Books of the Month

History and Biography. The fourth volume of the Dictionary of National Biography, edited by Leslie Stephen (Macmillan), conies with gratifying punctuality. It extends from Beal to Biber, and contains among its more important articles one on Bentham, one on Bentinck, one on Bentley by Jebb, one on Bewick by Austin Dobson, and one on Admiral Benbow, whose name seems to have been made for a roaring song. — The Peace of Utrecht, a Historical Review of the Great Treaty of 1713-14, and of the principal events of the war of the Spanish Succession, by James W. Gerard (Putnams): a painstaking work, but difficult to read. It is curious that an American author writing on this subject should apparently make scarcely a reference to movements on this side of the water. Yet, in the far-reaching consequences of the Peace of Utrecht, America was very distinctly involved. We would recommend Mr. Gerard to read Seeley’s Expansion of England.— Farthest North, or the Life and Explorations of Lieutenant James Booth Lockwood, of the Greedy Arctic Expedition, by Charles Larman (Appleton) : a most interesting biography of a man who wins the reader’s admiration and love for his delightful qualities and his sterling heroism. What companions he and De Long would have been! They were made out of much the same material. It is a pity that the book is not better written, and that the biographer is not as modest for his subject as his subject was for himself. — Myrtilla Miner (Houghton): a brief memoir of a remarkable woman who maintained a school for colored girls, when to do so required not only principle, but unflinching courage. One reads with admiration the account of Miss Miner’s respect for cleanliness. — The Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, by George S. Morriam. In two volumes. (The Century Co.) One pauses at the title-page, with a hesitation at accepting the implication of Mr. Bowles’s central position. Of course, as a newspaper editor, he had much to say about and to do with the times. Every editor is in like case. Then, in two volumes. Is not that rather over much? But once given a personal interest in the subject, and these difficulties are likely to vanish. The biography is an interesting one, with a curious reflection of Mr. Bowles’s own taste, in the publication of a large number of family letters. The man was notable, and Mr. Merriam has tried his best to make him alive; but we think he has tried too hard, and has made a book out of all true proportion. There is an enormous amount of talk about Mr. Bowles and his times. We fancy that Mr. Bowles himself, with his newspaper instinct, would have brought the whole work into one quarter of the space, —and then it would be read. That is what he did with the Republican.—Bryant and his Friends, by James Grant Wilson (Fords, Howard & Hulbert), is a volume of pleasant gossip about the earlier American authors and wits, and particularly the Knickerbocker group, as the title would indicate. Though the book contains little that is new, beyond certain hitherto unpublished letters of no great moment, it contains much that is agreeable to recall, and is written in an appreciative and genial mood. The most interesting chapter is that devoted to brief personal sketches of several of the less noted, not to say wholly obscure, prose-writers and verse men who served as corporals in the Knickerbocker pioneer corps of American letters. Some of them certainly deserve to be brevetted. The work is adorned with three steel plates, —a beautiful head of J. K. Paulding, and the finest engraving we have of Bryant. The portrait of Fitz - Green Halleck, though not so admirable, is still excellent. — Rameses the Great, or Egypt 3300 years ago (Scribners), is a reissue, without change, of one of the volumes of the Library of Wonders, published a few years ago. A considerable portion of the book is devoted to the historical monuments of Egypt, but the narrative is rather dry, and presumes a good deal on the historical knowledge of the reader. — Mr. George Makepeace Towle has followed his England and Russia in Central Asia, which we noticed on its appearance, with a companion volume, England in Egypt, both books being in a series called Timely Topics. (Ticknor.) — The Story of Rome, from the earliest times to the end of the republic, by Arthur Gilman, is the second in the series entitled The Story of the Nations. (Putnams) The plan of the series supposes a lighter vein in the historical treatment than is ordinarily adopted, but does not therefore exclude exactness of statement. Mr. Gilman, like his predecessor Mr. Harrison, means to give in familiar form the results of historical students, and we think he is more successful than the former. His proportions are better, and we are spared the too jocular tone. The style is generally clear without being elegant, and one gets the impression of a good piece of task-work, rather than a fresh, individual book, forced out of one from his full knowledge and strong interest. — The Royal Mail, its Curiosities and Romance, by James Wilson Hyde. (Harpers.) This little book is the work of a superintendent of the Edinburgh post office, who has amused himself by sketching the history of the postal service in England, not from its earliest time, but since the beginning of the century. There are plenty of anecdotes and entertaining incidents. — The second part of the Greville Memoirs (Appleton) contains MrGreville’s journal of the reign of Queen Victoria. Naturally this portion is not so pungent as that which preceded and had to do with a more variegated morality. As moralists we much prefer Queen Victoria’s reign, — at least the earlier part of it. As gossips we find the Georges and William much more entertaining ; they were surrounded by a society which threw off anecdotes freely. However, in these two volumes the lover of literature, as well as of polities and history, will find much that is agreeable ; he will look with interest, for instance, to see what is said about that obscure power, John Allen. — The Fall of Constantinople, being the story of the fourth crusade, by Edwin Pears, LL. B. (Harpers.) “ The conquest of Constantinople,” Mr. Pears says, “ was the first great blunder committed by the West in dealing with the Eastern question,” for the result was to let Asia loose upon Europe. The book is very readable, and has that independence of thought in the treatment of great historical questions which is very stimulating to the reader. — Lincoln and Stanton is the title of one of the numbers of Questions of the Day. (Putnams.) The author is Judge Kelley, the veteran member of the House, who makes in it a study of the war administration of 1861 and 1862, with special consideration of General McClellan’s paper in the Century. The appendix contains the author’s letter to the Tribune in reply to some strictures of Oliver Johnson. Judge Kelley writes with feeling, but his long experience and earnest patriotism are forces which work on his side.—Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War, by Admiral Porter (Appleton), is a personal narrative by a prominent officer, who has lately shown an astonishing fertility in book-making. We think this book is by all odds the most readable as it is the most important of the lot; the lively manner in which Admiral Porter writes gives the work almost the air of a romance. —A Narrative of Military Service, by General W. B. Hazen. (Ticknors.) This also is a record of personal experience, but in a more dignified and historical form. We wish General Hazen had left out the cheap wood-cut portraits, which detract from the appearance of the book. We are glad to learn from his preface that he reserves his criticism and self-defense for another book. The longer he can put it off the better it will be. — In the new series of English Worthies, edited by Andrew Lang, the first volume is Charles Darwin, by Grant Allen (Appleton), who is perhaps more to be trusted in a personal and general narrative than in a strictly scientific review of Darwin’s work.

