Recent Literature

WE are disappointed, to find that Mr. Stone’s “ History of New York City,” which was evidently written with asincere and earnest desire to produce a really valuable work, shows only unappreciative thought and superficial treatment of the subject. The author, it is true, departs sufficiently far from the ordinary record of “enterprise ” and “incidents,”to insist that the city is not without “ traditions, ” a claim which he advances with ever-recurring emphasis, and in support of which he brings forward many long extracts from the gossip of the past; some of them pleasant and entertaining enough. But the thinking reader looks for so much more than these things. Glorification of great feats accomplished, and gossip about social scenes in “legendary ” coffee-houses or among eccentric characters of a generation or two ago, play an appropriate part in volumes of personal recollections, or in garrulous autobiographies ; but they do not make a history, nor do descriptions of popular “ sensations ” and disturbances, without connection or especial pertinence. Neither does New York consist entirely of buildings, “monuments of public enterprise.” We should be glad to know something of the population of the great city, so strangely mingled from all the peoples of the world as to make the place utterly unlike all others ; of the growth of characteristics, customs, and classes ; of the past and present situation of rich and poor ; of the means of care for the latter, and of the internal administration among this mass of human beings ; of the history of the municipal organization and its problems ; of the great schemes of speculation — and peculation — that have risen, had their day and their incalculable influence, and gone down ; in fact, if our demands, in our character of everyday reader, are not too exorbitant, we should like to know something of the human, the political, and the politico-economical history of New York.

History of New York City from the Discovery to the Present Day. By <AUTHOR>WILLIAM L. STONE</AUTHOR>, Author of “ The Life and Times of Sir William Johnson, Bart.”; “ Life and Writings of Colonel William L. Stone” ; etc., etc., etc New York : Virtue and Yorston. 1872.

The Greeks of To-day. By <AUTHOR>CHARLES K. TUCKERMAN</AUTHOR>, late Minister-Resident of the United States at Athens. New York : G. P. Putnam & Co. 1872.

Joseph Noirel’s Revenge. By <AUTHOR>VICTOR CHERBULIEZ</AUTHOR>. Translated from the French by WILLIAM F. WEST, A. M. New York. Holt and Williams. 1872.

A Summer’s Romance. By <AUTHOR>MARY HEALY</AUTHOR>. Boston : Roberts Bros. 1872.

Keel and Saddle. A Retrospect of Forty Years of Military and Naval Service. By <AUTHOR>JOSEPH W. REVERE</AUTHOR>. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 12mo.

A Comedy of Terrors. By JAMES DEMILLE. Boston : J. R. Osgood & Co. 1872.

A Chance for Himself; or, Jack Hazard and his Treasure. By <AUTHOR>J. T. TROWBRIDGE</AUTHOR>. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1872.

The Lives of the Novelists. By <AUTHOR>SIR WALTER SCOTT</AUTHOR>. With Notes. New York : A. Denham & Co. 1872.

Biographia Literaria ; or, Biographical Sketches of my Literary Life and Opinions. By SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE. Prepared in part by the late <AUTHOR>HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE</AUTHOR>. Completed and published by his Widow. 2 vols. New York : Holt and Williams. 1872.

Letters from High Latitudes ; being some Account of a Voyage of the Schooner Yacht “ Foam,” 85 O. M., to Iceland, Jan Mayen, and Spitzbergen, in 1856. By the Earl of Dufferin, K. P. etc. Toronto : Adam Stevenson & Co. 1872.

We would not willingly do injustice to a work undertaken in the sincere, and, as far as it goes, entirely praiseworthy spirit which animates this book ; and in endeavoring to point out the really great field that a historian of New York City has before him, we have perhaps seemed unfair to an author whose chief error may lie in a mistaken title-page, and who from the beginning only intended to collect some recollections and detached narratives useful to future writers. But we must take Mr. Stone at his word, and when he tells us in title and Preface that he has written a history, we must judge it accordingly. We might justify by many citations that dissatisfaction with the result of his labors which we have been obliged to express in somewhat too general terms. But we need only notice one or two examples, chosen entirely at random, of the way in which important periods are neglected, while the author hurries on to personal anecdote and plentiful “ recollections.”

We will take an instance from the earlier portion of the work. It would naturally be supposed that New York, during the beginning, and in fact the whole continuance of the Revolution, would afford a theme for a chapter of average length at least. And the reasonable space which Mr. Stone accords to the years before the outbreak of the war, though by no means so great as that devoted later to the description of a few “ eccentric characters,” — barber, confectioner, and others, — leads us to hope for this. But when we come to the actual outbreak of hostilities, we are amazed to find a single sentence (page 243) devoted to the fact that “New York, imitating the example of her sister Colonies, formed a Provincial Congress,” and “ appointed five delegates to the Continental Congress ” in Philadelphia. A page more brings us to the arrival of Washington in New York ; and from this (June 25, 1775) two pages only are required to carry us through the whole eventful year to the Declaration of Independence. Surely something was doing in New York City all this while ! Having most superficially described its capture, Mr. Stone tells us that “ the history of New York City during its occupation by the British is not one that Americans can recall with pleasure,” and apparently believing that this fact excuses him from telling us anything about it, fills some ten pages with a gossiping letter from Madame Riedesel, containing anecdotes of the period, and then suddenly astonishes us with the news of peace ; and the Revolution is over.

