Recent Literature

In one of the warmest, most delightfully personal of his Dramatic Lyrics, Browning represents the singer as anticipating the time when life’s November shall find him dumb, sitting by the fire over “ a great wise book as beseemeth age,” when the youngsters, whispering —

take the chance to slip out on some halfforbidden excursion. “ I shall be at it, indeed, my friends,” he says : —

This was written — published at least — twenty years ago, and perhaps hints, it we may read any autobiographic confession between the lines, at a foreseen intellectual rest among the enduring forms of Greek art. Browning’s mind, with its restlessness, its incessant experimenting and exploring, could scarcely he supposed, if time enough were given, to miss adventures in this direction, but now that we find him within the region of Greek life,¹ we see no signs of anything that looks like the attitude of an old man warming himself by the fire. The same vigorous clinch of life which marks his handling of mediæval subjects is to be found here, and in the person of Balaustion he enters the heart of Athens and essays to lay bare the secrets of that wonderful life, giving it an interpretation as far as possible removed from the conventional mode.

Balaustion, the Rhodian girl who cast in her lot with Athens — as Browning told us in the forerunner of this book, Balaustion’s Adventure — at the time when under the disastrous failure of the Sicilian expedition the allies of Athens were deserting her for Sparta, is seen now returning to Rhodes with Euthukles, her husband, seven years later, when the Spartan supremacy had accomplished the disgrace of Athens, and the double walls which Themistokles had caused to be built after the repulse of the Persians were destroyed by the city’s rival. Sailing away from this horror Balaustion surveys it in recollection:

It is by resolutely facing this scene in recollection that Balaustion hopes to vanquish it in her mind, and not only the special horror of Athens’ final shame, but that interior and antecedent crumbling of the city’s life which only found outward sign at last in this more patent misery. “ What hinders,” she exclaims, —

So Balaustion rehearses, while Euthukles records, an adventure a year before, when they were still resident in Athens, not yet stripped of its honor. Euthukles had brought home to his wife, sitting alone, the news of the death of Euripides in Macedonia, how the news had been received in Athens, especially by the people returning from the theatre, where they had been to see one of Aristophanes’ comedies crowned ; as this discourse between Balaustion and Euthukles goes on, and little by little they leave talk of Aristophanes and the fickle Athenians, to recall their master and friend Euripides, taking up his play, Herakles Mainomenos,² which he had given to Balaustion, the shouting and singing of a company is heard without, there is a knock at the door, which is flung open, and in troops the choros of the comedy, followed by the chief actors, a gay crowd of girl dancers and flute-boys, Elaphion, the première danseuse, and finally Aristophanes himself. Before the pure presence of Balaustion the drunken revelers slink back into the street, Elaphion going last, leaving Aristophanes alone. By the same power of womanhood, Aristophanes, stripped of his followers, owns himself stripped also of all disguises of his soul, and so confronts frankly and ingenuously the clear eyes of the searching Rhodian.

There follows then what is, by distinction, Aristophanes’ Apology, a plea for his art in answer to the mute reproach of Euripides, and the plain, straightforward question and charge of Euripides’ friend, Balaustion. The Apology is followed by Balaustion’s defense of her master against the attack of Aristophanes, and for direct witness of the truth she holds she recites the whole of the play that lay by her side, the Herakles. Some words follow the recital ; then the story of the year following is rapidly told, the political events, the career of Aristophanes, the crash that came in the Spartan victory, and in the midst of that a kind of miniature adventure of Euthukles, whose brief recital of Euripides’ words turns the edge of the Spartan vindictiveness; and so the ship that bears these two brings them at length to Rhodes.

Such is a brief outline of a poem which seems inexhaustible to the reader. It will be seen at once in how rich a mine the poet digs. Athens at its sudden downfall, Euripides, Aristophanes, tragedy, comedy, politics, art, — here are suggestions enough for a living poet, and Browning has cast himself into the time and scene with an energetic warmth which is kindled partly by the magnificent Greek life, and partly by that impetuous struggle with problems of art and life which has from the beginning marked him as the poetic athlete of English literature. If it be said that poetry can dispense with discussions on art, we may at least put in a caveat for the pictorial form in which this discussion is presented. To analyze the discussion itself would be inexpedient here, but whoever, reading the story once for the discussion, shall turn and re-read it for its wealth of imagination, will surely become somewhat reconciled to a treatment which is no barren rehearsal of principles, but the picture of two very distinct persons engaged in a fence with words that have power to hurt. The reader unfamiliar with Greek history and literature will hardly derive much satisfaction from a single reading, but in spite of the apparently learned look of the pages, the poem demands but an ordinary acquaintance with the historical realities upon which it is based; still, the more one is at home in Athens, the more thorough enjoyment he will take in this historical picture.

In fact, we cannot help regarding the secondary value of the book as very significant. Its primary value as a rich and abiding poem is for all readers who can get through the hedge that seems to surround it. There remains a worth for the student so potent that we are almost ready to concede that Browning deliberately chose his theme for this ulterior object. It is impossible that one of so sturdy a nature as Browning, so ardently patriotic, so profoundly impressed by the ethical side of life, should fail to protest against the insidious renaissance of modern England which has displayed itself in a philosophy and art satisfied, at their best, with an earthly paradise. It has been the habit of the school adopting this return to the antique to represent Greek life under an aspect of fatalism, and to extract from it a creed of æsthetic indulgence which suffers the believer to dwell in a condition of refined sensualism. The masculine protest is found in this poem and its predecessor. Alike the chilly Greece of conventionalism and the luscious Greece of the renaissance disappear before this picture of Athens with its tempestuous crowd, its solitary figures, and its intense civil and political life. The whole poem is a warning against the attempt to separate literature and art from nationality and righteousness; as such it will brace many minds, and while it doubtless must remain a student’s poem, its influence may be counted on over a susceptible class of young Englishmen and Americans.

— In probably a deeper sense than he intended, Mr. Hayne has traced in his title ³ precisely the two forces which most prominently appear in his poems, — “nature and tradition.” Of the first element we will speak presently. Of the second we may say, that while retracing the romance-haunted paths of the past, in quest of poetic opportunity, Mr. Hayne is tacitly following another tradition than that which gives him his subject-matter, namely, the tradition of all our Southern songsters, who maintain a devout faith in the saving power of old legends. Not, of course, that he relies on his subject solely; on the contrary, the workmanship of these poems of tradition, The Mountain of the Lovers, The Vengeance of the Goddess Diana, Visit of Mahmoud Ben Suleim, and the rest, is most careful and elaborate. But there is a subtle sympathy between the poet and his material which seems to belong to an older time, and is expressed in the very choice of words and phrases obsolete except in poetry, to an extent greater than that of most modern verse: “ natheless,” “ puissance,” and a fondness for the form “ what time,” may be cited, together with the use of words like “whisperous,” and “wailful.” A distinctly modern tone, in other places, gives to this trait the exaggerative force of contrast, perhaps ; though for our own part we must frankly confess a preference for the poems of nature, in which the author reconciles his verse with the language of our time. We have no space for analysis of these outof-door lyrics, in which a glad and genial temper so invariably asserts itself, and often with great success; but, as one of Mr. Hayne’s happiest strokes, we may quote the lines, once before printed in The Atlantic,—

There is in the volume a third element of sly humor and easy satire which we leave our readers to investigate.