Poetry. Ticknor & Co. have brought out, in a most tasteful shape, a new edition of Mr. Howells’s poems, including several pieces hitherto uncollected. In its essentials, however, the work belongs to the author’s early period, and makes one regret, in spite of his great success as a novelist, that he broke his youthful engagement with the lyric muse. It was a match promising singular happiness, as every living reader of the first issue of these poems is still ready to testify. The lover of choice verse will not find in contemporary poetry anything better in its kind than the touching Elegy on John Butler Howells, or The Song the Oriole Sings. Such a lyric as In Earliest Spring, in which an exquisite imaginative quality breaks into perfect flower at the end, causes one seriously to doubt if realism is after all so superior a thing. — Wishmaker’s Town, by William Young (Holt), is a small volume of poems, which are not commonplace, yet fail to arrest attention and hold it surely. The thought which lies back of the poems seems stronger than the poems themselves. — Utopian Dreams and Lotus Leaves, by George W. Warder. (Sampson Low, London.) Hopelessly smooth verse. — A Voyage to the Fortunate Isles, and other Poems, by Sarah M. B. Piatt. (Houghton.) This is a collection of Mrs. Piatt’s poems, made up from her previous volumes, and by its content impressing itself upon the reader’s attention, we would hope. — Afternoon Songs, by Julia C. R. Dorr (Scribners): a volume of graceful verse. — The New King Arthur, an opera without music, by the author of The Buntling Ball. (Funk & Wagnalls.) It is also a poem without wit. Mr. Gilbert must begin to regret that he set the fashion of grave nonsense when he finds such a following at his heels. — Verses, by Francis Allen Hillard. (Putnams.) The author modestly puts out this volume as rather for his own pleasure than for that of the public. The truth is, every sensible man writes poetry some time or other in his life ; only every sensible man does not print his verses. — Dodd, Mead & Co. have reprinted in a very handsome manner Monier Williams’s translation of Sakoontalá. This charming India drama is worthy of its present setting, which is in every respect superior to the English edition issued in 1856.