This easy method of passing over the change of his chosen city from the chief town of a Colony to the metropolis of a new nation, is in itself a somewhat remarkable achievement of the historian ; it is a fair example of the way in which the author fills the spaces between the unimportant gossip of the book ; but it becomes insignificant when we find, very much later, that his sole mention of the Rebellion in 1861, or anything connected with it, is comprised in a single sentence of general statement and a most imperfect chapter on the New York Draft Riots of 1863. The sentence (page 538) is as follows : “ In 1861 and 1862, the citizens of New York, almost to a man and without distinction of party, rose grandly to sustain the Union.” We should have supposed it impossible to write the history of the smallest village in the country, and not say more about the effect of the Civil War than this ; yet this sentence is absolutely and literally the only direct mention Mr. Stone makes of the fact that there was a war. The chapter on the riots deals only with them apart from any connection with what was doing outside the city. It is made up of quotations from the files of the “ New York Herald,”—from reporters’ accounts written in all the fear and excitement of the moment, —and altogether is as little worthy the name of history as anything could well be. The rioters are called “ the people ” (pp. 542, 548, and often), and a mild tone of conciliation runs through the articles. In a short clause of a sentence of one of them (page 543), casual mention is made of the fact that the rioters “ burned the Colored Orphan Asylum in Fifth Avenue and tore up a portion of the New Haven Railroad track”!

Thus the war is disposed of without a word of its effects upon the city; of the men sent out and those who never returned ; of the aid that came from the merchants’ coffers ; of the Sanitary Commission and the support it found there; of those after-influences of the great convulsion which New York felt more, perhaps, than any city in the country; and of a thousand things that should find a place in any worthy record.

The same superficial treatment is accorded to the financial panic of 1857, to the uprising against the Tammany misrule of a year ago, and many other episodes which the ordinary observer is disposed to think most important in New York’s history. Nothing, indeed, is told completely, and the most remarkable feature of the book, if we may be guilty of the bull, is the great amount of valuable information it has left untold. Only at its end do we begin to find what a history of New York City might really be made, when we read the author’s extracts from Dr. Osgood’s excellent address before the New York Historical Society.

Matters of inaccuracy of style and statement there is little need to mention. We were somewhat surprised, it is true, to find one, whom we supposed to have an independent fame, introduced to the reader (page 137) as that “ early and bosom friend of the late Dr. Nott,—Alexander Hamilton”; or to come upon passages as remarkable as this (page 175), “ the union of Church and State .... was, like the ‘ Skeleton in Armor,’ ever present to their imaginations.” But enough has certainly been said, without allusion to any minor points, to show that we have good reason for wishing that whatever is valuable in the volume might have been given us in a different form and under a different title ; and that Mr. Stone’s evidently sincere research and labor might have been bestowed for other and more useful results.

—When the American traveller gets into Italy he feels a surprise, which he is commonly not honest enough to avow, at the Italian sky. This sky is blue, but the American does not find it, on the whole, much bluer than his own sky, and he had expected to find it ever so much bluer, because he had taken the word of English writers who may be said never to have seen the sky in their own country, and are, therefore, justly enraptured by the aspect of the Italian heaven. In like manner, English writers have prepossessed the American traveller concerning the moral traits of the Continent. When he quits his own country the Englishman leaves behind him the manly honesty of the English domestics, the chastity of the English poor, the social content and mutual helpfulness of all ranks and grades, the universal intelligence and prosperity ; and he naturally finds most other people treacherous, prejudiced, insolent, servile, licentious, revolutionary, ignorant, and miserable. This cannot be helped, but there is no reason why we who have skies and errors of our own should accept the skyless and immaculate Englishman’s estimate of other countries. How should we like to have his estimate of us generally accepted ? It is chiefly against the commonly received English opinion of “ The Greeks of Today ” that Mr. Tuckerman’s book is directed (though we believe that the lively Monsieur About is partly answerable for the low esteem in which the Greeks are held), and we do not see why he has not successfully combated it. If he had not liked the Greeks, he would probably not have written a book in their favor ; but he does not love them blindly, and he does not seek to establish their claim to more than a fair share of the slender common stock of human virtues. He thinks them industrious, enterprising, sober, and chaste, and sufficiently truthful and honest; but he does not ask us to believe that they are all so ; and he accounts for the abuse that has been heaped upon them by the facts that they are politically ambitious, and have the “ great idea ” of themselves solving the Eastern question by driving out the Turks ; that they are commercially unprofitable ; and that they prefer French to English ideas. Besides, they had a bad name to begin with ; and they are poor and proud, and dependent and spirited. This is Mr. Tuckerman’s explanation ; but no people who have been travelled among and written about would demand any explanation save the misconceptions and dislikes of travellers and diplomatists. We care more for those parts of the book relating to the political character of the Greeks ; to their “ idea ” of possessing their race and religion of the dominion of Turkey ; to their desire for education so universal that every man and woman in the kingdom can read and write; and to the progress that they have made since their independence. This is mainly in the direction of commerce, which is so considerable that in all the eastern Mediterranean there are two Greek sail for every one of another nation, though of course British tonnage is vastly greater. Agriculture does not flourish, because the land is desperately poor, and the peasants are slow to change inherited habits and methods. Yet “ such a thing as absolute poverty does not exist in Greece ; food is abundant, though of the coarsest kind ; and compared with the ‘ smiling landscape ’ of English rural life, there is more domestic contentment and domestic virtue, temperance and chastity, in the peasant life of a single province in Greece than in all the greater part of rural England.” His education and his constant reading and talking beget an intense patriotism in the Greek, which is fostered by the memories and monuments of the past, and is now and then appealed to by such events as the official revival of the foot-races and games on the ancient course at Athens. It is also consecrated by his religion, not outlawed by it, as for instance the Italian’s is ; and his religion is something that, with all its superstitions, seems not so very bad. At least he will not give it up for ours ; and Mr. Tuckerman’s chapter on the Missionaries in Athens is not encouraging to Protestant zeal for the conversion of the East. The famous massacre of English travellers of Marathon in 1869, and brigandage generally in Greece, are fully treated, and Greek brigandage appears in nowise different from Italian brigandage. It had its rise in the times of oppression; it is encouraged by the immunity of the robbers on Turkish soil, as the Italian brigand was protected on Papal territory; and like the Neapolitans the Greek brigands have their forced spies and allies among the peasants, who keep them informed of all operations against them. One cannot read without horror of the loss of the English travellers, nor without indignation of the exaction by the English government of a money penalty from the Greeks. Imagine our paying indemnity to the English government for an Englishman scalped by Apachees, or our demanding it for an American garroted in London !

