Books of the Month

Travel and Nature. Picturesque Alaska, a journal of a tour among the mountains, seas, and islands of the northwest, from San Francisco to Sitka, by Abby Johnson Woodman. (Houghton.) An unpretentious record which betrays a genuine love of nature, and by its simplicity of narrative conveys to the prospective traveler over the same ground a clear notion of what he may expect to do and to see. — From Japan to Grenada, sketches of observation and inquiry in a tour round the world in 1887-8, by James Henry Chapin. (Putnams.) The ordinary notes of a plain, unpretending traveler, who carried not exactly the wealth of the Indies to the Indies, but a moderate competence. — The Home Acre, by Edward P. Roe. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) Mr. Roe, as is well known, was a novelist in-doors, and a small-fruit raiser out-of-doors. This book contains the fruit of his experience as regards trees, shrubs, and small vegetables when one has only a patch of ground beneath his patch of stars.

Poetry and the Drama. Accolon of Gaul, with other Poems, by Madison J. Cawein. (John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.) If Mr. Cawein were less uneasily conscious of his poetic gifts, we should have more confidence that he would work out his destiny to substantial success. There are lines in his book which lure one on, but the trail is lost, and one begins to think that this author has only poetic words, and not poetic thoughts. The one hope is in his recourse to nature. If he will dismiss all his romantic persons and his classic divinities, and go into the wilderness for more than an hour at a time; if he will indeed build himself a hut on some Southern mountain slope, and stay there for two years, he will destroy the second year what he wrote the first, and come out of the trial with some real poetic results, — of that we are sure. — The Masque of Death, and Other Poems, by Charles Lotin Hildreth. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) The first duty of a poet is to be musical. His attack is on the ear, and if his lines do not sing our ears have a way of closing themselves. When Mr. Hildreth says, —

we shut our ears as instinctively as we duck when we pass a baseball game in full progress. Tempt’st! As De Quincey says, the word ought to be boiled. It is more a pity, since this author sometimes shows a feeling for Nature in her more pensive moods which is fine and faithful. — Poems, by Lee Fairchild. (The Manual Publishing Company. Chicago.) Published, the author says. “ at the request of quite a limited number of those whom I consider my more appreciative friends.” —The Cup of Youth, and Other Poems, by S. Weir Mitchell. (Houghton.) How charming is the twilight song in The Violin ! — Poems, by James Arthur Edgerton, (E. R. Alderman & Sons, Marietta, Ohio.) The exigencies of verse-making produce variations in language, as when Mr. Edgerton sings, —

— and so forth. —Through Broken Reeds, by Will Amos Rice. (C. H. Kilborn, Boston.) Mr. Rice has sensibility; he has a habit of seeing things through a poetic medium, but he has not cultivated the power of melodious verse, and he has not learned the true value of words and figures of speech, else he would not have written, —

nor in his very first poem would he have been a racer in the first stanza, a hitter of something which appears to be a vow cast in the foundry of the soul in the second, and in the fourth should have said,

— Poems, by Dora Greenwell, with a biographical introduction by William Darling. (W. Scott, London; Thomas Whittaker, New York.) One of the Canterbury Poets Series. The introduction gives some pleasant intelligence of the life of this poet, whose name was familiar to American readers a generation ago through her prose volumes. The poems are selected from her fuller collection, and indicate the same hopeful spiritual nature as do her prose writings. —A Drama Beyond the Grave, by John Franklin Clark. (American News Company.) We cheerfully add that the price of this delectable comedy is twenty-five cents. No one will regret his money. From the first scene of the first act, when Bergman, Jr., bursts on the stage, representing the Docks in Baltimore, and screams, —

to the closing scene, when Lenore and Poe emerge from a dwelling “surrounded with columns around which twine flowers, foliage, and plants, " in a paradisical (sic) garden, and Poe delivers a farewell, in which he declares, “

