Comment on New Books

Religion and Theology. Who Wrote the Bible ? a Book for the People, by Washington Gladden. (Houghton.) The higher criticism has been expended now for some time upon the Bible, with the result that a certain consensus of judgment may be regarded as attained. It has been Dr. Gladden’s plan to present this latest accepted word of the critics in such a form as to meet the inquiries of a large class of readers who are uneasy over the rumors which have reached them, and are intelligent enough to receive reasonably a statement of results if given in the vernacular. The author has not been eager to give his readers the very latest conjecture and suspicion, but shows himself to he at once conservative and frank. The book ought to help many to readjust their view’s and to fortify their faith.—The Professor’s Letters, by Theophilus Parsons. (Roberts Bros.) Originally these letters were addressed to a young girl of sensitive religious nature bv a well-known writer of law books, who was a follower of Swedenborg. The tenderness and friendliness of the writing give an attractive character to the work, which is not so officially Swedenborgian as to repel those who are not in sympathy with the New Church, but are open to the refining thought which is apt to accompany the belief of its members. — Following the methods of other scholars, a number of students of church history have formed the American Society of Church History for the purpose of research, meetings, and publication. The third volume of these Papers (Putnams) contains what is in effect a treatise on The Renaissance, by Dr. Schaff, as well as shorter papers on The Historical Geography of the Christian Church, The Anabaptists of the Sixteenth Century, and other topics. Perhaps this subdivision of work is desirable, but we hope the day will come when historical societies at large will regard ecclesiastical history as within their purview.

Social and Political Science. The American Citizen, by Charles F. Dole. (Heath.) It is interesting, in view of the large number of books devoted to teaching the duties and rights of the citizen, to observe in what a variety of ways writers approach the subject. The fact that the study is pushing its way into the common school is leading writers to consider how it may be made comprehensive, and how it may engage the attention of those who have not been trained to think abstractly. Mr. Dole in this book begins at the right end, for he traces the notion of formal society in a very practical way through the family, the school, the playground, the social life of the young, up to the state, continuing with an application of principles to economics and to international law. A pretty wide range is taken, and some of the steps may be regarded as leaps ; but the book unquestionably will set botli teachers and scholars to thinking, and it bases all considerations on ethical and not conventional grounds. — The Relation of Labor to the Law of To-day, by Lujo Breutano. Translated from the German by Porter Sherman. (Putnams.) A compact treatise, proceeding on historical lines, which discusses the guilds as predecessors of trades-unions, then treats of these unions, and so comes to the heart of the struggle going on to-day. The second book deals with the economic principles of the labor question. The solution of the question, as it lies in the author’s mind, rests finally in the realization of freedom and equality of all before the law. — The fifth and sixth numbers of the Ninth Series of Johns Hopkins University series (Baltimore) are occupied with an investigation into the causes which led to the development of municipal unity among the Lombard communes, by William Klapp Williams, and bears the title The Communes of Lombardy from the Sixth to the Tenth Century. His inquiry seems to demonstrate the more vigorous principle of Teutonic organization as compared with the weaker remnant of Roman system. — In the series Questions of the Day (Putnams) Mr. George Haven Putnam has issued a very serviceable book under the title The Question of Copyright, which gives a summary of the copyright laws at present in force in the chief countries of the world, together with a report of the legislation now pending in Great Britain, a sketch of the contest in the United States, 1837-1891, in behalf of international copyright, and contains also certain papers on the development of the conception of literary property, and on the probable effects of the new American law. Mr. Putnam appears here as author as well as editor, and other writers are Mr. Bowker, Mr. Besant, Mr. Brander Mathews, and Sir James Stephen. — The Yellow Ribbon Speaker, Readings and Recitations, compiled by Anna 11. Shaw, Alice Stone Blackwell, and Lucy Elmina Anthony. (Lee & Shepard.) As the names of the compilers indicate to those who do not know the significance of the yellow ribbon, this speaker contains passages in prose and verse which tell for the cause of woman’s rights, as that term is popularly understood. — A second series of Speeches, Lectures, and Letters, by Wendell Phillips (Lee & Shepard), has been published, and further volumes are promised. These speeches will be read, we suspect, as Whittier’s poems are read, more for their eloquence and impassioned invective than as contributions to the history of the country. Mr. Phillips had the courage of his convictions, but those convictions were not always justified by the event. In this volume is a stirring tribute to Lincoln, but possibly some of his auditors remembered Mr. Phillips’s earlier judgment of the President when he characterized him with a sneer as a “ first-rate second-rate man.” — Politics and Property, or Phronocracy, a Compromise between Democracy and Plutocracy, by Slack Worthington. (Putnams.) Mr. Worthington begins with the serious statement: “it is evident to mankind in general that the earth on which we reside —an infinitesimal portion of the material universe — exists ; ” but in eighteen pages after this elemental start he reaches the Democratic and Republican parties. The main contention is for a system of cumulative taxation, but phronocracy involves also limitation of the suffrage and the occupation by the United States of all land from the frozen north to the Isthmus. Why should not the phronocratic philosopher wish to go further south ? An isthmus is a most arbitrary stopping-place. — Henry George’s Protection or Free Trade has been issued in a twenty-five-cent edition in paper covers. (Henry George & Co., New York.) — The Criminal Jurisprudence of the Ancient Hebrews, compiled from the Talmud and other Rabbinical Writings, and compared with Roman and English Penal Jurisprudence, by S. Mendelsohn. (M. Curlander, Baltimore.) A most interesting compilation, and one most suggestive as to the high moral standard of the Hebrew nation. It would be of even more interest to modern students if the land and usury laws of the ancient Hebrews could be subjected to the same critical editing. Of no slight value is the chapter of Maxims and Rules which bears out the reputation of the Hebrews for proverbial wisdom.