Mr. Tuckerman’s book is temperately written, and he tells us nothing of the Greeks — though he tells so much in their favor—that is not easy to believe.

— We spoke of M. Cherbuliez’s story, La Revanche de Joseph Noirel, during its serial publication in the Revue des Deux Mondes, and now that we have it as a whole in English we have not to modify our opinion of it greatly. We still feel that nearly every point is put with excess ; the language itself, in its brilliancy and force, has the exaggeration that surcharges the author’s intention, and carries him beyond the line at which a finer artist should have paused. Yet at times M. Cherbuliez is able to impress you almost as a man of genius ; and he certainly has poetical feeling little short of genius. The book is a romance, not a novel, and it would not be right to judge it by the strict rules of probability applicable to the novel ; but it has united so many realistic elements with its romantic excess that the result is puzzling to say the least. In the beginning is the description of the Mirion family at Geneva, which is delightful, though it shares the exaggeration of the whole book. M. Mirion, who has made his money in the furniture business, and who is preserved from the worst vulgarity by his frank content with his vocation and the luxuries it has brought him ; Madame Mirion, his wife, to whom he is subject and who is as ambitious and eager for social honor as he is indifferent; the various relations who help to fill up the comfortable house at Mon-Plaisir, are each as if studied from life, though each portrait is toned above nature. The most natural is the daughter, Marguerite, the heroine of the dismal tragedy about to ensue. She is an exceedingly lovely person ; beautiful, goodtempered, admirably educated, simple and fine. She is a young girl like the European young girls ; she has not seen enough of the world to love any one ; she yields to her mother’s ambition and her father’s wish, and marries Count Roger d’Ornis, who has a mediaeval castle in Burgundy, and a mediaeval crime on his conscience, having killed his dearest friend in a sudden quarrel, and a mediaeval enemy, holding Count Roger’s written confession of the homicide. But enemy is not quite the word either for the old blackguard dealer in bric-à-brac, who has nothing against the Count, and merely uses his secret to get money out of him. He appears one night at the castle half drunk, and in her husband’s absence is rude to Marguerite, who is bewildered that the Count does not resent the insult. Already she has felt the strange secrecy and darkness of her husband’s character ; now she overhears him talking with this drunken wretch of some dreadful fact known only to them. It is just before sickness in her family calls her home for a few days. At Mon-Plaisir there is no one to whom she can speak but Joseph Noirel, a workman of her father’s, whom M. Mirion took when a boy from a life of abject misery, taught his trade, and brought up in his family. Noirel is bitterly grateful, knowing that he is a monument to M. Mirion’s goodness. He is a type of character produced only by modern theories and modern conditions, a workman with a workman’s one-sided education, but a gentleman’s sensitiveness and more than a gentleman’s pride ; a man of great natural talent and force too. He is in love with Marguerite, but reverently, and he will give his life for her. She is sure that her husband’s secret is not to his dishonor; she implores Joseph to help release him from the dealer in bric-à-brac, and so Joseph takes service with the latter, and finally possesses himself of the Count’s confession, but not till it has been made known to Marguerite. Joseph is now unable to rise above his passion, and be truly generous and heroic. Marguerite is in despair at the avowal of his love. Fate has so closed her simple, kindly, happy life about with crime and evil, that she sees no escape. She offers to spend a day at a little village near Geneva with Joseph, if at the end he will take her life and his own. Thus, after destroying the confession, they die together, the author pursuing Marguerite’s emotions to the moment she is killed. “Joseph raised his arm, but it refused to strike because she was looking at him. In a broken voice he begged her to close her eyes..... She turned away her head, and the last thing she saw was an immense Castle d’Ornis on the wall before her which was spinning swiftly like a top. Then she gave a feeble cry ; Joseph had stabbed her to the heart, and with such a blow that death was instantaneous.”Such is the plot of this wonderfully clever, all too clever book. It scarcely holds together, even for the plot of a romance. Yet it is prodigiously effective ; the movement and development of the story are almost intolerably interesting ; and the character painting is often marvellously good. We know nothing better in its way than the inexorable, vulgar vanity of Marguerite’s mother, who, when Marguerite comes home for refuge after discovering that her husband is a murderer, thinks only of the neighbors’ talk of the failure of the brilliant marriage, — “ of what the Patets will say,”— and drives her daughter back to D’Ornis, with no hope of escape but through death. There are passages in the narrative of the first excellence, of the saddest beauty. We think here of the first days of Marguerite’s married life, while she and her strange remorsehaunted husband are devoted to each other, and are together in all his pursuits, and a possibility yet exists of happiness for her ; there is one scene where she falls asleep in the woods, and he awakens her, not enduring to be alone, that is exquisite in its melancholy charm. But the supreme effect of the book is at its close, in the description of that innocent, awful last day with Joseph. The sweetness and sunshine of spring in all the world around these tragical figures ; Joseph’s repeated prayers for release, and proposals of flight, and life and love elsewhere ; Marguerite’s calm resolution to die, and little bursts of fantastic caprice, and her half-gay deceit of the peasant at whose house they are, — form, with the terror of the end, a picture of such bewildering fascination, that one scarcely ventures at last to pronounce the catastrophe a piece of false or even inadmissible art.

