Recent Literature

THERE is a class of writers whom, extravagantly admiring in early life, we are apt to treat later with injustice ; and Bulwer, who is the greatest of this class, has not only met this fate with individual readers, but from the whole body of contemporary criticism. It is not so many years since Blackwood’s Magazine deliberately, and no doubt sincerely, rated him above all the English novelists of our time, — and much above them. It is now almost one of the insignia of rank in the republic of letters to slight him ; and the literary snobs are quick to the easy distinction of doing so.

This is a droll destiny for a lord ; it is a pathetic one for such an honest and painstaking worker, and it is an unfair one for a writer who has entertained the world so long and so well. The situation is so odious that it is doubly hard to have Buhver himself join his adversaries, and as it were officially announce, in his last book, The Parisians, that he is not a man of genius. It is not exactly a vulgar book, but it is hopelessly common — the final throe of cleverness, the ultimate act of mere talent. It casts its derogatory light back upon his former works, and mercilessly defines and ranges them. Yet what shall wc make of the fact that lie has been one of the greatest figures in modern English literature, and what shall become of his fame ?

The fame of all novelists is very perishable; the fashion changes, they are not The Borderland of Science : a Series of Familiar Dissertations on Stars, Planets and Meteors; Sun and Moon; Earthquakes; Flying Machines; Coal; Gambling; Coincidences, Ghosts, etc, By RICHARD read, they pass into the English Classics at the best, and continue on with the enduring deadness of mummies; and most of them die and cease to he, even in name. Is this the case with novelists of genius ? We suppose that Scott was undoubtedly a novelist of genius, but though the Waverley novels are still largely bought and considerably talked of, we doubt if since the fall of the Confederacy — in which region they were regarded as current literature—they are any longer even generally read. Occasionally a novel universalizes and bids fair to survive, as The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quijote, Gil Bias, and in less degree I Promcssi Sposi and Wilhelm Meister; hut in such cases the perpetuity of the work seems conditioned upon the author’s concentration of his force chiefly in a single effort of the kind. Is immortality then determined by quantity 7 Would Scott now be read as much as ever if lie had written no romance save The Bride of Latnmermoor, say? What rank would Buhver hold if he had given us only The Caxtons ? Does mankind forget good books in sheer despair at their number ? A. PROCTOR, B. A. Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1874.

The question is always a curious one; but it is a little apart from the business of considering The Parisians, which we were saying was so commonly conceived and commonly written. It is not so common in material; and it is full of the less delicate sort of skill. It has been called a picture of life in Paris just before the fall of the empire and during the siege ; but it is rather a map ; a very accurate map, we should think. All the lines and limits of action are carefully put down there. We have the imperial court, with its parvenu society and its financial speculation ; we have the legitimist aristocracy, with their gentle manners, their religiousness, their exclusiveness which the emperor himself never overcame, and their insuperable pride ; we have the republic full grown and ready at any moment to assert itself under the empire, with all its following of journalists, artists, speculators, and adventurers, and apparently unconscious of the commune within it. The vast design leaves out scarcely a characteristic type of the native Parisian or alien Parisian life; and it is not wanting in representatives of the English and American residents who so largely helped to form society under Louis Napoleon; but it is here, in his management of the Americans, that the author rouses in his American reader’s mind a very serious doubt whether he is able to paint Parisian life truly. If the speech, behavior, and character of his different Parisians are as grotesquely impossible as those of Colonel Frank Morley, the American, then it is a pity that we are so ignorant of Parisians as not to be able to enjoy all the author’s amusing mistakenness. Colonel Morley is not meant to be offensive to us; he is elaborately set down a very fine fellow ; and he and his countrymen are said to get on better than Englishmen in French society because they speak better French — from which we can imagine what the English French must be; but anything farther from the American humorist than Colonel Morley could not well be conceived— even by an Englishman. His talk is so preciously unlike the sort of American talk which it is supposed to represent, that it deserves to be got by heart like the colloquies of the famous Portuguese phrase-book. We report also that women so pretty, so rich, and so fashionable as Mrs, Colonel Morley are not attached in their own country to the Cause of Woman ; and that cause, thank Providence! needs no such meretricious charms to commend it to our hearts.

But doubtless it would be unfair to judge Lord Lytton’s Parisians by his Americans ; for doubtless he knew Parisians a great deal better. In spite of Colonel Morley, we shall believe that we have had a very fair glimpse of the society of the French decadence. The characters are oddly disproportionate to their motives, and the effects out of keeping with the causes; but the conditions of people and of things are, we should think, extremely well stated. There is a curiously dull and sluggish lovestory creeping through the book, of which really we do not believe it worth while to speak particularly. It may be said scarcely to arrive at any climax, it simply ends in the marriage of the lovers; but something of its ineffectuality may be due to the fact that a great part of the book, toward the close, is fragmentary. One may read The Parisians without excitement, and with a very fair degree of both instruction and entertainment.

— Many novel-readers will recall with pleasure Mr. Trollope’s Phineas Finn, which in some ways is among the best of his stories, and they will very gladly welcome a continuation of the adventures of the young Irishman who made a great many friends in his struggle with life, as depicted in the earlier volume, and by his disappointed hopes of success as he approached middle age. We left him then returning to Ireland to marry the simple girl whom he had first loved, and in Phineas Redux we have him returning to London, a widower, after two years’ absence, and once more taking part in the politics of the time. He is still a young man, and, as they say in advertisements, “without incumbrances.'’ Almost all of his old friends are introduced with their well-known peculiarities; the story runs on in the quiet, uniform way Mr. Trollope is so fond of, giving us good examples of the author’s merits as well as of his faults, or rather of his deficiencies.

One of the most noticeable qualities of the novel is its resemblance to life: the people come and go, and think and talk, very much as do our neighbors and friends ; in some places the conversation is remarkably clever ; the little hits people give one another, and the way each person follows his own thread of thought, in short, the individuality of every character, is admirably given. We might ourselves be overhearing the talk and watching the little ways of the people. It is with the women especially that Mr. Trollope’s cleverness is most noteworthy. Madame Goesler and Lady Glencora understand one another without the need of bringing their in most hearts to utterance; Miss Adelaide Palisser is very capable of defending herself when hard pressed by a friend, without any outward and visible signs of the faintest grain of malice, as at the top of page 16, when the conversation has come round to her lover, Mr. Maule: and so in countless other cases. Lady Glencora’s enthusiastic defense of Phineas at the time of his trial is amusing and natural, The talk of the men together is also entertaining and life-like.