there is nothing but, richness. Why, just look at the characters : Edgar Allan Poe, Poet and Author (no mere poet, mark you !) ; Clarence Bergman, A Cultivated, Selfish, Unprincipled Man; Clarence Bergman, Jr., A Desperate Character ; Torquato Tasso, A Poet and Spirit Father of Poe; Mrs. Lenox, A Lady living with her Family in Philadelphia; Jacob Holmes, A Stolid, Ignorant Man in Spirit Life ; and several other equally terrifying characters ; and the scenes are at Baltimore, Philadelphia, and the First Supermundane Sphere of Earth. O Poe ! what crimes are committed in thy name!—Eos, an Epic of the Dawn, and Other Poems, hy Nicholas Flood Davin. (Leader Company, Regina, N. W. T.) Mr. Davin (M. P.) has a delightful little passage in his preface : ” I had intended publishing what, now appears, and something more, in London, but the readers of the publishing houses were away holiday-making, and I had not time to await their return.” So he publishes his hook in Regina, and it has the honorable distinction of being the first piece of literature published in the North West Territories. — The Amaranth and the Beryl, an Elegy, by Charles Edward Barns. (Willard Tracker & Co., New York.) The other poems are Minabel, The Truth-God, Untitled Lyrics and Sonnets, Zoroaster. These be parlous words and wild verse. —The BirdBride, a Volume of Ballads and Sonnets, by Graham R. Tomson. (Longmans.) The workmanship of these poems is admirable, and we think that the author will do strong things in verse after she escapes, as we hope she will, from the influence of the old French poets and from the atmosphere of hooks generally. However rich a poet’s gifts may be, he becomes affected when he attempts to speak in the voice and manner of any period but his own. Now the writer of this hook has a charming nineteenth-century voice. — An Introduction to the Poetry of Robert Browning, by William John Alexander, Pb. D. (Ginn & Co.), is a really helpful and discriminating piece of work, and in these respects differs from the usual run of books about Browning. — American Sonnets, selected and edited, with an Introduction, by William Sharp (W. Scott, London), leaves nothing to be desired, except, perhaps, better sonnets. Mr. Sharp has done his work with great intelligence and faithfulness, and few American writers of “fourteen-liners” have escaped his field-glass. On the whole, the collection makes a, creditable exhibit. A similar volume of English sonnets, covering the same period, would not put us to the blush. Mr. Sharp’s introduction to bis anthology, which, by the way, is gracefully inscribed to Mr. Stedman, is well written and sympathetic, and not the less interesting because his literary estimates are for the most part at variance with those accepted on this side of the water. — From Snow to Sunshine, by Alice Wellington Rollins, with Fac-Similes of Water-Color Drawings of Butterflies, by Susie Barstow Skelding. (Frederick A. Stokes & Brother.) A very pleasing booklet which must have often served as an Easter gift.— The Afternoon Landscape, Poems and Translations, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Longmans), is a volume of careful and scholarly verse, in which is evident the precise touch of a writer trained in other departments of literature. The readers of The Atlantic have already had a taste of Mr. Higginson’s poetical quality in the piece called The Dying House. Quite as well worth their liking as that are Decoration, To My Shadow, a charmingly quaint conception, and Several of the sonnets, especially the sonnet on page 22, which closes with two striking lines :

