Books of the Month

Fiction. A Matter of Taste, by George H. Picard (White, Stokes & Allen) : a story which we should guess might never have been written, if Mr. James’s Portrait of a Lady had not hung over the author’s desk. It shows good taste and refinement of feeling, but lacks the firmness of touch which alone reconciles one to books of its class. — Noble Blood, by Julian Hawthorne (Appleton) : a rapid story ; the scene laid in Ireland, and the chief characters an American artist and Irish lady. The situations are developed as quickly as possible, and as many improbabilities as the space will permit hurried into the story. — Peril, by Jessie Fothergill (Holt): an English story of the thoroughly well-built sort. — The Black Poodle, and other Tales, by F. Anstey. (Appleton.) Ihe Black Poodle has already a fixed reputation, and nothing is likely to shake it. The other stories and extravagances show Mr. Anstey’s somewhat bizarre humor, but by themselves would not be likely to do more than sustain a reputation already made. — Ihe Making of a Man (Roberts) is a posthumous novel bv Mr. Baker, the author of His Majesty Myself, and other novels. Ihe man, who had already been of repute in the ministry, but was now crumbling as a farmer, was remade by the trial of war, which burnt away his dross and left the refined gold. Mr. Baker has always been in earnest; too much so sometimes for the perfect clearness of his style, for it suffers from a too abundant development of incidental thought. His books, however, have a singular internal vitality. — Deldee, or The Iron Hand, by F. Warden, author of that clammy novel The House on the Marsh. (Appleton.) This story runs the gamut of crime and improbability, and carries bravely to the end the love of two people aged five and three at the beginning of the book, — Bound Together is the business-like title of a dozen stories in one volume, by Hugh Conway, the author of Called Back. The qualities which made the now famous story popular reappear in these shorter tales. They move quickly, they deal with powerful emotions, and they will be forgotten, for they have no real excuse for being, and they are as idle as nightmares. — A Penniless Girl, from the German of W. Heimburg translated by Mrs. A. L. Wister. (Lippincott.) We do not think Mrs. Wister has been as fortunate as usual in selecting the basis for one of her ingenious fabrics. The plot is rather commonplace, and the story in general somewhat tedious. — Dr. Grattan, by William A. Hammond (Appleton): a novel in which a noisy style, cheap learning, and physiological jugglery combine to swamp the story and leave the reader in doubt whether he has brought enough away to warrant the trouble he was forced to take to get the treasure.— Christmas in Narragansett, by Edward Everett Hale. (Funk & Wagnalls.) Would it be asking too much of Mr. Hale if he would kindly give us his best, which is very good, once in a while, and not make us impatient over such an entertaining and dissipated melange as this book? It reads as if the carriage were waiting for the author, and yet there is enough incident and ingenuity in it to set up a dozen authors. — True, and other Stories, by George P. Lathrop. (Funk & Wagnalls.) The longest story, True, is a story of North Carolina to-day, in which the author has attempted to inweave the story of Raleigh’s lost colony. The conceit is so attenuated that it even weakens the force of the current story; for the reader has not only to believe in the transmission of personal characteristics through three hundred rears of altered conditions, but to believe that the persons of the story were also cognizant of them. — Tompkins and other Folks, by P. Iteming (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.): a collection of short tales, so ingenuous as narrowly to escape barrenness, and yet always retaining a delicate soupçon of humor which makes the reader curious to follow the simple turn of the narrative. We suspect that the stories have the stuff out of which reprints are made when a hundred years of neglect have intervened. — Prince Saroni’s Wife and the Pearl-Shell Necklace, by Julian Hawthorne. (Funk & Wagnails.) Mr. Hawthorne is so careless as to mix the narrative by a third and by a first person in telling the story of Prince Saroni’s wife. The tale itself is sufficiently repulsive. There is a brutal cleverness about it which may easily make it stick in one’s memory in place of more agreeable and more desirable stories. — Admiral Porter’s romance, Allan Dare and Robert Le Diable (Appleton), which has been publishing in parts, is now complete; but as the last sentence hints at a possible sequel, the Admiral may yet turn out to be the American Dumas, which he has begun to be. —In Harper’s Franklin Square Library, recent numbers are The Talk of the Town, by James Payn; From Post to Finish, a Racing Romance, by Hawley Smart; A Good Hater, by Frederick Boyle; Within the Clasp, a story of the Yorkshire jet-hunters, by J. Berwick Harwood; and Philistia, by Cecil Power.