There is the same sort of exactness in the political part of the novel. It reads like an account of what has actually happened. It is like looking through a glass which alters the absolute but not the relative position of the objects. Mr. Trollope’s philosophy of politics is a cheap one, but he manages to give his readers very much the impression they would receive if they were to watch the doings of political parties in England with great indifference as to what work was accomplished, and what principles were involved. It is the same indifference which is to be noticed in all his views of human beings. He never sees far beneath the words and gestures of his characters. He has a keen eye for the little social by-play, but there he stops. In reading his novels we have the enjoyment that is so great with audiences at the theatre who only want a real locomotive and a real fire-engine to come on the stage, to be perfectly satisfied with the play. Imagination is killed; we have in its place the recognition of familiar objects. We look at a mirror instead of at a picture.

This lack of invention is further exemplified by the author’s account of the hero’s love-affairs. There is something very unromantic in his fickleness, and something far from dignified in the way every one of the women is obliged to take the active part in courtship. Even Miss Palisser, who is represented as a young woman of some spirit, makes very meek and inefficient demands of her cool lover, and considers the fortune which drops into her lap as sufficient to outweigh his short-comings. He consents to marry her when she is rich, but is remarkably resigned to his ill-success so long as she is as poor as he.

There is nothing but amusement to be got from Mr. Trollope; he draws a hero who is but a dawdling lover and a whimsical politician ; the women in the book are bright and natural in many ways, and the upshot of it all is that Phineas marries the rich widow and, we may suppose, settles down to middle-aged comfort. Great novelists may tell the same story, but they let the reader see how petty such a conclusion is; they put a meaning between the lines where Mr. Trollope only leaves a blank. They teach as well as describe. Mr, Trollope seems to catch everything but the deeper meaning. The plot of the novel is that old, old one of lover and beloved in unequal stations, and of love triumphing at last over all the barriers of mere worldly wisdom and conventionality. The heroine, Maggie Grey, is an unpretending little creature, whose charm consists in her sweet and perfect womanliness, and the interest of the story lies in the way in which the rare balancing of many qualities, which this implies, wins its quiet way against every more brilliant advantage. In the opening chapters, Maggie appears as a sort of Cinderella to the odious wife and children of her uncle, a struggling London apothecary. From this dismal situation she is rescued by the keen-sightedness of a rich and vulgar but good-natured widow, their lodger, who sees what a treasure poor Maggie might be to her as companion, accountant, and lady’s maid, all in one. She secures her services for a small salary and takes her to the Continent, and finally to Paris ; Maggie meantime making the most of every opportunity that comes in her way, in order to qualify herself to earn her living eventually as a governess. In Paris, the widow, Mrs.'Berry, keeps open salon in the evening for a real count who has turned her head with his title, but who has designs upon her fortune, and is also a gambler, He brings there his friends and his victims, among the latter a stiff and stolid young English earl, just escaped from a tender but evangelical mother, and from whom the count expects to win large sums of money. Maggie, in tasteful costume, presides at the tea-urn, and first surprises and then captivates the earl by the ease and the friendliness, without presumption, of her manner. His cousin, Geoffrey Traffofd, however, a fascinating man of thirty-two, is sent over by the anxious mamma to prevent the mésalliance she sees impending for her darling. The danger is warded off, and both the gentlemen leave Paris, but not without Maggie’s having converted Trafford into a friend and perhaps something more. Soon after this enchanted episode, the infatuated widow marries the count, and Maggie is obliged to return to her uncle in London. She answers an advertisement and finds a situation as the secretary of a rich beauty who has just come into her inheritance, and who, to while away the months of her mourning at her countryseat, has chosen the original amusement of writing a novel. This lady turns out to be, of course, the cousin of Maggie’s Paris friends, who therefore are much startled at finding the latter at Grantham Park, when they go down for the holidays. The heiress herself is in love with one of them, and hence no end of delicate and tantalizing situations. The end is highly satisfactory, even to the bonne bouche so often withheld from the novel-reader, of a well-managed declaration scene, and one closes the volume marveling that a work unmarked by original genius should please one so deeply. A century ago such a Story would .have been a prodigy — nay, an impossibility. Now, amid a hundred others nearly as good, it tells itself with the utmost taste and skill, and scarcely excites a remark. This only shows to what a pitch of perfection the art of novel-writing — i. e., of painting the manners of the day — has been brought by that long and surprising array of clever English women who belong to the school created by Miss Austen. But when such good work as this becomes a mere matter of course, the beginning of the decline of the art is probably not far off.

To our grandchildren we dare say these novels will be of great service on account of their photographic accuracy, but if they are trusted to too much they will give a very meagre comprehension of a time which is not all sordidness and hunger for wealth and power. We should be harshly judged on such testimony.

— The Wooing o’t is the best possible antidote we could prescribe to sensational novels in general, and in particular, to the works, say, of Miss Rhoda Broughton, — whose beautiful, sensuous, lazy, untaught, illtempered, bad-mannered, selfish, and idiotically wayward heroines are no doubt sowing a rank harvest of evil in the fallow minds of the girl patrons of circulating libraries all over England and our own country. We know nothing of Miss Broughton, but she wonderfully belies herself if she is any other than a Celt, and most of her heroines are Celts also, whom her undeniable originality makes interesting, it is true, but who are au fond but “ wild Irish girls,” with native caprice as their only law.

In The Wooing o’t, on the contrary, we have the Anglo-Saxon feminine ideal with all its frank surrender to duty and cheerful acceptance of untoward circumstances, yet with an indestructible individuality that keeps it free and self-respecting and self-improving throughout; in short, the English diamond with all its faces cut — the product of the long discipline of ages.

