Books of the Month

History and Biography. The Memorial Edition of Abbott’s Young Christian will have its special value for readers through the biographical sketch of the author by one of his sons, which is prefixed. Mr. Abbott was unwilling to have a formal biography published, and his sons with right feeling respected his wishes, at the same time meeting a very general demand by giving the public some information regarding a writer who numbers multitudes among his readers. The sketch will be found exceedingly interesting, and the good sense and true humility of the subject admirably presented. (Harpers.) — The Constitutional History of England, by Charles Duke Yonge (Harpers), is intended by its author to serve as a supplement to Hallam; it covers the century between I760 and 1860, and is conceived in a modest spirit, the author referring to himself as the compiler. There appears to be no reference to Mr.

May’s work. —Frederick Martin’s The Statesman’s Year-Book for 1882 (Macmillans) is the nineteenth annual issue of this important manual. It is revised after official returns, and is more useful to the English-speaking student than the Almanach de Gotha, which it resembles in its personal details, while the statistical information upon all points appears to have been collected with great care.—Lady Jackson’s The Old Régime, court, salons, and theatres (Holt) has been reissued. It is an Englishwoman’s presentation of the gossip which collects about the decadence of France in the eighteenth century. — The seventh volume of Campaigns of the Civil War (Scribners) treats of The Army of the Cumberland, and is by General H. M. Cist, who was a staff-officer of both Thomas and Rosecrans. It has to deal with a series of exciting battles, including that of Chickamauga and the three days’ fighting about Chattanooga. — Mr. Philip H. Bagenal, B. A., has written a little volume on The American Irish and their Influence on Irish Politics, which has been reprinted by Roberts Brothers, and is a curious example of the struggle which an Irishman has between pride in his country and a desire to put his countrymen in the wrong. The author appears to be opposed to the laud league, but exceedingly proud of his countrymen, on whatever side of the conflict they happen to be. He does not seem to have very exact historical knowledge, or very strong analytical powers. — Quatre-Bras, Ligny, and Waterloo (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) is a painstaking narrative of the campaign in Belgium in 1815, by Dorsey Gardner. The situation is an interesting one: Mr. Gardner, an American student, passes in review a conflict about which a vast literature has accumulated concerning two great European nations, and publishes his work simultaneously in England and America. By the use of abundant foot-notes the author has enriched his narrative without retarding it, and by a copious index he places every part of his work at the easy service of the reader. — Molinos the Quietist, by John Bigelow (Scribners), is a brochure which will attract by its négligée dress, and hold the reader by the agreeable qualities of the narrative. Readers of John Inglesaut will be interested by the coincidence of the two books, and Longfellow’s sonnet to Whittier will give a pleasant association with the name of Molinos.— Charlotte Cushman is the latest volume in the American Actor Series. (Osgood.) Mrs. Clara Erskine Clement, the author, is already well known by her hand-books of art; in this volume she has divided her work with Miss Stebbins, whose biography was largely personal, while Mrs. Clement has to do with Miss Cushman’s professional history. — Thomas à Kempis and the Brothers of Common Life, by the Rev. S. Kettlewell (Putnams), is a careful and exhaustive monograph in two volumes, treating of the religious revival out of which arose the He Imitatioae Christi. Mr. Kettlewell writes not as an antiquary, but as an historian of broad sympathies, and his work will find many who would be repelled by a merely learned treatise. — The American edition of Froude’s Thomas Carlyle (Scribners) is in two volumes, like the English issue. The American publishers, however, have dropped the commonplace wood-cuts, which add little to the value of the London book. We content ourselves here with saying that the work has been added to the Franklin Square Library (Harper & Bros.) in very readable type. The same publishers have also brought out a 12mo cloth edition, with portraits and illustrations.

