Recent Literature

THE Lake-Country which Miss Woolson sketches is the region of the great inland seas, Superior, Huron, Erie, and the rest, and the term is allowably stretched to include that part of Northern Ohio in which the community of the Zoar Separatists prosperously doze their lives away. The ground is new, and Miss Woolson gathers from it a harvest out of which the grain had not been threshed long ago. Our readers already know three of her stories, Solomon, The Lady of Little Fishing, and Wilhelmina, which are the best in this book, and fairly suggest its range, for it is now poetically realistic in circumstance like the first and last, and now poetically fanciful like the second. Both kinds rest upon the same solid basis — truth to human nature ; and because Miss Woolson has distinctly felt the value of this basis, we are the more surprised at her projecting such an air-founded fabric as Castle Nowhere. In this we are asked to suppose a wretch who beacons lake schooners to shipwreck on the rocks, and plunders them that he may keep in luxury the young girl whom he has adopted for his daughter, and who lives in an inaccessible tower on a secret isle of the lake. A subtle confusion of all the conceptions of right and wrong is wrought by this old reprobate’s devotion to the child, and his inability to feel that any means to her pleasure and comfort can be bad; but we doubt whether this is an intended effect, and if it is, we think it not worth the writer’s or reader’s pains. Castle Nowhere is the least satisfactory of the stories; one is harassed from beginning to end by a disagreeable fantasticality.

The notion, in Peter the Parson, of the poor little ritualist who lives a missionary among the ruffians of the Northwestern lumbering town, and daily reads the service to himself in his empty chapel, is altogether better, though we wish the matter were less sketchily treated. Miss Woolson had something in Rose’s unrequited love for the parson, and the tragic end it brings him to, worthy her most patient and careful art. The Old Agency is another good sketch, or study, tasting racily of the strange time and place. It is the ancient government agency building at Mackinac, about which linger the memories of the Jesuit missions, and in which, after its desertion, an old soldier of Napoleon comes to spend his last days: the story gains color from its supposed narration fey the Jesuit father Piret; for the French have had the complaisance to touch our continent with romance wherever they have touched it at all as soldiers, priests, exiles, or mere adventurers. St. Clair Flats is apparently a transcript from the fact, and with its portraits of the strange prophet, Waiting Samuel, and his wife, it is a not at all discouraging example of what our strangely varied American real life can do in the way of romance ; it seems only to need the long-denied Opportunity in fiction which some of our later writers have afforded it — none with greater promise of a successful interpretation in certain ways than Miss Woolson herself. Her story of Solomon is really a triumph of its kind — a novel kind, as simple as it is fresh. The Zoar Community, with its manners and customs, and that quaint mingling of earthy good-feeding and mild, coarse kindliness with forms of austere religious and social discipline, which seems to characterize all the peculiar German sectarians, has had the fortune to find an artist in the first who introduces us to its life. Solomon’s character is studied with a delicate and courageous sympathy, which spares us nothing of his grotesqueness, and yet keenly touches us with his pathetic history. An even greater success of literary art is his poor, complaining wife, the faded parody of the idol of his young love, still beautiful iu his eyes, and the inspiration of all his blind, unguided efforts in painting. His death, after the first instruction has revealed his powers to himself, is affecting! y portrayed, without a touch of sentimeutalistic insistence. It is a very complete and beautiful story. Wilhelmina, of which the scene is also at Zoar, is not quite so good; and yet it is very well done, too. Perhaps the reader’s lurking sense of its protractedness dulls his pleasure in it. But it is well imagined, of new material, and skillfully wrought. The Lady of Little Fishing is as line, in its different way, as Solomon. That is a very striking and picturesque conceit, of the beautiful religious enthusiast who becomes a sort of divinity to the wild, fierce furhunters among whom she pitches her tent, and who loses her divine honors by falling in love with one of them ; and all the processes of this romance and its catastrophe are revealed with dramatic skill and force. It argues a greater richness in our fictitious literature than we have been able to flatter ourselves upon, or a torpidity in our criticism which we fear we must acknowledge, that such a story should not have made a vivid impression. It has that Internal harmony which is the only allegiance to probability we can exact from romance, and it has a high truth to human nature never once weakened by any vagueness of the moral ideal in the author, — as happens with Mr. Harte’s sketches, the only sketches with which we should care to compare it.

— In those moments of extreme exile which attend all American patriots who have once been in Europe and are there no longer, we sometimes find a fantastic solace in the examination of guide-books. Following their alluring itineraries, we place ourselves on familiar and famous routes of travel, with no other expense than a certain outlay of imagination ; but even if it cost money, we feel that we could easily make it up by the difference in the price of living in Europe — so much less that one can travel there for about the same money that one stays at home in Boston. In a minute we are at Home, or in Paris, or wherever Americans like to be ; and we are stopping at this hotel or that, or have taken lodgings for a protracted sojourn, and are tired of the Louvre and the Vatican, and are looking out sharply not to he cheated by the cab-drivers and shop-people. We are blowing out the extra candle which the waiter wants to light for us at the charge of a franc; we are stickling at the service put down in the bill when we have already feed everybody; we are bringing the guides to hook on their extortionate demands, and are giving nothing to Swiss beggars whose goitres weigh under four pounds; at the table d’K6te we are fighting the American eagle against all the other national beasts and birds; and in a word, the whole delightful world of European travel is before us. It does not always matter what guide-book we use to this magic end, whether Murray’s portly and respectable tomes, or the immortal volume of our owu, our native Fetridge, or some such gentlemanly and tranquil connoisseur of pictures, places, aud people as the now quite superseded Valery, with whom one travels by vettura instead of rail. But it is well in these matters of guide-books, as iu that of unabridged dictionaries, to get the best, and upon the whole we recommend Baedeker to the imaginary tourist. The Germans, who have gone to the bottom of history, philosophy, and religion (and mostly found nothing there), have in Baedeker reduced touristry to a science, and have given the public what there is of it in certain volumes covering the whole area of customary travel in those continental lands where Germans now keep all the first hotels, and are likely, if they go on with their abominable thoroughness, to gather a main share of the international commerce into their hands, and supply the world at last with everything but its wit, grace, beauty, faith, and liberty— these trifles being unworthy their attention. In our European days (which envious Time has now thrust half a score of years behind him), Baedeker was one large volume in German, meant for the whole of Europe and necessarily very succinct, which all Americans carried who could muster enough German to read it. They found it entirely trustworthy, and if not so full of Byron and British propriety of fact, emotion, and opinion as Murray, or of such truly delightful originality in criticism and exegesis as Fetridge, yet supplying all the needs of hurried travel, and costing far less to carry than any guide in their own tongue, the German national frugality (not to say niggardliness) having cheapened the way everywhere to travelers supposably of the German race. This admirable compend has now been dispersed and expanded into nine volumes, each perfectly pocketable, and comprising a store of useful information not otherwise to he had in the same space. Sentiment and criticism are apparently excluded from the plan of the work; we find no poetical quotations, or very, very few ; when the guide has once referred to a notable object, it refrains from comment; at the same time it gives all the historical facts necessary to intelligent enjoyment of places and things — points around which the reader can assemble his wandering general knowledge, or with which he can disperse his general ignorance. There are many maps, carefully and clearly executed, and a very great abundance of those local details concerning fares, fees, currencies, and so forth, without which no one can set out on a supposititious tour with any peace of mind. But it is not to the supposititious tourist only that we commend Baedeker. The actual traveler may consult him with unfailing advantage; and if he buys the volumes before sailing, he may most profitably give to them those moments of the voyage to Europe which would otherwise probably be abandoned to seasickness.