Philosophy and Theology. In the reissue, in collective form, of the late Rowland G. Hazard’s writings ( Houghton), all of which indicate the philosophic mind, two volumes take prominence as distinct contributions to philosophy: Freedom of Mind in Willing, and the composite volume which contains the two letters to John Stuart Mill on Causation and Freedom of Mind in Willing, the two discourses on Man a Creative First Cause and Animals nor Automata, and a letter to Dr. Wharton on Causation. The former of these volumes contains an interesting essay on Mr. Hazard by Professor Fisher, and both have bibliographical notes by the editor of the series. Miss Caroline Hazard. Mr. Hazard belonged to a small class of men. a very small class in America, — Mr. Sampson Read was another, — whose mercantile pursuits do not merely create no real obstruction to their intellectual avocation, but offer simply another form of expression. Mr. Hazard, engaged in buying cotton and manufacturing it, was the same Mr. Hazard who pondered Edwards and Mill and wrought at his philosophical themes, not as a closet student, but as a thinking man of affairs. — It is proper to place here also the volume by the same writer and publishers. Essay on Language, and Other Essays and Addresses, since the method of approach and of statement is so clearly philosophical. Yet we are disposed to value more highly that, sturdy independence of mind which finds expression in some of the addresses, and to esteem the personality of the thinker above his thoughts. Miss Hazard’s biographical sketch gives some hints, but more are to be found in the papers themselves.— Christian Doctrine Harmonized and its Rationality Vindicated, by John Steinfort Kedney. (Putnams.) Dr. Kedney accepts Christian Dogmatics as a science, which, in spite of variations of belief, has a general and defined existence. His business is to show, from a speculative point, that this science is not an artificial nor an arbitrary system, but rests upon the same foundation as all human learning, and is part and parcel of the human reason. His apology is presented with manliness and courtesy, and he writes with a catholic spirit which will win him respect and attention. — The Way, the Nature and Means of Revelation, by John F. Weir. (Houghton.) A reverent and searching study of the Scriptures for that Bible within the Bible which discloses the natural and normal development of the spiritual life. Professor Weir has pondered over the nature of the human spirit, and has lead his Bible, not as a fragmentary collection of facts and teachings, but as a consistent hand-book to the life of man. No one can follow him in the course of his thought without being struck with the penetration of his interpretative power.—Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development, by Henry George Atkinson and Harriet Martinean. (Josiah P. Mendum, Boston.) The reader of Miss Martineau’s life will recall the close connection which she made, spiritually, with Mr. Atkinson, to the dismay of her friends. Mr. Atkinson was to the vulgar a clairvoyant; to Miss Martineau he was a philosopher, who solved her problems, and their correspondence, here given, shows a mind of great dexterity, which manipulates the more elusive phenomena of the spirit with confidence and a great show of systematic construction. — Solitarius to his Dæmon, three papers by Charles Edward Barns. (Willard Tracker & Co., New York.) The three pipers are entitled The Ephemeris of Nature, Solitude, and The Poet’s Province. Dip into this book anywhere and you will not touch bottom ; even at the shores it is very deep. Take the first sentence of the second paper, for example : " Who would that he were brave enough to read the cryptograph of a human heart ? " Or this, near the end of the same: “Mere analytics and mind-values all sooner or later swim into the Sargossas sea of stagnation.''

Fiction. The Story of Million Lescaut. and of the Chevalier des Grieux, translated from the French of L’Abbé Prévost by Arthur W. Gundry. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) Mr. Gnudry regards this book in a different light: from Mrs. Grundy: with him it is a classic, and so

all but Mrs. Grundy agree; yet Mrs. Grundy herself might be somewhat puzzled to say why she puts her fan up when the book is mentioned. To the reader who comes upon it by accident it seems dull and commonplace; no impropriety could be more decorously and blamelessly set forth ; there is not a simper in the book. One has only to accept the intrigues as in the course of nature, and one has a mild narrative of personal adventure, told serenely and with proper grace. — A Splendid Egotist, by Jeannette H. Walworth. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) A somewhat pallid piece of sensational Writing. The author conceives an artist who is so selfish as to think his superior wife a hindrance to his success, and then leaves him to get along without her, while she stays in the background of a chosen hiding-place, ready to come forward at the proper moment. The situation is not especially new, and the author does not seem to know just what to do with it. —The Story of Patsy, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. (Houghton.) It is almost misleading to place in this category the pathetic and humorous sketch from life which meets us in this little book. Mrs. Wiggin’s strong sympathy with the weak and unfortunate is accompanied by so keen and delightful a sense of the drolleries of human nature that one is saved alternately from despair and from levity. — A Bluegrass Thoroughbred, by Tom Johnson. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) Feeble-wickedness.— Hagai*, by James Arthur Mac Knight. (Belford, Clarke it Co.) A confused tale of Ohio, Utah, and the Rebellion. The characters execute a great variety of evolutions, but it is quite difficult to make out the figures. — Lang Syne, or the Wards of Mount Vernon, by Alary Stuart Smith. (John B. Alden, New York.) An attempt at an historical romance of the time of the War for Independence. The figures of Washington and Franklin move through the story with somewhat awkward consciousness, and the writer seems rather a hashed at her own boldness, as witness this sentence: “ ‘ Lady Alice,’said Dr. Franklin, as any other mortal might have done, ‘what may I help you to?’ " and Lady Alice would like some barley cream or a cup of orgeat, as no girl, unhappily, would now. — Her Strange Fate, by Celia Logan. (Belford. Clarke & Co.) flip view on the cover, which shows a young woman looking out of her window while a young man in black gracefully drops into a lake several thousand feet below, leads us to wonder how her fate could be more terrible than hisn. Chapter I. “It was a dreary, drizzling morning in Port Repose. Iowa.”. . . Chapter II. “ Shaking off the girl, Mrs. Norris sprang to the counter, seized a bottle of vitriol, rapidly uncorked it, and turned tn throw the contents into Erford’s face. Quick as she was, he was quicker still, and with his umbrella Struck np her hand, sending the fiery liquid flying in all directions.”We may remark, en passant, that we have never seen the umbrella used more effectively, even in a woman’s hand, in modern fiction. In the twenty-eighth chapter we come to our friend on the cover. “Neither Inez nor Hugh saw nor heard her. He tore open the velvet portière, leaped upon the balcony rail, and plunged headlong into the river. In vain Inez tried to clutch him. . . . There was a heavy splash.”The artist appears to have been so engrossed with arranging the legs of the elegant young man that he neglected to notice that in the story he plunged headlong. Why can we not have faithful illustrations to our novels, when they are written with such painful regard for nature and reality ? — Fraternity. (Harpers.) A Welsh story. — A Storm Ashore, by James H. Connolly; The Lion’s Share, by Mrs. Clark Waring; Bella Domonia. (Belford, Clarke & Co.) — A Girl Graduate, hy Celia Parker Woolley. (Houghton.) A contribution to the literature which the higher education of women has been bringing down on us of late. — Roberts Brothers give us two additional volumes of Miss Wormley’s excellent translations from Balzac’s novels. — Mr. Henry James offers us a very entertaining book for summer reading in A London Life, and Other Stories. The other stories consist of The Patagonia, The Liar, and Mrs. Temperly. The second of these is quite without a rival in this collection. (Macmillan & Co.)