Philosophy and Theology. Outlines of Primitive Belief among the Indo-European Races, by Charles Francis Keary, of the British Museum (Scribners), is a study in Aryan religion in the historical method. Mr. Keary reaches by this method results which agree substantially with those obtained by the student in comparative mythology, and he resolves most lines into those which bound the creed of nature worship. The book will be found one of much interest. —Eternal Purpose, a Study of the Scripture Doctrine of Immortality, by William R. Hart (Lippincott), has passed to a second edition, and the author has taken the opportunity to add an essay on life, temporal and eternal, which in some degree contains the thought of the book. — The Perfect Way, or the Finding of Christ (Field & Tuer, London), is a small quarto, printed on bluish paper, and calculated in its general appearance to excite curiosity. The authorship is veiled, — everything is veiled in the book; the very color of the paper makes a hazy atmosphere; and the announcement is made that, the lectures which constitute the volume were delivered originally in London before a private audience, another touch of mystery. The profundity of the mystery increases as one begins to read, and finds himself chasing Greek phantoms, which turn upon him and declare themselves Christian ghosts. The authors—for there is a vague reference to a dark conspiracy — wander amongst the ruins of the Christian religion, which seems to have just suffered from some dynamite explosion, and pick out the foundation stones for use in a new structure. In brief, the revelation which is proffered gets no farther than the preliminary velation. —The Sabbath Question is the short title of a volume made up of a sermon and two speeches upon Sunday observances and Sunday laws, by the Rev. Leonard Woolsey Bacon, and of six sermons by his brother, the late Rev. George Blagden Bacon. (Putnams.) The book appeals to an enlightened conscience and a generous Christian sentiment.

Poetry and the Drama. Cagliostro, a Dramatic Poem in five acts, by Edward Doyle (printed for the author by W. B. Smith & Co., New York), appears to be a test of sanity. Let the reader read it as far as he can, and then go off in a corner and engage in a self-examination. There will be a verdict of some sort on somebody. Ifh he cannot read the dramatic poem, let him try himself on the prefatory notes and foot-notes. It is the topsiest-turviest piece of literature we have met this many a day, — Sonnets ancl Canzonets, by A. Bronson Alcott (Roberts), is a volume which will appeal to the friendliness of the reader, as well as stimulate his critical faculty. Mr. Alcott has interwoven into his lines so much personal history and sentiment that poetry comes to one’s fireside and sits familiarly in the corner. Mr. F. B. Sanborn prefaces the volume with an affectionate letter and a dissertation upon the form adopted by Mr. Alcott for his verse. Mr. Sanborn’s brief paper proves — if it prove anything — that Mr. Alcott is not alone in his misapprehension of the structure and compass of the sonnet. — Eadburga, Queen of Wessex, and other poems, by William E. Nowlan, Jr. (M. H. Keenan, printer, Boston). is a thin volume, which represents a fluency of form, an agreeable sentiment, and some ingenuity in construction. The best thing about the volume is a certain brightness of invention in the story, which appears in the poems The Penitent and Noblesse Oblige, but after all the poetic form which should make the poems worth while is only a faint echo of a forgotten style. — Rip Van Winkle, a sun myth, and other poems, by Augustus Radcliffe Grote (Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., London), will interest readers of The Atlantic, in whose memory some of Mr. Grote’s verses will linger. The incident of the publication of an American poet’s book in England need not deter one from looking closely into it; the poems are the dreams of a scientific man of imagination. — Story of Chief Joseph, by Martha Perry Lowe (Lothrop), is a little illustrated volume, in which Bishop Hare’s pathetic narrative is turned by a sympathetic woman into smooth verse.

Travel and Adventure. A Parisian Year, by Henry Bacon (Roberts), is a light and agreeable sketch of twelve months in Paris by an American artist living there. These sketches in literature are accompanied by sketchy illustrations by the author. Some of them are good enough to make one wish that they were not all of the “process ” kind, good enough for memoranda, but leaving a general impression of undress art. — History and Causes of the Incorrect Latitudes as recorded in the journals of the early writers, navigators, and explorers, relating to the Atlantic coast of North America, 1535-1740, is a curious little pamphlet by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, of Boston, which will appal the untechnical reader by suggesting the difficulties which lie in the way of historical investigation. Any one who has tried to find just where an early traveler landed on the coast will be almost ready to take refuge in a skepticism regarding the very existence of the traveler. — Matabele Land and the Victoria Falls is drawn from the letters and journals of the late Frank Oates, a naturalist who penetrated the interior of South Africa. It is edited by C. G. Oates (C. Kegan Paul & Co., London), who also supplies a memoir, and is well illustrated by wood-cuts, colored plates, and maps. An extended appendix gathers up the result of the naturalist’s collections and studies in a series of papers and lists by such scientific specialists as Westwood, Rolleston, Sharpe, and others. The good breeding and high character of the young naturalist, his honorable ambition, and his untimely fate render the book more than a record of travel and adventure, for the reader carries a personal regard for the traveler from first to last.— One may take his choice of titles in Mr. S. S. Cox’s book, which hears on the title-page two names, Arctic Sunbeams and From Broadway to the Bosphorus by way of the North Cape, while the head-line carries From Pole to Pyramid. (Putnams.) This variegated name covers travels in Holland, Norway and Sweden, Lapland and Russia. Mr. Cox is a traveler who never loses his spirits and good-nature, and if he sometimes loses his head in his excitement over scenery, the reader can get amusement instead of heat. His language is the English of the Cox di-