Fiction. Bret Harte’s Maruja (Houghton) reads like a drama turned into a novel, with the improbabilities of the stage carefully retained. — Mustard Leaves, or a Glimpse of London Society, by D. T. S. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) D. T. S. makes the mistake for American readers of beginning with a scene in the New Hampshire hills, and for English readers of completing the story in London. The American judging by the first part will know that the last is untrue, and the Englishman by the last part that the first is untrue. One does not, however, need to be from either country to discover that the story is a silly one. — Oblivion, by M. G. McClelland, is an American novel in the Leisure Hour Series (Holt), the oblivion being the temporary loss of memory of the heroine. — Lob lie-by-the-fire, or the Luck of Lingborough, by Juliana Horatia Ewing (S. P. C. k., London; Youngs, New York), is one of the bright little stories which seem to have been left over from Mrs. Ewing’s portfolio. There are some spirited sketches by Caldecott accompativing it. — Endura, or Three Generations, a New England Romance, by B. P. Moore (Golden Era Co., San Francisco) : a curious sort of novel, into which the author has dumped people and places in an apparently confused heap. The theme of the story is the recovery of a lapsed property, but the author has added all manner of observations on a variety of topics. — An Ill-Regulated Mind, by Katharine Wylde (Holt): a volume of the Leisure Hour Series, in which a somewhat strained relation between a young man and young woman is played upon with variations. Originality is not a quality to be so forcibly attempted.—The Red Route, by William Sime (Holt): an Irish story in the Leisure Hour Series. — Fiammetta, a summer idyl, by William Wetmore Story (Houghton), is a pathetic little romance, which has a charm of manner and a grace in its pictures of Italian life that indicate how much of the poet has gone into the making of this prose piece. Mr. Story is always clever, but in this slight work it is not his cleverness so much as his refinement of feeling which strikes one.— Mr. Grant Allen’s novel, Babylon (Appleton), may be called an international novel from the other side, and we don’t know but his Americans and their lingo are as near as we get to the English and their talk. Mr. Allen is a bright man, very handy with his pen, but, on the whole, brighter in spots than in the business of constructing a whole novel. — Slings and Arrows and other Tales is a collection of four stories by the late Hugh Conway. (Holt.) — Another volume in the Leisure Hour Series (Holt) is At Bay, by Mrs. Alexander. — A Mortal Antipathy is the apt title given to the tale which Dr. Holmes included in this last year’s papers of the New Portfolio. (Houghton.)—John Maidment, by Julian Sturgis (Appleton), is the agreeable work of an agreeable writer. It has the circumstance of youth in it; it has also some of the ingenuousness of youth. In spite of Mayfair, there is always a suggestion of unspoiled human nature, and the whole effect is of fiction which is not great nor profound, but is honest and unaffected. — Bonnyborough, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. (Houghton.) It is so long since Mrs. Whitney has published a new story that we are curious to see whether she has retained her old audience or is compelled to draw a new one about her. This story has all her old characteristics, though not perhaps the intricacy of plot of the last one.— High Lights (Houghton): a slight novel, in which an artist is the hero, and the whole story is led, not so much in the ordinary light of day as under a glass skylight. — Recent numbers of Harper’s Handy Series are The Flower of Doom, and other stories, by M. Betham-Edwards ; The Dark House, by G. Manville Fenn ; The Ghost’s Touch, and other stories, by Wilkie Collins ; The Sacred Nugget, by B, L. Farjeon ; Goblin Gold, by May Crommelin ; Primus in Indis, by M. J. Colquhoun ; In Quarters with the 25th (the Black Horse) Dragoons, by J. S. Winter; A Barren Title, by T. W. Speight; Half-Way, an Anglo-French Romance; Christmas Angel, by B. L. Farjeon. — Recent numbers of Harper’s Franklin Square Library are My Wife’s Niece ; The Mistletoe Bough, edited by M. E. Braddon ; Self or Bearer, by Walter Besant.