Essays. Excursions in Art and Letters, by William Wetmore Story. (Houghton.) Mr. Story has written so learnedly upon subjects connected with the arts which he engages in, and yet has scattered his work through so many periodicals, that he has done a service to students and readers in thus collecting what otherwise would miss a long life. The papers in this volume are Michel Angelo, Phidias and the Elgin Marbles, The Art of Casting in Plaster among the Ancient Greeks and Romans, A Conversation with Marcus Aurelius, and Distortions of the English Stage as instanced in “Macbeth.” The wide range of his scholarship and the sweep of his intellectual sympathy are well indicated by these subjects and his treatment of them. — Unhappy Loves of Men of Genius, by Thomas Hitchcock. (Harpers.) Mr. Hitchcock has chosen a dozen subjects, chiefly from the ranks of men of letters, since they usually furnish the largest number of documents in evidence. He has done his work with good taste and an interest which is communicated to the reader. Yet we wonder why it is that when we come to the passion of love, novels containing imaginary cases are so much more interesting than biographies which deal with actual and recorded psychological phenomena.

Music and the Drama. Music in its Relation to Intellectual Life ; Romanticism in Music. Two Lectures by F. L. Ritter. (Edward Schuberth & Co., New York.) Mr. Ritter makes the second of these lectures to consist mainly in running comments on the succession of composers of the romantic school.— Hamlet from the Actor’s Standpoint, its Representatives and a Comparison of their Performances, by Henry P. Phelps. (Edgar S. Werner, New York.) An odd medley, out of which one can pick a good many significant comments on the presentation of the character, but not many on the nature of Hamlet. The notes which Mr. Furness gathered from Mr. Booth and others, and used in his Variorum edition, are rather more pointed in this respect. — Blind, The Intruder, translated from the French of Maurice Maeterlinck by Mary Vielé. (W. II. Morrison, Washington.) These two plays belong to the work of the impressionist school in literature, and it would be difficult to find elsewhere language so stripped of ideality in form and yet so charged with meaning. The author has, as it were, dealt with words in masses, and manages to convey to the mind distinct impressions which cannot be traced for origin to particular phrases. The work is a curiosity of form. Mrs. Vielé has skillfully done her work as a translator.

Hygiene. Power through Repose, by Annie Payson Call. (Roberts Bros.) A little book which presents in a lucid, earnest way the observations and reflections of a woman who has studied the various forms in which nervous tension shows itself in her sex, and has reached the perception of certain simple but far-reaching laws which, if obeyed, would correct the apparently fatal tendency to nervous exhaustion, Miss Call writes as one who has a mission, but her book in its method and style is an admirable illustration of her principle so well condensed in the title. — Drinking-Water and lce Supplies, and their Relations to Health and Disease, by T. Mitchell Prudden. (Putnams.) A lively popular statement of the general conditions which affect the purity and impurity of water and ice. The author prudently abstains from specific instructions, but seeks to interest the householder in the subject, with the view to making him or her, very often her, more intelligently observant.—What to Eat, How to Serve it, by Christine Terhune Herrick. (Harpers.) It is surprising how many variations can he played on this familiar tune. Mrs. Herrick writes as freshly and as sensibly on breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and high teas, the rooms in which they are served, the-furniture of the table and the service, as if ever so many housekeepers, she among them, had not been giving the same excellent advice any time the past dozen years. — The Daughter, her Health, Education, and Wedlock; Homely Suggestions for Mothers and Daughters, by William M. Capp, M. D. (F. A. Davis, Philadelphia.) An unpretentious, sensible little book, which would perhaps make more of an impression if the writer had a more epigrammatic style ; but he says a good many things which will arrest attention because of the simplicity and reasonableness of the presentation.