Fine Arts. The title-page of Bartolozzi and his Works, by Andrew W. Tuer, gives some intimation of the treatment of the subject. The general title is followed by the words, “A biographical and descriptive account of the Life and Career of Francesco Bartolozzi, R. A. (illustrated), with some observations on the present demand for and value of his prints; the way to detect modern impressions from worn-out plates and to recognize falsely-tinted impressions; deceptions attempted with prints; print-collecting, judging, handling, etc.; together with a list of upwards of two thousand — the most extensive record yet compiled — of the great.”It is a book and print collector’s book, rather than a literary biography, and with its luxurious paper, pretty copper-plates, vellum binding, and blank leaves for extending the catalogue, it appeals to the self-indulgent bibliomaniac. It is published by Field & Tuer in London, and by Scribner & Welford, New York. — The Graphic Arts, by P. G. Hamerton (Roberts), is further described on the title-page as a treatise on the varieties of drawing, painting, and engraving in comparison with each other and with nature, and is in effect an untechnical narrative for the general reader, written by a man capable of technical writing, and doing his work out of a catholic interest in art. Mr. Hamerton is always agreeable; he is an artist who assumes the rôle of an amateur, and always with success.

Fiction. In the collected edition of Dr. Holland’s writings we have The Bay Path, his earliest story, an historical novel of the colonial age of New England, and Arthur Bonnicastle, which appeared ten years or so ago in Scribner. The serious preface to The Bay Path is Dr. Holland’s apology for writing fiction. (Scribners. —The Adventures of Halek, an Autobiographical Fragment, by John H. Nicholson (Dutto), may be profound and vast, but we frankly confess that it seems to us an enigma of dullness. Halek in the early part of the last century, in Voltaire’s hands, for instance, would have been witty and indecent. Now, he is clothed in the same vague orientalism, but has passed through a serious conversion, which renders him more respectable, but more tiresome also. — A Fascinating Woman, by Madame Edmond Adam (Petersons), is preceded by a sketch of the author in the reserved style of the biography of contemporary heroines. The story is not to be regarded as a novelist’s work, but as the feverish revelation which a public woman makes of herself under the guise of fiction. — Keeping the Vow is a story, by Mrs. Morgan Morgan (Walter Smith, London), of Scottish and English life near the close of the last century. It is a domestic story of refined feeling, but of no special artistic value. — Belgian Days, by Kate Byam Martin (Jansen, McCIurg & Co., Chicago), is a story of the fortunes of an American governess in a Belgian family. Its pictures of interior life in Belgium have some claim on the attention, and the story is unaffected and fairly interesting. — The Homestretch, by S. M. A. C. (Geo. W. Harlan, New York), is a Story, the scene of which is laid in that extraordinary South of the Southern imagination, and the characters are those fervid men and women who live in that land, and nowhere else, while the moral appears to be equally imaginary.—In the Leisure Hour Series (Holt), Heaps of Money, by W. E. Norris, author of Matrimony, is one of the latest issues. The book is one of Mr. Norris’s earlier works, but readers who have easily been pleased with his later novels need not be shy of this. — Dorothea, the latest volume in the Round Robin Series (Osgood), is a light and amateurish work.

Literary Criticism. Men and Books, or Studies in Homiletics, by Austin Phelps (Scribners), is the kind and wise advice of a trainer of the clergy grown mellow in his office, intended for students in theology who are to be leaders of men, and not doctrinaires. One can find no fault with a spirit which arises to broaden the minds of young ministers by enlarging the scope of their taste and reflection. Some even who read books upon Dr. Phelps’s suggestion for the good they are to get from them will come to enjoy them without reference to their own professional training.— Notable Thoughts about Women, a literary mosaic by Maturin M. Ballou (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is so far critical that it contains a long list of authors drawn from, and a still longer index of subjects. There are thirty-four hundred and seventy-one thoughts about women, of which the greater number gather about Beauty, Love, and Lovers. If one has never thought about women here is his opportunity to help himself to other people’s opinions, and a very curious and entertaining medley he will find it.