— Mr. T. A. Trollope’s tale, Diamond cut Diamond, is a story of priestly interference in the domestic affairs of a family of country people in Tuscany. There is a burly, good-natured fattore — or manager of a nobleman’s estate — who outwits a crafty, proud, sell-devoted priest of the high ecclesiastical type, and his own wife, the virulently devout fattoressa, and succeeds in marrying his pretty daughter, whom they had meant for the convent, to the man of her heart. Another daughter, her mother’s and her confessor’s favorite, comes to a somewhat disproportionally tragic end — doubtless because that was her fate in the fact on which our author tells us that he builds. The country life in Tuscany, and the country people, as well as their Florentine cousins, are set before us with an honest clearness and knowableness most refreshing — we are glad to find those habitual victims of romance so much of our own every-day paste. But the people are all better than their performance : that is, they are wonderfully life-like studies each one, but their drama moves roughly and reluctantly ; the workmanship of the book is not so much simple as it is often rude. Yet it is to be praised in the highest degree for the virtues we have named; one might live many years in Italy without learning to know Italian characters and conditions so well as by reading this story.

—To literary men, the Life and Correspondence of Samuel Johnson, D. D., by the Rev. E. Edward Beardsley, will be of more than ordinary value as supplying many gaps in the early history of literary institutions, thus far little known; and throwing quite new light upon some portions hitherto erroneously conceived. Dr. Beardsley has done a good work in getting together the materials for this interesting volume, and shown admirable judgment, as well as experience, in selecting and putting together what he has used. As the life of a clergyman and one prominent in his denomination, to his co-religionists the biography would in any case have proved satisfactory; but the work has a far wider claim than this ; and the life of Johnson merits the attention of all professing to be familiar with either history, science, philosophy, or education. A friend of the renowned Berkeley; a correspondent of Benjamin Franklin ; in colonial matters the confidential adviser of the Archbishop of Canterbury (Secker) ; in science an associate with Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor of New kork: such a man, it is evident, must leave in his correspondence much of the most interesting matter. This, however, is by no means the limit. In the history of Connecticut, the name of Dr. Johnson is inseparable from the first impulses of learning and education manifested in that State, and we may say also in Massachusetts. A thorough and eager scholar ; a skillful exponent of the modern systems of philosophy; a fine linguist, having been the best Hebraist in America ; a successful teacher ; a molder of the early existence of two of our most noted seats of learning, Yale and Columbia : he evidently rises in himself to a level worthy of general observation.

There are probably very few who are aware how much the Congregational college (Yale) owes to the care and kindness of the Church of England ministry ; most especially to the watchful interest of him whose life we now read. To him the early Yale was indebted for wise guidance and government; the first judicious start in progress toward modern science and modern philosophy. To him she owes the benefaction of many valuable volumes, bestowed by Dean Berkeley ; and to him she owes the solid possession of the valuable property also bestowed by the dean as an endowment for learning ; although unwise leasing has made that gift, for ages to come, of little profit. All this is shown in the life of Johnson. His own experiences in the germ form of the college as a school at Saybrook are given us. The squabbles, arising from local jealousies, respecting the establishment of the college buildings, and the protracted splits between two portions of the teachers and pupils, are also portrayed. Hartford even in these days was pulling caps with New Haven for the good things, and struggled for the dignity and emoluments of a university. Wethersfield likewise disputed the privilege, and the unhappy school — not yet dignified as a college — was a battle-ground of factional feeling. The struggle, however, had not begun until after young Johnson had finished his collegiate course and got his degree at the original Saybrook division of the field, and it was not until the fight was over, and through the influence of the legislature the location of the college finally settled at New Haven (where a gift of eight acres for the necessary buildings had afforded abundant room), that his official connection with the institution took place. He, together with a friend of his, Brown, was elected to the tutorship, and they were the first professors in the college. The president — then called rector — did not reside at New Haven, but at Milford, so that Johnson was practically the head. The rector was also a warm personal friend of Johnson, and the three seem to have worked in entire harmony; though it is quite evident that Johnson was the leading mind, as were also his attainments apparently superior.

About this time occurred the transition era of philosophical thought. The wave of discovery in natural science and speculative thought in moral science had long before in England begun the upheaval of old systems of philosophy, and scholastic and theological opinions. This wave had now touched the shore of the Western Hemisphere and begun to lift the ponderous axioms of the mediæval schoolmen, which had until then constituted the established mode of thought and teaching in the collegiate school. Phineas Fisk had been the tutor in mathematics, and mental and moral philosophy in the school until Johnson’s charge; and he had never got out of the beaten track of traditional axioms or established formulas. Indeed, it was not safe, bread-and-butter-wise, to do more, considering what our author tells us, namely : “ At the outset the trustees made a fundamental rule that especial care should be taken to ground the students in theoretical divinity, and the rector was forbidden to teach or allow any other to teach systems contrary to their orders.”

However, the wave of progress began to be felt, and Johnson and Brown, being of one mind, insensibly elevated the standard of philosophical thought among the young men. They must have done it very prudently, for it does not seem to have aroused any opposition, nor can we find any token of question concerning the soundness of their teaching. After a time, the rapid growth of the college compelled the presence and residence of the rector, not only to direct and govern, but also to aid in instruction. Mr. Andrew, who had been previously acting as rector, was unwilling to leave his parish at Milford, and too advanced in years to be willing to assume the care. Hence the trustees elected another, Mr. Cutler, in his stead, and on his coming to assume the duties that Johnson had evidently been filling, the latter retired from his tutorship. He had long desired to deyote himself entirely to ministerial life, and now being called to do so he gave up his charge. A warm personal friendship for Cutler brought Johnson still in contact with the college life; and a noble benefaction of Governor Yale in a large number of books sent from England, the works of the ablest and most learned English divines, gave opportunity to the three men, Rector Cutler, Tutor Brown, and ex-Tutor Johnson, to study the writings of the most celebrated thinkers in the Church of England. The result was a curious conjuncture. These three (and other clergymen) became dissatisfied with their position in the Presbyterian Church, and doubted the validity of their ministerial commission. In other words, they were evidently inclined to embrace that horror of the rightly constituted Puritan mind, prelatical government. It is amusing to trace the result of the startling development. Had a thunderbolt fallen on all three walking in the academical grove, greater consternation could hardly have been awakened. As President Woolsey said in his historical discourse delivered upon the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Yale : “ I suppose that greater alarm would scarcely be awakened now if the Theological Faculty of the college were to declare for the Church of Rome, avow their belief in transubstantiation, and pray to the Virgin Mary.”