Music. The Franklin Square Song Collection, No. 3, edited by J. P. McCaskey (Harpers), contains two hundred favorite songs and hymns for schools and homes, nursery and fireside. A good deal of reading about music and musicians is mixed in. We think a selection is just now more important than a collection of songs.—St. Nicholas Songs, with Illustrations (The Century Co.), is a charming and novel book for the household where there are children. The volume contains upwards of a hundred pieces, accompanied by music composed expressly for the work. The reader will find nowhere else so large and excellent a collection of American music.—Music, by Henry C. Bannister (Holt), is a compact hand-book, intended originally for the use of candidates for middleclass examinations in England, but useful for the large class of amateurs in this country who desire to study the subject in a less formal manner.— Musical History, with a roll of the names of musicians, and the times and places of their births and deaths, by G. A. Macfarren, is a number of Harper’s Handy Series, and is a reprint of the same article in the Encyclopædia Britannica. It would be hard to find in the same space a more convenient hand-book of the subject. — Here may be placed, also, Dancing and its Relations to Education and Social Life, with a new method of instruction, including a complete guide to the cotillion (German), with 250 figures, by Allen Dodworth. (Harpers.) The author is a veteran teacher, and what he has to say about teaching will receive attention. It ought to receive it all the more for the good taste which he shows in his general observations.— The Standard Operas, their plots, their music, and their composers, a hand-book, by George P. Upton (Jansen, McClurg & Co.): a usefid and well-prepared little volume, which comes almost with a surprise when one considers the incredibly poor accounts of the operas which have appeared in connection with this or that opera company. Mr. Upton tells one just what one wishes to know, and tells it in a simple, readable English. — The Principles of Expression in Pianoforte Playing,by Adolph F. Christian. (Harpers.) The author, who is himself a teacher, has aimed to find and formulate principles of expression which answer to a definition of music that does not confine the art to the expression of emotion. Intelligence, not feeling, he says, is the chief requirement in expression. His book bears the mark of thoroughness.

Medicine and Hygiene. Cholera, its Origin, History, Causation, Symptoms, Lesions, Prevention, and Treatment, by Alfred Stillé, M. D. (Leas): a conservative work. Dr. Stillé, at the close, pays a little attention to the proposed or rumored cholera inoculation, and decides that it is entirely opposed to the whole course of pathological investigation of the disease. — Lectures on the Principles of House Drainage, by J P. Putnam. (Ticknor.) The principles are fully and freely illustrated by intelligible examples, and the book is one more contribution to the art of clean and healthy living. We notice, by the way, a curious paragraph on the last page. The peppermint test is described. The assistant is to carry a twoounce bottle of oil of peppermint up to the roof and pours the contents into the soil-pipe. “ The assistant,” Mr. Putnam proceeds, “ remains upon the roof until the examination within the house has been completed; otherwise the odor clinging to his clothes will be likely to follow him into the house.” Can’t the poor fellow come down from the roof and sit on the doorstep ? — Brain-Rest, being a disquisition on the curative properties of prolonged sleep, by J. Leonard Corning, M. D. (Putnams.) Dr. Corning describes also the mechanical contrivances which he has invented for regulating the cerebral circulation. — Common Sense in the Nursery, by Marion Harland (Scribners), has appeared in part in Babyhood, but in its present complete and comprehensive form will be of real value to many mothers. It is experience, judgment,and affection precipitated into advice so simple and rational as to commend itself at once to right-minded people. — Twenty-Five Years with the Insane, by Daniel Putnam. (MacFarlane, Detroit.) Mr. Putnam is not a physician, but a clergyman who was chaplain of an asylum, and in this volume he recounts some of his experience as well as indulges in some historical retrospect. The book is temperate in its tone, somewhat desultory, and not especially instructive. — A Guide to Sanitary House-Inspection, or hints and helps regarding the choice of a healthful home in city or country, by W. P. Gerhard (Wileys): a sensible little volume, intended for householders rather than for professionals.—A Text-Book of Nursing, for the use of training schools, families, and private students, compiled by Clara S. Weeks. (Appleton.) While designed for regular tuition and examination of nurses, this book may profitably be used in any thorough training of young women in the practical duties of life. It does not attempt to render a physician superfluous, but to make the nurse more efficient. — Psychiatry, a clinical treatise on Diseases of the Fore-Brain, based upon a study of its structure, functions, and nutrition, by Theodor Meynert, M. D., translated, under authority of the author, by B. Sachs, M. D. Part I., The Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistry of the Brain. (Putnams.) The anatomical facts given in this volume are made the basis of reasoning, which doubtless will be carried out more fully in the more strictly psychological portion of the work.

