burgher was enabled by some strange chance to visit Paris, and was eagerly questioned, when he came back, as to the character of that capital of capitals ; to which it is said he answered that ‘ Paris, a’ thing considered, was a wonderful place; but still, Peebles for pleasure ! ’ ” This book is so exquisitely made by the Riverside printers and binders that we took it — alas, that this should still be praise ! — for English work.

The Earl and the Doctor, who have written a pretty large book about their cruise in the Society Islands, are not to be read for useful information, or a wise treatment of well-known facts. We cannot say either that they are to be read for amusement, to any great extent. Their adventures are monotonously trivial ; their observations are chiefly of the Polynesian girls, who make eyes at them and invite to extreme love-making; their pleasure is to tempt the natives to their forbidden dances, their philosophy to mock the work of the missionaries, which, we suppose, is imperfect and ludicrous enough in many things. The style of the book is a curious result of English study of Artemus Ward and his school of humorists, and is highly spiced with American slang. Nothing worth knowing is told, not even about the immorality of the islanders, to which the authors continually recur with a lickerish fondness. If it must be said of a nobleman’s book, the spirit of the whole is vulgar.

Another book of recent travel by a totally different kind of traveller is the story of Rev. Mr. Prime’s voyage around the world, in which the hopeless commonness of the material, the thought, the sentiment, is as aggressively evident as the flippancy of the Earl and the Doctor. The author’s journey was from New York to California, thence across the Pacific to Japan, and so through China, India, Syria, and Europe home again ; but if there was anything new on this somewhat prolonged excursion, Mr. Prime had not the gift to find it out; and if there was any interest left in the old things, he could not persuade them to yield it to his page. When one has diligently followed such a traveller, unrefreshed even by novel facts, it becomes a poignant question with him how the wanton production of books of travel shall be stayed. Can the community have no safeguard against publications that profess in some sort to be instructive, but really fall below the ordinary novel of commerce in usefulness ? To be sure, we cannot bring this charge of lack of instructiveness against “ A Woman’s Experiences in Europe,” but that is a very exceptional book of travel. Everywhere, if Mrs. Wallace does not see the most surprising things, upon every object she has some ingenious reflection which bestows the charm of freshness. There is a lively criticism on the studios of artists of various nations at Rome, which reaches its climax in praises of the “ American studio. The most absorbing genius reigns here. The terror of the Italian picture-dealer, just as Germany is the thorn in the flesh of English literati. Sipping dew from every foreign flower, this saucy bee hums and drones through his hive, till some fine morning he produces honey, not raw dew of Italy, Germany, France, or England, but an American composition, that excites the admiration and fear of the Italian, the jealousy of the German, the wonder and applause of the hearty Frenchman, the sneer of the Englishman.” From this, it is seen that Mrs. Wallace is one of the obsolescent travellers whose pride feeds upon comparisons of Europe and America. Even when using a foreign tongue, like the French, for example,—for there is no denying that French is foreign to most of us, — she prefers to use it in a native-American manner, saying, “ Ah, le bonheur ! ” instead of“A la bonne heure ! ” as the hearty Frenchman would. There is no harm in this, and cruelty alone could blame Mrs. Wallace’s vivacious record of her experiences.

Mr. Baldwin, who has very intelligibly grouped in his “Ancient America” the most useful materials of primitive American history, avoids theories or their discussion, and leaves each reader the pleasure of enjoying such as he may happen to have, or the greater delight of forming new ones act libitum. The question of the mounds of North America and their builders he considers very fully in the light of well-collated facts, tending to show that they are the work of the same people who in Central America and Mexico have left more lasting evidences of their genius and culture, and who once inhabited the entire Mississippi and Colorado Valleys, and retired before more savage races. His conclusion that the mounds of the North were the terraces that sustained more imposing though less enduring structures seems well founded. But the most interesting part of the work is that which treats of Mexico and Peru, where the author gathers into convenient form the evidences of a high civilization and an advanced state of arts and science, and even a respectable literature (especially in Mexico), ages before the Spanish invasion. He believes that the history of America is traceable to a period many centuries prior to the Christian era, from records possessed by both Mexicans and Peruvians, when they were overwhelmed by their Christian discoverers ; that their civilization waxed and waned through successive periods, the proofs of which are built into and graven upon architectural remains scarcely inferior to those of Egypt and Assyria ; and that they were enlightened countries, with a known history and certain antiquity, when our knowledge of them began. We may at least half believe Mr. Baldwin when he finally asserts that the Spanish invaders found these ancient peoples happy and left them wretched; robbed them of their wealth, and introduced indolence and beggary where had been industry and thrift; gave them anarchy and slavery for orderly government and independence, and ignorance for enlightenment.