— Mr. Saxe dedicates his new collection ⁴ to Frederick Locker, but this were hardly needful to remind us where his goal and his ambition lie. Those who have learned to know and like his neat touch, before now, are not likely to miss the old gifts in the new setting, as witness these lines, from his Ode to the Legislature, concerning lobbyists : —

In the present volume, we are carried through the entire gamut of certain wellknown notes, with a nimble finger; we have vers de société, the allegory, the instructive legend, the epigram in abundance. Few writers of merely amusing verse in America have so completely mastered the special order of effects aimed at by them, as Mr. Saxe. Yet his view of the humorous is conventional ; he builds no roads of his own, and chooses with cautious skill those which have been successfully laid out by Hood and his school. Naturally, he falls far short of those who went before him in these paths, and least of all should we wish, in mentioning Hood, to suggest that Mr. Saxe in any way reproduces the rich, tremulous emotion of that poet’s serious pieces, the glowing fancies of his Midsummer Fairies, the simple, dewy freshness of I Remember, and The Death-Bed. Mr. Saxe is not a poet in the sense that Mr. Locker is, either; where shall we find in his verse tenderness like that of the Englishman’s Sick Man and The Swallows ? Still, he is a man of native wit, and, even more, an appreciator of successful versified wit in other languages than his own. One rests comfortably, too, on sensible, clever moralizing like this, from A Charming Woman : —

There is no need for asking Mr. Saxe to do what does not lie within him, in order to value aright what he does so well. Therefore, though we find little feeling, nothing that can be called poetry, in this book, we can still enter into the perfectly sound, upright purpose of entertaining which it shows, and commend it to that wide popularity which surely awaits everything of its author’s writing.

— In this, the third volume of his valuable history,⁵ Mr. Bancroft presents the reader with the vast amount of information he has been able to collect with regard to the mythology of the westernmost inhabitants of this continent, and in addition with a brief résumé of what is known about their languages.

The mythologies of these various races, so different in intelligence and civilization, show the greatest divergences. The Quichés of Guatemala left behind them comparatively the most complete relic of the sort; full, to be sure, of inconsistencies and frivolities, but yet of the greatest interest, and inspired by a genuine belief in a great creative being. One of the episodes describing an attempt of the gods to create man is somewhat amusing; it runs as follows: —

“Again is there counsel in heaven: Let us make an intelligent being who shall adore and invoke us. It was decided that a man should be made of wood and a woman of a kind of pith. They were made; but the result was in no wise satisfactory. They moved about perfectly well, it is true; they increased and multiplied; they peopled the world with sons and daughters, little wooden manikins like themselves; but still the heart and the intelligence were wanting; they held no memory of their Maker and Former; they led a useless existence, they lived as the beasts live; they forgot the Heart of Heaven. They were but an essay, an attempt at men ; they had neither blood nor substance, nor moisture nor fat; their cheeks were shriveled, their feet and hands dried tip, their flesh languished.” Divine vengeance was taken against them. " The bird Xecotcovach came to tear out their eyes; and the Camalotz cut off their head; and the Cotzbalam devoured their flesh; and the Tecumbalam broke and bruised their bones to powder. Thus were they all devoted to chastisement and destruction, save only a few who were preserved as memorials of the wooden men that had been ; and those now exist in the woods as little apes.” This explanation of the origin of wooden men and women seems to deserve being better known than it is.

In one of the Aztec myths there is this imposing account of the creation of the sun. There had been no sun for a long time, and the gods assembled their worshipers and told them that the one who should first fling himself into the fire should be turned into the sun. One accordingly threw himself in, and soon arose as the sun In the east, the quarter where he was least expected, so bright that not even the gods could gaze upon him. He did not rise from the horizon, and the gods sent him word to leave, but he answered that he would not until he had killed them all. One of them took his arrows and shot them at the sun ; the first the sun dodged, but being hit by the next two, he seized the last and hurled it back at the god, slaying him. The rest of the gods appointed one of their number to kill them all, which he did, and finally killed himself.

Traditions of a deluge existed among the Mexicans, and in one district there was a legend of an attempt to build an artificial mountain against further floods, but it was as much of a failure as the tower of Babel, and the wrath of the gods being roused, the builders were killed by lightning, and work upon it came to an end.

The northern Indians have various traditions about the origin of man; some hold that human beings first existed as birds, beasts, or fish. Most of the Californians claim their descent from the coyote; the Koniagas revere a dog as their original ancestor. The first father of the Aleuts is said to have fallen from heaven in the shape of a dog. Others again consider that beasts, fish, and edible roots are descended from human originals. A dog or bird was frequently the disguise of the god who created the earth and man. The Thlinkeets have a very full cosmogony based on this notion : the great Somebody, as Mr. Bancroft calls him, being Yehl, the crow or raven, who created most things, and especially the Thlinkeets. This Yehl, among many strange adventures, put the stars and the sun and moon into the sky by tricks which we have not space to narrate here; the light of the sun was so alarmingly bright that people were at first afraid; many hid in the mountains, woods, and water, and were changed into animals frequenting those places. He also introduced fire to mankind. The interpretation of these myths is very difficult, and is nut attempted by Mr. Bancroft, who collects the material for others to make theories about.

The worship of the sun by the Mexicans is clearly proved, and many high authorities unite in considering it the fundamental idea in the religions of civilized America.

Eclipses naturally excited a panic ; men with white hair and white faces were sacrificed to the sun by the Mexicans; the Tlascaltecs, on the other hand, chose the ruddiest victims they could find. Comets were held, as they have been in later times by more civilized people, to be foreboders of plagues, famine, or the death of a ruler. With regard to water, Mr. Bancroft says its use “ more or less sanctified Or set apart or made worthy the distinction ‘ holy; ’ the employment of this in a rite of avowed purification from inherent sin at the time of giving a name, — baptism, in one word, — runs back to a period far preChristian among the Mexican, Maya, and other American nations, as ancient ceremonies to be hereafter described will show.”

