Books of the Month

Travel, Geography, and Nature. Mr. Edward Walford. who was one of the editors of Old and New London, has now begun the issue of Greater London, a work projected on the same plan. (Cassell.) His method is to give anecdotical and antiquarian accounts of the district which lies outside of London proper, yet really belongs to what De Quincey used to call the nation of London. The work is abundantly illustrated, and when completed will furnish a treasury of historical information upon the greatest centre of the modern world. This is one of the books which should be placed on the lowest shelf in the library, so that young people can browse in it.—Round the World, by Andrew Carnegie (Scribners), follows the same author’s lively and agreeably egotistical An American Four-in-Hand in Britain. Mr. Carnegie took the proper course, and went westward round the world. His unfailing cheerfulness and his shrewdness make him a good traveling companion for those who do not ask very much more. Indeed, one might go farther and fare much worse, for Mr. Carnegie’s observations, which are made with great readiness, are often such as commend themselves to a more thorough-going student. —Over the Border, Acadia, the Home of Evangeline (Osgood), is by an author who writes for a company of eight who make an excursion to Nova Scotia. They are primed with the necessary historical knowledge and with the text of Evangeline. The story is pleasantly told, if one does not exact too much, and there are some interesting heliotypes printed in disagreeable, tints. Eliza B. Chase is a name printed on the cover, but not on the titlepage, and the reader not unreasonably guesses it to stand for the author. — Summer, from the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau, edited by H. G. O. Blake (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is in continuation of the selections previously made by Mr. Blake, and published as Spring in Massachusetts. Like all of Thoreau’s work, it offers itself for further selection by the individual reader. Thoreau suffers far less than Hawthorne by this kind of posthumous publication ; or rather — for Hawthorne does not suffer — there is less sense of the matter being raw material. Thoreau’s confessed books never had any constructive art. They were all a series of notes, and the reader is thus well satisfied with each successive selection, even though Thoreau himself did not make it. An excellent map of Concord gives Thoreau’s haunts, and will be equally serviceable for other of Thoreau’s writings. — At Home in Italy, by Mrs. E. D. R. Bianciardi (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is a very readable report, by an American lady who is domesticated in Italy, of those matters which her friends and neighbors would be likely to ask her about, if they could question her. Mrs. Bianciardi is a good traveler, also, and writes of Italian scenery, history, and life as one who has both the native gift of observation and the advantage of residence. — Henry Irving’s Impressions of America, narrated in a series of sketches, chronicles, and conversations, by Joseph Hatton. (Osgood.) Here is the interviewer taken to one’s bosom and carried about wherever one goes. The idea makes one at first shudder, but if one’s interviewer was a friend before he was an interviewer the idea becomes a trifle less appalling. Think of the courage of the interviewer, however, and of his rare devotion to his calling, when he follows it at the extreme risk of sacrificing friendship! The book is outside of literature, but it is an entertaining medley, and will give those who heard and saw Irving something of the feeling that they have heard and seen him and shaken hands with him. — The American Horsewoman, by Mrs. Elizabeth Karr (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is a handbook for the use of ladies. It is direct in its statements, goes into minute details, even to the buttons on one’s habit, and altogether is the most sensible book which has appeared on this subject. It can hardly stimulate horsemanship, hut it can free it from some of the vague terrors which it has had for American women. One excellence of the book is in its strict adaptation to the needs of women in America. — Day-Dawn in Dark Places, a story of wanderings and work in Bechwanaland, by Rev. John Mackenzie (Cassell), is a book of travels and missionary experience. The period embraced is from 1858 to 1882, and the writer is a plain, honest writer, who tells his story simply and without pretense.— Mr. W. D. Howells gives us a charming little volume in his Three Villages. (Osgood Co.) The villages in question are Lexington, Shirley, and Gnadenhütten. Whether among the Puritans, or the Shakers, or the Moravians, Mr. Howells does not lose his picturesque touch, or falter for a moment in his line observation. All the papers in the book have been printed before, and are destined to be reprinted many times. — One looks to a guide-book for information rather than for entertainment ; but in Cassell’s Illustrated Guide to Paris (Cassell & Co.) the matter is presented in so agreeeble a manner that the reader who goes to it to be instructed remains to be amused. The illustrations are, for the most part, excellent, and where they fail in being no better than they ought, to be they are sufficiently truthful for their purpose, — that of helping the stranger to identify the public buildings and points of interest described in the text. —Under the title of G. T. T., Gone to Texas (which title, by the way, is “conveyed” from one of Edward E. Hale’s clever books), Mr. Tom Hughes has published a collection of amusing letters from some young kinsfolk of his who migrated to Texas in 1878. (Macmillan & Co.) The letters have no literary merit whatever, but they are full of pluck and good sense, and make one feel very warmly toward the healthy young English lads who penned them. Perhaps more literary skill would not have enabled the writers to give a better picture of ranch life.