— Miss Healy’s “ Summer’s Romance " indicates more careful and serious study than most novels, but we think that the writer is capable of still better work, and it is this hope which induces us to try to point out what seem to us to be great faults. A young woman is introduced to us as the companion of a British matron who is as stern as the original of any French caricatures, and we receive the intended impression of a heroine who is pretty in spite of her pale face, and who is very ready for any romance that time or circumstances may offer her. The matron dies, leaving a certain sum of money to Louisa, the heroine, which she determines to make use of by giving herself a vacation at Capri, where the scene of the story is laid. She makes the acquaintance of one of the islandwomen and, under her advice, takes rooms in the house of a priest. Living in the same house is a young English painter, and the two naturally become acquainted and fall in love. At this stage appears a man of the world, Mr. Carryl Crittenden, whose unreal character is clearly indicated by his name. He is represented as an old friend of the novel-reader ; his manners are faultless, but his heart is colder than the iceberg; outwardly, he cringes deeply before lovely woman, while within he meditates naught but bitterness and cynicism. Sharpened by his wide experience, he soon sees the state of affairs, and being a sworn foe of wedlock he warns Lester, the young painter, against the threatening dangers. To convince his friend of the frivolity of the female sex, he proposes to make Louisa fall in love with himself. For once, however, this hitherto successful heart-breaker is baffled. Instead of making the pale-faced young woman fall in love with him, he falls deeply in love with the pale-faced young woman, and is enraged by her coldness. Lester at last tells his love to Louisa, — for if there was anything calculated to bring him to the point, it must have been seeing his friend’s devotion, — and she accepts him. Crittenden, however, vows that she shall never be his wife. This result he accomplishes by telling Lester that his aunt, the British lady who died in the beginning of the book, has left him a large fortune on condition that he should not marry beneath him. The legal value of any such condition we shall not discuss, but it certainly had a Strong influence on Lester. Crittenden urges a mock marriage and at last threatens to break with him, and by his earnestness induces Lester to consent to the mock marriage. Unfortunately their conversation is overheard by Louisa, who never sees either of them again, but hides with the Capriotewoman, and dies, while Crittenden carries Lester off on a false scent, and so the novel ends.

All the incidental parts of the story are admirably managed, the scenery is well described, the subordinate characters are intelligently delineated, and, in general, the first part of the story is told with a great deal of skill. We see simply the effect that this love-affair has upon Louisa, we sympathize with her little joys and woes, and become thoroughly interested. But later there is a feeling of disappointment. Crittenden is a most artificial creation; there is to be sure no lack of men who consider themselves irresistible to women ; there are some, too, who feel a cynicism that so many affect; but in Crittenden there is a theatrical vein of intense self-consciousness that shows how slightly the writer understood the character she tried to draw. It may be said, moreover, that she misses the most important point of the novel, which would naturally be the struggle in Lester’s mind between love on one hand and selfindulgence on the other. As it is, he gives up his affection for Louisa without a serious struggle, at the bidding of Crittenden, and shows himself thereby to be so feeble, so fibreless a character, that the reader who considers for a moment is rejoiced that Louisa escaped marrying him. Of course, in real life, such cases happen continually, and they are fair subjects of fiction, but such absolute worthlessness as is here shown by Lester vitiates the whole merit of the book. It was either blind infatuation on the part of Louisa, which we fancy it was hardly the writer’s intention to represent, or a total misconception of the way in which Lester would show his treachery. The real action of the novel lies here, and this is hurried over in a way that is far from satisfactory. The writer ignores the difference between Lester as we first see him, and as he appears when under Crittenden’s influence, and it is this contradiction to which we object. All this is perhaps taking the novel more seriously than was intended by the writer or is desired by the reader, who will find much that is pleasing in it and will undoubtedly be entertained by it.

— Colonel Revere’s retrospect of forty years of military and naval service will, we have no doubt, be received with great favor by young men who possess a healthy taste for adventure ; and, indeed, it is not without interest for all classes of readers. The writer is a descendant of that famous Paul Revere who took the midnight ride “on the eighteenth of April, seventy-five.” There are few men living who could tell such a story of personal travels and adventures as this book records. Entering the United States Navy as a midshipman, at fourteen years of age, Revere joined the Pacific Squadron in 1828, and from that time until near the close of the late civil war he appears to have been seldom off the deck or out of the saddle, although he did not hold a commission from this government during the whole of that time. He took part in or witnessed a good deal of fighting in different parts of the world, and made the acquaintance of many curious characters, — some known to fame and some unknown. He gives, with other attractive anecdotes, an interesting account of an interview with Lady Hester Stanhope, to whom he was sent with an invitation to visit an American war-vessel, then lying at Sidon, not very far from her Oriental home. He came away from the interview with a feeling that Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, and whose death was supposed to have affected the mind of this noble lady to whom he had been engaged, was, on the whole, fortunate in having been released from all earthly engagements.