Political Economy and Public Affairs. Principles of Political Economy, by Simon Newcomb. (Harpers.) The author has attempted in this work to present the principles in a scientific manner and without the customary polemic method. Perhaps it is this consideration of a purely scientific spirit which leads him, in discussing the application of principles in the question of protection, to ignore wholly the view which makes national integrity a factor in the problem. — The Postulates of English Political Economy, by the late Walter Bagehot, with a preface by Alfred Marshall. (Putnams.) It is unfortunate that Mr. Bagehot could not have revised his work ; with current information, we think, he would not have spoken of the Tehuantepec ship railway as a fraudulent scheme and a collapsed one. — Protectionism, the ism which teaches that waste makes wealth, by W. G. Sumner. (Holt.) Professor Sumner is rapidly reaching the point where he will burn heretics or knock them on the head. He has lost what little patience he may once have had with protectionists. He has given up trying to convince them, and devotes his attention now to exposing them. — Practical Economics is the title which Mr. David A. Wells gives to a collection of essays, printed originally in The Atlantic and elsewhere, respecting certain of the recent economic experiences of the United States. (Putnams.) Mr. Wells’s long service as an economic writer enables him to bring to his work an advantage which younger students miss ; he has lived through great changes in economic conditions, and has been a watchful contemporary student, and not merely a retrospective inquirer. — Railroad Transportation, its history and its laws, by Arthur T. Hadley. (Putnams.) It is interesting to find a great subject like this, which has been attacked from a great variety of individual points of view and in multitudinous petty particulars, brought under review by a student who is not a railway manager, and who looks at the whole subject as an economical and political problem. Mr. Hadley’s work shows a marked advance in American economical literature. — The Silent South, together with the Freedman’s Case in Equity and the Convict Lease System, by George W. Cable. (Scribners.) Mr. Cable has collected in this volume his recent papers on the subjects which form the ground swell of political thought not so much in all America as in the South. For better or worse, the negro has been left, politically, to the States in which he is found: in respect of education and religion he is still the ward of the North, and it remains to he seen if each part of the country, using the means in its power, finds a certain ground of reconciliation and common work where once they found the occasion of conflict. — The third number of Military Monographs (Putnams) is the Necessity for Closer Relations between the Army and the People, and the best method to accomplish the result, by Captain George F. Price, U. S. A. Captain Price believes that we should organize the militia more perfectly and bring the regular army into more intimate connection with the volunteer force, but he does not give a very clear notion as to the relative part to be played by the general government and the state governments.

Books of Reference. Johnson’s New General Cyclopædia and copper-plate hand-atlas of the world (Johnson) is a solid two-volume work; in effect, an expanded dictionary of nouns, proper and common. Further condensation is secured by an abundant use of abbreviations. The Cyclopædia is tolerably strong in brief legal definitions, though we miss Libel, and in biography gives perhaps less attention to literature than to science or mechanics. Alexander Agassiz, by the way, did not resign his position in 1855. There are some rather queer entries, like Rank of States. The work is freely illustrated, though there seems to be no law about the choice. Why should Chipmunk, for example, be given a cut as big as his neighbor Chlamydophorus ? The maps are clear and ugly.— Part II. of a New English Dictionary on historical principles has been published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. (Macmillan, New York.) This is Dr. Murray’s great work of which the first number appeared some time since ; it is now promised more rapidly under the new arrangement of his residence at Oxford. This part covers Ant-Batten, and like the previous number is rich in historical illustration. The tracing of a word through its successive uses is the only thoroughly satisfactory lexical treatment for students, and If Dr. Murray’s work is completed on its present plan it will be indispensable to literary and historical students. One might well buy each number as it appears for the sake of the amount of curious lore which he will be sure to pick up in running it over.

Books on Art and Illustrated Books. Wonders of Sculpture, by Louis Viardot (Scribners), is a convenient book for giving one a running view of famous works. A chapter on American sculpture, descriptive rather than critical, is added by another hand. — Essays on the Art of Pheidias, by Charles Waldstein (The Century Co.), is a work for the archæologist rather than the general reader. The essays on the sculptures of the Parthenon, with the preliminary chapters and the miscellaneous papers included in the appendix, will be found very interesting and valuable by the classical student. The volume is handsomely printed by Clay & Son, London, and is illustrated with numerous plates and wood-cuts. — Mr. S. R. Koehler’s interesting history of Etching (Cassell & Co.) reached us too late to be included in our detailed notice of similar holiday books, among which it deserves a very high rank. — Keats’s Eve of St. Agnes has been illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett (Estes & Lauriat) in a style which is perfectly creditable without either interpreting or magnifying the poem. Indeed, the richness of the poem would have permitted and encouraged a more strictly decorative form of embellishment. — A Library of Religious Poetry, a collection of the best poems of all ages and tongues, with biographical and literary notes, edited by Philip Schaff and Arthur Gilman. (Funk & Wagnalls.) This is a new edition of a work brought out a few years since, and we do not quite understand the preface in its date and statement. Certainly the editors have not thoroughly revised the book to the close of 1884, as therein stated. A number of steel plates illustrate the work.