— It is now two or three years since Messrs. Osgood &. Co. projected their series of guide-books for America on the Baedeker plan, and they have lately followed their first volume, on New England, with one for the Middle States. It is very little to say that we have hitherto had nothing at all to compare with these books in thoroughness and fullness. They are written with a sincerity and sober good taste which should be the first condition of their acceptance by the self-respectful tourist, and if they expose the poverty and monotony of American travel in some respects, there is hardly any fair-minded malcontent to whom they will not suggest that he would be more interested in his country if he knew it better. We ought to he especially grateful to Mr. Sweetser for his careful and pleasant presentation of what may be called tourist-history, no less than for those statistics, directions, and counsels which it is more strictly the business of a guide-book to give. His information upon matters of local interest in the vast area which his work covers is largely the result of his own experience and observation, and some actual use of his work enables us to bear witness to the accuracy, completeness, and good sense with which it is done. To the foreigner visiting our country such a conscientious and faithful cicerone is indispensable; and as we are all necessarily foreigners in nine tenths of our immense territory., the native American cannot very well afford to travel without him when he travels for pleasure.

— Nearly half a century ago Macaulay published, in the Edinburgh Review, his admirable essay on the subject of history, and we are just beginning to reap the fruits of his teachings. He longed to see the day when the history of his own country should be written so that it would exhibit the true spirit of each age, and by a writer able to give to truth the attractions of fiction. He would have the historian show us the court, the camp, the senate; in short, the nation, not its rulers alone. The perfect historian, he says, will not merely describe men, but will make them intimately known to us. He will indicate the changes of manners, not only by general phrases, or statistical extracts, but by appropriate images that will present the people of past times to our mind somewhat as foreign peoples are now presented to the eyes of observing travelers. Mr. Macaulay did not dare to hope that the model historian would appear in less than a century from the time at which he wrote. One half of that period has now passed, and the researches into forgotten records, as well as the few exceptionally good publications which have resulted from those researches, have prepared the way for better historical work in the future.

We are not prepared to pronounce Mr Green’s compendious volume perfect, but we think it is the best effort yet made to give to schools the sort of history that they need. It is not, he says, “ a drum and trumpet history,”for " war plays a small part in the real story of European nations, and in that of England its part is smaller than in any ” [other]. “ The only war,” he continues, “ which has profoundly affected English history and English government is the Hundred Years’ War with France, and of that the results were simply evil. If I have said little of the glories of Cressy, it is because I have dwelt much on the wrong and misery which prompted the verse of Longland and the preaching of Ball.” He has given more than usual prominence to the figures of “ the missionary, the poet, the printer, the merchant, the philosopher,” and subordinate positions to the military hero and the politician. The battles and sieges are presented in the form of tables of Chronological Annuls, and the royal families in Genealogical Tables which are clear and comprehensive. In this way the claim of Edward III. to the French crown; the union of two branches of the descendants of Henry III. in Henry IV.; the descent of James I., his cousin Arabella Stuart, and William Seymour, her husband, from Henry VII., and the intricate pedigrees of the members of the houses of Lancaster and York, are plainly exhibited to the eye at a glance. Very clear maps, borrowed from Freeman’s Early English History for Children, are also presented.

In a work of this description, besides the traits we have already mentioned, a proper proportion in the treatment of the different periods and philosophic divisions of the subject appear to us indispensable. In these respects Mr. Green has not been so successful as in others. A glance at the titles of his chapters, the number of years they respectively' treat, and the number of pages allotted each, will make our meaning more clear.

Chapter I., entitled The English Kingdoms, carries the history from the invasion of Julius Cæsar (B. C. 54) to the year 1013, occupying fifty-eight pages. The second chapter, England under Foreign Kings, 1013-1204, covers fifty-four pages ; Chapter III., The Great Charter, 1204-1265, fortytwo pages; Chapter IV., The Three Edwards, 1265—1360, fifty-six pages; Chapter V., The Hundred Years’ War, 13361431, fifty-four pages; Chapter VI., The New Monarchy, 1422-1540, seventy - five pages ; Chapter VII., The Reformation, 1540—1610, one hundred and seven pages; Chapter VIII., Puritan England, 1610-1660, one hundred and forty pages; Chapter IX., The Revolution, 1660-1742, one hundred and twenty-nine pages; Chapter X., Modern England, 1742-1873, one hundred and four pages. We do not intend to have it understood that we think it possible to assign an exact number of pages to a given period, nor that the importance which a historian intends to give to any era is to bo gauged by the space his account of it occupies in his volume. We are exact, however, in recapitulating Mr. Green’s table of contents because it is very suggestive.