But the most wonderful story which Colonel Revere has to tell is that which relates to “ Stonewall ” Jackson. While going up the Mississippi River in 1852, he made the acquaintance of Lieutenant Thomas J. Jackson of the United States Army; and their conversation happening one evening to turn from nautical astronomy to astrology, Jackson showed unusual interest in the subject, and gave his reasons for believing that there might be something useful to mankind underlying the present practice of that occult science. Before they separated at the end of the journey, Revere, who had studied astrology somewhat, to while away the dull hours on shipboard, but who had no faith in it, gave Jackson the necessary data for calculating a horoscope. Not long after he received a letter from the Lieutenant, enclosing a scheme of their nativities, by which it appeared that their destinies ran in parallel lines, and that somewhere about the first days of May, 1863, they would both be exposed to great danger. The letter and the calculations made but little impression upon the experienced man of the world, and they were put aside and forgotten.

At the battle of Chancellorsville, which took place in the early part of May, 1863. Revere, who commanded a brigade, was engaged in the inspection of his picket-line, stationed in the vicinity of the plank-road, when a party of horsemen approached his position from the direction of the Confederate lines. The remainder of the story we give in the writer’s own words: “ The foremost horseman detached himself from the main body, which halted not far from us, and, riding cautiously nearer, seemed to try to pierce the gloom. He was so close to us that the soldier nearest me levelled his rifle for a shot at him ; but I forbade him, as I did not wish to have our position revealed, and it would have been useless to kill the man, whom I judged to be a staff-officer making a reconnoissance. Having completed his observations, this person rejoined the group in his rear and all returned at a gallop. The clatter of hoofs soon ceased to be audible; and the silence of the night was unbroken save by the melancholy cries of the whippoorwill, when the horizon was lighted up by a sudden flash in the direction of the enemy, succeeded by the well-known rattle of a volley of musketry from at least a battalion. A second volley quickly followed the first; and I heard cries in the same direction. Fearing that some of our troops might be in that locality and that there was danger of our firing upon friends, I left my orderly and rode towards the Confederate lines. A riderless horse dashed past me and I reined up in the presence of a group of several persons gathered round a man lying on the ground apparently badly wounded. I saw at once that these were Confederate officers ; but reflecting that I was well armed and mounted, and that I had on the great-coat of a private soldier such as was worn by both parties, I sat still, regarding the group in silence, but prepared to use either my spurs or my sabre, as occasion might demand. The silence was broken by one of the Confederates, who appeared to regard me with astonishment ; then, speaking in a tone of authority, he ordered me to 1 ride up there and see what troops those were,’ indicating the Rebel position. I instantly made a gesture of assent and rode slowly in the direction indicated, until out of sight of the group ; then made a circuit round it and returned within my own lines. Just as I had answered the challenge of our picket, the section of our artillery posted on the plank-road began firing ; and I could plainly hear the grape crashing through the trees near the spot occupied by the group of Confederate officers.”

The “ Richmond Inquirer ” of May 13, 1863, after giving an account of the manner in which “ Stonewall ” Jackson met his death through the mistake of one of his own regiment, says : “ The turnpike was utterly deserted, with the exception of Captains Wilbourn and Wynn; but, in the skirting of the thicket on the left, some person was observed by the side of the wood, sitting, his horse motionless and silent. The unknown individual was clad in a dark dress which strongly resembled the Federal uniform ; but it seemed impossible that he could have penetrated to that spot without being discovered ; and what followed seemed to prove that he belonged to the Confederates. Captain Wilbourn directed him to ride up there and see what troops those were, — the men who fired on Jackson ; and the stranger rode slowly in the direction pointed out, but never returned with any answer.”

Colonel Revere’s book is, on the whole, well written and well arranged ; much better than is usual with the retrospects and reminiscences of unprofessional writers. There are several short stories at the end of the personal narrative which are well worth reading.

— Mr. DeMille’s “Comedy of Terrors ” is rather too long for the sort of success aimed at, — the entertainment of the reader by exciting adventures which the tone of the book advertises him will all turn out well. An extravaganza in five acts is not so diverting as if in one ; and yet, if you grant its premises, and do not blame it for not being a tragedy or a melodrama or a genteel comedy, it is diverting enough. In Mr. DeMille’s story there is no pretence of doing more than playing with the feelings which your ordinary fiction wrings and lacerates, and its sincerity in this respect is a relief. Besides, the people, several of them, are original and amusing, though like the plot there is a little too much of each of them. Mrs. Lovell and Mr. Grimes are certainly a unique pair of lovers ; the notion of the tie between them — the chignon that goes over the cliff and up in the balloon, and is cherished by Grimes through all his perils — is a conceit both new and humorous; and there is something very comical in the inability of either Grimes or Mrs. Lovell to see it in an entirely unheroic light. Mr. DeMille also gets a good deal of fun out of his mockserious use of the well-worn machinery of fiction ; while it cannot be said that he has spared incident by flood or field, or lacks ingenious surprises. It is a story that reads better as a whole than when broken into monthly instalments.

— Mr. Trowbridge carries forward in “A Chance for Himself” the history of that small canal-driver, Jack Hazard, whose fortunes he had told of before. Jack has found a home in good Deacon Chatford’s family, and he is very happy in it till he discovers a treasure of silver half-dollars in an old log on Squire Peternot’s land. The story is all about how the Squire got this money away from Jack, and how Jack repossessed himself of it through the Squire’s back window, and was arrested, and escaped from the constable, and afterwards gave himself up, and was finally set free on consenting to let the Squire have the money, — which turns out to be counterfeit. It is a story for boys, and it is so thoroughly good in naturalness of character and incident, and in vigor of movement, that any one not greatly past middle life may read every page of it (as we did) with no regret save for the fact that few stories written for men in this country are half so well in their way. It is not in thought or diction above the heads of the boys, but its art is such as we all must admire, and its people such as we at once recognize. There is not a falsely conceived or overdrawn personage in it; the slightest sketch is full of life and truth.