As to what comes after life there was the same diversity of belief. The ideas of a heaven and hell were not universally held; some savages are said to be wholly without any notion of the immortality of the soul. The heaven of those who believe in one is a spot of never-ending sensual pleasure; that of the Columbian tribes was a sunlit spot fully supplied with salmon and berries, a very modest resting-place ; while the Okanagans find in their hell an evil spirit in human shape, but with tail and ears like a horse, who jumps about from tree to tree, with a stick in his hand, and beats the damned. The Ahts believe that Chayher, their Pluto, is a figure of flesh without bones, the counterpart of our grim skeleton king of death; in his gloomy realm there are no salmon and the deer are very small, and the blankets, like those furnished by the Indian Agency, are miserably thin and insufficient, so that survivors burn blankets at the funeral of their friends to keep them warm. Some of the tribes believe in metempsychosis; the Apaches consider the rattlesnake as the form the wicked will take after death. The Mexicans had a very complicated notion of a future life, and Mr. Bancroft briefly points out in a foot-note the resemblance in some respects between the ideas of the Mexicans and those of the ancient Greeks and Romans with regard to their future abode: “The trembling soul has to pass over the same dreadful river, ferried by a brute Charon. In Hades, as in Mictlan, the condition of the dead was a shadowy sort of apparent life, in which, mere ghosts of their former selves, they continued dreamily to perform the labors and carry on the occupations to which they had been accustomed on earth. In Greece, as in Mexico, the shades of the dead were occasionally permitted to visit their friends on earth, summoned by a sacrifice and religious rites. Neither Elysion nor the glorious Sun House was the reward of the purely good so much as of the favorites of the gods. Such points of resemblance as these,” Mr. Bancroft goes on, “ are, however, unnoticed by those who theorize concerning the origin of the Americans ; they go farther for analogies, and perhaps fare worse.”

The gods worshiped by the Indian tribes were of many sorts. Matlose, the hobgoblin of the Nootkas, is a fair specimen : “ His head is like the head of something that might have been a man hut is not; his uncouth bulk is horrid with black bristles; his monstrous teeth and nails are like the fangs and claws of a bear. Whoever hears his terrible voice falls like one smitten, and his curved claws rend a prey into morsels with a single stroke.”One is reminded of Victor Hugo’s Han d’lslande.

When we come to the study of the Mexican religion, we find it, as Mr. Bancroft truly calls it, “a confused and clashing chaos of fragments.” There were two Schools of religious philosophy in Mexico, one held by the multitude, the other by the wiser few, and it is hard for investigators to find common ground between the two, Tezcatlipoca was apparently the principal one of the Mexican gods, and many prayers are given which were addressed to him under his various names; these prayers show traces of Christian padding, so to speak, on the part of the priest who is responsible for them, but in the main they are considered accurate reports. As to Quetzalcoatl and Huitzilopochtli, we have a full discussion of the various theories concerning their mythical existence and probable meaning. Much space is devoted to the other deities and the ceremonies of their worship. The number of religious buildings throughout the whole country was very great ; Torquemada estimated the whole number at eighty thousand. For the support of these, great tracts of land were the property of the church, and these were held by people on certain conditions, or worked by slaves ; moreover, taxes of wine and grain and voluntary contributions made up the sums needed. The number of priests was immense, and sacred offices were held by women as Well as by men; some, indeed, kept forever burning the sacred fire, like the Roman vestal virgins. There were various religious orders, not unlike those of other times and other religions. Fasts were observed in atonement for sin, and penance was done by thrusting sticks through the ears or tongue. The favorite offering was human beings. One authority puts the number of those sacrificed every year as high as twenty thousand ; we are told that at the inauguration of a temple between seventy and eighty thousand were sacrificed. In Yucatan this cruel habit existed to a much smaller extent.

The amount of information Mr. Bancroft has amassed is very great, but the whole subject is in the greatest confusion. In time the inconsistencies in the various reports may be unraveled, and it may be possible to get at the real meaning of the intricate mythologies ; for this purpose such a volume as this will be a rich mine for the student who has a clew to the explanation of what is now so obscure. It is so recently that anything has been done with the mythology of the Aryan peoples, and indeed there is still so much uncertainty about some of the methods now employed, that the prospect for getting to understand the Mexican is very dark ; but that in time it will he made clear one can hardly doubt. What J. G. Muller has done in this way is a model of careful study and intelligent theorizing. It will be found fully repeated in this volume.

The last two hundred and fifty pages of the volume are taken up with an account of the languages of the native races of the Pacific States. Singularly enough, while the languages differ in vocabulary they are wonderfully alike in many of their characteristics, as, for instance, agglutination, the expression of the plural by reduplication, the application of gender to the third person of the verb, etc. If we exclude the Eskimo, which is not properly an American language, there are three great languages, the Tinneh, the Aztec, and the Maya. This last is the tongue of Central America; the Aztec that of Mexico, with traces in California, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Oregon. The Tinneh extends over the northern part of the Rocky Mountain range, with branches in Alaska, British America, California, New Mexico, Texas, and Mexico. As to the dialects of these three grand divisions, they are numberless; the classification Mr. Bancroft has made of them covers eleven pages of his book. Of very many of them we find given a few examples of the words most commonly used, the paradigm of a verb, and often the version of the Lord’s Prayer. Many examples are also to be found of long words; the following must enliven Miztec spelling-matches; it means to stumble in walking; kavaundisasikandiyosauninahasahan.

A useful page is that in which the foolishness of proving analogies between different languages by the existence of words of similar sound and meaning is shown by a list of singular coincidences ; such are “ for the Sanscrit da, . . . the Cora ta (give); for eké, the Miztec ec (one); for mâ, the Tepehuana mai (not) and the Maya ma (no); for tschandra, the Kenai tschane (moon); for pada (foot), the Sekumne podo (leg); for kamâ, the Shoshone kamakh (to love) ; for pâ, the Kizh paa (to drink).” Enough are given to be the foundation of a very interesting volume to prove that the North American Indians are of Aryan origin.

In conclusion, we have only renewed congratulations and thanks to offer Mr. Bancroft for his faithful work. He has pushed on with the same perseverance and faithfulness, and the result is that we have a hook which cannot fail to he the standard authority on the subject of which it treats.

— It is difficult to repress a sense of disappointment and pain at seeing a name which we have been taught to revere attached to a volume so flimsy in its construction, so slipshod in style, and altogether so unworthy of a scholar as these essays of Mr. Carlyle’s on the Early Kings of Norway.⁶ If written merely for the entertainment of the readers of Fraser’s Magazine, in which they were first printed, they might, perhaps, have some excuse for being, but when gathered into a volume they naturally come to us with some pretension of historical accuracy, which, it is safe to say, they utterly fail to justify.

Mr. Carlyle’s career as an author, with all its intense beliefs and intenser prejudices, seems at last to have culminated in the conviction that the cudgel is the only true instrument of government; and his literary life for nearly half a, century, when seen from his present point of view, seems to present a kind of crescendo movement toward this loud and strongly detined finale. It is in perfect keeping with this theory that he divides the Kings of Norway into two grand classes, the anarchic and the anti-anarchic, the former of whom he paints very black, while he becomes the defender and partisan of the latter. Whether the ideal historian of the future is to be of the Ranke or the Mommsen type — whether he is to be an impartial, dispassionate critic, or a man of ardent convictions and prejudices — is a question which only posterity can settle; but we hardly run much risk in saying that that extreme exaggeration of the Mommsen type which Mr. Carlyle represents will hardly long survive when a new generation shall have ceased to feel that personal fascination with which a powerful individuality like his always invests it. At least, we hope for his own sake that his more lasting contributions to literature will not lend a pernicious immortality to this hasty compilation of illdigested facts, which, moreover, have long been accessible to the English-speaking public in Laing’s translation of Snorro Sturlason’s Sagas of the Kings of Norway.