The author omits to give us the reasons that influenced him in the divisions he has made, not, we presume, because he had none, but because he thinks them too plain to need explicit statement. Of course this is complimentary to the reader’s sagacity, and yet we should have preferred the other course. It gives us an opportunity, however, to inquire why the first eleven centuries occupy less than eighty of Mr. Green’s pages; why the period of the rule of the ” foreign kings ” is made to close with the year 1204, in the middle of the reign of King John; what philosophic reason exists for constituting the reigns of the “ three Edwards,” a period by themselves; why the Hundred Years' War, treating of fortyone years of the reign of the third Edward, is made a separate period; and why his shortest period, that of “ Puritan England,” occupies the greatest number of pages.

Mr. Green may tell us that the first eleven centuries of English history are barren and unimportant, but we reply that they are running over with riches of just the sorL that Macaulay designed to indicate in the essay we have referred to, and crowded with incidents such as have been used by other writers who have treated special periods. The works of Mr. Freeman, from which Mr. Green has borrowed already so much relating to these times, would have given him help in becoming acquainted with the details we refer to, and the works of the now fashionable republication societies furnish a vast fund of information about the manners and intimate life of old England. We suspect that Mr. Green would offer Mr. Freeman’s works as his excuse for this deficiency, but they ought not to cause us to condone the offense. We are not of those who think English history previous to the Norman Conquest of slight importance, and while we are inclined to the opinion that Mr. Freeman has given too much detail in his Early English History for Children, we are no less positive that the book we are now considering errs in its too great brevity. What Mr. Green does give us is very clear and well put, though he stretches the matter a little in assigning “ the name of England ” to Angela, a tract that he properly describes as “ what we now call Sleswick, a district in the heart of the peninsula which parts the Baltic and the Northern seas.” England derived its name, undoubtedly, from Angeln, but that Angela was ever called England we have not seen stated before. Mr. Freeman is too rigid in adhering to antique orthography, and, in this case at least, Mr. Green is too free in departing from it. While on the subject of spelling we may as well protest against Mr. Green’s “ orgy,” page 586; “ Novum Organon,” page 413; and “ Renascence,” repeated in many places. He properly calls the Plantageneta “ Angevins,” but we wish he had explained that the title he uses is derived from Anjou, for it is not found in our English dictionaries, and will confuse the young learner.

Mr. Green’s divisions, Foreign Kings, and The Great Charter, we do not like, as he states them. The great struggle for supremacy in England continued from the landing of Ctesar to the time of the Conquest by William, and during all that period there was a succession of foreign rulers. At that time, however, the struggle ceased, and an unbroken line of descent connects Victoria with the Conqueror. From 1066 to the date of the signing of the Magna Charta is the next period of English history, as it exists to our mind, for the government was at that time, the feudal monarchy established at the Conquest. Mr. Green’s period of The Great Charter extends from 1204 to 1265, as if King John had ceased to he a foreigner eleven years before he signed the document that elevated his natural meanness to everlasting fame. We conceive the third general period in English history, that of the limited monarchy, to have begun when the Great Charter was signed.

Turning again to the merits of the work, which are far greater than its defects, we call especial attention to the citations of authorities. Each section is preceded by a discriminating list of hooks that may he referred to by the student, and they are not bare titles.

These lists are frequent and full, and constitute a running commentary upon the historians they mention. Finally, we commend Mr. Green’s history for its admirable outlines of the progress of literature from the earliest to the latest times.

— Compendiums of English literature are generally of the most slipshod sort, and it is with great pleasure that we point out the merits of Mr. Minto’s Characteristics of English Poets from Chaucer to Shirley. Nowhere does this author put down an opinion because it is the one commonly received. He has thoroughly independent judgment, which seeks the truth, however, rather than novelty. The aims he set himself were, first and principally, “ to bring into as clear a light as possible the characteristics of the several poets within the period chosen,” and secondly, “ to trace how far each poet was influenced by his literary predecessors and his contemporaries.” “Justly viewed, indeed,” he says, “ the method pursued in this volume is not so much the opposite as the complement to M. Taine’s. His endeavor was to point out what our writers had in common; mine has been to point out what each has by distinction.” This is certainly an excellent plan, nor does the execution fall short of it.

Of Chaucer, with whom the book begins, it is said that he is not so much the first genial day in the spring of English poetry as a fine day, or perhaps the last fine day in the autumn of mediaeval European poetry. Such, at least, is the more instructive way of regarding him. The author shows Chaucer’s dependence on the Erench and Italian poets, gives us some particulars of his life, and in his criticism of Canterbury Tales points out — and for the first time, if we are not much mistaken — the difference between the ribaldry of the less refined pilgrims and the delicacy of the “ gentles.” These tales, he says, “ embody two veins of feeling that powerfully influenced the literature of the fifteenth century : the sentiment that fed on chivalrous romances, and the appetite for animal laughter that received among other gratifications the grotesque literature of miracle-plays.” His exposition of this theory is very suggestive. That his independence does not become mere struggle to say something new is shown by this emphatic statement: “ The compression of masterly touches in that Prologue can hardly be spoken of in sane language.”

Of Shakespeare also Mr. Minto manages to say some good things which had been previously unsaid. Of course a chapter of thirty-five pages devoted to certain qualities of his poetry is incomplete, but so far as it goes it will be found interesting. The characterization of the minor poets seems fair. Exception can be made to the little attention given to Webster, especially in comparison with that devoted to Cyril Tourneur, and to the omission of Drummond of Hawthornden, and of Donne. Spenser’s sonnets are, perhaps, too summarily condemned.

On the whole, we think that this book will be found to be one of the best of companions by those who are studying early English literature. There is nothing dogmatic in Mr. Minto’s expression of his opinions, and there is enough originality to encourage the reader to think for himself. There is much information and no pedantry ; moreover, there is no dullness in the book. We are glad to see the announcement of an American reprint; glad, that is to say, for the American public; Mr. Minto gets no part of our congratulation.

