Comment on New Books

Travel and Nature. Our Italy, by Charles Dudley Warner. (Harpers.) Mr. Warner sings, with wonder in his voice, the praises of Southern California. The song is not a mere rhapsody, but has very articulate sentences concerning oranges, grapes, raisins, and climate. The mellifluous Spanish words which label the towns and the occasional missions give the mellowness of age to what otherwise impresses one as the most splendid achievement of the age of electricity ; while the wonderful air in which this chosen spot is bathed melts and blends new and old into a golden present. If reading Mr. Warner’s books and looking at his pictures so uplift a staid commenter, what must the reality do ? — Noto, an Unexplored Corner of Japan, by Percival Lowell. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic who followed Mr. Lowell as he led them by devious ways through a sort of land of dreams to the wide sea will find a fresh pleasure in taking up the pretty book which holds the whole excursion. Now that the world has been covered with the tracks of explorers, there is a new pleasure to be gained in entrusting one’s self to a voyageur who travels in the pure joy of motion, and has the art to communicate his delight to others. Mr. Lowell’s book is for readers who love literature rather than for those who wish to add to knowledge patience. — Spain and Morocco, Studies in Local Color, by Henry T. Finck. (Scribners.) Mr. Finck is a capital traveler, and has a quick eye for those points which every traveler thinks he has seen when he reads about them. In this bright group of sketches, what is omitted calls for a bow to the author almost as much as what is included; for one is not called on to accept opinions, views, judgments, which only longhabitude in the person delivering them would justify. Rather, he finds himself in the companionship of a good observer and swift sketcher. Let him go to Spain and Morocco with Mr. Finck on his first journey, and take Mr. Ford, Mr. Hay, or Irving on his next trip. — The Blessed Birds, or Highways and Byways, by Eldridge Eugene Fish. (Otto Ulbrich, Buffalo.) A dozen papers on birds, and flowers, and trees, and country rambles, by a writer who confines himself mainly to the neighborhood of Buffalo, and writes not only with a genuine love of his subject and from firsthand acquaintance with it, but in a style which wins the reader, because the writer, without obtrusion, has thrown into it the spirit which animates him in his researches. He shows a familiarity with other writers in a similar vein, but is none the less individual and agreeable.

History and Biography. Recollections of President Lincoln and his Administration, by L. E. Chittenden, his Register of the Treasury. (Harpers.) Mr. Chittenden has written an extremely interesting book; and not the least interesting figure in the group is the author himself, who appears first as a Green Mountain lawyer engaging in the canvass for Lincoln in 1860, and gives a vivid account of his part in that canvass. As a politician Mr. Chittenden is refreshingly open, and his book is in many ways a capital record of political methods and of the common talk of men, as well as of the relations of men of distinction. We wish he had transcribed his notebooks verbatim when reporting conversations. Perhaps he has done so, but one is tempted to think that there is here a mixture of current impressions and later recollections, and so is in doubt just what credence to give. There are remarks accredited to Lincoln, for example, which one hesitates to accept. — The Old Navy and the New, by RearAdmiral Daniel Ammen, with an Appendix of Personal Letters from General Grant. (Lippincott.) Under this title Admiral Ammen gives in effect his autobiography and reminiscences which go back nearly to the War of 1812. He writes with a sailor’s frankness and with a sailor’s faculty for roving. His strong interest in the Nicaragua route leads him to treat of the Isthmus and its waterways at some length, and his lifelong friendship with General Grant enables him not only to give many reminiscences of his great associate, but to print a number of pleasing letters from him. — The latest volume in American Religious Leaders (Houghton) is Charles Grandison Finney, by George Frederick Wright. The grotesquerte of the full name is increased when the reader learns that the famous revivalist was actually named after Richardson’s hero. Finney’s name in the extreme Fast is a dying echo of what was once a mighty sound, but in Ohio it stands for institutions and a very positive religious movement. It was well worth while to have an Oberlin professor detail the career of so individual a preacher and theologian, and the reader of the book will find himself crossing battlefields famous in theological warfare. The figure of Finney himself is one which it would seem impossible now to copy, and it has thus a strong historical interest. —Charles Darwin, his Life and Work, by Charles Frederick Holder. (Putnams.) A volume in the Leaders in Science Series. Mr. Holder has made a sort of compendium of Darwin’s books of travel, and interjected a few personalia, but he has done little toward presenting the man vividly to young readers, and, in spite of the abundance of material from which he could draw, the book seems singularly lifeless. — The April Bulletin of the Boston Public Library (The Trustees, Boston) contains, besides the Classified List of recent accessions, a finding list of works by and relating to Rousseau in Bates Hall, and a continuation of Mr. Ford’s Bibliography of the Official Publications of the Continental Congress.