Travel and Nature. Fresh Fields, by John Burroughs (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), is a collection of a dozen notable essays, in which Mr. Burroughs gives his impressions of England. He carried to the old country an eye and an ear which were quick to take in the England of our dreams and of England’s own poetry. His line sympathy with nature and the best of humanity makes him an excellent reporter of that which is enduring in a nation’s life and home. — Bermuda, an Idyl of the Summer Islands, by Julia C. R. Dorr. (Scribners.) Mrs. Dorr writes with a pleasant enthusiasm of the Bermudas, and tells gracefully what every one would wish to know concerning them. The islands, fortunately, do not make heavy demands upon the guide-book function, but what little is to be said on this side is said with judgment. The maps are good and convenient. — The Cruise of the Montauk to Bermuda, the West Indies, and Florida, by James MeQuade. (Thomas R. Knox & Co., New York.) The book is in the form of familiar letters, and while some information is given it is imbedded in such a mass of good-natured but rather tiresome fooling as to make the reader think a cruise with the author something to reflect upon twice before accepting. —Mr. Frederick A. Ober has published, as a supplemental volume to his Travels in Mexico, a pamphlet, Mexican Resources, a Guide to and through Mexico. (Estes & Lauriat.) It is intended less for travelers in search of the picturesque than for those in the way of business and investment. — In the Lena Delta, a narrative of the search for Lieutenant-Commander De Long and his companions, followed by an account of the Greely Relief Expedition and a proposed method of reaching the North Pole, by George W. Melville, edited by Melville Philips. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) This volume, while not in the form, is really in the spirit, of a complement to The Voyage of the Jeannette. Mr. Melville passes rapidly over the experience of the expedition up to the fatal hour when the boats separated; the same time forms the bulk of Mrs. De Long’s narrative. He then gives in full the adventures of the men after that point, condensed in Mrs De Long’s book into two or three chapters. The earlier book, indeed, is not necessary to this. Mr. Melville is a born explorer, and, what is rare, tells his story with the energy which he shows in his business. It would be hard to find a more spirited narrative of adventure than this book presents. The reader will lay the book down with a hearty wish that Mr. Melville may persuade some man of money to send him again in search of the North Pole.—The Cruise of the Alice May in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Adjacent Waters, by S. G. W, Benjamin. (Appleton.) Mr. Benjamin is a fluent writer, but his style is not as picturesque as are the charming illustrations which accompany his agreeable sketch. Why cross the Atlantic when one can see in America such quaint forms and find one’s seif in so primitive a society as are here hinted at ? — The Land of Rip Van Winkle, a tour through the romantic parts of the Catskills, its legends and traditions, by A. E. P. Searing. (Putnams.) A good deal of pains has been taken with this book, and it has the appearance of sumptuousuess. Yet a closer examination shows little real beauty in the pictures, —or shall we say in the engraving? — for a hard, metallic style has given all the cuts a dead, flat look. The text is good-natured, but the humor is somewhat forced and the chronicle rather faithful to unimportant details than alive with the animation of a graceful story-teller.— In the Trades, the: Tropics, and the Roaring Forties, by Lady Brasey. (Holt.) The plain English of this title might he A Cruise in the Yacht Sunbeam from the Mediterranean to England by Way of Madeira, the Caribbean Sea, Jamaica, the Bahamas, Bermuda, and the Azores. Lady Brassey’s previous books prepare one to enjoy this, which is a bright, readable record of travel, in which domestic English life forms an agreeable atmosphere, through which one sees the world. The illustrations are abundant and generally fair, while good maps help to furnish the volume. The old-fashioned traveling tutor and his young friends are here modernized and refined into a family excursion under the most satisfactory conditions.

Folk-Lore and Humor. The Algonquin Legends of New England, or Myths and Folk-Lore of the Micmac, Passantaq noddy, and Penobscot Tribes, by Charles G. Leland. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) Mr. Leland has made a find, and while some dreadful cold-blooded critic will probably come along and say that the ’Quoddies have stuffed him after being stuffed themselves, it is difficult to believe that the varied sources of the stories could all be in collusion. We prefer to think that Mr. Leland has made a real contribution to folklore : whatever becomes of his theory regarding the Scandinavian origin of some of the stories, the parallelism is very striking. The illustrations by Indians are very interesting and sometimes intentionally humorous. — Half a Centurv of English History, pietoriallv presented in a series of cartoons from the collection of Mr. Punch (Putnams) : a hundred and fifty caricatures from Punch, illustrative especially of political history. The reproductions have the effect of vulgarizing the merry jester. — Pictures of Life and Character, by John Leech: from the collection of Mr. Punch. (Appleton.) The minifying process by which these designs have been reproduced saves them from the fault of the last-named book : still the charming refinement of execution is lost ; the fun, however, remains. — Broken English, a Frenchman’s Struggle with the English Language, by E. C. Dubois (Putnams) : an attempt to make English idioms into French equivalent, and to illustrate the despair of a Frenchman who would master the doublings of the English speech. One may extract a good deal of fun from the book, and some instruction while looking out for the fun. — The Enchiridion of Wit: the best specimens of English conversational wit. (Lippincott.) The readable preface inspires one with confidence in the compiler’s judgment, which is confirmed by a reading of this bright collection. — The Bantling Ball, a Grieco-American play, being a poetical satire on New York society (Funk & Wagnalls): in form a travesty of Swinburne and imitation of Gilbert. The satire is not particularly delicate, nor is it crushing, there are clever lines, but the whole joke is rather thin.