— Mr. Yeatman has ideas of his own about early English history, as well as many ideas which were current years ago, and which have generally been regarded as obsolete. What Mr. Yeatman says of the descent of the Britons from the Trojans can serve very well as an example of the ingenuity of his mind, as well as of his method of leading his readers over the gaps in his argument by the liberal use of such words as undoubtedly, certainly, unquestionably, etc. The following are his words:—

“ Thus ancient history proves conclusively the exalted character and intelligence of the Briton, and lays the foundation for a reception of the belief in his boasted pedigree. The Britons themselves claimed to be descendants of the ancient Trojans, and unquestionably they show at every stage of their history that they are worthy of such high descent.” Homer “ distinctly includes the Pelasgians and the Thracians amongst the allies of the Trojans; . . . thus is strengthened the belief in the truth of their claims; but, if they were not so descended, at least their ancestors may have been amongst the allies of Troy. . . . Let those who assail their position show anything like equal proofs against it. Until then, Britons can remain satisfied in their belief, and glory in the wealth of its possession.” Elsewhere the connection between the Britons and the Thracians is proved in very much the same way. Nor does the author disdain to establish the identity of the Ligurians and the Angles. He by no means satisfies himself, however, with preserving vague traditions, clothing them with fallacious arguments, and calling them established truths; he can be in his turn a wild iconoclast. He is reluctant to give up Arthur, but for Alfred no words are too bitter. We are told that on grounds of common-sense we must reject Asser’s Life of Alfred, and “we are forced to the conclusion that our Saxon history is a fraud which has imposed on us for centuries, and which must be utterly rejected.”

Among other curious bits of information, we learn of the Druids that “we cannot resist the conclusion that they had retained the science of the Noachidte, and must in fact have been the direct descendants of that son of Noah whose issue, it is conjectured, settled down upon this portion of the globe, and here obtained that complete exemption from strife and the turmoil of war which was the traditioual inheritance of our ancestors.”

The main authority for many of his statements is a book of the last century, The History of Manchester, of which Dr. Johnson, who occasionally hit the nail on the head, said “it was all a dream.” The author, according to Mr. Allihone’s Dictionary of Authors, was Dr. John Whittaker, whom Mr. Yeatman accordingly calls Dr. William Whitaker.

It will he noticed that Mr. Yeatman’s views differ from those generally held by modern scholars. He expresses himself as follows about some remarks of Professor Max Muller : “ One is disgusted with the impertinence of the comparisons drawn between our universities and those of the Continent— comparisons, of course, greatly in favor of German institutions. Those who are acquainted with their internal concerns, the lives their students yield, and the amount of learning they obtain, know that they will not compare for an instant with Oxford or Cambridge; that in classical and mathematical learning our universities stand the first in the world; . . . and indeed, by the few steps that have been made, as in the creation of a chair for the study of Anglo-Saxon, for instance, when there is no such language, they have only made themselves ridiculous, though they are not half so ridiculous as they will become if they follow the lead of the German school to the end.” In short, this is a foolish book by a foolish man, which might make mischief among thoughtless readers.

— It will be the fault of the rising generation if it is not well educated. It certainly has one advantage over those which have preceded it in the school-room, namely : the possession of more wisely written textbooks. Within a few years nearly all the old methods of instruction have been overhauled, and a great many useful changes have been made. Of grammars this is not the time to speak, but with the appearance of the first volume of Mr. J. M. Hart’s German Classics for American Students, it is impossible not to notice the changes in the editing of books designed for students. It is intended that this series shall contain the German books generally read by young people, and that the work of the editor shall advance from giving grammatical information in the first volume, to explaining historical allusions, and pointing out trains of thought and literary qualities in those to succeed. For the first volume we have Hermann and Dorothea, Which seems to us a good choice. The introductory extracts, giving an account of Goethe’s material for the preparation of the poem, are to the point. The notes serve rather to supplement the lexicon, on the whole, than to take its place. Such, for example, is the comment, on the first page of the notes, on Indianisch, that on Landau, page 111 of the book, and elsewhere. With regard to questions of grammar, however, the decision about what shall be done is not so easy. To refer to half a dozen of those most commonly used takes up too much space, and to refer to one alone would be unwise; yet it would seem as if some such reference were, needed for an explanation of such phrases as er kam gefahren, frisck getrunken, etc. Or at least, since reference to a grammar has been shown to be foolish, some tolerably complete mention of tlie rules covering these cases might be advantageous. At the end of the volume a glossary of the words which especially deserve the student’s attention is given. In this some inaccuracies are to be noticed; especially, page 148, under the word Heissen, the reference to the Old English form “ to bight,” as if it were an infinitive, is wrong. It is for the past indefinite of the Old English hatan, and philologically too interesting a word to be treated with anything but the greatest respect. Again, page 152, the connection between Germ, ziehen and the English “ to tug” is made by no means clear. As it stands, it reads as if only a similarity of meaning, and not of origin, connected the words. On page 120 we find “ Tafeln, frames ? ” but is there any reason for supposing it does not mean panes of glass ? Page 129, Eirund des Kopfes refers, we should say, to the shape of the head, and does not mean, as is there explained, the oval of the head, i. e., the face. Page 132 is there any ground for supposing that trefflich ever means “ hitting, answering to ”? These seem unnecessary renderings. On the whole, this edition promises to be a good one. The first volume, at any rate, in good hands, would be found of service to students. It is with much interest that we await the next volumes, where the editor comes into comparison with Buchheim, We shall then have a better chance to judge of his success, for his task will be more difficult.

— In his journeying, Mr. Myers, the author of Remains of Lost Empires, went through many strange lands, lying outside of the usual path of even the adventurous tourist. After a trip in Egypt and Palestine he and his brother made their way to Palmyra, thence to Aleppo and Nineveh, down the Tigris to Bagdad and Babylon, into Persia, and from Shiraz to Cashmere, and then hastily through India. This was not taken merely as a pleasure - trip ; both he and his brother were experienced travelers ; they had already visited South America together, and his brother had also spent some time in Central America, occupied with scientific work, especially with botany. It was from his interest in this study that the brother was anxious to investigate the flora of the Himalayas. Unfortunately he was taken with fever in India, and he died on his way to Ceylon, a martyr to science. The surviving brother, the author of this volume, was interested especially in geology, but his book is by no means made into a scientific report. On the contrary, it gives the reader a notion of some of the more striking peculiarities of the comparatively unknown places visited by the author. Mr. Myers does not publish his diary, and so avoids the error of many travelers who imagine the question of what they had everyday for breakfast to be as interesting to their readers as it is to themselves; yet even with this disadvantage there is often a vivacity in a traveler’s journal not to be found in the more formal record. When he describes interesting incidents, such as the running away of the raft on the Tigris, for instance, Mr. Myers is much more entertaining than when he is treating his readers to brief condensations of ancient history, with becoming moral reflections. Occasionally, too, space is found for theological discussion, as is only natural, perhaps, when one is looking for the Garden of Eden. In general, the book is not as entertaining as might be wished ; it is not easy to point out exactly in what particular it falls short, but any one who compares it with really delightful books of travel, such as Eothen, The Crescent and the Cross, or some of the recent accounts of journeyings in Africa, will readily detect the difference. With regard to information Mr. Myers adds but little to what has been collected by more eager professional explorers, from whom be quotes liberally, as was but natural and right. In leaving the book we would not wish to be understood as condemning it as unreadable ; it is a good book of its kind, but its kind is that of the less interesting books of travels.