Science. Mental Evolution in Man’s Origin of Human Faculty, by George John Romanes. (Appleton.) " My object,” says Mr. Romanes, ” is to seek for the principles and causes of mental evolution in man, first as regards the origin of human faculty, and next as regards the several main branches into which faculties distinctively human afterwards ramified and developed.” Future installments will deal with the Intellect, Emotions, Volition, Morals, and Religion. The student will find in the work thus begun not a simple survey of the field after the scattered work of other men, but a coördinated scheme based upon Mr. Romanes’s own hypothetical extension of the evolution doctrine into the domain of psychology. He seeks to weld still more completely the links in the chain which hind the human with the brute creation. —The Psychic Life of Micro-Organisms, a study in experimental psychology, by Alfred Binet; translated from the French by Thomas McCormack. (The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.) This little book may be taken in a measure as a foot-note to Romanes’s large work, but a footnote by a dissenter; for Binet sends the psychological element down into the very protoplasm, and objects to Romanes’s theory as arbitrary and artificial. — Chemical Lecture Notes, by Peter T. Austen. (Wiley.) “ This little book,”the author says, “is not intended to be a text-book of chemistry, but is simply a collection of notes and observations on certain topics which experience as a teacher has shown me often, give the student more or less trouble.”In form, the book is a familiar talk with students. — We should be gravely remiss if we failed to record The Pericosmic Theory of Physical Existence, and its Sequel Preliminary to Cosmology and Philosophy Proper, by George Stearns. (Wood Brothers, Hudson, Mass.) It may be that some of our readers have a right to the book, for it is dedicated “ To all Votaries of Science Proper, and to all Tentative Abettors of Philosophy Proper, the finale of whose calling is the teleology of mundane existence.” Can you, reader, lay vour hand on your watch-pocket and deny that you are either a Votary of Science Proper, or a Tentative Abettor of Philosophy Proper? We are neither, and we will have nothing to do with the Pericosmic Theory. How do we know that it is not Science or Philosophy Improper ?

Bibliography and Books of Reference. Catalogue of the Barton Collection of the Boston Public Library. (Published by the Trustees.) This noble piece of cataloguing is in two parts : the first being a Catalogue of the Works of William Shakespeare, original and translated, together with the Shakespeareiana embraced in the collection, prepared by Janies Mascarene Hubbard ; the second, a Catalogue of the Miscellaneous Portion of the same collection, prepared hy José Francisco Carret. The Barton Collection was made by Thomas Pennant Barton during the years 1834—1866, and was bought by the city of Boston in 1873. It contains over twelve thousand volumes, and is by all odds the most valuable collection, taken with the other possessions of its kind in the library, of Shakespeareiana on this side of the Atlantic. The Miscellaneous Portion embraces a great deal illustrative of the English drama, and many books which will be of value to editors of English classics. The whole catalogue mounts up to over eight hundred and fifty pages of double-column matter, set in very clear style and accompanied by pertinent bibliographical notes. If is the worthy production of a great library.