Hygiene and Medicine. Maxims of Public Health, by O. W . Wight. (Appleton.) Dr. Wight, who is health officer of Detroit, has tried in this small volume to set plainly and directly before people certain fundamental doctrines regarding sanitary matters as they affect towns and cities. He is pungent and forcible in his way of putting things. He divides his book into ninety sections, and supplies an index, but it would have been well to furnish his separate sections with headings to catch the eye. — Women, Plumbers, and Doctors, or Household Sanitation, by Mrs. H. M. Plunkett. (Appleton.) This is the book which the modern Dora must substitute for her cook-book, and on which we fear many will balance Jip. If any woman can read it and then go to housekeeping she is a brave woman. If she heeds it there are even chances that she will meet her end by accident. No woman who has mastered the squirming diagrams of this volume, and governed herself accordingly, will ever have typhoid fever. She may have the nightmare.— Notes on the Opium Habit, by Asa P. Meylert, M. D. (Putnams), has passed to a third edition, — What is to be Done V by R. B. Dixon, is a handbook for the nursery, with useful hints for children and adults. (Lee & Shepard.) The suggestions are sensible, homely, and given in a straightforward manner. If handbooks would make us a nation of rational livers we should soon be on the way to sound health.

Biography and Memoirs. The Croker Papers, edited by L. J. Jennings (Scribners), are contained in two stout octavo volumes, and include the correspondence and diary of J. W. Croker from 1811 to 1857. Mr. Croker was one of those industrious Englishmen who are ready to undertake any public work in politics or literature, who write quarterly articles, carry on a prodigious correspondence, are under-secretaries, and know about everybody and everything. Mr. Jennings has compiled an entertaining book, if one is ready to be entertained by political personalities and a half-interior view of English society. Mr. Croker himself does not accumulate a very important character in the course of the two volumes, and the chief interest which he has to literary students is somewhat slighted; for although Mr. Jennings gives in some detail the circumstances of Croker’s editing Boswell, and refers to Macaulay’s attack, he does not trouble himself to defend Croker, but merely abuses Macaulay. Macaulay no doubt was moved by personal dislike, but then he was thoroughly at home in the subject of Boswell, and his criticisms did damage Crokcr’s reputation for good scholarship, — Episodes of my Second Life, by Antonio Gallenga. (Lippincott.) Gallenga’s career as correspondent of the London Times, in which he traduced Mazzini, is fresher in people’s mind than his earlier career as Italian refugee in America and England. The present volume, if it throws no special light on his character, does not lead one greatly to admire him; there is a constant suspicion engendered in the reader’s mind that the man was a fraud. Nevertheless, his recollection of Cambridge and Boston life is curious. Either from design or from fault of memory he disguises a few names, but the picture is apparently intended for a faithful one, and it is dryly truthful in many respects. The oddity is partly in the apparent failure of the writer ever to have corrected or compared his first impressions, so that what one reads might have been written forty or fifty years ago. It must make some of the families who received Gallenga feel a little crawly to read his recollections of them. — John Howard Payne, Dramatist, Poet, Actor, and Author of Home, Sweet Home, his Life and Writings, by Gabriel Harrison. (Lippincott.) Mr. Harrison reprints, with additions, his earlier life of Payne. The book, despite its somewhat disorderly form, is an interesting one, and will give a more substantial character to Payne’s literary life than is carried in most people’s minds. The prose essay on Our Neglected Poets will serve Payne’s reputation more than his poems, which are for the most part thin Moore and water.— Two biographies of Abraham Lincoln have recently appeared. The first has for its sub-title The True Story of a Great Life, showing the inner growth, special training, and peculiar fitness of the man for his work, by William O. Stoddard. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert.) We distrust such an announcement on the title-page. It becomes one to be modest in his statement of what he has done for Lincoln. Mr. Stoddard has the advantage of having been one of Lincoln’s private secretaries, and he writes intelligibly and earnestly. The book is too much of an essay about Lincoln to take rank as a satisfactory biography, but it contains much that is discriminating and penetrating in its portraiture, not only of Mr, Lincoln, but of the men who were about him. The other life is by the late Isaac N. Arnold (Jansen, McClurg & Co.), and lacks something of the personal element of Mr. Stoddard’s narrative. Although Mr. Arnold knew Lincoln intimately, he writes more as a student of history, and when he does employ personal description it is apt to be of a rhetorical sort. Both writers bring the tribute of personal admiration, and however imperfectly the two volumes answer the requirements of biography, they serve to keep alive that treatment of Lincoln which is charged with respect and love, and is not coldly scientific. — The Countess of Albany, by Vernon Lee, and Mary Wollstoneeraft, by Elizabeth Robins Pennell, are the two latest additions to the Famous Women series. (Roberts Bros.)