The work itself alone can give satisfactory information upon all the after history of Dr. Johnson. His personal intercourse with Dean, afterward Bishop Berkeley ; the interesting correspondence between them upon philosophical topics; his intercession with the dean, when that learned man was about to return to England, that Yale should not be forgotten ; and the result, in the noble gift of over a thousand volumes, and his own personal farm in Rhode Island, presented by Dr. Johnson’s instrumentality to Yale ; the ludicrous quandary of the faculty concerning the gift, whether to accept or refuse; fearing to accept, lest these books might, like the Trojan horse, be only an insidious pouring in of prelacy upon their citadel; fearing to refuse lest the loss should be seriously felt: all these points come out with delightful distinctness. Then, too, Dr. Johnson’s extended influence throughout Connecticut and New York ; his constant intercourse with literary men ; pleasant selections from letters between these and him ; his connection with Dr. Franklin, when the latter was printing his work on philosophy, and the philosophical and educational discussions between them; the invitation to New York to found King’s College and give it shape; his life there, and the successful result of his labors in the building up of Columbia : all these topics, so general, so historic in their bearing, while so personal and direct in their relations, contribute to the interest and value of this excellent biography.

— The third volume of Mr. Forster’s Life of Dickens awakens comparatively little interest, though it covers a period of greater events perhaps than either of the former volumes. In this period — from 1852 to 1870 — David Copperfield was finished, Hard Times, Little Dorrit, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, and Our Mutual Friend were written, and The Mystery of Edwin Drood was left a fragment; Dickens separated himself from his wife and began his career as a public reader, visited America a second time, returned home, and died. These occurrences afford material which a deeper and finer man than Mr. Forster would have turned to better account, but which in his handling is still impressive. His criticisms and analyses of the successive works noticed in this volume are of the same character as those which by their extreme cheapness and obviousness excited the mild surprise of readers of the preceding volumes ; but the comments upon Dickens’s own traits show a somewhat greater penetration.

We permit ourselves to doubt, however, whether Mr. Forster ever quite understood his illustrious friend, or entered thoroughly into the spirit of his extravagant humor. The biographer has profited by the criticism he had received so far as somewhat to abate the arrogance of his narrative, but he remains to the last apparently in an attitude of open-mouthed credulity, while his friend bubbles him with one wild exaggeration after another. This good Mr. Forster really seems to believe that people in Brooklyn turned out, each with his mattress and his loaf of bread, and slept and ate in the street, the mercury standing below zero, in order not to lose their places in the queue to the doors at which tickets to the Dickens readings were sold. Such is the story that the humorist wrote home to his trusting familiar ; and so many are the droll fables with which Mr. Forster suffers his innocence to be abused, that one’s longing to “examine his bumps ’’ becomes intolerable. It is posBible, of course, that Dickens himself may have been the victim of misrepresentations on the part of his “ own people,” as he calls his manager and agents ; he always saw and heard the things he desired, and it is said that on his first visit to this country, this tendency of his was once amusingly flattered; the person who realized his ideal of the questionasking American on the Pennsylvania canalboat,— and who (as recorded in American Notes), when he had exhausted his curiosity concerning the price of Boz’s clothes, followed him about stroking his fur coat the wrong way, — being an ingenious young gentleman of Pittsburgh, who did it all on a wager. But for the most part it is plainly Mr. Forster alone who is taken in.

The matter of the separation is blamelessly treated, upon the good principle that the least said is the soonest mended. The simple truth is that Dickens was tired of his wife, and put her away for that reason and for no other. No other is alleged or hinted at by the biographer, who, as far as consulted, steadfastly opposed Dickens’s course.

He also opposed his entering upon the career of a public reader, to which Dickens seems to have turned in restless and desperate longing for the excitement which he no longer found in his books, and which, as he had no inward quietness of soul, no “refuge of the mind,” his nature imperatively demanded. It is a solemn lesson that the exercise of genius is in itself only a momentary escape from the ennui that torments all of us who have not provided ourselves with some secure retreat from the world within the world. Religion used to be highly recommended for this purpose; we suppose that nowadays Evolution is to console and support us — not with the hope of heavenly peace somewhere, but with the elevating consciousness of primordial jelly.

It is an interesting book, this last volume of the Life of Dickens, only less interesting than the first volumes; but, as we have before said, it is as far from satisfactory as can be. It shows us Dickens as Forster and Dickens alone knew him, and the recollections and impressions and knowledge of his associated world are almost untouched. Whether it will be thought hereafter worth while for any one to write another Life of Dickens, it is not easy to say ; but it would be his misfortune if only this were to remain. To be sure, we can always escape from his life to his works, when we want to like him.

— Mr. James Rees, who seems to have been known also as “ Colley Cibber,” has written, in his Life of Edwin Forrest, such a book as will meet the wants of that large public which admired the late tragedian’s columnar legs, and frown, and folded arms, and hissed defiances of the villain and tyrant. But there were people who tried to ignore these qualities and powers in Edwin Forrest for the sake of the real genius which he had, and which all his bad school could not couceal; and these people would not ask so big a book as Mr. Rees has made, nor at all the same kind of book.

— The New Chemistry, of the International Series, by Prof. J. P. Cooke, Jr., of Harvard College, is the fruit of much study, and of long experience in teaching the science of chemistry as a liberal study in the college curriculum.

The progress in the philosophy of chemistry has been largely due to the strong desire of mathematical minds to bring order out of apparent chaos; and to state some simple laws upon which processes of philosophical and mathematical analysis could be built. The attention of physicists is naturally directed to the question of the ultimate constituents of matter. One of the fruits of this attention is the law of Avogadro, which is thus stated : “ Equal volumes of all substances, when in the state of gas, and under like conditions, contain the same number of molecules.” This law, taken in connection with that of Mariotte, “ The volume of a confined mass of gas is inversely proportional to the pressure to which it is exposed ; ” and that of Charles, “ The volume of a given mass of gas, under a constant pressure, varies directly as the absolute temperature,” are the great pillars in the structure of the modern philosophy of chemistry. The investigations of physicists upon the energy developed by the motion of the ultimate constituents of matter, the measurement of infinitesimal wave lengths of light and heat, the determination of the size of molecules, and the sphere and limits of electrical action, have led the chemist to apply the reasoning and the facts deduced in physics the more recondite phenomena of chemical action.