The whole story breathes of the country in which its scenes are laid, and in its course, which nowhere passes the modesty of nature, there are marks of such honest study and thorough knowledge of farm life and farm folk, such delicate and true touches in the higher motives of the plot, that one is not only entertained by this tale for boys, one is charmed and delightfully surprised.

— Coleridge’s “ Biographia Literaria,” Scott’s “ Lives of the Novelists,” and Lord Dufferin’s “Letters from High Latitudes” are three late republications each so good in its way that there are no new books we can commend half so heartily to those who have not yet read them, — and the number of those who have not yet read any given book constantly increases, alas ! in spite of all the diligence of fame. They are not works to be criticised ; they are hardly to be examined by the mere passing book-noticer of the hour; and yet, with regard to the “ Biographia ” especially, one confesses “ There are a great many new ideas in that book,” as the gentleman said of Plato’s “ Phaedo.” Here, for example, is something so fresh that it might almost have been written for the instruction of the ungenial critics of our own day and country, to whom at any rate we suggest the meditation of it: “ Till, in the place of arbitrary dictation and petulant sneers, the reviewers support their decisions by reference to fixed canons of criticisms, previously established and deduced from the nature of man, reflecting minds will pronounce it arrogant in them thus to announce themselves to men of letters as the guides of their taste and judgment. To the purchaser and mere reader it is, at all events, an injustice. He who tells me that there are defects in a new work, tells me nothing which I should not have taken for granted without his information. But he who points out and elucidates the beauties of an original work does indeed give me interesting information, such as experience would not have authorized me in anticipating..... I know nothing that surpasses the vileness of deciding on the merits of a poet or painter (not by characteristic defects ; for where there is genius these always point to his characteristic beauties, but) by accidental failures or faulty passages, except the impudence of defending it as the proper duty and most instructive part of criticism.”

In Scott’s charming lives of Richardson, Fielding, Smollett, Radcliffe, Walpole, and the other more elderly British novelists and romancers, one cannot help feeling that after all there is no really valuable criticism save that from authors, — critics who have not only given hostages to fortune, but who have learnt through their own attempts the limitations of creative literature. The patience, the generosity, the sensitive appreciation shown in these Lives — lightly undertaken as prefaces to the volumes of “ Ballantyne’s Novelist’s Library,” and now growing just a little quaint and old-fashioned as to criterions, though far from that as to principles — are inexpressibly refreshing ; and the opinions come with the authority of one who knows because he has done, and does not merely pronounce because he likes or dislikes.

It is Lord Dufferin’s appointment as Governor-General of Canada, no doubt, which has inspired his Canadian publishers to reprint (and, we are sorry to say, largely misprint) the lively letters which he wrote seventeen years ago from Iceland and other frozen parts of Northern Europe. The ordinary tourist does not take Iceland in his course, and a book about Iceland so old as this is still in some sort a new book. At any rate, it is a very pleasant book, full of the spirit of comfortable adventure, good-natured, and even humorous, though with here and there the signs of a disposition to pass mere fun off for humor; sentimental with a wholesome sentiment, and not unslangy. The material is pretty meagre ; the lava-fields, the geysers, the icebergs, are not much varied by modern human interest; but Lord Dufferin has a love for Saga-lore, and sets the present stupor of that strange and northern world against its past glory with many artistic effects, in letters which unfailingly entertain the reader.

As a proof of the way in which Turgenieff’s fame is slowly advancing among the reading public, and as a volume containing a great deal of information on a subject that is not taught in our common schools, we recommend to our readers Otto Glagau’s Die Russische Literatur und Iwan Turgenjew. It is a small book consisting of a series of articles contributed to the National-Zeitung of Berlin, which, by the way, is one of the best newspapers published in Germany, — one for which Julian Schmidt often writes. The author begins by a brief but satisfactory account of the earlier efforts of Russian writers ; of Pouchkine’s “ Oneguine ” he expresses a very different opinion from that which is held by most Russians who write, and who, apparently, mistake their patriotic pride in the first eminent work in their literature for critical approval. It is, in spite of its national subject, hardly more than an offshoot of Byronism on foreign soil. The “ Captain’s Daughter,” which was translated into French about twenty years ago, and a new edition of which was lately announced, Mr. Glagau praises much more warmly. With equal justice he commends Gogol’s TarassBoulba, which is certainly a remarkable novel. Of it, too, a new edition is announced. Mr. Glagau gives the reader an analysis of the story, for which we have not space here ; we must content ourselves with simply recommending it to our readers, who will find in it a genuine flavor of the soil, a grim fierceness which marks the half-savage Cossack ; besides this there is the same pathos which we find in Turgenieff’s novels. With these exceptions, Russian literature was more remarkable for its formal imitations of various styles of composition than for any positive merit of its own; the country, or at least the cultivated portion, felt the same yearning, one might judge, that inspired those now three-quarters forgotten American writers who tried to give immortality to our early history and to the Revolutionary War by writing Virgilian epics about them.