History. Kentucky, a Pioneer Commonwealth, by N. S. Shaler (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.): a volume in the American Commonwealths series. Professor Shaler tells the story of Kentucky not as a digester of annals, but as one who apprehends a personality in the State. He writes, moreover, often at first hand. That is, he interjects interpretations of historical facts from a large and familiar acquaintance with the State, and he tells at some length the story of Kentucky’s curious status during the war for the Union, as one who not only had a share in the Slate’s experience, but had a clear perception of the meaning involved in that status. Better concise histories of Kentucky may be written, but the personal element in this book will keep it always valuable to the student and to the general reader. Thus far no State has been reported with such keen appreciation of the underlying life of the Commonwealth. — A History of the Illinois National Guard, from the Organization of the First Regiment in September, 1874, to the Enactment of the Military Code in May, 1879, has been written by Holdridge O’. Collins. (Black & Beach, Chicago.) The regiment seems to have seen service chiefly in quelling riots in Chicago.— The Historical Reference Book, comprising a Chronological Table of Universal History, a Chronological Dictionary of Universal History, and a Biographical Dictionary, with Geographical Notes, by Louis Heilprin. (Appleton.) The distinction between the first two sections of the book is that the Chronological Dictionary is arranged in alphabetical order. The type is larger than is generally employed in such works, and the author declares that he has taken special pains with his dates. — The admirable new edition of Bancroft’s History of the United States (Appleton) has reached its sixth volume.

Literature and Criticism. Custom and Myth, by Andrew Lang (Harpers), is a collection of essays devoted to a study of old stories and superstitions. Mr. Lang represents the modern variety of the gentleman and scholar. He brings with him the old classic culture, and adds to it the outof-the-way knowledge which dips into African folk-lore and Scandinavian mythology. Writers of this school are apt to tire one with their comprehensiveness, but Mr. Lang is an agreeable writer, and it is only necessary for the reader to believe in his learning when he can enjoy his theories.— A new edition has been issued of the interesting little essay, by Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, on Edgar Poe and his Critics. (Tibbitts & Preston.) It is in effect a reply to Griswold’s reflections, and the relation which Mrs. Whitman held to Poe, as his betrothed, gives the book a peculiarly tender character. — The Book-Lover, a Guide to the Best Reading, by James Baldwin (Jansen, MeClurg & Co.), is a very inadequate and inaccurate affair. The little hook, however, is full of delightful surprises, among which is the attributing of works to the wrong authors. — Dr. A. P. Peabody presents us with admirable translations of the De Amicitia and Scipio’s Dream. (Little, Brown & Co.) The translator’s introduction and notes give a high value to the volume.

Books for Young People. Boys Coastwise, or All Along the Shore, by William H. Rideing (Appleton) : a capital book, in which a very slight framework of fiction contrives to hold a good deal of interesting description of coast life. Here one may learn of wreckers, divers, ocean steamers, life-saving stations, and the like, all told in a clear, straightforward fashion and sufficiently well illustrated.—The Lost City, or The Boy Explorers in Central Asia, by David Ker (Harpers): a lively story of adventure in Afghanistan, written by an English traveler who knows his ground. There is plenty of excitement in the book, but the spirit is healthy, and one may even pick up a morsel of Russian.—Little Arthur’s History of France (Crowell) is an admirable book for children, and not to be classed with the showy and worthless volumes usually placed in the market at holiday times.—Indian History for Young Folks, by Francis S. Drake. (Harpers.) Mr. Drake comes legitimately by his subject, and he writes as one who does not need to examine authorities, but speaks from a full mind. Of course he could not treat of Indian warfare without including the relations of French and English, and it is a pity that he could not more distinctly have shown how much of Indian fighting was the result of the conflict between the two nations. The book is, indeed, too exclusively a history of fighting ; for although that was the prominent fact in Indian history so far as the whites are concerned, there was still room to have said more regarding that part of Indian history which has to do with the efforts made within and without the tribes to achieve civilization. The important subject of the Iroquois league is scarcely touched upon.