The new chemistry can therefore be characterized as a new growth front an old stock, which has sprung from germs which have borne large fruit in the sister science of physics. Indeed, Professor Cooke in his work on the subject epitomizes this truth in the following manner ; —

“In the early part of this course, I stated that all modern chemistry rests on the great truth that matter is indestructible and is measured by weight. This evening we have seen glimpses of another great central truth, which, although more recently discovered, is not less far-reaching, or important, namely, energy is indestructible and is measured by work.” The attention of modern chemists is directed to the questions of the structure of molecules and the grouping of atoms, in the old chemistry the structure of a compound, and the energy required to rend it apart or to build it anew, was not considered ; great stress was laid upon the influence of simple radicals, as expounded in the electro-chemical theory. On the phenomena of electricity and magnetism, which showed that matter could be endowed with two opposite conditions, an analogy was founded; and the dualistic system characterized the old chemistry. The law of Avogadro and the law of quantivalence — a law which assumes that every elementary atom has a certain number of bonds or poles by which alone it could be united to other atoms — state two principles upon which the new chemistry is largely founded. Professor Cooke, in the first four lectures of the course (originally delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston), which are embodied in the present work, lucidly explains the recent progress in definite conceptions of molecules and molecular action. These chapters bear evidence of much thought in arrangement and in illustration. As an evidence of the manner of illustration we quote the following in regard to the medium ether : “ Here is a glass cylinder filled with air, and here is a piston which just fits it; the area of the piston is about a square inch. We will assume that it is exactly that. If we put a weight of fifteen pounds on the top of the piston, it will descend just half-way in the tube, and the air will be condensed to twice its normal density. Now if we had a cylinder and piston, ether-tight as this is airtight, and of sufficient strength, and if we put on top of it a cubic mile of granite rock, it would only condense the ether to about the same density as that of the atmosphere at the surface of the earth. Of course, the supposition is an absurdity, for it is assumed that the ether pervades the densest solids as readily as water does a sponge, and could not, therefore, be confined ; but the illustration will give you an idea of the nature of the medium which the undulatory theory assumes. It is a medium so thin that the earth, moving in its orbit 1100 miles a minute, suffers no perceptible retardation, and yet with an elasticity in proportion to its density a million million times greater than air,”

Words and space do not allow Professor Cooke to do full justice to the brilliancy of his experiments. The improved method’s of projection of objects and experiments, which could not be seen by a large audience, upon a screen —largely used now in popular expositions of scientific subjects — are due to him; and the descriptions of the shooting of crystalline rays under the play of colors produced by polarized light, the hues of thin films, the growth of magnetic curves, and the decomposition of water, experiments which delighted the audience who heard the lectures, make the reader regret that the printed page must necessarily convey but a poor idea of the brilliancy of the actual experiments.

In regard to the atomic theory Professor Cooke thus states his ground : “ Although in the present state of the science it gives absolutely essential aid both to investigation and study, I have the conviction that it is a temporary scaffolding around the imperfect building, which will be removed as soon as its usefulness is past. I have been called a blind partisan of the atomic theory ; but after this disclaimer you will understand me when during the remainder of this course of lectures I shall endeavor to present its principles as forcibly as I can.” From Lecture X. to the concluding one—Quantivalence— metathesis and atomic bonds are explained with great clearness and aptness of illustration. The remarks on the electrochemical theory and electrical analogies bear the evidence of much new thought on the subject. We commend the lectures to those students of the new philosophy who have been lost amid terms such as quantivalent, hydroxyl, monatomic, artiads, perissads, etc. The lecture on the Synthesis of Organic Compounds presents the subject, necessarily a complex one, to a popular audience in a clear and philosophical manner.

— The title of Mr. Proctor’s book is a very taking one; for there is a Borderland of Science, and a very fascinating one it is to spend a short time in, if one is not too light-headed, and if one has the requisite tact to avoid that part of the frontier where dwell the men “ with their heads beneath their shoulders” — the circle-squarers, the trisectors of the angle, the perpetual-motion vendors — in one word the paradoxers and foolometers of De Morgan. Then again there is another boundary where a wise man mar not stay long; this joins the land which is full of the disputers over sun-spots, quarreling about the “ up-rush or downrush" of gases. This is indeed a dangerous country.

There is a true borderland, however, which is a fascinating but a lonely land, where it is given to few to dwell, and where most never penetrate. The world at large knows very little of the great men there, and that little only incompletely. Gauss, Abel, Jacobi, the Herschels have lived there ; and we might expect in this book some mention of the men who have taken their places in this generation. Mr. Proctor’s preface, too, excites and stimulates curiosity ; he says, “ Such essays as appear . . . may be regarded as the selected works of the author.”

When we take up the book itself we must flatly confess that we are disappointed. If we judge it by the high criterion which we have but just set up, it is surely faulty, for it contains no original suggestion of any note, except a reiteration of Mr. Proctor’s theory of Jupiter.

Judging of it by the standard of Mr. Proctor’s previous books it still falls far short. Here, in point of fact ,we have to deal not with the borderland of science, hut with the fag-end of Mr. Proctor’s scrapbook.

“ Gambling Superstitions” are not on the borderland of science at all ; the theory of probabilities, of which the author would consider this essay an exemplification, covers in its most elementary portion the whole ground, and more than the whole ground, of this essay. Its borderland is far away from school-boy problems. “ Ghosts and Goblins is not scientific; it is simply a narrative, and an inextensive compilation.

William Howitt did his work better, and had the good taste to keep things which were personal and should be sacred out of sight. We easily sec that the book is not scientific. Is it then a work of fancy ? Jules Verne has done this kind of literary work much better, and in a light and graceful style to which Mr. Proctor’s rather heavy and mechanical plod is ludicrous in comparison. Would Verne have described the inhabitants of the small satellite of Saturn as short persons whose ears were “ large and quite round, somewhat resembling conch-shells, and capable of changing in shape” ? Their” sixth-sense,” their “heat eyes,” the “three moons” without “inhabitants” which attend Titan (itself a satellite of Saturn) are not fanciful; these things are not funny — they are simply “ bien Anglais ” — the sportive pranks of the Behemoth.