History and Government. Norman Britain, by William Hunt, M. A., is a volume in the series of Early Britain, published by the S. P. C. K. (E. & .J. B. Young & Co., New York.) It is a compend. following the lead of Stubbs and Freeman, and is furnished with a good map. — Short History of the Reformation, by John F. Hurst (Harpers), is a dry, meagre statement of a great historic fact; it is by no means so valuable as Seebohm’s Era of the Protestant Revolution. — Samuel Adams, the Man of the Town-Meeting, by James K. Hosmer, is one of the excellent series of Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. (N. Murray, Baltimore.) This pamphlet is a study for a large work, and if Mr. Hosmer carries out the same general plan upon a large scale he will make an interesting contribution to our history, — Representative Government : the true method of reaching concerted action and of finding the will of a concurring majority in the election of representatives of the people ; the remedy for the evils of the delegate system and the evils of permanent party organization; the civil service evil and its remedy. By Thomas D. Ingram, M. D. (F. S. Hickman, Westchester, Pa.) This full title-page gives the contents of a small volume in which the author in a temperate manner sets forth the evils which most people who are not party politicians now admit, and seeks a remedy. The book is worth consideration, because it holds fast to the idea that the people should in some way elect persons to represent them, without the entanglement of party and platform. — It must be said of Professor Ten Brook’s translation of Anton Gindely’s History of the Thirty Years’ War (G. P. Putnam’s Sons) that the work is interesting in spite of the translator. The two volumes are written throughout in the loosest English. The reader is constantly coming upon such ill-constructed sentences as these (vol. i. p. 34): “Ferdinand, combination as he was about half of monk and prince, was, as to person, of middle stature,” etc.; “ His first marriage was with his cousin, a sister of Maximilian of Bavaria, who (?) was about four years older than himself, bore him several children, and died prematurely,” etc. Lasting histories are not written in this style. — M. de Maupas’s Story of the Coup d’Etat (D. Appleton & Co.) is an elaborate account of that event, written from a novel and interesting point of view. M. de Maupas performed an important part in the affair of the 2d December, which of course he defends, and defends ingeniously. The collapse at Sedan must have made the writing of such a book a matter of some difficulty. M. de Mail pas, however, proves that the last word has not been said on the Second Empire. He writes with coolness and ability, and if he overstates the measure of his late master, we can forgive the exminister: loyalty to the king when he can bestow no more favors is a rare and edifying spectacle. The present volume deals with only the earlier days of Louis Napoleon’s administration; the author purposes to bring his narrative down to the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war. The work in the original is entitled Mémoires sur le Second Empire. Mr. Vandam’s translation is very unequal; in the text, and especially in his own illustrative foot-notes, he provides us with some exceedingly queer English.