Education and Textbooks. Sketch of the Philosophy of American Literature, by Greenough White. (Ginn.) A rapid survey of the subject, with more of an attempt at discovering the rationale of the development of literature than such sketches usually contain. If Mr. White had given either more or less detail, we think his success would have been greater. That is, if he had assumed full acquaintance with facts, and had written for scholars in the same space, he might have made his speculation more profitable ; if he had, on the other hand, confined himself to the really important figures, and given more detail, he might have made his book a good introduction to the study for the use of schools and colleges.— Mademoiselle de la Seiglière, by Jules Sandeau, is added to Heath’s Modern Language Series. It is edited by F. M. Warren, of Johns Hopkins. The play is one recommended for the courses preparatory to entrance into New England colleges, and the editor has therefore had somewhat immature students chiefly in view ; but he has kept well in mind that he is introducing students to literature, and not merely to a school exercise. — English Prose, its Elements, History, and Usage, by John Earle. (Putnams.) The reader who has wearied of formal treatises on rhetoric, and doubts the power of any one to escape a sort of dry rot when dealing with language as it finds expression in literary art, should take up this book. It is a refreshingly independent work, and is so inductive in its method, building its results upon such a wide range of independent examples, that one finds himself always in the company, not of a dogmatic schoolmaster, but of an intelligent, curious student. The writer of English, in particular, cannot fail to get capital suggestions from it, chapter by chapter. — Tales from Shakespeare’s Tragedies, by Charles and Mary Lamb. Edited, with Notes, by William J. Rolfe. (Harpers.) Upon the same plan as the Comedies, to which we have before referred. The book is for school use, and as such might well have dispensed with the feeble woodcuts inserted here and there. — In Heath’s Modern Language Series, a recent number is Colomba, by Prosper Mérimée ; with Introduction and Notes by J. A. Fontaine. The introduction to this Corsican story is brief ; the notes are to the point and helpful. — Apperception, or The Essential Mental Operation in the Act of Learning, by T. G. Rooper. (Bardeen.) The original title of this little work, which is of English origin, was A Pot of Green Feathers, the answer which a teacher received upon asking her charge what a pot of ferns was, which she placed before them. The answer set Mr. Rooper to thinking how the mind really works in assimilating what is offered to it. His suggestive essay reaches the conclusion, “ That education is the best, not which imparts the greatest amount of knowledge, but which develops the greatest amount of mental force.”_ Prussian Schools through American Eyes, a Report to the New York State Department of Public Instruction, by James Russell Parsons, Jr. (Bardeen.) The Report deals only with elementary education, and is of special worth because of the particularity with which it describes the system in use. The rigid and uniform practice in Prussia makes this possible, since the observer is not bothered by too much freedom of exercise on the part of the teacher. Seeing one school, .he sees all.

Science. Electricity, the Science of the Nineteenth Century, a Sketch for General Readers, by E. M. Caillard. (Appleton.) A popular treatise, dealing first with static electricity, then with magnetism and current electricity, and finally with practical appliances of electricity. The historical phase of the subject is lightly touched upon, the author proposing to explain the phenomena of electricity as understood to-day, although she indicates the successive steps taken in the application of electricity. The book is plainly written, but not otherwise attractive in style. — The Diseases of Personality, by Th. Ribot. (The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.) Whether or not one looks at personality with the eye of a biologist, he will be sure to find in this little volume a great many interesting facts touching the disorders which affect the unity of personal consciousness ; hypnotism naturally comes in for treatment. Under the emotional disorders which take the form of opposite sexuality, we wonder if M. Ribot would undertake to account for the Chevalier d’Eon.— Animal Life and Intelligence, by C. Lloyd Morgan. (Ginn.) An English work, an octavo of five hundred pages, in which the author aims to consider his subject from a scientific and philosophical standpoint. Beginning with the nature of animal life, he proceeds with the process of life, reproduction and development, variation and natural selection, heredity and the origin of variations, organic evolution, the senses of animals, mental processes in man, mental processes in animals, their power of perception and intelligence, the feelings of animals, their appetences and emotions, animal activities, habit, and instinct, and finally struggles with the great problem of mental evolution. He reaches a conclusion which may be stated in his own words as a “ general belief that the intellectual progress of Englishmen during the past three hundred years has been in part due to the inheritance of individually acquired faculty.” It will be seen that his subject almost compels him into a discussion of human phenomena, though the book deals mainly with the lower animals.

Poetry. The Heart of the Golden Roan, by O. C. Auringer. (Lothrop.) An unusual piece of work, if only for its form. Eight poems in sequence, all cast in a measure not unlike Drayton’s The Battle of Agincourt, tell a romantic tale of choice between love and duty, the rider on the roan speeding on a somewhat mystical errand. Although the reader be not able to translate the facts of the poem into prosaic terms, he will be moved by the spirit which lifts the narrative into a poetic form which is more than once rich and striking. After the banjo poetry of the day, it is something to come upon the trumpet obbligato. — Sospiri di Roma, by William Sharp. (Printed for the Author, Rome.) Mr. Sharp has carried the conceit of sighs into the very form of his verse, which is throughout in irregular, broken measure, each line a breath, and unlinked by rhyme with any other. The poems are reflections of moods closely allied with nature in Italy, and often express with great felicity the momentary and feeling emotions of one who broods over the scenes both of human life and of landscape in Italy. — Chansons Populaires de la France, a Selection from French Popular Ballads. Edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by T. F. Crane. (Putnams.) In his interesting introduction Mr. Crane shows how late the French littérateurs have been in coming to a sense of the richness which lay in their folk ballads, and how rapidly these ballads were disappearing from the popular knowledge. One wonders at this the more when one considers how the literary class is constantly reinforced by accessions from the country; but much, doubtless, is due to the dominance of Paris and the strong disposition to exalt the art of letters. The collection is an attractive one, and is well equipped with bibliography and reasonable annotation.

Fiction. Juggernaut, a Veiled Record, by George Cary Eggleston and Dolores Marbourg. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert.) Juggernaut is the craze of speculation, and this novel, with its highly artificial framework, is designed to show how it crushes the life out of a man and his wife who come in the way of its terrible grinding power. — Two volumes of the attractive little series of Knickerbocker Nuggets (Putnams) are occupied with Representative Irish Tales, edited by W. B. Yeats. If the books contained nothing hut Lover’s Barny O’Reirdon the Navigator, they would be worth owning, that one might read over and over again that inimitable story ; but there are besides good examples of Carleton, Banim, Maria Edgeworth, whose Castle Rackrent is selected, Maginn, Croker, Griffin, Lever, Kickham, and Rosa Mulholland.