Whatever may be said in defense of Mr. Carlyle’s theory of government, it is not to be denied that in its application to the Norwegian kings it is attended with serious disadvantages. Like any other extreme notion, it excludes the possibility of a fairminded judgment, and in some instances even leads to a positive distortion of facts. On pages 11 and 12, for instance, we read of Harald the Fairhaired, who was one of the anti-anarchic kings, and accordingly great, wise, and prosperous, that “ he managed his government, aided by Jarl Rögnwald and others, in a large, quietly potent and successful manner ; and it lasted in this royal form till his death, after sixty years of it. These were the times of colonization ; proud Norsemen flying into other lands, to freer scenes, — to Iceland, to the Faröe Islands, which were hitherto quite vacant,” etc.

This is Mr. Carlyle’s way of stating that the best and noblest families in Norway, rebelling against Harald’s tyranny in making them royal vassals and tenants instead of free bönder, depriving them of their Odels-ret, as the modern Norwegians call it, fled to Iceland, Greenland, and the Faröe Isles, and established there free, self-governing communities. Whether the king’s measures were just or not, which admits of a diversity of opinions, we believe that neither he himself nor any of his biographers has hitherto regarded their results in driving so many staunch freemen into exile as beneficial to the realm, or, as Mr. Carlyle would have us believe, as part of the general prosperity. Again, his portrait of Sverre Sigurdson, whom for some unaccountable reason be classes among the anarchic rulers, is made up of such random tints and touches as his hostile fancy abundantly suggests, but which a conscientious reference to the acknowledged authorities of Norse history would prove to be utterly false and inaccurate. Mr. Carlyle goes even to greater length ; he repeatedly emphasizes the doubt which existed concerning Sverre’s birth, and in the end asserts that his pretended father’s name was King Harald Wry-Mouth, instead of Sigurd.

It is quite safe to assert, judging from Mr. Carlyle’s capricious spelling of proper names, that he does not understand Icelandic, and has consequently never read the Sagas in the original. The name of the first king of Norway he spells Harald Haarfagr, which is indeed neither Norwegian nor Icelandic; the spelling of the Sagas being Haraldr Hárfagr, and that of modern Norwegian and Danish, Harald Haarfager. Again, if he had been consistent in rendering the Icelandic accented á with aa, as the Norwegians do, he would have written Haakon and not Hakon. Sveinn Tjuguskegg of Denmark is hardly twice referred to under the same name. Svein Double-Beard, Svein of the Double-Beard, the DoubleBearded, Fork-Beard, Svein of the Forked Beard, are all about equally correct translations of the famous surname, but must be very confusing to the reader whose knowledge of Norse does not enable him to trace these numerous variations to their linguistic source. Lundarsol he translates “ sunshine of the grove,” instead of “ sun of the grove.” But these and many other minor inaccuracies would hardly have been worth dwelling on, if Mr. Carlyle had not needlessly emphasized them by either ignoring or sharply criticising both Snorro (whom, observe, he knows only in more or less imperfect translations) and the labors of later scholars who have devoted, not a few hours of leisure in their old age, but a life-time, to this study of Norse language and history. It is indeed dangerous to move unsteadily on the ground where men like Freeman, Munch, Kaiser, Möbius, and Maurer have left the deep footprints of their march.

It is hard to imagine what can have started Mr. Carlyle on these aimless rambles through the Arctic forests of the North, where evidently he expects to find nothing to interest him, where he sees but savage customs and barren shores. His utter lack of sympathy with his subject reveals itself in every line and figure of speech; we seem to see the vivid gesture of disdain with which he greets these picturesquely barbaric kings (perhaps with two or three exceptions) as they pass in file before him. If he quotes their sayings, it is usually done in a random way, and with the addition of “ If I remember rightly,”“I think,” " I believe,” or a similar phrase. During a little domestic quarrel which Snorro describes very minutely because it was fraught with grave results, Mr. Carlyle makes Olaf Trygvesson say, “ Pooh, pooh, can’t we live without old Burislav and his properties ? ” which is, to say the least, a very inaccurate rendering of the king’s words. But the book abounds in equally absurd versions of passages which in their original garb would have appeared anything but Iudicrous. On page 105, where he describes Saint Olaf’s attempts to christianize Norway, he tells us that “ heathenism got itself smashed dead,” which was indeed not the case, as it was Olaf who “ smashed it dead.”

So soon as our historian comes to speak of one of the heroes of his own land, his tone undergoes a radical change. No more careless phrases, no contemptuous epithets, no random statements or reckless criticisms of half-known authorities. On Scottish ground he waxes warm with holy zeal, and his lively sympathy with the character of John Knox and his eager partisanship occasionally stimulate him into a vehemence of diction which cannot but remind us of the time when Sartor Resartus and the essays on Burns and Goethe and Jean Paul Richter kindled our blood and widened our vision. The many excellences of the dissertation on the Portraits of John Knox make the errors and the defects of the essays on the Kings of Norway even more glaringly conspicuous.

But after all it is the imperious spirit of Carlyle which in two different forms animates both, and to those who like Carlyle per se, and are indifferent about the Kings of Norway, the latter will perhaps yield no less enjoyment than the former.

— Many Americans who have earned the title of Howadji have met in their Egyptian journey a singular personage called Lady Duff Gordon. Few who knew her could have heard without regret of her death, and the volume containing her last letters⁷ and a short memoir of her by her daughter, Mrs. Ross, will he welcomed by all who made her acquaintance and a vast many besides. The memoir is the most interesting part of the book, and one cannot help wishing it had been longer, not only for the sake of the subject of the biography herself, but because she was surrounded all her life by people one has heard much of and would like to know more of, beginning with her parents. But it is written with a discreet English pen, severely aware of the limits of good sense and propriety, and leaving us in the pleasanter frame of mind of stimulated but unsatisfied curiosity, instead of sated and sickened with unmeaning detail, unmeasured praise, and undesirable disclosures. The brief account of her childhood and early years, in which her strong and peculiar character already made itself manifest, shows her growing up among a set of people, who more than any others in their country made their mark on the last half-century: James and John Stuart Mill, Bentham, Carlyle, Dickens, Thackeray, Tennyson. When a child, too, she met Heine, and those early recollections together with later ones, — for she repeatedly saw him in his long death-agony,—are a delightful contribution to our eagerly-cherished personal reminiscences of that unhappy genius. At nineteen Lucie Austin, as she then was, married Sir Alexander Duff Gordon after this peculiar courtship : “ One day Sir Alexander said to her, ‘ Miss Austin, do you know people say we are going to be married ? ’ She was annoyed at being talked about, and hurt at his brusque way of mentioning it, and was going to give a sharp answer, when he added, ‘ Shall we make it true ?' She replied with characteristic straight-forwardness by the monosyllable.