— The two books on our list called Diamonds and Precious Stones are likely to be mistaken for one another, on account of their similarity in titles, subject, and size; but their merit is very unequalThe treatise of Mr. Emanuel (which seems to be an American edition from English plates of a work published by Hotten in 1865) is a valuable handbook to ordinary purchasers as well as professional collectors of precious stones. M. Dieulafait seems to have composed his book, on the contrary, in some such way as his countryman wrote about the camel: “ Away goes the Frenchman to the Jardin des Plantes, spends an hour there in rapid investigation, returns, and writes a feuilleton, in which there is no phrase the Academy can blame, but also no phrase which adds to the general knowledge. He is perfectly satisfied, however, and says, Le voilà, le chameau.” It is profusely ornamented with wood-cuts, but we observe none which have a substantial superiority over the few but well-chosen illustrations of Mr. Emanuel’s book, except the pictures of machinery for cutting and polishing gems, and apparatus for modern experiments in their artificial production. Its only superiority to that book consists in a brief and interesting account of those experiments. In the pictures of cutting and polishing machinery, the most recent improvements are not represented, and the author seems to he ignorant even of the inventions of the Boston jeweler, Mr. Henry D. Morse. Mr. Emanuel, with English precision, furnishes his readers with a copious index, and devotes twenty-seven pages to the bibliography of precious stones. M. Dieulafait neglects to do either of these things ; and his translator has not supplied the deficiency, nor corrected at least a score of glaring errors and inconsistencies, of which the following are random specimens : “ All precious stones are transparent, or at least translucent.” “Precious stones are opaque, when not a ray of light can penetrate them; example, the jasper.” “The precious stone called the carbuncle by the ancients is the same as the modern ruby.” “ At the same time that it is averred that the carbuncle of the ancients included our oriental ruby, it is equally certain that this name was applied to all red stones. For the present, then, we must retain Mr. Emanuel as our most trustworthy popular authority on the subject of gems. But it will be easy for an ingenious compiler to prepare a work which shall supersede both of these hand-books in public favor, by combining portions of them with fragments of such works as Madame de Barrera’s Ana of Gems and Jewels, and Mr. King’s Antique Gems and Rings. The need of fuller information on the subject than most American wearers of precious stones possess is very great. Numerous causes join to keep, as they have made us the most extravagant people of the age. We are very much such a compound of luxury and hardihood as a nation, as Alexander was as a hero. And though no assembly of our fine ladies has yet, we venture to believe, afforded such a spectacle as M. Babinet (in the preface of Madame de Barrera’s book) says he witnessed in the Tuilerics under Louis Napoleon, where he declares that he “had occasion to see” not less than two thousand women “clothed” with diamonds, like birds with feathers, or beasts with fur, and wearing them as naturally, yet we know not what awaits us in the future. The parure of the New York belle may yet become as proverbial as the costume of the Arkansas gentleman.

— In spite of some venturesome speculation as to prehistoric data, M. de Coulanges’ work on The Ancient City contains a tolerably accurate delineation of the influence of varying religious beliefs on the social, legal, and political customs of Greece and Rome from the earliest period to that of Christianity. The title of the book is unfortunate. The real topic is, The Religious Beliefs considered as the Source of the Customs of Greece and Rome. The worst fault of the treatment is that it makes these beliefs very nearly the only, and not simply a chief source of the customs. We are not undiscriminating disciples of Mr, Buckle; but race, climate, and Zeit-Geist certainly exercised upon Greece and Rome more than the almost inappreciable influence grudgingly assigned to them by De Coulanges. Always making allowance for a thin vein of extravagance in the discussion, the reader will find this w-ork a suggestive, if not a thoroughly scholarly treatment of a theme which is certainly very important and interesting.

In regard to the Aryan religion, to which M. de Coulanges assigns in prehistoric ages an influence greater than the Olympic afterwards acquired over Greece and Italy, his somewhat diffuse reasoning may be epitomized by five propositions : 1. Before the rise of the Olympic religion, each family worshiped its own ancestors. 2. The sacred fire in each Greek and Roman house represented the ancestors. 3. Every fire protected its own and repulsed the stranger ; was worshiped by ceremonies kept strictly secret; was the providence of a family and had nothing in common with the fire of a neighboring family, which was another providence. 4. The domestic religion required that the hearth should be fixed to the soil, and that the tomb should be neither destroyed nor displaced. 5. This religion could be propagated only by generation. In giving life to the son, the father gave to him at the same time the family creed and worship, and the right to continue the sacred fire, to offer the funeral meal, and to pronounce the formulas of prayer.

By these traits of the Aryan religion, De Coulanges explains the origin of the peculiar early Roman and Greek ideas of the continuity of the family, the profound significance of Penates, Lares, Vesta, and especially of Gens and Tribus, of kinship, agnation, and adoption, and the rise of the law of property, the inequality of son and daughter, and the right of primogeniture.

One of the obscurest chapters in history is that concerning the origin of the Olympic religion, and we are not surprised that M.de Coulanges can do no more than saythat it arose from a personification of the powers of nature. This new religion, in what, way soever it originated, gradually widened the circle of human associations ; families united into the phratries and the phratries into the tribes of which we hear so much in Greek and Roman.history; the older religion was absorbed into the new ; and as the private house had arisen around the sacred fire of the private hearth, so the city rose around the sacred fire of the common altar established by the founder. From, the point where M. de Coulanges begins to give dates and to cite authorities from ancient authors, we have only occasional reluctance in admitting his conclusions, and we commend as eminently worthy of study his views of the relations of the transformed Aryan, and of the Olympic religion, to the gods of the city, the public meals, the festivals, and the calendar, the triumphs, rituals, and annals, the sacred and secular authority of the king, the distinction between citizen and stranger, the alliance of cities and gods, and the omnipotence of the state.