Text-Books and Education. Ida C. Craddock, Teacher of Phonography in Girard College, Philadelphia, has prepared and published Primary Phonography, an introduction to Isaac Pitman’s system of phonetic short-hand; with a series of original exercises, written principally in the simple characters of the phonographic alphabet, without contraction. The extension of the system in so many directions, in business and study, renders a work like this of value in familiarizing the student with dictation exercises. — Selections from the Latin Poets, edited by Professor E. P. Crowell, of Amherst (Ginn, Heath & Co.), contains examples of Catullus, Lucretius, Tibullus, Propertius, Ovid, and Lucan. It is a pity that a book which contains otherwise such good workmanship should lack a table of contents. Aside from this slight defect, the book is praiseworthy, and ought to widen the range of college acquaintance with Latin literature. — The Song Wave is the meaningless title of a collection for school and home use of melodies, part songs, glees, duets, quartets, and all the variety of musical composition. It is a mystery to us why music-books should so often have silly titles. The collection here has the customary jumble of good and commonplace music and verses.

Science. A fourth edition has been issued of Dr. Simon Newcomb’s Popular Astronomy (Harpers), in which the principal additions relate to the great telescopes completed within the last three years, the transit of Venus of December 6, 1882, and recent developments in cometary astronomy. The work, as its title indicates, is not intended for the professional investigator, but aims to present the general reading public with a condensed view of the history, methods, and results of astronomical research, and includes the latest and most interesting news from the heavens. — Science and Culture, and other Essays, by T. H. Huxley (Appletons), is a collection of Professor Huxley’s miscellaneous writings, produced at intervals during the past seven years. They were originally published for the most part in Macmillan, the Nineteenth Century, The Fortnightly, the Contemporary, and Nature, and take up subjects more or less suited to popular audiences; they deal with practical affairs in the mental life, and apply the doctrines of science to man’s conduct. — The thirty-ninth volume of the International Scientific Scries (Appletons) is The Brain and its Functions, by J. Luys. It is divided into two parts: the first, anatomical, presents the cerebral mechanism as it has been disclosed by a series of investigations; the second, physiological, explains the different fundamental properties of the nervous elements, considered as living histological units. The author claims that he has captured for the physiological physician a large tract hitherto claimed by the speculative philosopher. By a natural consequence a steam-engine becomes the most perfect type of the human brain.—The fortieth volume of the same series is Myth and Science, an essay by Tito Vignoli, whose thesis is the organic relation of these two intellectual habits as coexisting in the human race; for he refuses to hold that myths and the myth-making power are simply Incidental to an undeveloped stage of civilization. —Physical Education, or the Health Laws of Nature, by Felix L. Oswald, M. D. (Appletons), does not commend itself by the war-whoop of an introduction, in which the author flourishes his knife as he jumps frantically over the prostrate corpse of Christianity. —The Annual Report of the operations of the United States Life-Saving Service for the Fiscal Year ending June 30, 1881, has been rereceived from the Government Printing Office at Washington. After the statistician has read the columns of figures we recommend him to turn the book over to some novel-writing friend, who will find much useful uncopyrighted material in the way of hair-breadth ’scapes. — Halcyon Days, by Wil son Flagg (Estes &Lauriat), is the first of three vol umes, in which the author has broken up the contents of his previous works, The Woods and ByWays of New England and The Birds and Seasons of New England. In this volume Mr. Flagg collects his descriptions of nature, and since it is as a patient and close observer that he has won a just repute we place his volume in this section. The old-fashioned air which hangs about this writer’s work has in itself a certain rural and quaint character. — The Domain of Physiology, or Nature in Thought and Language, by T. Sterry Hunt (Cassino, Boston), is a paper presented to the National Academy at Washington, in which the author attempts to bring all investigations of nature under a comprehensive terminology. The result in part is the production of some interesting words.

Business. Money-Making for Ladies, by Ella Rodman Church (Harpers), has an alluring sound; so many would like to make a little money and keep their ladyship. An examination suggests that the author’s notion of a lady is somewhat conventional. The book is a rather foolish one. A little more grim truth would have been better.