‘ Yes,’ and so they were engaged.” They were evidently created for each other. It was about this time that she made her first literary essay, the translation of Niebuhr’s Greek Legends. In the five years following she translated three other books, also from the German: those who have read The Amber Witch will remember what remarkable knowledge of that language and command of her own it shows, as well as a curious and admirable gift of assuming a quaint style suited to the subject, without effort or affectation. Such a performance is the result. of something far beyond mere accomplishments ; few young women of twentythree are so mature in their powers. A year or two later Sir Alexander and his wife translated together Ranke’s History of Prussia, and wrote Sketches of German Life; this and all other particulars which are given of their life, whether in London, in the country, or abroad, suggest a home which must be rare everywhere, — a husband and wife sharing each other’s pursuits and interests, with the same friends, the same tastes; the duties and pleasures belonging to their children, society, charity, and the cultivation of their own talents, holding their due proportions in the full and well-ordered existence, — rare everywhere, indeed, but hardly possible except in that well-regulated and balanced social system. It was all to be broken up, however, by Lady Duff Gordon’s ill-health. A severe illness in 1851 was the beginning of the trouble in her throat and lungs which sent her first to the Continent, then to the Cape of Good Hope, and finally to Egypt, where she remained from 1863 until 1869, once returning to England to see her family. She died at Cairo in the summer of 1869.

Her Letters from the Cape were first published in 1862 (and are reprinted in the present volume); subsequently her Letters from Egypt appeared, and finally these last letters. They were written to her family, and have the easy, familiar, chatty style of fireside talk; writing to those who knew all about the people she lived among, and the circumstances of her position, much is taken for granted which the outside reader would fain have made clear; with regard both to her own mode of life and Egyptian manners and customs generally, one often gasps for an explanation. She lived on the Nile, going up and down in a certain boat, which seems to have united the advantages and anxieties of keeping a house and a horse. But she took things easily ; everything but expense. She halted frequently on the way, and had a sort of headquarters in a house at Thebes built over a temple ; it belonged to the French government and was put at her disposal by the consul; here, with a few divans, a table or so, and

the minimum of pots and pans, she contrived to make herself entirely comfortable by conforming to the habits of the country. She speaks of two or three servants only, all natives, but she lived with a retinue of followers, Arab and Copt, Moslem and Eastern Christian, in a feudal or rather patriarchal combination of dignity and familiarity. Her life appears to have consisted in talking to them, and in nursing and doctoring them, — which she did with inexhaustible kindness, and skill, — listening to their stories, sympathizing with their troubles, which are many and heavy, joining in their religious observances (for her own amusement, or the sake of the picturesque, or to gratify them), and eating with them, as they are exceedingly hospitable and fond of giving repasts to their friends and patrons. She says that social distinctions are unknown in Egypt, and it certainly seems as if she were in equally good company whether dining with the donkey-boy, the washerwoman, the Cadi, or the Mufti, and met everywhere about the same variety of guests. No wonder her infrequent English visitors were startled to see her sitting on the floor with a parcel of half-dressed blacks, imperturbably taking her food from their fingers, which she says she prefers to forks, as the former are washed fifty times a day. Her accounts of it all are exceedingly entertaining ; she had the directness of vision and way of looking at the surface by which clever English people so often see the true relations of things when we miss them by trying to look deeper. She tells stories capitally, and tells a great many; some are very touching, too, though she does not lean much to the pathetic. The fate of the lower orders, which constitute nearly the entire population in Egypt, is deplorable, subject to the most arbitrary and despotic power, exercised with the caprice of a child and the cruelty of a Nero, and through the pressure of half a dozen intermediary authorities, each one turning a new screw in the rack : all this she sees, feels, and gives her mite to alleviate, with that humanity unimpeded by sensibility which makes English help often so efficient. She is very full of it all, and tells it in her letters, mixed with the most astonishing and bewildering gossip about Omar, Achmet, Sheyk Gussuf, the Meohn, and the little Darfoor boy, — we suppose her correspondents knew whom she meant,—with a propensity to talk about her neighbors and their smallest affairs which we have observed in the most cultivated of her countryfolk. The result, however, is a book of incomparable spirit and freshness, and an insight into the existing state of things in Egypt which not even About’s delightful Ahmed the Fellah pretends to give, One cannot doubt that the liveliest curiosity regarding other people’s mind, body, and estate was at the root of much of her benevolence, but perhaps that is a necessary ingredient in this humanity. She had her reward not only in the consciousness of the good she did, but in the adoration of the poor, gentle, simple people. They called her Noor-al-Noor, Light from the Light, a poetical and reverent adaptation of her own name Lucy, from lux : they spread the news of her good deeds as far as Mecca; they came from all directions and distances to consult her, and had faith in her as in a supernatural beneficence; her death was considered a calamity, and one cannot restrain a feeling of sadness that she was not buried among them at Thebes, as she had wished. She has added a notable name to the long list of English eccentricities.

One necessarily compares her with her celebrated country-woman, Lady Hester Stanhope, whose Eastern life offers the only parallel to Lady Duff Gordon’s; but the latter makes Chatham’s famous niece look like a theatrical personage by contrast with her simplicity, unconsciousness, and true goodness of heart.

— The most ardent lover of Harvard College, as well as the youngest and most enthusiastic of its graduates, will have no cause to be dissatisfied with, at any rate, the outward and visible signs of respect paid to the college in these two massive volumes.⁸ To those young gentlemen who are leaving what has been for some years their home, it probably seems as if, whatever troubles — which appear much magnified by their unwise elders — the world may have in store for them, it will only be necessary to run over the well-filled pages of the Harvard Book to forget them entirely ; they regard it as much more a к&3X03C4;ήϻα άєί than the works of Thucydides. In time, however, it will assume its own real value, and will he recognized for what it is, a rather confused collection of papers of different merit, all treating of college matters, and generally magnifying their importance. The history of the college by Mr. Samuel Eliot is full and interesting, and serves as an excellent introduction to the sketches that follow. Some of these, notably those on Harvard Square and Class Day, are entertaining, and redeem the useful but not brilliantstatistics which some of the subjects require. A fuller treatment of Harvard College it would be hard to devise. Every building it owns within or without its gates is described, in some cases with legal fullness and accuracy. Antiquarians will not be able to complain of careless treatment of their subjects by those who have written about the past. In almost every case specialists have been chosen to write on the matter they knew best. And, moreover, almost everything concerning the college finds mention. Many pages are devoted to accounts of ball-playing and boating, and both are treated with commendable fair-mindedness. The fullest statistics are given, which, in doubtful cases, cun serve as unimpeachable evidence.

It is not necessary to enumerate all that these two large volumes contain ; they do more than satisfy the most inquiring curiosity ; they entertain as well as instruct. The illustrations — wood - engravings and heliotyped photographs — are full and interesting. The honored graduate will find in the text, as well as in the heliotype, a great deal to remind him of the past and to make him familiar with recent changes. How well those who are unfamiliar with the college will be able to form any definite notion of it. from even this full collection of facts, it would be hard to say. They, naturally, would find the book of less interest than would the limited public for which it is specially intended. What they might miss is any reference, except some trifling, incidental ones, to the course of study at the college. An interesting chapter, and one of the greatest value, might have been added, made as complete as careful investigation could make it, of the instruction given in the past, and that now given in all the different departments of the university. This, it seems to us, would have raised the book from the position of an album, which it now holds, to one of authority ; and, moreover, it would have freed it from the objection of being a book about a college, which omits speaking of the main business of a college. No one person could have taken this task upon himself, but a wise distribution of it among different hands was not impossible. Such a chapter, or series of chapters, might well have taken the place of the brief biographies of the professors and the fac-similes of their signatures.