Biography. The Mothers of Great Men and Women, and some Wives of Great Men, by Laura C. Holloway. (Funk & Wagnalls.) This volume selects the great men and their mothers, and makes out a very good account. We would not be supposed to question the fact that great men have had good mothers, — we have been reminded of it too often; but we would put in a plea for an occasional father. Mrs. or Miss Holloway has done her work, however, more simply and with greater variety of illustration than one might have expected. — Biographies of Workingmen, by Grant Allen. (S. P. C. K., London : Young, New York.) The workingmen are Telford, Stephenson, Gibson, Herschel, Miller, Garfield, and Edward, only one of whom, Edward, remained a Workingman, in the strict sense. The mistake of books of this class is in making so much of the greatness of the man. Garfield is put down as a canal-boy, but if he had been only an honest, faithful canal-boy, who never misused the horses and never fell into the canal, his life as a workingman would have been of greater value to other canal-boys. The first lesson to workingmen is surely not that they can get rid of being workingmen. — Chinese Gordon, a succinct record of his life, by Archibald Forbes (Funk & Wagnalls), does not profess to be more than a compilation by a man Who is especially qualified to make a good one. The portrait frontispiece is also a succinct portrait; the nose is made of three lines, the eyes of a similarly economical number, and the whole effect is enough to make El Mahdi think he had met the Cardiff Giant in uniform. — Lee A Shepard have published in a pamphlet Wendell Phillips’s oration on Daniel O’Connell. — A History of the Bank of New York, 1784-1884:, compiled from official records and other sources at the request of the directors, by Henry W. Domett (Putnams), necessarily includes also something of general financial history. The bank is the oldest in the State. — Government Revenue, especially the American System, an Argument for Industrial Freedom against the Fallacies of Free-Trade, by Ellis H. Roberts. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) Mr. Roberts was invited to lecture before Cornell University with the distinct understanding that he should present the argument contained in this book, and he has preserved his lectures in an attractive form. Whatever may be the creed of the reader, he will be indebted to Mr. Roberts for much interesting information freshly grouped. — The Problem of Negro Education, by George R. Stetson (Cupples, Upham & Co.), is a thoughtful essay by a gentleman who has resided at the South ; the chief factors in the solution are in his judgment government aid industrial schools and common-sense teachers for every hamlet, but he does not clearly point out who are to administer the educational appliances.— Every Seventh Soul, by Rev. Morgan Callaway, president of Paine Institute, Augusta, Georgia (Harrison & Co., Atlanta), is another contribution to the same subject. Mr. Callaway sees the remedy in the Methodist church, acting through such representatives as the Paine Institute.— Repudiation, by Geo. Walton Green, is an economic tract issued by the Society for Political Education. New York. It is a historical summary, and has immediate reference to state repudiation since the war. — Suggestions for a Commercial Treaty with Spain, with especial reference to the island of Cuba, by Adam Badeau, of Jamaica. New York, is the result of studies made by the author when consul-general at Havana.

Society and Economy. Property and Progress, or a brief Enquiry into Contemporary Social Agitation in England, by W. H. Mallock. (Putnams.) Mr. Mallock represents the man of breeding and taste, who recognizes the existence of poverty and its evil, but who is still more keenly alive to the logical inaccuracies of Mr. Henry George. — What to Do and How to Do It is a manual of the law affecting the housing and sanitary condition of Londoners, with special reference to the dwellings of the poor. It is issued by Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., for the Sanitary Laws Enforcement Society, and white of local usefulness chiefly contains food for thought for those Americans who wonder if, under popular government, cities and States may not do something like what the government of Great Britain is doing in the manipulation of society. — The Guild of Good Life, a narrative of Domestic Health and Economy, by Benjamin Ward Richardson, M. D. (S. P. C. K., London; Young, New York.) Dr. Richardson is always sensible, and be takes a very rational interest in sanitary reform. In this little book he has used the trite expedient of a club of working men and women, by means of which to enforce some simple considerations of health and decent living. The book is calculated for the latitude of England, but one would not get out of his course who followed its directions in America. — Mothers in Council (Harpers) also resorts to the fiction of a club, but carries it out more completely. In a town, presumably of collegiate interests and culture, a dozen mothers meet, talk, read papers, and listen to passages from good authors upon those topics which are near to the heart of conscientious women. There is little attempt at distinguishing the personality of the speakers, but there is not a foolish one among them, and a community governed by them ought soon to be able to dispense with their concilary wisdom. Not. so society at large, which will find these mothers most excellent advisors. — Thrift and Independence, a word for workingmen, by the Rev. W. L. Blackley (S. P. C. K., London; Young, New York), contains general principles with applications suited especially to English middle and lower class people.

Music. The History of Music from the Christian Era to the Present Time, by Dr. Frederic Louis Ritter. (Ditson, Boston.) Dr. Ritter has rewritten in this form his History of Music in the form of lectures, and has given in a compendious and agreeable form a narrative history. The book is quite as entertaining to the general reader as it is useful to the student.— My Musical Memories, by H. R. Haweis (Funk & Wagnalls): a volume of reminiscences and musical anecdotes by a clergyman who has a passion for music. Wagner is the theme for a number of chapters, and Mr. Haweis gives at some length analyses of the Baireuth operas.

Criticism. Did Francis Bacon write Shakespeare? is the persistent question which turns up just when every one thinks he has answered it. The editor of Bacon’s Promus of formularies and Elegancies asks it again, and gives thirty-two reasons for believing that he did. The little pamphlet containing the answer is, the author says, only a sketch of the most outward circumstances, and intended only to present portable arguments. She invites correspondence from Shakespearean students. (W. H. Guest & Co., 29 Paternoster Row, London.)