— Mr. Mill’s Three Essays on Religion will hardly awaken as intense au interest as they would have done ten years ago, when the influence of that remarkable man was almost paramount over a certain class of young, bold, and ardent minds. We are far from thinking that the undeniable decline of his personal authority is due to the fact that the generation which took so kindly to his tuition has outgrown him. So fine and fit a guide for students in matters purely intellectual will not soon appear again, and the world is happy in that the weighty works which he has left behind him may long continue to administer the rare tonic of his teaching. But Mr. Mill, like Plato, and more perhaps than any other philosopher whether of ancient or modern times, had the power of infusing into the dryest and most abstruse inquiries, and even into severe ratiocination, a kind of potent intensity, a magnetic force which awakened in the docile subject something very like personal enthusiasm; and all enthusiasms entail a temporary reaction. How he could have done this, how a man of his literary asceticism and unflinching sternness of method should have contrived to make so many disciples, was long a problem to the curious in such matters, but the Autobiography, by the light of which his works ought all to be re-read, explains it fully. We have there the spectacle of a child subjected from his tenderest years to an intellectual discipline of no less than frightful severity; responding to that discipline by an amazing precocity of powers and attainments, accompanied by an independence and sincerity of mind almost unique, but also, and inevitably, by the stunting and all but starvation of his capacities for feeling and affection. Yet that these capacities also were originally of singular richness and beauty, there is now no room to doubt. Forbidden their proper channels, they throb dumbly along the pages of his metaphysical and political treatises, making them singularly alive. The book on Liberty, many pages of the Logic itself, the Promethean defiance, early in the book, which carried so many readers triumphantly through—or over — the difficult discussion of Hamilton’s philosophy, Mr. Mill’s partisanship, actually fervent, of the North during our own war, his grand loyalty to his unfeeling father, and the almost divine honors which he paid to that friend and wife, the light of whose thoughts, by all independent testimony, was so largely borrowed from him — all these attest the truth of what we have said, and invest with a singular shadow of pathos the record of the great man’s upright and laborious life.

It is also of especial interest to read the religious essays by the light of the Autobiography, because in the latter we find the embryo, and trace the natural growth of whatever is distinctive in the former. In describing his father’s opinions, Mr. Mill says: “He found it impossible to believe that a world so full of evil was the work of an author combining infinite power with perfect goodness and righteousness. His intellect spurned the subtleties by which men attempt to blind themselves to this open contradiction. The Sabaean or Manicheau theory of a good and an evil principle struggling against each other for the government of the universe he would not have equally condemned, and I have heard him express surprise that no one revived it in our time. He would have regarded it as a mere hypothesis, but he would have ascribed to it no depraving influence. As it was, his aversion to religion, in the sense usually attached to that term, was of the same kind with that of Lucretius. He regarded it with the feelings due, not to a mere mental delusion, but to a great moral evil.” These words give the key-note of the Essays on Religion.

These essays are three : the first, which is brief and merely preliminary, is on Nature, and in this the author discusses the various senses in which it is usual to employ the words nature and natural, and distinguishes the proper from the fallacious, in his most thorough and lucid manner. In the second, — on the Utility of Religion, — the author inquires whether the belief in religion considered as a mere persuasion, apart from the question of its truth, is really indispensable to the temporal welfare of mankind, and concludes that it is at least extremely beneficial; but strongly avers that a simple sense of unity with mankind, and a deep feeling for the general good, is not only entitled to be called a religion, but may be developed into a better religion than any other, and also that “ the only rational form of belief in the supernatural is that which regards nature and life, not as the expression of the moral character and purport of the deity, but as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or with a principle of evil as by the Manicheans.” He also examines the value in morals of the belief in a future life, and decides that although pleasing, and by no means preposterous, it is not a necessary condition of the highest virtue.

The third essay, entitled Theism, inquires first into the existence and then into the attributes of a deity. Under the former head, the argument for a first cause is pronounced to be of no value for the establishment of theism, because no cause is needed for that which had no beginning, and matter and force, so far as we can judge, can have had none, although that which is called mind certainly does, in our experience, begin. Mr. Mill also lays light stress on the argument from consciousness, which was the stronghold of Descartes, but admits the cogency of that from the marks of design in nature, even going so far as to allow that it fulfills the conditions of an induction by the first of his own methods, and summing up with the declaration, that, — Darwinism notwithstanding, — in the present state of our knowledge, the adaptations in nature afford a larg balance of probability in favor of creation by intelligence. The whole result of Mr. Mill’s inquiry into the attributes of a deity may he condensed as follows: The evidences of natural theology distinctly imply that the author of the Kosmos worked under limitations, and was obliged to resort to contrivances, not always the most perfect imaginable, for surmounting certain obstacles, — which obstacles there is, however, no ground in natural theology for supposing intelligent. There is also a preponderance of evidence that the Creator desired the happiness of his creatures, the chief strength of that evidence lying in the fact that pleasure seems always to result from the normal working of the machinery, pain from some interference with it. On the whole, therefore, he infers a being of great but limited power, of great and perhaps unlimited intelligence, who desires and pays some regard to the happiness of his creatures, but who cannot be supposed to have created the universe for that end alone. An inquiry into the evidences of immortality leads Mr. Mill to the conclusion that there is no inherent impossibility in the persistence of the thinking and feeling power without the material conditions which we know, and he becomes almost eloquent where he urges the idealistic doctrine that “ feeling and thought are much more real than anything, else, the only things, in fact, which we directly know to he real, and that all matter, apart from the feelings of sentient beings, has but a hypothetical existence.” Finally, the claims of revelation are briefly examined, Hume’s argument against miracles is adopted with certain reservations, and the character of Christ, as deduced from those records which are entirely trustworthy, is admitted to be one of transcendent beauty, furnishing the highest ideal of conduct ever yet presented to man.