The college graduate’s affection for his triennial catalogue is well known ; but that will sink into neglect by the side of these larger and more important volumes.

— Unlike some other recent pulpit oratory, sermons like those about King David,⁹ with which Dr. Taylor fills four hundred and thirty-three closely printed pages, seem “ harmless ” if not “ necessary.” When we try to think what the sensations of the Protestant clergyman must be when first he realizes that he is pledged to produce a hundred sermons a year, more or less, during his natural life, we are ready to forgive him for spinning along and tenuous thread and studying the art of dilution anxiously. But those who really desire to become acquainted with the greatest of Jewish monarchs and one of the greatest of all, one who stands among men and kings very much indeed like Launcelot among knights, will, perhaps, do as well to go to the Bible itself. There are two narratives of the king’s life and reign, both terse, dramatic, and affecting, and singularly confirming one another. There are his matchless works in full, and there are no independent sources of information. Therefore, except for subjective reasons, one does not see the advantage of making so very much longer a story out of one which cannot be told better than at first.

— Doing and Dreaming ¹⁰ is a little story of a decidedly religions character, which may well find its place in a Sunday-school library. Within a very moderate compass we have one young man go blind, one young woman die, another half kill herself by copying to pay her father’s debts, and still another neglect her work in order to read and write poetry and indulge in useless reveries. This is not a story that will ever supplant The Initials in the common estimation, but it will probably suit the public for which it is designed. At any rate, it has the advantage of conveying religious instruction without at the same time inclining the young reader to adopt bad grammar or vulgar ways, as some books of excellent moral aim do. But even with this great merit in its favor, the unregenerate reader will find it hard to forgive the writer’s bloodthirstiness in regard to her characters. They are created but to die untimely at the most harrowing moments.

— By the will of the late Richard Fletcher, a special fund was left under the care of the trustees of Dartmouth College, from the avails of which they are to offer biennially a prize of five hundred dollars for the best essay on the degree of conformity with what are known as the customs of the, world, proper for an orthodox Christian. The first award under this bequest was made in September, 1874, to the Rev. D. W. Faunce, and his essay has been reprinted by Roberts Brothers under the title of The Christian in the World.¹¹ Mr. Faunce is master of a style which is very nearly perfect for didactic purposes; direct, earnest, cordial, and wholly free from affectation. His spirit is strict and his scheme of life a trifle ascetic, but his is never a sour asceticism, and austerity is at all events better than license.

FRENCH AND GERMAN.4

It must have been with some uneasiness that Mérimée’s Unknown saw the announcement of a volume of his Letters to another Unknown.¹² It must have been a consolation to her, however, to notice the large number of pages without a line of print upon them, and the cool, airy spaces between the lines in the printed letters, and when she read the book it must have been with great satisfaction at the harmlessness of this rival book. Without doubt, too, she speaks in terms of very high praise about this little collection of letters, more high perhaps than it deserves. Those readers who seek for such entertainment as they found in the letters to the first Unknown will be less pleased. Even Mérimée, with all the adoration he received, was truly frank to but one of his correspondents, apparently, and we learn from this volume only what we knew before, that he was a man whose view of life was far from cheering, that in society he was not imposed upon by nonsense, and that he was an entertaining letter-writer. This, the second Unknown, wins a Polish lady, a friend of the late Empress of the French, and by her appointed présidente of a court of love of which Mérimée was the secretary. The main importance of this game was the intimacy which produced these letters between the two officers of the society. They are in no way love-letters; far from it; they are amusing, friendly notes, gossiping, and in a way malicious. The first was written March 1 1, 1865, the last, April 23, 1870; there are forty-nine in all, and for the most part worth reading. But the first Unknown has no need of uneasiness about her correspondence ; that still remains by far the most important, and she can now feel satisfactorily indifferent about her rivals.

— Perhaps some of our readers may recall a volume by Mr. Hillebrand, Frankreich und die Franzosen, which was noticed in these pages rather more than two years ago. In that interesting book was to be found a capital study of the French people and their ways and actions, made by one who knew them intimately, and who was able to write about them with freedom from prejudice. The volume just published, Wälsches und Deutsches,¹³ is a sequel to that one. It is composed of a number of articles taken from different journals, and treating of a number of subjects of interest at the present time. Italy, France, and Germany, in the order named, give food for discussion. Those essays which treat of some recent appearances in German literature seem to us the most interesting of the book. Those on French subjects, treating briefly of Mérimée, Jules Michelet, and Flaubert’s Tentation de St. Antoine, have no marked importance which would have made their suppression a serious loss. On the other hand, the Italian essays are entertaining and instructive. Coming to the last division of the book we find first a demolition of the glory of Gervinus, whose reputation, it may be fair to say, is of an artificial, ungenuine sort, accepted by every one as a part of his liberal education,—somewhat like the monument on Mount Washington to the young woman who died there, which consists of a heap of stones, deposited not by afflicted relatives and friends, but by travelers as an incident of their journey, in compliance with the custom mentioned in the guide-book. Mr. Hillebrand’s article is not mere contemptuous depreciation, but very rational enumeration of the faults of the imposing historian, with what seems like due credit when praise is deserved. The whole article is very well worth reading ; it is thoughtful, intelligent, and suggestive. In a foot-note he calls attention to the good influence of the Jews in German development. He says with truth that this would he an admirable subject for the historian, they having always served to counterbalance too exclusive, narrowing devotion to German theories. They introduced cosmopolitan notions. More than this may well be said of them ; a very great share of German success in many different branches is due to them.

Dr. Nietzsche, a modern writer, comes in for laudatory mention. Mr. Hillebrand sees in him one who has struck the note of reaction against those German virtues which have become in time German faults, and praises him accordingly. That Nietzsche is justified in much of his fault-finding cannot be denied. He attacks Strauss for his book, The Old Faith and the New, which is reasonable enough, but when he sees the obvious fault of the present day, the disposition on the part of shadow-minded people to varnish themselves with recent information and call it culture, it requires a hasty motion of the mind to decide that this has its origin in the excessive study of history, yet that is what Nietzsche holds. The man of to-day, according to him, knows a great deal about culture, instead of being cultivated, because German scholars pretended that history was a science. While we agree with him heartily in denouncing the flagrant folly of mistaking information for culture, it is hard to put the blame where he puts it, on the scientific study of history. It would seem to belong more fairly to the comfortable study of compendiums, cyelopædias, text-books, etc., which are like “ parlor cars ” running on the road to learning. Scholars, to secure a speedy fame, find that they have to bring their wares to a more and more fastidious public, and are tempted to try to sugar their pills more lusciously than their neighbors can. The public, finding a life-time can be spent in study of graceful literary and artistic elegancies, devotes itself to them instead of ruggeder work, and the result is all the second or third hand information flaunted in our faces by people who have got the first look into whatever volume is to be the generally re- ceived authority for the next six months, not to know and preach which shall be accounted as æsthetic heresy. Mr. Hillebrand praises Nietzsche’s style, in our opinion, much more warmly than it deserves, for at times this foe of historical study roars like a common scold.