Books for Young People. Chatterbox for 1885. (Estes & Lauriat.) This mèlange of reading matter and pictures continues to come along, each year very much like the last. There are limits to the very good and tire very bad, but there are no limits to the commonplace.—Historic Boys, their Endeavors, their Achievements, and their Times, by E. S. Brooks. (Putnams.) Mr. Brooks has selected a dozen boys of ancient and modern times, though he does not come down later than the eighteenth century, and has given literary portraits of them. They were all hoys who were, so to speak, born to the purple, — indeed, it would have been difficult to find the early record of any others before democratic times; but then honor and courage and manliness were not born with democracy, and these stories, though perhaps a little galvanic in their activity, are honest attempts at making history real to the young by means of characters in whom they are supposed to be especially interested, and the deeds are such as point to the best elements of character. — Strange Stories from History for Young People, by George Cary Eggleston (Harpers) : a score of stories from history, mediæval and modern. Mr. Eggleston has selected those subjects which give opportunity for telling of courage, perseverance, fortitude, and other manly virtues, but he also thinks it well to harrow the youthful soul with scenes from the life of Ivan IV. The stories are told with a straightforward manner, but without grace or special dramatic skill. They are simply free from fustian and sentiment, and so have a negative excellence. — Three Vassar Girls in Italy, by Lizzie W. Champney. (Estes & Lauriat.) The three young women, who have been making excursions in other countries, have reached Italy, and find m that land plenty of material for letters, chats, and digests of printed books. We find Mrs. Champney’s liveliness more agreeable than much of the frippery of books of this class, but it is amusing to see how the necessity to be entertaining may get the better of one. Here are two girls suffering from the cold, who play pease porridge hot to warm themselves, and during the game one gives the other a lecture on St. Mark’s. We should like to have seen that performance. — ZigZag Journeys in the Levant, with a Talmudist storyteller, by Hezekiah Butterworth. (Estes & Lauriat.) This is the seventh, we think, of the series, and is as crammed with pictures as the rest. It is also written in the same queer, jumping-frog style, and has the same ingenious automatic toys of characters. — The first volume of The Child’s Pictorial (S. P. C. K., London; Youngs, New York), a little monthly magazine with colored illustrations, is an exceedingly attractive book. Both pictures and stories deserve a word of hearty

Practical Arts. First Lessons in Amateur Photography: a series of lectures delivered before the senior class of the Montclair High School by the principal, Randall Spaulding (Scovill Manufacturing Co., New York) : a little volume intended to give specific directions to young people who have the photographic craze. — Wonders of GlassMaking in all Ages, by A. Sauzay (Scribners), is a scrappy, anecdotieal book, by which one can pick up some curious information.

Theology and Philosophy. Christ and Christianity, — Studies on Christology, Creeds and Confessions, Protestantism and Romanism, Reformation Principles, Sunday Observance, Religious Freedom and Christian Union, — by Philip Schaff (Scribners) : a collection of essays and addresses by Dr. Schaff, who is a learned rather than an original theologian. But his learning is so varied and so kindly that the reader picks up a great many very suggestive facts and ideas, and learns to regard the author’s books as never-failing cisterns from which to draw well-filtered water, — a service not far behind that afforded by a fountain which is intermittent in its force. — The Idea of God, as affected by modern knowledge, by John Fiske. (Houghton.) In reprinting the papers which have appeared in The Atlantic, Mr. Fiske has added a readable preface in which he indicates the relation which the book bears to his previous writings. It is interesting to see the occupation of the theological field by other than clergymen, and it is a good sign of the widening of the field. — Darwinism and other Essays, by John Fiske. (Houghton.) This new edition of a collection of essays is enlarged by the addition of three others. Mr. Fiske’s growing reputation makes his friends desirous of following him along the many tracks which he has marked out in his mental activity.