It is needless to say that the above conclusions are enforced by strong and skillfully wielded arguments, such as no inexperienced reasoner can hope fairly to confute, in a manner as free from arrogance and scoffing as from sentimental fervor, and in a style of the utmost clearness and strength. Their most startling feature to the ordinary reader will doubtless be the reiteration that the Creator’s powers are limited, or that the notion of his omnipotence is inconsistent with that of his perfect goodness. Yet we are inclined to think that the horrors of this conception will subside, as it is dispassionately viewed. The perception of such an inconsistency has ever been a source of untold agony to some of the noblest minds, compromising the ideal which they would follow, and paralyzing their own efforts toward it; and to them no suggestion will appear contemptible which proposes a relief from their torture. There are even some positive considerations of feeling to be urged in favor of the theory which Mr. Mill revives. Since all our experience of our highest joy— that of loving — is of loving limited and imperfect beings, it would seem that another being of the same kind, although immeasurably greater and better than those whom we see, might well engage a sincerer affection on our part, than one of whom experience enables us to form no sort of conception. And the thought that such a being is engaged in a stupendous warfare on those powers of evil which excruciate us, and that if we fight by his side ever so feebly, we may assist that ultimate triumph of his which even the stern and cautious philosopher of the present work opines to be foreshadowed by the progress of human events thus far, is surely one of inexhaustible inspiration. Moreover, it is worth while to note that some such conception of divine and human destinies has, virtually if not nominally, pervaded all religions during the period of their greatest power. It is the soul both of Greek tragedy and of the poetry of Milton, and in general of all those supreme works of the imagination which mark the highest level of the human mind.

— Lord Russell is by no means unfamiliar with the use of the pen. He has been an essayist, a biographer, a tragedian, —in which capacity he received the respects of John Wilson Croker, a critic who judged the work of the noble whig by strict tory principles, — and he has written, we see in Adlibone, a tale. In his present Recollections and Suggestions, he adds another contribution to the history of English political life. He entered the House of Commons in 1813, at a time when whig principles were in abeyance, and until Lord Grey’s reform administration he was in the minority. After that time he had more direct control of the fortunes of England. In this book he explains his record, avows his faults with due apology, attacks with some violence those who succeeded him In the leadership of the House of Commons, and suggests freely what he considers the best policy for English statesmen to pursue. As to his grumbling about what Mr. Gladstone has done, that hears some resemblance to a family quarrel, which will probably settle itself without difficulty. What is most interesting to us is what he has to say about the Treaty of Washington. This he condemns in no measured terms. He says it is commonly regarded in this country as an act of capitulation on the part of England, and for corroboration of this belief he quotes the opinion of Baron Hübner. With all respect for that authority, however, we would most earnestly say that it is more generally regarded as acknowledgment of error on the part of England, which is much to the credit of that country, rather than a humiliating concession. He says, “ I assent entirely to the opinion of the Lord Chief-Justice of England, that the Alabama ought to have been detained during the four days in which I was waiting for the opinion of the law officers. But I think that the fault was not that of the commissioners of customs ; it was my fault, as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.” At last Lord Russell sees his error, which has certainly been an expensive one to his country, but there is no one in America who thinks that the confession of wrong-doing on the part of England is truckling to our greatness, or a sign of a disposition to submit to bullying. We know the English too well for that. Baron Hübner formed his opinion from the remarks of American “ statesmen,” presumably those of Washington, who are generally many years behind their fellow-citizens in forming an honest opinion.

While Lord Russell acknowledges his error with regard to not detaining the Alabama, he condemns severely Mr. Adams for lack of confidence in the good intentions of the English government. If Mr. Adams saw what he had a right to demand of the English government, and urged that policy upon them, it is certainly natural and justifiable that he should have distrusted their intention when their acts were iniquitous. In short, Lord Russell cannot make a mistake that brings serious harm upon another country, and escape suspicion of not treating that country fairly. This acknowledgment of error, however, which he now makes, ought to make us ready to let bygones be bygones.

The volume throws much light on the inner history of English politics of more than half a century. To Englishmen and the many American students of English history it will be an interesting volume, not always by reason of the author’s wisdom, but generally of his candor and experience. He is a man who has earned the right to speak, but the world has also the right of rejecting his opinions if they are unsatisfactory.

— The printed report of Dr. Storrs’s three lectures on Preaching without Notes is itself one of the most conclusive arguments in support of the plea which he makes ; for the compactness of statement, the nice use of words, the freedom from repetition, whether of phrases or of noticeable words, the precision and the kindling fervor of some of the periods, which characterize these lectures, delivered without notes, show that it is possible to use this method and avoid the pitfalls which are plainly seen to exist for all who commit themselves to public oratory without the protection of manuscript. No doubt the author himself has special mental qualifications for preaching without notes, yet the frank account which he gives of his own experience in the matter renders it more than probable that a degree of power in this direction, is within the reach of any clergyman who will take the pains to make himself master of one of the prime conditions of success in his profession. No one can read these fresh, forcible lectures without regretting the tyranny of a custom which robs the public preacher of so large a part of his power. Extemporaneous preaching, as it is sometimes called, rests under just suspicion when it is presumed to he preaching on the spur of the moment without special preparation. Such a proceeding is sometimes possible, when all the circumstances and inward faculties converge to lift the preacher into a sudden power of speech, but these rare possibilities only render a weekly succession of such a felicity absurdly improbable. We call attention to the book because with its wise advice, drawn from a long and notable experience, and especially with its insistence on the springs of power in such oratory, it ought to be of very great service to young preachers, and because like all honest revelations of the causes which have led to success in some one field of intellectual labor, it contains abundant suggestion for those who pursue similar though not identical labors. For example, his hints upon the best means of attaining intellectual readiness for some special task are of value to writers as well as to preachers.

