Books of the Month

Fiction. The latest novels of the Franklin Square Library (Harpers), are A Foolish Virgin by Ella Weed, Yolande by William Black, The Senior Songman by the author of St. Olaves, and Aut Cæsar Aut Nihil by the Countess M. Von Bothmer. The last two stories are not without interest in their special way; but, with all respect to the London Saturday Review, Mr. Black’s Yolande is the very poorest thing he has done. Miss Weed’s story makes us hesitate about endowing another college for young women. — A Newport Aquarelle (Roberts) is manufactured out of the make-belief high life which Newport enjoys. It is a novel which makes one wonder if communism may not offer the world a better chance, after all; but then Newport is not the world, and this very thin aquarelle is not art. — A Washington Winter by Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (Osgood), is a series of sketches of society there strung upon a thread of plot. It has thus the form of a novel, but the lay figures who move through it owe whatever vitality they may possess to the clothes of the real people which they wear. There is a curious mingling of historic names, so that one has a vision of real people and wax figures walking about arm in arm in a show. The book may be a travesty of Washington, but it is not good fiction, nor has it good manners. — Times of Battle and of Rest, by Z. Topelius (Jansen, McClurg & Co., Chicago), is one of the series of Surgeon’s stories of the Swedish historical romancer. One needs to get rid of a good deal of contemporary literature before this reads familiarly. —Vix, by George E. Waring (Osgood), is a paper edition of a popular horse story.

Religion. More Words about the Bible. by James S. Bush (John W. Lovell Company, New York), is a little pamphlet containing five sermons which aim to place the Bible in its relation to theology and life, and to remove it from an isolated superiority. — Gathered Lambs, by Rev. Edward Payson Hammond (Funk & Wagnalls, New York), is a volume of talks to children about religion, which has a tendency, we regret to think, to make hypocrites, pharisees, and sentimentalists of them. The Ten Commandments are more needed.

Travel. The Tourist’s Guide-Book to the United States and Canada (Putnams) appears to be an English book, of which an edition is published here. It is disfigured by advertisements between the leaves, and apparently written and printed by people to whom America is a foreign country. A guide-book to France would not contain more misspelled words and blunders to the square inch.