Books of the Month

Travel and Geography. Six Months in Persia, by Edward Stack, of the Bengal Civil Service (Putnams), is a two-volume narrative of life and travel, accompanied by clear maps and with the customary mark of English barbarism, the absence of a topical index. The journey was made in 1881, and the traveler was well equipped for his work, both by native freshness of mind and by a long Indian experience, which gave him the basis of interesting comparisons. The book will be welcomed as the evidence of an intelligent man about a little known country, but one likely to play an important part in the approaching conflict between Russia and England in the East— The Report of the New York State Survey for the year 1880, under James T. Gardiner (Weed, Parsons & Co., Albany), includes tables and fine maps of Eastern New York, Central New York, and the Hudson River.

Fiction. Mr. Bret Harte’s complete works are followed at once by a little volume containing two stories in his well-known manner: Flip, and Found at Blazing Star. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) — In the Round Robin series (Osgood), the latest issue is Doctor Ben, an episode in the life of a fortunate unfortunate, in which certain phases of insanity are treated in a healthy manner, and the author, who is good-natured and hearty, does not spoil a good story for the sake of pushing a theory. — Captain Mansana, and Other Stories is the latest in the series of Björnson’s novels. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) The long story is now first given, to English readers. The Railroad and the Churchyard is one of Björnson’s telling short stories, and has been printed before. Dust, the third in the book, is very recent, having just appeared in Norway, and revives our hopes that Björnson has not been lost to pure literature. We would rather spoil the politician, if necessary, to keep the artist. — The latest numbers which have reached us of the Franklin Square Library (Harpers) are The Knights of the Horseshoe, a traditionary tale of the cocked-hat gentry in the Old Dominion, by Dr. W. A. Caruthers; A Strange Journey, or Pictures from Egypt and the Soudan; and Heaps of Money, by W. E. Norris, which is in the old form of Harper’s Library of Fiction, but at a cheap price.

Philosophy. Geometry and Faith, a Supplement to the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, by Thomas Hill (Lee & Shepard), is declared to have passed to the “ third edition, greatly enlarged,” but the book lacks any preface which explains in what respect the issue differs from the second edition, published in 1874. The book was originally suggested by Babbage’s treatise, and is an eloquent plea in modern terms for the truth that God geometrizes. — Arâk el Enûr is the title of a quarterly, of which the first number has appeared, devoted, as the cover says, " to the expression of clear, investigative thought.” The contents are two in number: Man and his Surroundings, a philosophic and scientific treatise, founded on qualitative bases, by J. C. Lane, and a portion of Wilkins’s translation of the Bhagvat - Gita. (Quarterly Publishing Co., New York.) The flounderer after truth may here splash ad infinitum. — In Social Equality, a Short Study in a Missing Science (Putnams), Mr. W. H. Malloek appears to be making an effort to regain his position amongst respectable writers. He busies himself with the aspects of modern democracy, and makes acute observations which have the air of being real discoveries. — The Peak in Darien is the fanciful title of a volume of essays by Miss Frances Power Cobbe (Geo. H. Ellis, Boston), in which she takes her position between the two oceans which bound humanity, and makes observations upon the great problems of life and immortality. The titles of the essays are Magnanimous Atheism, Hygeiolatry, Pessimism and One of its Professors, Zoöphily, Sacrificial Medicine, The Fitness of Women for the Ministry of Religion, The House on the Shore of Eternity, and the Riddle of Death. Miss Cobbe is an earnest theist, with more logic, but no less emotion, than belongs to most women.

Art. Mr. J. W. Bouton of New York sends us the twenty-ninth volume of L’Art, which gains in cumulative interest by its presentation in this form. Among the contributors to the volume are Champfleury, Decamps, Lenormant, Véron, Yriarte, Gehuzae, Leroy, and our countrywoman Mary Agnes Tincker. There are papers on G. F. Watts, Delacroix, Hamilton Palace, which has been so much in the eye of connoisseurs of late, Courbet, Japanese Art, the Influence of France on Art in Austria, together with notes on the Salon. The etchings are by Billy, Bocourt, Gaucherel, Gaujeau, Gautier, Greux, Jacomin, Leenhoff, Massé, Mongin, Pagliano, and Ramus, while the list of artists whose works have been reproduced in etching, wood, or photogravure is a long and illustrious-one. Among the papers is one by Miss Tincker on the interesting Madonna of Santa Chiara, owned by the banker Hooker at Rome.