Mr. Hillebrand also, in making mention of one of Nietzsche’s publications, speaks at some length about Schopenhauer, whom he admires as a writer, as a philosopher, and as a thinker. In one passage, not in this chapter however, Mr. Hillebrand seems to us to be in error. He speaks of the contempt which Schopenhauer had to endure in his life-time, when he was almost entirely ignored by all except a faithful few, and then proceeds to excuse some of Wagner’s outbursts of self-praise as if he also were despised and neglected by a cold world. The musician of the distant future is held up to our admiration as a buffeted martyr, who cannot get a hearing, who keeps perfect control of his temper until the last minute, and then in despair utters some impatient expression of wrath which we should he ashamed to remember against him. In fact, however, Wagner has every reason to he proud of his success, if of nothing else. It is not every would-be reformer who has money poured out by the public to aid his plans, who has an opera-house built for him to try his experiments in, who by lamenting the scorn with which he is treated gets his operas performed in every large city of Europe and North America, and who in Germany is one of the most popular musicians of all time. This is making martyrdom cheap and giving away its crown to any one who can manage to make himself popular. Beethoven’s experience was of a very different kind, and the comparison between the two men, in this respect at least, is well Worthy of note. The worship of Schopenhauer goes together with that of Wagner, in the school to which Mr. Hillebrand belongs, and, it may be said, adorns. He brings to the discussion of the affairs of Germany a mind full of information, polished by cultivation and ripened by experience, but after all it may well be questioned whether he is not at his best in the discussion of some of the more trifling matters he takes up, such as German literary style, or the peculiarities of Prince Pückler-Muskau, who falls a ready prey to the scornful critic. We see a third volume announced, which is to treat of England; it will be interesting to notice how Mr. Hillebrand performs this arduous part of the task he has set himself in his career as a literary observer. It is a country about which a great deal is yet left to be said, and it is to be hoped that the volume treating it will be made up with more care than the one before us to-day, which hardly fulfills the promise of its title, although it is an entertaining book.

— A new story of Tourguénieff’s that has just appeared in a German dress is Punin and Baburin.¹⁴ It has the form of the reminiscences of an old man, who recalls the time when, a hoy of twelve, he was living with his grandmother. She took into her employ a man, Baburin, who became a sort of secretary. He was an ardent republican, but the most singular thing about him was his affection for a companion, Punin, who was one of the strange, half-witted creatures Tonrguénieff is so fond of drawing. The boy becomes very much attached to the amiable Punin, and is somewhat repelled by the coldness of his severer companion. In time the two men are dismissed by the boy’s grandmother, and nothing is seen of them for several years. The narrator comes across them at different periods of his life, when a student at the university and again when older. There is a melancholy romance in it, and the whole story partakes of the gloom which is so frequently to be observed in what this author writes. Still, in this case it may be questioned whether it is any gloomier than any other biography. The fault with the story is that while it opens well and promises much, it is not carried out consistently to its end. The writer seems to have tired of it, and to have left it in an unfinished state. It is no more than a study, but the opening pages deserve reading, and the whole tale may indeed be recommended, after warning is given that it is not one of Tourguénieff’s best. There follows it in the same volume Die lebendige Mumie, which finds its true place in the excellent Mitau translation of this author’s works, in his Skizzen aus dem Tagebuche eines Jägers. More than half the volume is filled with a sensational story, Spurlos Verschwunden, by the translator of the Russian Tales. It is a story of murder, and the author has at last recognized the fact so familiar to readers, that in stories of this sort the murdered person always seems to have been justly removed, while all our sympathy, against the author’s wishes, is given to the murderer, whom every one persecutes. Try as we will we cannot help hoping he will get off. In this case the murderer, a woman, does get off; she is never found out, but she has a bad time, not with her conscience so much as with the unconscious justice of events; and the hangman would have been a relief to her. As may be imagined, this is not a story of the highest art, but it produces at intervals the desired feeling of horripilation.

— Auerbach, in a little volume just issued, entitled Drei einzige Töchter,¹⁵ interests his readers by less violent means. The stories he has collected are three in number. The first, Dor Fels der Ehrenlegion, tells of the love of a young German lady for a painter whom she meets in foreign parts. There is considerable cleverness in the drawing of some of the people, especially of the heroine and her old schoolmate. The construction of the story is not its most admirable point; by the time the heroine is out walking near where the artist is painting, the reader feels most marked premonitions of the impending spraining of her ankle a few pages further on. This artist is painting a rock, and calls it the rock of the legion of honor because a picture of his, representing it, had won him that decoration; after the marriage, the father of the heroine is returning home with this picture in his charge, and he holds the following conversation with the stationmaster : —

“It is a picture painted by my son-in-law. Come and see me, and you shall have a look at it.”

“What does it represent? Monte Rosa, the Righi, or the Jungfrau ? ”

“ Nothing of the sort. An unknown cliff on the Lake of Lucerne; no one except us knows it; it used to be called the Rock of the Legion of Honor; it is now called the Rock of Love.”

And with that eloquent remark the story ends. Fortunately no one knows this cliff, so that travelers in Switzerland cannot have the pleasure of a sail on the lake spoiled by having it pointed out; but carving advertisements on rocks seems a noble employment in comparison with labeling them in this way.

The second story, Auf Wache, has already been mentioned in these pages in speaking of the new German magazine, the Rundschau. Nannchen von Mainz is the title of the third. It is a story of the Rhine country, as its name indeed indicates. This is much like some of the author’s earlier work. It tells how a young girl of Mainz fell in love with a Prussian soldier, much to the wrath of her father, and how finally they were married. It is a clever enough little story, and it is amusing to notice that it has, or rather had, its political meaning, in showing how much ill-feeling existed between different sections of Germany. In a brief paragraph at the end, the writer says that although it was written only in 1864, it might have been written a century before, the present condition of things being so unlike what is there represented.

On the whole, the main value of this little volume is that it is essential in order to fill up one’s set of Auerbach ; the stories are very trifling in themselves. They show, however, the singular mixture of intelligence and simplicity which characterizes all his work, although with but little of the pathos and humor which serve to calm the reader’s occasional impatience at his tactlessness. It is to be hoped that we may soon see the volume from him which, it is whispered, contains a number of stories fully equal to his best. Perhaps these now before us are thrown out to serve as a foil.

PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

John B. Bachelder, Boston : Popular Resorts, and how to reach them. Combining a Brief Description of the Prineipal Summer Retreats in the United States, and the Routes of Travel leading to them. By John B. Bachelder.

Cincinnati Industrial Exposition of Manufactures, Products, and the Arts. Rules and Premium List of the Sixth Exposition. 1875.