The greater part of the book is taken up with a discussion of Turgenieff, giving us a brief account of his life, and detailed critical sketches of his various writings. Those who are familiar with these books will find themselves repaid by reading Mr. Glagau’s remarks ; and to those who have yet to make the acquaintance of, perhaps, the greatest novelist living, we can warmly recommend this book as an interesting introduction. With many merits, it has one noticeable omission, that, namely, of any definite statement of Turgenieff’s high position as a writer ; this is everywhere implied, to be sure, but a piecemeal criticism that goes over the ground without any summing up is as unsatisfactory as a trial without a verdict. Many of the critical remarks will be found to be true and often ingenious, while others again seem to us to be written with a very heavy hand. For Turgenieff’s love of nature and his marvellous power of describing it, for his touching descriptions of the sufferings of the serfs and of their solemn resignation, Mr. Glagau gives him as much credit as the most enthusiastic admirer could demand. By means of his intelligent remarks and by his copious extracts the most indifferent reader would feel, supposing that he had never even heard of Turgenieff, that he had discovered a great author ; but there are other remarks made, at which admirers might easily, and to our thinking very justly, take exception. Turgenieff’s power as it is shown in his love-stories meets with very slight recognition ; the author often, indeed, makes it the subject of very severe criticism. He does not seem to discern the delicacy which marks Turgenieff’s writing, even when his subject is one which, if coldly stated, would prepare the mind in its natural, modest state for something more than hardihood on the part of the writer. Most of Turgenieff’s stories are full of passion ; we have human beings whose whole nature is moved by one great impulse, and not as we commonly find in English novels, for instance, an account of a conflict between etiquette and love on the part of two amiable people. And in such subjects criticism always has one of its surest positions, — one namely, that demands of it to keep a watchful eye on literature, art, or whatever it may be, to see that morality is not offended by any artist who, naturally enough, looks more especially at the formal beauty of his work. A just critic should have full perception of this beauty, while, not so much by teaching the world as by expressing its opinion, he indicates to the artist what in the long run the world will demand of him. No formal rules can be put down, nor is this the place to try to clear away the ground for abstract principles ; but in the specific case before us, Mr. Glagau, as we have said, seems to judge too hastily, or, to put it with greater justice, more severely than many will think warrantable. He does not seem to feel Turgenieff’s real modesty, as it is shown, for example, in Frühlingsfluthen, of which mention was made in these pages a month or two since. Moreover, in judging these love-stories, Mr. Glagau seems to regard them with too cold an eye, trying to determine whether such or such a love-affair is reasonable, as if it were the universal rule that love-making should be reasonable, should be controlled by as careful coolness and forethought as a fop shows in the choice and preparation of his raiment. If Turgénieff selects a psychological impossibility for the subject of a story he deserves blame, but it is easier to detect the inadvisability of a match than it is to know all the subtle laws that control men’s and women’s hearts.

The few pages on Turgénieff’s realism, and the comparison which is made between him and Pisemski, can be recommended ; here the critic does both authors full justice.

Towards the end of the book we have an account of two imitators of Turgénieff, Karl Detlef and Sacher-Masoch. The best thing that this last-named author ever wrote appeared in a somewhat modified form, and modified to its credit, in the Revue desDeux Mondes for October 1. It was called Don Juan de Kolomea, and the imitation of Turgénieff was clearly to be seen. Moreover, it was certainly a striking story, although in many ways an unpleasant one. But there never was a sadder case of misused talents ; the author has sunk from bad to worse, and his later writings would deserve to be burned by the public hangman, if that were not the surest way of increasing their circulation. Mr. Glagau gives him the denunciatory criticism that he deserves. We hope that one result of the appearance of Mr. Glagau’s book will be an increase in the number of the readers of Turgenieff; we on this side of the water need not mind the novelist’s occasional flings at the Germans in Russia, which seem to rankle in his critic’s breast, and every reader will find much food for thought in the author’s treatment of his subjects.

— While we are speaking of Turgénieff, it may be well to mention the appearance of a new volume of a German translation of his works. It contains three stories. One, The Lear of the Steppe, appeared a few months ago in the Revue, in French, and in this country in “ Every Saturday,” while another translation is announced by Messrs. Holt and Williams. The third, Der Oberst, has appeared in French in a little volume of his shorter tales, under the title of Le Brigadier; while the second one, Der Fatalist, is here presented to Western Europe and to this country for the first time. Der Oberst is one of the most touching tales that Turgénieff ever wrote; by its pathos and simplicity it fascinates every reader. It would be perhaps as good a story as one could find through which to make Turgenieff’s acquaintance. The Lear of the Steppe hardly deserves such praise ; it is by no means one of this author’s most successful stories. Der Fatalist is a short character-sketch, with apparently great local truth as the description of a type with which we of this age and country are unfamiliar ; this fact, however, will probably only make it more interesting to us by partly idealizing a tale which, as it stands, needs any softening that can be given it, to alleviate its grimness. It is not, nor is it likely that it was intended to be, one of his masterpieces, but it is marvellously well told. Of course to those who have not read it all such phrases are as meaningless as gestures in the dark, but it is too much to ask of any one to spoil a story the merit of which lies in the telling.

— As noticeable a French book as any is George Sand’s last novel, Nanon. We understand that this author lost the greater part of her property in the late war, and that for this reason she is compelled to continue writing at a time when she would probably be glad to lay down her pen. This novel is written in autobiographical form ; it is the story of a peasant-girl who lived through the times of the Revolution, not among the horrors which the great cities saw, but in the country which had its own fears and distress. Running through it all is a love-story, as purely and innocently told as possible, with none of the uneasy curiosity that makes so many of this author’s novels objectionable. But while the story has this merit, and contains a most charming description of Nanon’s childhood, as a whole it is rather tedious ; still it may be recommended as a harmless example of this remarkable woman’s power of invention and narration. The reader who skips with ease will not be sorry to have read the novel; if it is dull, it is only dull in comparison with some other of her novels.

— Another story of a different sort is Les Nouvelles Amours d' Hermann et Dorothée. It is told by means of a series of letters between a Prussian officer who is in the army investing Paris and his fiancée, who is in Berlin. Of course there is plenty of ridicule of the lourd Allemand, but it is not merely that. It has, besides, a little love-story, showing how the Prussian succumbed to the graces of the Parisian siren. It is not a remarkable work of fiction, but it is very readable. It will readily kill an idle halfhour.