History and Biography. In the American Men of Letters series (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), Mr. O. B. Frothingham’s George Ripley has the advantage that it leads the way in a biographic sketch, no life of Mr. Ripley having before been published. The relation which this critic held to American literature for a generation renders it every way fitting that he should be treated in the series, and Mr. Frothingham has given the reader excellent material from which to form a judgment of the man. — In the American Actor series (Osgood) Miss Kate Field records the life of Fechter. The book is dedicated to the memory of Dickens, who did so much to introduce Fechter to Americans. Miss Field deplores Fechter’s illtemper as the ruin of his life, and writes in a lively fashion of his career in Europe and America, filling out her somewhat rambling sketch with notes of his several parts and a collection of newspaper criticisms. —The Life and Achievements of James Addams Beaver, by Frank A. Burr (Ferguson Bros., Philadelphia), is a warm, enthusiastic life of the gentleman who is a candidate, at this writing, for the governorship of Pennsylvania.

Poetry and the Drama. Mr. Sidney Colvin’s Selections from the Writings of Walter Savage Landor (Macmillan), coming so soon after his admirable sketch in the Men of Letters series, will continue the good work of acclimatizing Landor. There is no question that good wine does need a bush, when every other shop is given over to cheap mixtures; and while we would not go so far as to insist that a taste for Landor offers a criterion of culture, we know of no English author who so completely takes the place of a Greek classic read in the Greek language. — W. J. Rolfe’s edition of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida (Harpers) is excepted by the editor from his collection of Shakespeare for schools, and since it cannot be pruned is given without change, for the use of older readers. Mr. Relfe continues his plan of supplying the reader with a variety of critical judgments from accepted sources, rather than giving much comment of his own. —A new edition is published of T. Buchanan Read’s Poetical Works, with a dozen engravings from drawings on wood and a portrait. (Lippincott.) A kindly biographical notice precedes the poetry, and a few pages of notes complete the volume. Of the wine and water poets Read is not the weakest; there is now and then a distinct bouquet perceptible. — Sheaves, a Collection of Poems, by Harriet Converse (Putnams), is a neat volume of verse. — Erothanmatos and Sonnets is the title of a volume by Leonard Wheeler, issued by the Melancholy Club of New York, and for sale by James Miller. One lingers a moment to enjoy the pathetic significance of a melancholy club as the publisher of a new volume of poems. The poetry itself is serious in intention, but lacks the form which justifies so prolonged an expression of grief. The writer should have measured his book by Tennyson’s In Memoriam, before he ventured to publish it.

Humor. Vice Versa, or A Lesson to Fathers, by F. Anstey (Appletons), is an amusing picture of the bouleversement attendant upon a father and school-boy son changing places. The jest has a remote practical intention, but most readers will be too much entertained by the fun of the book to search very hard for the moral. — Ting-a-Ling, by Frank R. Stockton (Scribners), is a new edition of what passes for a juvenile, and perhaps must be given up to children, though the dryness of the fun and the suddenness of some of the turns assail the older reader most. The very clever designs by E. B. Bensell add to the interest of the book. It is only a pity that the pictures should be treated so coldly in printing. — Billy Blewa-way’s Alphabetical, Orthographical, and Philological Picture Book for Learners (Osgood) is a book of silhouettes in white and blue, harmless for older people, and unsuitable for young people. The fun is not very original nor likely to produce much hilarity. — Under the Sun is the comprehensive title used by Mr. Phil. Robinson to cover various smaller books previously published in England, and all partaking of the same general character of playful and lively sketches of life out-ofdoors, chiefly in India. The humor is agreeable, and the book may be taken as a pleasant side dish.