Even after revolution and philosophy had done their utmost, Christianity brought a change so radical that it marked the end of ancient society. It replaced the fear of the gods by the love of God. It belonged to no caste, corporation, city, or nation, but called to itself the whole human race. The principle implied in the command to preach the gospel to “ every creature,” M. de Coulaiiges justly calls new, extraordinary, and unexpected. So, too, was the principle of the separation of religion from its immemorial dependence on the state. The spirit of propagandised took the place of the law of exclusion. While the state was for the first time free, one complete half of man had been rescued from its control. The soul no longer has a country.

We congratulate Mr. Small on the studious success with which his translation of this work preserves the clearness and vivacity of the original French, without injury to the idiomatic grace of the English.

— Messrs. Holt & Co. have published an edition of Taine’s Tour through the Pyrenees, without the illustrations of Doré, which rendered their holiday edition of the same work altogether the most desirable book of the season. It is, as many readers must know, a sauntering notice of large and little watering-places in the Pyrenees, of some non-watering-places of the region, and of many and many spectacular phases of nature there. When the author comes to a famous city or scene of history, he sits down and tells some story characteristic of it, either out of the old chroniclers direct, or out of his own vast general reading. Sometimes this is a mere picture of local life or manners at a certain epoch; sometimes it is a marvelous legend ; but it is always done with grace and point. So are all the watering-place characters and tourists, the invalids, bores, beggars, peasants, charmingly touched. In the illustrated edition, where Dore’s wonderful pencil helps out the descriptions of nature, you do not feel how tedious they are ; but in the later edition this fully appears. It seems as if this bright M. Taine had said to himself that he would paint a series of pictures which should appeal to the literary perception as landscape paintings do to the eye; and he has produced a whole gallery in proof of the impossibility of doing anything of the kind. We could not well give an idea of the deliberation and cold-bloodedness with which the attempt is incessantly made; but we may impress some readers with a sense of the delightfulness of the book when we Say it is delightful, in spite of the word-paintings. You are not obliged to read them, — you can skip every one.

OTHER PUBLICATIONS.

Roberts Brothers, Boston: Ivan de Biron ; or, The Russian Court in the Middle of Last Century. By Sir Arthur Helps. — Sex and Education. A Reply to Dr. E. H. Clarke’s Sex in Education. Edited, with an Introduction, by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. — The Old Masters and their Pictures. For the Use of Schools arid Learners in Art. By Sarah Tytler. — Modern Painters and their Paintings. For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art. By Sarah Tytler. — The Trust and The Remittance. Two Love Stories in Metred Prose. By Mary Cowden Clarke.

Harper and Brothers, New York : The Land of the White Elephant: Sights and Scenes in Southeastern Asia. A Personal Narrative of Travel and Adventure in Farther India, embracing the Countries of Burma, Siam, Cambodia, and Cochin-China (1871-2). By Frank Vincent, Jun. With Maps, Plans, and numerous Illustrations.— No Name, A Novel. By Wilkie Collins.

— The Blue Ribbon. A Novel. By the Author of St. Olave’s, etc. — Ninety-Three. By Victor Hugo. Translated by Frank Lee Benedict.

Henry Holt & Co., New York : Desperate Remedies. A Novel. By Thomas Hardy.— Essays on Military Biography. By Charles Cornwallis Chesncy, Colonel in the British Army, and Lieutenant-Colonel in the Royal Engineers.

J. R. Osgood & Co., Boston : Theodore Parker: A Biography. By Octavius Brooks Frothingham. — The Life of Thomas Jefferson. By James Parton.

Estes and Lauriat, Boston : Adventures of an Attorney in Search of Practice. By Sir George Stephens.—Famous Cases of Circumstantial Evidence. With an Introduction on the Theory of Presumptive Proof. By S. N. Phillips, Author of Phillips on Evidence.

J. B. Ford & Co., New York : The Circuit Rider: A Tale of the Heroic Age. By Edward Eggleston, Author of The Hoosier Schoolmaster, etc.

J. M. Stoddart & Co., Philadelphia: No Sex in Education ; or, An Equal Chance for both Girls and Boys. Being a Review of Br. E. H. Clarke’s Sex in Education. By Mrs. E. B. Duffy, Author of What Women should Know, etc.

Orange Judd & Co., New York : Pretty Mrs. Gaston, and other Stories. By John Esten Cooke². Illustrated.

Asa K. Butts & Co., New York : The Martyrdom of Man. By Win wood Reade.

Dodd and Mead, New York : Cassy. By Hesba Stretton.

FRENCH AND German.³

No one has ever accused Victor Hugo of ignorance of his powers; he may have lacked a thorough comprehension of their limits, but he has always had the art of bringing every scrap and shred of information and feeling to the adornment of his various writings. He has never worked with the unconsciousness of some writers who drop gems by the way in their haste for better business; he prefers to beat his gold very thin, to hang his tinsel in a favorable light, to make glass do good service when diamonds are wanting. Everything seems arranged for an artificial illumination ; one can read even the best of his novels as one goes to the theatre to see a melodrama. You enter a world where the people are sharply defined as saints and villains, and where an incident happens in the novel you know it is the sign for the curtain to fall, while you have a little time to wonder what explanation will be given in the next act. Any claim of resemblance to life must be given up at once; you simply ask to be thrilled with horrors and amused by impossibilities.

No better background for such a plan could be found than the hideous nightmare of the French Revolution ; there is this distinction to be made, however, that extravagance of style and straining aftereffect are less successful here than would be a plain narration of events; even a disordered imagination is cold in comparison with the terrible facts. This first division of the novel is called La Guerre Civile, and it treats of the war in La VendéE. The story runs as follows : A Breton nobleman, the Marquis de LanteNac, is first introduced to us on board of a ship in the English Channel; he is trying to make a landing on the French coast in order to take command of the peasants, who are still staunch royalists, and who are fighting with the republican bands from Paris. On their way, by the carelessness of some officer, one of the ship’s guns in the lower deck breaks loose from its fastenings and begins to roll about with the motion of the ship, carrying destruction with every lurch. The horrors of the scene are described by Victor Hugo in a very epigrammatic chapter called Vis et vir. rIhe cannon is compared to the living chariot of the Apocalypse. It kills four or five men and then rolls over them again and again. “ How fight against aii inclined plane that has caprices 1 ” The officer whose fault it was steps into the place. " The contest began. Contest unheard of. The fragile struggling with the invulnerable. The warrior of flesh attacking the beast of brass. On one side a force, on the other a soul. All that was taking place in a penumbra. It was like the indistinct vision of a prodigy. A soul; strange, one would have said the cannon had one, it too; hut a soul of hate and rage. This blindness seemed to have eyes. The monster appeared to be lying in wait for the man. ... It was some gigantic insect of iron, having, or seeming to have, the will of a demon,” etc., etc., etc. 1 All books mentioned under this head are to be had at Schønhof and Möller’s, 40 Winter Street, Boston, Quatrevingt-treize. Par VICTOR HUGO. Premier Récit. La Guerre Civile. 3 vole. Paris. 1874.