That “ Una and her Paupers ” will be found interesting to many readers there can be but little doubt. It describes an interesting character, and, more than that, it gives an account of the work that a woman, eager to do good, self-denying, earnest, was able to perform and yet in a perfectly womanly way. Miss Agnes Jones was a representative of the large class of women to be found in every community, just in proportion to its refinement, who long to be of some use to the world. She was well educated, in easy circumstances, and she might well have settled into the performance of the ordinary domestic virtues, but she could not content herself with that; she had a natural aptitude for severer duties, and for these she was not wholly without experience. Hence it was that she placed herself at Kaiserswerth in preparation for the more serious occupation that she had chosen for herself. Afterwards she took charge of the Liverpool Workhouse, and here it was that she found herself performing the real work of her life. That her success was very great is clear, that she must have done a great deal of good is equally certain; but yet we think no one who reads the book can help feeling the difference between his admiration of Miss Jones’s noble work and a certain impatience at the unwisdom of its direction. For her no one can help having praise. She gave up everything, comfort, health, her life, for the poor, but yet, however admirable in itself this self-denial is, it is to be regretted that her life was really thrown away. What she actually did was of importance ; her example, too, we may be sure, will be of great effect; but those who are most anxious to do well would be the last to wish to be judged by what seemed more glorious, instead of by what really did most good. Under proper direction the results will be as good, and the lives of the workers will not be needlessly sacrificed, and just that wiser direction was apparently lacking in her case. The struggle with poverty is real war, and needs training, caution, and the same supervision of resources that a general in the field must exercise. In the long contest, and that in which Miss Jones enlisted will certainly be a long one, training will always do more than enthusiasm; and the wise general is he who knows when to keep his men under cover as well as when to bid them charge.

In his “ Walks about Rome ” Mr. Hare has brought together all the information concerning Rome that every traveller who does not limit his information to the redcovered guide-book vows shall be his before he leaves that city. But the absence of one’s own books, the dearness of those in Rome and the difficulty of bringing them away, the weariness that sight-seeing so surely brings, cause one’s good plans in this respect, in spite of their attractiveness, to fail as utterly as if they were made with the intention of correcting a favorite fault. The real richness of Rome as well as its interest are only known to those who stay a long time there ; but for such, or even for those whose visit is a brief one, we know no single volume that can replace this of Mr. Hare’s. In his Introduction he says : “ So much has been written about Rome, that in quoting from the remarks of others the great difficulty has been selection ; and the rule has been followed that the most learned books are not always the most instructive or the most interesting. No endeavor has been made to enter into deep archæological questions, to define the exact limits of the Walls of Servilius Tullius, or to hazard a fresh opinion as to how the earth accumulated in the Roman Forum, or whence the pottery came out of which the Monte Testaccio has arisen; but it has rather been sought to gather up and present to the reader such a succession of word pictures from various authors as may not only make the scenes of Rome more interesting at the time, but may deepen their impression afterwards.” Such a book is exactly what the traveller wants ; the selection has been made with discretion, the author’s works of condensation has been well clone. One may judge of its thoroughness by noticing the great number of authors from whose writings extracts are made, — Hawthorne, Mrs. Jameson, Mr. W. W. Story, Ampere, Niebuhr, etc., etc. We heartily recommend the volume to past and future visitors of Rome ; they will find it a condensed library of information about the Eternal City.

We like Mr. DeMille’s extravagant fictions, in which we find quite as much truth as in many more probable ones, and in which, no matter how terrifying the situations, we are never called upon to feel seriously alarmed. Of course, the young lady whose life is saved by everybody and who regularly engages herself to each successive preserver, is going to marry Rufus K. Gunn (the American made Baron in the papal service), and so we take the wicked Italian Count and the brigands very easily, as Mr. DeMille meant we should. He gives us all the excitement of the highpressure romance, and insures us against the bursting of the boiler ; and there is much more character and humor thrown in than can be afforded by the novelists who are in earnest about their sensation-making. For this reason we commend “ The American Baron,” and “ The Comedy of Terrors ” now publishing in these pages.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