— The anonymous volume entitled The Paraclete is apparently an English reprint, and would seem to have been written by a low-church Episcopalian of strong evangelical views. The author wishes to add his word on the orthodox and scriptural side of the “ irrepressible conflict ” now going on in the religious world. He thinks that in the future “this struggle will probably relate not so much to the mere facts of Christian history as to the reality of spiritual existence; man’s personal spirituality will he denied; thought itself will be still more emphatically pronounced but a form or expression of matter; . . . Christianity will be regarded as the outcome of a tragical mistake, and the entire theological idea be classed with the nightmares of paganism.” The best antidote to these materializing tendencies, the author thinks, will be found in a devout acceptance of his own theory of the Holy Ghost, which he also considers the culminating doctrine of the Holy Scriptures, and which is substantially this : The Holy Ghost is a distinct person, and the highest and most potent of all possible persons. Even Christ’s mission is inferior to the Spirit’s, because Christ’s embodiment in flesh and blood was necessarily brief, and his miracles all physical, and therefore evanescent. The dominion of the Spirit, which began when Christ finally left the world at his ascension, is progressive and eternal. The miracles of the Spirit, which are purely spiritual, have entirely superseded those grosser displays of the divine power which are recorded in the Gospels. Their era is now, and it will not pass away The writer professes his firm belief in the trinity, but to many of those who receive, or think that they receive, that doctrine, this new “ scheme of salvation ” will be open to the objection of seeming singularly to slight, not to say degrade, the office of God the Father.

The earlier division of the hook has, however, great beauty of diction in parts, and is marked by a warmth of feeling which will render it grateful reading to some of those who have never questioned the foundations of the so-called orthodox faith. There is another class of minds in whose way it may possibly come, young minds at once active and docile, eager for rational sanction to that which they wish and think they ought to believe, and modestly ready to be imposed upon by the present author’s continual assumption of argumentative forms; and to these it is surely right to point out the extreme weakness of his reasoning as such. His favorite and perhaps least obvious form of fallacy is this: If Christianity were true, such and such things would probably occur. Now they do occur, therefore Christianity is true. A more palpable form of absurdity, also frequent in these pages, may be represented by the argument for “ original sin,” thus : How can we help thinking that we are, by descent from Adam, totally depraved, when we know that if any one of us had been in Adam’s place, we should have sinned as he did? which would seem at least to dispense with the notion of hereditary guilt. If religion is to be defended by reasoning, it must be of another kind than this.

The second, or controversial, part of our author’s book is open to severer censure. A weak argument may after all be the only practicable weapon of a weak mind, but the plainest principles of honor and courtesy forbid such treatment of an antagonist in opinion as may be found under the head of Personal Reasons for rejecting Materialism. Here, forgetting that he has just repelled with indignation the idea that the work of the Spirit during the last eighteen hundred years is to be judged by the character of the Christian church, he rejects every form of the so-called “ positive philosophy” on the ground that Hobbes and Hume advised the use of evil means foxgood ends; while Epicurus, Condillac, Bolingbroke, and John Stuart Mill refrained, through the fear of unpleasant personal consequences, from giving full utterance, in their lives at least, to their skeptical views. To this it must be replied, first, that they did not so refrain, but rather that each of these men, before he died, had associated his name with a perfectly distinct set of opinions; and next, that no one of them would have incurred, or did incur, danger or disgrace by the full avowal of his views. Indeed, the writer himself presently sneers at Professor Tyndall for saying that he will maintain certain positions “ at all hazards,” declaring that there are no hazards at the present day, “ however anxious some men may he for the honors of martyrdom.”

Of Mr. Mill, against whom this author’s wrath is especially kindled, it is not too much to say that his life and death alike witnessed an intellectual honesty of which it may not he his critic’s fault that he can form no conception, while his studied reserve and moderation of manner in expressing certain views would seem to have sprung from an unwillingness rudely to shock those believing souls the foundatious of whose peace are most of all imperiled by such pious (or impious) nonsense as the following, by way of an appeal against the tendencies of modern science : “If we cannot see the organism of a nettle without a microscope, can we see ‘ the things of the Spirit of God ’ without special illumination ? ”

FRENCH AND GERMAN.²

The republication of Sainte-Beuve’s earliest writings is not one of those mistaken acts of which the friends or relatives of eminent men are often guilty, when the dust is brushed off from deservedly forgotten writings and they are brought forward to mar a distinguished reputation. On the contrary, Sainte-Beuve left nowhere, even in his most distant past, spoiled paper on which he learned to write, to rise up in judgment against him. Even in his earliest essays we find the delicacy of touch, the half shy pointing with an almost imperceptible gesture, the witty, restrained comment, which made him always so delightful. He did not begin by dinning his jests into the ears of his audience, by taking his reader by the shoulders to turn his attention to what was said; he always showed his wise and attractive moderation. He was a critic born, not manufactured.

He had himself meant to Superintend the publication of these volumes, or at any rate of certain of his early essays, but his death prevented. The present series begins, with the articles Sainte-Beuve wrote when a medical student of twenty. Even here we find, as we have said, the charm that has won him elsewhere so many readers. In these, the first cases in which he mentioned Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and others, to whom he was afterwards continually referring in one way or another, he notes the faults as well as the virtues, and what would have been noticeable excellence in mature criticism becomes even more remarkable in the work of one so young, and who was also, more or less, a follower of the same school. In speaking of Victor Hugo he says: “ In poetry, as elsewhere, nothing is so dangerous as force ; left to itself it ruins everything; it makes what was new and original only odd ; a brilliant contrast degenerates into affected antithesis; the writer aims at grace and simplicity, and he exhibits only triviality ; he seeks for what is heroic, and finds only the monstrous; if he ever tries the monstrous, he cannot escape puerility. M. Hugo can supply us with examples.” Such an example is his Chant de Néron, of which the critic says that it was the soul of the tyrant which was to be shown us, hut instead, “in approaching the scene the writer’s imagination runs away with him ; he without meaning it becomes a spectator, and he is much more interested with the fire-engines than with Nero’s heart.” Sir Walter Scott’s Life of Napoleon is discussed at some length, and its many faults are exposed, but yet without any attempt to decry Scott’s real merits as a novelist. In other essays we find Sainte-Beuve more on his own ground, when, namely, he is writing about those subjects which he always seemed to handle with caressing fondness, as if reluctant to leave them ; such are the articles on Diderot, Madame de Genlis, Madame de Maintenon, etc. It will be with some interest that the reader turns to the notice of the American novelist, Cooper, on the occasion of a French translation of his Red Rover, but it is not necessary to give even in outline the criticism, because American readers have learned to forget Cooper, although abroad he is still read more or less. When Scott is so far on the way to temporary oblivion, it is no wonder that his followers are unread. It need only he said that Sainte-Beuve praises Scott warmly enough to make ns feel ashamed of the neglect with which that novelist is generally treated. A more interesting article is that devoted to the destruction of one Alexandre Duval, a gentleman who frowned upon the young writers of The Globe, of whom Sainte-Beuve was one. M. Duval wrote as one would wish his adversaries always to write, so foolishly that his words only need be quoted for his readers to form the exactly contrary opinion. His attack on the Romantic school was of the most amusing sort, and Sainte-Beuve did not spare his foe.