DENMARK has always had the reputation of being a tender mother to her great sons, — after their death. In their lifetime she has seldom strewn their path with roses ; and still, in spite of her step-motherly treatment, they have always clung to her with touching devotion. Tycho Brahe is no exception to this rule ; persecuted and unjustly driven into exile, he thus addresses his ungrateful country : —

Apropos of these verses, there are probably not many who have known Tycho Brahe as a poet before ; but this volume, which is, by the way, a very charming volume in spite of its somewhat pedantic style, gives us many a pleasant glimpse of the great astronomer’s every-day life and habits, and also informs us that he was a very constant worshipper of the Muses. Not only are his astronomical books and manuscripts according to the custom of the age furnished with dedicatory verses and inscriptions, but even the walls of his castles and his observatories are covered with them. If a foreign prince visits Tycho, it immediately inspires him to write Latin hexameters ; if he has chosen a husband for his daughter, the invitations for the wedding move to the same graceful measure ; and if, bowed down by disappointment and misfortune, he sits gazing at the sky of a strange land, even his grief and his longings seek relief in well-sounding stanzas.

The present biography of Tycho Brahe is in every sense of the word a scholarly performance, being written by a man who is gifted with that kind of microscopic sight and indefatigable patience for scientific research which we have got into the habit of regarding as a peculiarly German accomplishment. But Mr. Friis is a Dane, and on every page gives evidence of his Danish nationality. He compels us to accept nothing on his authority, but continually quotes his sources, and even in a number of instances prints his original document in full, which probably adds not a little to the scientific value of his work, while it detracts considerably from its interest to the general reader.

Tycho Brahe was born in December, 1546, and the reading of his life brings one face to face with almost every famous man of the sixteenth century. Monarchs, diplomatists, and men of science equally courted his acquaintance and frequently visited him at his wonderful establishment on the island of Hoeen, or, as he himself calls it Insula Venusia vulgo Hoenna. With a view toward educating himself for a diplomatic career he went abroad at the age of sixteen, accompanied by his tutor, the celebrated Danish historian, Anders Vedel ; but the starry heavens already attracted him more than diplomacy, and having once formed his resolution, neither threats, promises, contempt, nor the prohibitions thrown in his way by his noble relatives, could thwart his designs. Frederick the Second of Denmark was himself a lover of the sciences, and when Tycho’s discovery of a new star had attracted the attention of the world to him, the king was not slow to recognize and engage his services. Of the discovery of the new star the author gives the following account: —

“November 11, 1572, he (Tycho) had, as was his wont, spent the greater part of the day in his laboratory. The sky had for several days been cloudy, but in the evening, as he was walking from the laboratory back to the mansion, it had cleared off. As, according to his old custom, he lifted his eyes toward the starry heavens, he was not a little surprised to discover right above his head in the constellation of Cassiopeia a new and very bright star which he had never seen before. Hardly knowing whether to trust his own eyes or not, he hastened back to his laboratory to ask his workmen if they too could see it. He also addressed the same question to some peasants who just came driving along the road.”

The portion of the book describing Tycho Brahe’s castle, Urainborg, his observatory, laboratory, and various other establishments at Hoeen, reminds the reader forcibly of a certain class of romantic fiction, whose chief merit consists in a complicated machinery of trap-doors, secret springs, subterranean passages, etc. Here, however, you are not at liberty to indulge the romantic fancies which naturally thrive in such a mystic atmosphere, for at once comes the author with his proofs, groundplans, bird’s-eye views, and longitudes and latitudes, and abundant references to Tycho Brahe’s and other people’s writings, which immediately convince you that you are actually treading on terra firma. And still we cannot help thinking that Tycho’s many and wonderful establishments, at the same time that their value to science is beyond dispute, would have furnished an excellent stage for dramas of the German Zacharias Werner school, which deal largely in astrologers, dooms, and subterranean scenery.

Tycho, in spite of his astrological lore, did not perceive the doom that was hanging over his own head. The old King Frederick died, and was succeeded by his son, Christian the Fourth, to whom Tycho and his science were equally indifferent. And looking upon his labors from a mere pecuniary point of view, it was not to be denied that they had cost the state a very considerable amount of money. The king, therefore, began to show his dissatisfaction by gradually depriving Tycho of all his abbeys and provinces, the income of which had hitherto gone to procure astronomical instruments and to keep up his costly establishments at Hoeen, and by continually harassing him with petty commands and investigations into his private affairs. Tycho was probably, like most other nobles of his age, no lenient master to his peasants ; but, on the other hand, the persevering watchfulness with which the government now suddenly began to protect the interests of its subjects at Hoeen, has certainly a very suspicious flavor of wilful persecution. The biographer, for some reason or other, continually attempts to shield the king by throwing the blame for his injustice upon his counsellors, some of whom were known to be hostile to the astronomer. Had the king been a man of a weak and vacillating character, the excuse might have been a valid one; but Christian IV. was the ablest and most independent monarch of the whole Oldenborg race, and undoubtedly knew what he was about. In the year 1597, Tycho Brahe was compelled to leave the island, where he had spent the greater part of his life and his fortune in the service of his science and his country, but was soon after engaged by the Emperor Rudolf of Hapsburg, who gave him the castle Benatky in Bohemia. But his life had already struck its roots too deeply into the paternal soil. A year later we find him vainly striving to extract some sorry solace from the old, comfortless maxim, ubi bene, ibi patria :

At Benatky he was visited by Kepler, who like himself had fled from the persecutions of a tyrannical government. Tycho Brahe died in the year 1601, four years after his arrival in Bohemia.