THE first book on our list, the Journal et Correspondance de André-Marie Ampère, is one that all summer travellers would do well to put into their trunks when they leave for the sea-shore or the mountains. It is like an innocent French novel, without the dulness that in that misguided country repels one from pictures of virtue. Those who remember Ampère as a physicist and mathematician need not fear finding algebraic formulas or chemical reactions here ; there is in parts a quaint scientific flavor where he observes the feelings of his heart as if it were the magnetic needle, but this only adds to the interest of the book. His journal is an account of his courtship ; the letters are his own, those of his wife and her sister. The story of his falling in love is charmingly told, with a naïveté that a novelist would give his right hand to attain. For instance, under the date of September 26, 1796, we find, “ I found her in the garden, without daring to speak with her. . . . . Oct. 29. I saw Julie in the courtyard as I entered, but, unfortunately, some men were emptying a cart ; I went into the house. I found a Mine. Petit calling, and I did not dare to speak.... Oct. 31. A great deal of company. A chance in the garden lost. I brought back the seventh volume of Sévigné. I forgot the eighth and my umbrella.... Nov. 2. I went to get my umbrella.... Nov. 9. Julie told me not to come so often..... Dec. 15. Breakfasted with M. Perisse [her brotherin-law], Julie came at last. I stayed with her till eleven in the morning. She showed me all her jewels, told me my hair was cut too short, and made fun of the people with whom she spent last evening.... Dec. 23. I talked with her a long time about Grandison, the passions, and I mourned the lot of those who do not know if they are loved. She reminded me that last year I had said I only wanted to be sure that I was not hated.” And so it goes on. From his brief hints we catch a charming vision of his earnestness, affection, and seriousness ; while of Julie we have brief glimpses, as if we met her on the stairs, or saw her tripping through the garden. In his calls he stays too late, and she has to remind him to go away. She chides him for inattention to his dress. Then, too, we have all the letters that her sister Elise writes to her about him. Women’s letters have been so often and indiscriminately praised, that it may be worth while to say that a letter is not good, save under certain well-known exceptional cases, merely because a woman wrote it; but then, when a woman does write a charming letter, it is indeed charming ; and these letters of Elise, a great many of which are given, are delightful. This book is not all an idyl ; they are married, Julie’s health fails her, and soon she dies ; but with all this sadness we can be grateful for the picture that this book gives us of innocence and real affection, and, at the last, of bravery. As we said, it is like a novel, in some places surprisingly so, but with infinitely more poetry than most, and of course with more realism than even Balzac.

Thermidor is the title of an historical novel dealing with nearly the same time. It is a grisly tale, rigid with accuracies in the names of streets, the dates of thunderstorms, etc., but yet one that will be found of interest, and full of instruction too. It is curious to notice the difference between the historical novel and memoir of the same time ; how in the novel, at the time of the terror, every one is terrified ; in a revolution every one raises his hand to heaven, etc. : while in the memoir we get glimpses of the people going about their business, and laughing and talking as usual. In that respect this novel may be compared with the book we have mentioned above.

For another study of the recent revolutions we know no better book than Achard’s Souvenirs personnels d'Émmies et de Revolutions,, which has recently appeared. The author gives us modestly and with very little comment an account of what has passed before his eyes in the many days of warfare that Paris has seen during the last forty years. With the events of a year ago still fresh in our memories, it seems hardly worth while to quote any account of the horrors which all good Americans are only too ready to forget in consideration of the cheapness of kid gloves and hack-fare in Paris ; but we recommend the book for its historical interest and for the personal interest, the secret of which lies in an author’s leaving himself out of his work.

In a volume entitled Les Jours d d'Épreuve M. Caro has collected a certain number of essays that had already appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes. They are all about the war and the condition of France. Although at times they are noticeably weak, if not almost querulous, they are well worth reading as an example of the thoughts of the better class of Frenchmen. But no French writer seems to write definitely enough about the problem which lies before that country. They are often eloquent, they are always intelligent, but what they say seems vague and rhetorical when one considers the very active nature of the dangers that beset them. When a man’s house is burning it is not wise for him to be searching his text-books for an account of the laws of combustion.

M. Octave Feuillet’s last novel, Julie de Trécoeur, is, like everything he writes, well worth reading, at least by such as are accustomed to tales in the French tongue. It does not demand a serious examination, but its cleverness, which is its most marked trait, makes it very entertaining. Whatever one may think of M. Feuillet’s writing, no one can accuse him of carelessness. Indeed carpers, whom no one can please, might say that he was only too careful. Certainly this little story may be taken as a very good example of what is meant by the polish of French workmanship.

M. Du Mesnil-Marigny has published a Histoire de l'Économic politique des anciens Peoples de l'Inde, de l'Egypte, de la Judée, et de la Gréce. This large and thorough work will be found of interest by the student. The author undertakes to prove the antiquity of this science, and to illustrate its history from what we know of these countries. He proves the existence of the theory of protection in ancient times, and also the existence in Athens of a unit of weight and measure taken from the length of a cube of distilled water, one side of the cube representing the unit. Moreover, the book is full of information on the laws that regulated the commerce and manufactures of the countries of which he writes. In the necessarily brief notice, which is all that our space allows, we cannot by any means do full justice to the thoroughness of this book. To dismiss a book of this importance with a flippant or even a well-considered adjective is unfair to the author and to the reader. But it is equally impossible in half a page to give an intelligent abstract of two thick volumes on Political Economy of whatever age or country. It only remains for us to recommend the work most heartily to the many students of the science.

We have left ourselves but little space for German books, and those we have received this month are but few in number. At this season the ponderous tome is not attractive, but it may not be amiss to mention merely the appearance of Henne-Am Rhyn’s Culturgeschichte, of the third edition of Schleicher’s Compendium der Indogermanischen Sprachen, which is not a work of general interest, and of the first part of Steinthal’s Abriss der Sprachwissenschaft.

For lighter reading we have a volume by Elise Polko, Im Vorübergehen, containing four short stories that will be found as tearfully sentimental as most of the writing of that lady. Edmund Hoefer’s new story, Zur linken Hand is not absolutely unreadable. The third volume of Fritz Ellrodt, finishing the novel, has arrived.