In the second volume are articles on Balzac, Charles de Bernard, Gautier, Heine, and others. Parts of these Sainte-Beuve himself had already seen fit to publish, and it may he a question, too simple for casuistry, how justifiable it is to pick out what has been thrown away and serve it up again ; but if the editor has done wrong, this is not the place to find fault with him. Certainly he has done no harm to SainteBeuve’s reputation, but for that SainteBeuve has only himself to thank. We rejoice to see the promise of the publication of the great critic’s correspondence; we only wish there were another Sainte-Beuve to choose from them extracts to be commented on, explained, and illustrated.

It should be said the title of these volumes, Les Premiers Lundis, is one given them by their present editor, from no other reason than what may be called the “force of attraction,” in order to bring them into line with those other volumes of SainteBeuve’s, The Causcries du Lundi, and Les Nouveaux Lundis, which have made his name immortal.

— We have often spoken in these columns of the excellent German translation of Tourguéneff’s novels now appearing, and praised its accuracy and elegance; and now that we have a German version of a book that has never been put into English, it is doubly necessary to speak of it again. The hook has appeared in French in two translations, of unequal merit, and the better translation has long been out of print, so that those who are unfamiliar with Kussian will have to content themselves with the volume before us to-day, Skizzen aus dem Tagebuche eines Jägers. These were Tonrguéneff’s earliest prose writings, and they showed very plainly his marvelous power. They treat almost entirely of scenes in the life of the serfs, and although the author writes apparently without animus, there can he no wonder that this book did in its time for Russia what Uncle Tom’s Cabin did in this country in the way of helping to form an opinion Hostile to slavery. The various sketches are short, they are indeed more nearly suggestions than complete tales, but they are packed so full of life and beauty and pathos that they make a very deep impression on the reader. They are marked, too, by a poetical flavor, which only appears in hints in his longer novels, but which is to be found on almost every page of those descriptions of wanderings through the woods and fields, and of nights spent in peasants’ lints, or out-ofdoors by the side of a camp-fire. The sadness which fills everything Tonrgueneff has written is perhaps more capable of defense for its appearance in these pages than it is elsewhere, because here the author was, or assumed to be, a chronicler of what he knew by his own experience ; and living as he did in a country which has acquired Suddenly all the outside show of civilization, thinly covering the fury of untamed, half-savage natures, he could not fail to meet continually with harsh discords between the false polish and the real roughness of the men he saw. Whatever happened, the serfs suffered; they had been left far behind in the march forward, and the petty nobles and small gentry despised them. In the longer novels, however, the writer takes upon himself to picture life, and it is doubtless on account of the way the grinmess of Russian society first struck him that he has become such a black pessimist. For in spite of his wonderful talent and his unfailing charm, the laws of art are surer to be right than one man’s mood. There may come seasons of despondency in literature, but they are generally when weaker brothers have got the trick of writing,—as is the case, for instance, just now in English poetry; when a man of the calibre of Tourguéneff turns to melancholy, it is rather to be explained by some personal, immediate cause, than by his willful contempt for the great laws which have made literature the consolation that it is. These rise above individual experience because they are founded upon broad generalizations from many experiences. Then too, despair, however well suited for certain tastes at certain times, has been frequently convicted of unhealthiness, and is not what readers want; the familiar law in political economy about demand and supply is not without its analogy in regard to books, pictures, and other modes of escape from the harassing, sordid cares of the world.

In this German edition are included three sketches not in the French translation, two of which appear for the first time. In one of them Tourguéneff gives a most touching account of his meeting a family servant whom he remembered as a merry, thoughtless girl, but who had been struck down in her happiness, when engaged to be married, by some mysterious disease, the result of an apparently trifling accident.

There is nothing more touching than the poor creature’s resignation, nor more accurately represented than the narrator’s robust health, which seems so blundering in comparison with the delicate sensitiveness of the sick girl. It is indeed a wonderful picture Tourguéneff has drawn here, and although the reader lays the book down with a lump in his throat, he cannot help admiring the writer’s skill. It would seem as if the numerous writers of tales could not do better than study him to learn the secrets of their trade. This recommendation is safe enough, for he is sure to escape imitation.

The other new sketch describes a very trifling matter, a midnight drive over a lonely road from a peasant’s house to town, during which both the writer and his driver are alarmed by the mysterious rattling of a vehicle which breaks into the lonely silence in a most ominous manner. At first it has a supernatural sound; then the driver recalls murders which had been committed in that reigon, and their fears only increase when it turns out to be a party of revelers ; these, however, merely beg for some money, which they thankfully receive and soon spend for more liquor. This is a slight sketch, but it is surer to give the reader a chilly thrill than are some of Mr. Wilkie Collins’s most carefully manufactured novels. The third is the one called Tschertapchanow’s Ende, which appeared in the Revue des Deux Mondes, two or three years ago, and, if we are not mistaken, in a French collection of the writer’s shorter stories. It is longer and more ambitious than the others, but, in our opinion, less successful. Tschertapchauow, it will be remembered, had made his appearance in an earlier sketch.