Circulars of Information of the Bureau of Education. No. 3,1875. An Account of the Systems of Public Instruction in Belgium, Russia, Turkey, Servia, and Egypt. No. 4, 1875. Waste of Labor in the Work of Education. By P. A. Chadbourne, D. D., President of Williams College, Mass. No. 5, 1875. Suggestions respecting the Educational Exhibit at the international Centennial Exhibition, 1876.

Congregational Publishing Society, Boston : Conversations of Jesus. As recorded by John, but occasionally supplemented by the reports of the other Evangelists.

Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati : Songs of the Year and other Poems. By Charlton.

Dodd and Mead, New York : The French at Home, By Alfred Rhodes. With Numerous Illustrations Estes and Lauriat, Boston: Woman’s Love, or Like and Unlike. By J. F. Smith. —Maud or Nina. By J. G. Whyte Melville.— Counterparts, or the Cross of Love. By the Author of Ramon and Charles Auchester. — Open! Sesame! By Florence Marryatt. — A Woman’s Ransom. By Frederick William Robinson,

Experimentation on Animals, as a Means of Knowledge in Physiology, Pathology, and Practical Medicine. By J.C.Dalton, M. D., Author of Physiology in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York.

J. B. Ford & Co., New York : The Abbé Tigrane, Candidate for the Papal Chair. By Ferdinand Fabre, Translated by the Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon.— A Summer Parish : Sabbath Discourses and Morning Service of Prayer, at the Twin Mountain House, White Mountains, New Hampshire, during the Summer of 1874. By Henry Ward Beecher. Phonographically reported by T. J. Ellin wood.

Bradley Garretson & Co., Philadelphia: Wood’s Bible Animals. A Description of the Habits, Structure, and Uses of every Living Creature mentioned in the Scriptures, Illustrated with over One Hundred New Designs by Keyl, Wood, and E A. Smith; engraved by G. Pearson By the Rev, J. G. Wood, M. A., F. L. S. To which are added Articles on Evolution, by Rev. James McCosh, D. D., President of the College of New Jersey ; and Research and Travel in Bible Lauds, by Rev. Daniel March, D. D.

William F. Gill & Co., Boston : Life in Paris. Letters on Art, Literature, and Society. By Arsene Houssaye. — The Silent Withess. A Novel, By Edmund Yates. — The Marriage of Moira Fergus. A Novel. By William Black. —The Satchel Series. Vol. I. Stories, Poems, Essays, and Sketches. By Miss M. E. Braddon, Wilkie Collins, Owen Meredith, M. Quad, and others. Fully Illustrated.

Harper and Brothers, New York: Miss Angel. A Novel. By Miss Thackeray. With Illustrations.— Sermons out of Church. By the Author of John Halifax, Gentleman,etc. — The Way we Live now. A Novel. By Anthony Trollope. With Illustrations. — Ward or Wife. A Romance.— Playing the Mischief. A Novel. By J. W. DeForest.— Eglantine. A Novel. By Eliza Tabor. — The Character and Logical Method of Political Economy. By J. E. Cairnes, LL. D,, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy in University College, London.—The Lady Superior. A Novel. By Eliza F. Pollard.

Henry Holt & Co., New York : Within an Ace. By Mrs. C. Jenkin. — On the Heights. A Novel, By Berthold Auerbach. Translated by Simon Adler Stern. — Whiteladies. A Novel. By Mrs, Oliphant.

Lee and Shepard, Boston : Childhood: The TextBook of the Age, for Parents, Pastors, and Teachers, and all Lovers of Childhood. By Rev. W. F. Crafts. — In the Kitchen. By Elizabeth S. Miller.

J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia: Log-Book of a Fisherman and Zoölogist. By Frank Buck land, M. A., late Student of Christ Church, Oxford, inspector of Salmon Fisheries for England and Wales, etc. Illustrated. —Principal, or Basis of Social Science. Being a Survey of the Subject from the Moral and Theological, yet Liberal and Progressive Standpoint. By R. J. Wright.— English Gipsy Songs. In Rommany. With Metrical English Translations by Charles G. Leland, Professor E. H. Palmer, and Janet Tuckey.

Longmans, Green, & Co , London: Skull and Brain: Their Indications of Character and Anatomical Relations. By Nicholas Mergan. Illustrated by Lithographic and Wood Engravings.

Mutual Life Insurance Co. of New York: Plain Directions for Accidents, Emergencies, and Poisons. — Plain Directions for the Care of the Sick, and Recipes for Sick People. By a Fellow of the College of Physiciaus of Philadelphia.

James R. Osgood & Co., Boston : Illustrated Homes. A Series of Papers describing Real Houses and Real People. By E. C. Gardner. With Illustrations.— Little Classics. Vol. XIV. Poems Lyrical. Edited by Rossiter Johnson. — A Nine Days’ Wonder. A Novelette. By Hamilton Aïdé.

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York: Schiller’s Die Piccolomini. Edited, with an Introduction, Commentary, Index of Persons and Places, and Map of Germany, by James Morgan Hart.

Report of the Board of Commissioners Fifth Cincinnati Industrial Exposition. 1874.

John Ross & Co., New York: Mansions of the Skies. An Acrostic Poem on the Lord’s Prayer. By W. P. Chilton, Jr,

John Ross X Co., Edinburgh : The Gentle Shepherd. A Pastoral Comedy. By Allan Ramsay. Edited, with a Life of the Author, and a Reference Glossary, by J. R.

Scribner, Armstrong, & Co., New York: Bric-aBrae Series. Personal Reminiscences by O'Keeffe, Kelly, and Taylor. Edited by Richard H. Stoddard E. H Swinney,New York: Statement of Reasons for embracing the Doctrines and Disclosures of Emanuel Swedenborg. By the Rev. George Bush, late Professor of Hebrew in the N. Y. University.

John F. Trow, New York : Trow’s New York City Directory, for the Year ending May 1, 1876.

Twentieth Annual Report of the Board of Directors of the St. Louis Public Schools, for the Year ending August 1, 1874,

D. Van Nostrand, New York : European LightHouse Systems ; Being a Report of a Tour of Inspection made in 1873, by Major George 11. Elliot, Corps of Engineers U. S. A., Member and Engineer Secretary of the Light-House Board, under the Authority of Hon. William A. Richardson, Secretary of the Treasury. Illustrated by fifty-one engravings and thirty-one wood-cuts in the text.

A. Williams & Co., Boston: The Requisites for a Church School, and the Adaptedness of the Protestant Episcopal Church for the Work of Religious Education. By the Rev. David Greene Haskins.— Idothea; or the Divine Image. A Poem. By Joseph Salyards.

Wilson, Hinkle, & Co., New York: The GradedSchool First Reader : The Graded - School Second Reader: The Graded - School Third Reader; The Graded-School Fourth Reader; The Graded-Sehool Fifth Reader; The Graded-School Primary Speller. By T. W. Harvey, A. M.

Wright and Potter, State Printers, Massachusetts : Sixth Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Libor. March, 1875.