The nobleman manages to interfere just in time to secure the gun and save the life of the officer, whom he at once condemns to death and has shot and thrown overboard. The ship is now in a wretched plight, all the guns are useless with the exception of nine, and at that moment the republican fleet, carrying three hundred and eighty guns, comes in sight. We confess to a feeling of disappointment here; we had hoped for a glorious description of a naval fight, with the maimed ship victorious over all its foes ; but, far from it: Lantenac puts away in a little boat, with one man to row him ashore, while the ship, after a short but vain struggle, sinks without surrendering, like the ever-memorable Vengeur. This sailor who is carrying the marquis away is a brother of the officer who was shot; the relationship he takes occasion to mention when they have reached a lonely inlet, and at the same time he declares his desire for vengeance. This is one of the thrilling moments, but no one has any real dread that the hero is going to be made away with so early in the first volume. The sailor is won over by a few sagacious words, and lands the marquis uninjured on French soil. A beggar, a mysterious creature, entertains him overnight. He has, too, the pleasure of seeing placards, with a full description of his personal appearance, on the walls, with a large reward for his capture and the promise of a speedy and violent death for him when caught, signed by his grand-nephew, Gauvain, a young viscount, who is an ardent republican. The next morning he is straying in the woods; he hears loud cries, guns, and uproar; he approaches ; guns arc leveled at him ; they call him by name, he bares his breast, —Tableau Number Two, —when they fall to the ground before him, kissing his hand ; they are his friends !

He is soon in command of a large force of peasants, and there is very bitter war between them and the forces from Paris commanded by Gauvain. At last Lantenac is badly beaten, and with only nineteen men he takes refuge in an old castle in which Gauvain had passed his infancy. The enemy to the number of some thousands is outside. The castle is described very thoroughly, and everything indicates the great agony of the fifth act. Fully to understand it, the reader of the novel will recall, what we have omitted, three little children who are introduced to us at the very beginning of the book, and who now are in the castle ; their mother, half crazy from wounds, fevers, hardships, and the loss of her children, has been wandering about in search of them. The assault begins; the nineteen men die hard; their ammunition gives out; their countless foes press them very close; they retreat with diminished numbers from story to story ; they are certain to perish, when — immense excitement—a stone in the wall rolls from its place, and there appears the once murderous but speedily converted sailor, who thus mysteriously opens a hidden path to the forest. One man is left to keep back the army which is rattling at the door of the room below, and Lantcnac makes his way out. The one man is overcome by numbers, and dies; first, however, setting fire to the stone castle. At that moment, the mother of the three children appears in the path in front of Lantenac, and explains her case; he returns, and at the risk of his life makes his way to the room where the children are, rescues them before the admiring eyes of his recent foes, but — as he is climbing down he is tapped on the shoulder and made a prisoner by a very savage republican, formerly a priest, now a leader in the revolution, Cimourdain by name. All the others, struck by his gallantry as a fireman, were about to let him go, but Cimourdain, whose relentlessness has been described at great length, now justifies his reputation, This is a grand tableau, and matters begin to look serious. Lantcnac is put into a cell, where Gauvain comes to visit him. The uncle at first treats him with disdain, but when his nephew says that he has come to let him out, his tone changes. Lantenac walks out; Gauvain is found there and is brought to trial before Cimourdain for aiding an enemy of the republic to escape. He is found guilty and sentenced to death; when this point is reached in a play, people begin to grope about under the seats for their overshoes, and to button up their great coats.

Cimourdain, the former tutor of Gauvain, loves Gauvain most tenderly, but he loves the republic more. So he has the guillotine, which had been brought all the way from Paris for Lantenac, put together; Gauvain is led out, thoroughly satisfied with the course affairs are taking; he puts his head to the block after crying “ Vive la Re publique! ” and as the ax descends the report of a pistol is heard, and Cimourdain drops lifeless, having shot himself through the heart. With that the curtain fails, and we must wait for the second part of the novel, in which, it is to be supposed, the three children are to appear once more.

Such is the groundwork of this extraordinary novel, to the full force of which we can do but scanty justice. The neat epigrams in which all the people talk, the smoothness with which all the incidents happen just at the last moment, when even the experienced novel-reader finds his heart beating with excitement, show the art of a master of melodrama. As for the study of character, there is, of course, nothing of the sort; we have in its place the study of situations. The whole method of such writing is to make the most violent contrasts, to invent something more unexpected than even a tolerably fertile imagination could devise—in telling fairy-stories.

As to the merits of the melodrama in fiction it is well to be clear; it may be admired, but care should be taken to distinguish the admiration from that which we give to the more serious work which has some other aim than making us hold our breath for a moment, as we do at a circus when the rope-climber pretends to fall. As for Victor Hugo himself, in his moralizing on the tight places he gets his heroes into, it shows a sort of sincere confidence in the value of his work, which might be diminished if nature could enable him to get a view at the humorous side of his mock thunder and harmless lightning. He walks behind the scenes, now turning down the gas, now letting the calcium-light blaze on the prominent character, or opening the mysterious trap-dour, but with a most sublime certainty that he is one of the great writers of the earth. He is the cleverest of decorators; but he has this fault, that, like the heathen, after building himself an idol and polishing its eyes to make it look angry, and inserting the dreadful claws, and arranging the machinery to make it roar, he then is overcome with terror at its naturalness, and bows down and does reverence before it.