Education. An interesting pamphlet has been published by the Association for Promoting the Higher Education of Women in New York, containing the Proceedings of the first public meeting, held April 22, 1882, at which the Rev. Dr. Storrs, Mr. Parke Godwin, Mr. J. H, Choate, Rev. Dr. H. C. Potter, and Dr. W. H. Draper spoke, and where letters were read from English scholars who had taken part in the movement at Oxford and Cambridge. — Miss Josephine Hodgdon, who prepared the leaflets from the writings of Longfellow, Holmes, and Whittier, has prepared a similar selection from the writings of W. H. Prescott. They are intended for convenience of use in schools. (Lippincott.) — A Practical Arithmetic, by G. A. Wentworth and Thomas Hill (Ginn, Heath & Co.), is intended, not for beginners, but for those who have already mastered the first principles of numbers. The authors make their aim distinctly to teach arithmetic as an art, not as a science; decimal fractions precede common fractions, and the book is very largely one of examples.—Mr. Wentworth also sends out through the same publishers Elements of Algebra, which comprises what the author conceives to be a year’s work for a beginner. He has aimed at a steady gradation in the book, and has accumulated a great number of examples for practice, excluding complicated problems.— A somewhat novel experiment is made by Prof. W. C. Wilkinson in The Preparatory Greek Course in English (Phillips and Hunt, New York), a book intended for those who have been prevented from taking a college course, vet wish to acquire some knowledge of the classics through their own tongue. The design may have been pron pted by the series of Ancient Classics for English Readers, but this book is more comprehensive than any single volume of that series, and includes a good deal of historical and geographical information. The writer has apparently had in mind such an audience as he might find at Chautauqua, and writes with liveliness and with a manifest determination that the reader shall find the Greek writers as human and as interesting as English or American ones. The aim of the book at length appears to be to set the reader at work learning Greek, and we think that the author has erred here in tacking a very slight bit of Greek work to his book. — French Syntax on the Basis of Edward Matzner, by J. A. Harrison (John E. Potter & Co., Philadelphia), is primarily a syntax, and not a grammar, but it has so much grammatical apparatus as is needed to perfect the plan. Its object, in the author’s words, is “ to enable home students, teachers, senior classes in colleges and universities, and other inquirers into the niceties of the most polished of European languages to find without trouble what is allowed and what is not in that language.” — C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, has issued a series of Dime Question Books on United States History and Civil Government, Physiology, Literature, Theory and Practice of Teaching, and other Subjects. The compass of the books is too slight to give them any special value. — Under the title of School Room Classics, the same publisher sends Milton’s Tractate of Education and The New Education, a brief exposition of Froebel’s views, by Professor Meiklejohn, of S. Andrew’s, Scotland. —The Delsarte System of Oratory, from the French of Delamosne, by Frances A. Shaw (Edgar S. Werner, Albany, N. Y.), is an explosive introduction to oratory, with physical bases of emotion. Thus there is a diagram of legs, by which one can learn to express terror, hesitation, ceremony, vehemence, intoxication, and other qualities and acts, all below the knees. The book would not be a bad one for social purposes. The old play in which one is required to identify a friend by the eyes only, the rest of the person being concealed by a sheet, could be varied by a series of leg problems.

Books for Young People. Mr. George Cary Eggleston’s The Wreck of the Red Bird (Putnams) belongs to the time-honored class of saltwater excursion and shipwreck books, and has this advantage, that the scenes are laid on the Carolina coast. One has not read far before he discovers how fresh a field the author has secured and how recklessly he uses it. — The Cryptogram, by Jules Verne, translated by W. J. Gordon (Scribners), may properly be placed among books for young people; it describes life on the Lower Amazon, and is as astonishing as one can possibly desire.— Saltillo Boys, by W. O. Stoddard (Scribners), gives in a realistic manner the life of boys and girls in a country village thirty years ago. There is a roughness about, the book which seems intended to be an excuse for manliness, but we do not know that there is much to quarrel over in it.