History and Biography. Mr. John Fiske, in the friendly preface to his two-volume work on The American Revolution (Houghton), declares that he has never to this day understood the secret of the interest shown in the work when he was delivering it piecemeal before companies of young and old. We suspect his readers could reveal the secret to him by explaining to a mind not ordinarily obtuse that the power of coördination which he has enables him to select the really essential facts in a narrative of the Revolution, and to place them in such relation as to disclose the connection of cause and effect ; and that his own human interest in the story is communicated to the reader through the medium of a limpid, animated style. Mr. Fiske has a marvelous faculty for appropriating the best material and transforming it by his genius into the; appearance of his own invention. These volumes read as if the author designed the American Revolution. — The American Race, a Linguistic Classification and Ethnographic Description of the Native Tribes of North and South America, by Daniel G. Brinton. (Hodges.) Dr. Brinton introduces his study with an inquiry into the origin of American races, and after disposing of other theories, maintains an European origin from the northwest. His main work, however, is to classify the races into five groups, on the basis of language, though he does not neglect the evidence of craniology. He gathers into this volume the results already announced by him in a more fragmentary form.—In his The Life and Times of John Dickinson (Lippincott), Dr. Charles J. Stillé has written a temperate and reasonable exposition of the career of a statesman who was so philosophical in mind, so legal in training, and so courageous in disposition that he was pretty sure to be misunderstood in a time of political upheaval, and we may add, pretty sure also to misunderstand the actual tendency of events. The study is an excellent contribution to historical literature, and marks quite well the new spirit in which our political history is written, — a spirit which is unpartisan, yet national. — Under a Colonial Roof-Tree, Fireside Chronicles of Early New England, by Arria S. Huntington. (Houghton.) The apparent carelessness of this book adds to its charm. A more formal method and a closer regard to the demands of antiquarian students might have served to dissipate something of the agreeeable flavor which now attaches to these rambling pages wherein old Hadley and the life it held reappear and disappear to the eye. One gets glimpses of household interiors which are not the reconstruction of the author, but the result of her affectionate unveiling of records and diaries. — The Biography of Dio Lewis, by Mary F. Eastman. (Fowler & Wells Co.) The author of this life must have despaired of putting on record a character so charged with vitality as that of Dr. Lewis. He was a whole battery in himself, giving off sparks in all directions, and electrifying every one with whom he came in contact. His work in promoting knowledge and observance of the laws of health was admirable and has been continued by many disciples ; but the public that knew him here may be somewhat surprised at the extent of his labors for temperance. He seemed, in New England parlance, always about to be flying off the handle, but in reality he was cutting at all sorts of evils. The biography is not too formal, and one gets a tolerably faithful notion of this lively reformer, with his generous nature and his restless impulses.

Poetry. The Vision of Misery Hill, a Legend of the Sierra Nevada, and Miscellaneous Verse, by Miles I’Anson. (Putnams.) A collection of hearty rhymes which have sometimes the vigor as well as the slouch of the miner. The pictures were engraved by no ordinary engraver, or if the engraver was ordinary his tools were not.

Education and Textbooks. Memorials of St. Paul’s School. (Appleton.) St. Paul’s School at Concord, N. H., has contrived in its short career of thirty-six years to accumulate a body of traditions which, if all goes well, will furnish the basis for delightful memories for many generations. Very likely some of the varied forms of life which it has cultivated in these earlier years will disappear, but good customs which have stood the test of two generations of men are likely to prevail ; and this volume, interesting now to on-lookers, will one of these days have peculiar interest to those who are curious as to the beginnings of things. We would not for this reason advise persons to buy it and store it against an indefinite future use, but we can assure the reader who does not happen to have been a St. Paul’s boy, or a Concordian, as J. H. C. would have us call him, that he will find in this work a most lively account of a Knabengarten. The ingenuity which has gone into this cultivation of boy life at Concord is extraordinary. — French by Reading, a Progressive French Method, by Louise Seymour Houghton and Mary Houghton. (Heath.) The principle upon which this clever book is designed is that of a teacher and pupil working together. After a brief introduction giving the necessary information as to letters and their pronunciation, a series of lessons is given, which start with interlinear translations, just as a teacher might read aloud to the pupil, follow with grammatical inferences, and conclude with the French passage free from the translation. The series proceeds from easy forms to more difficult.

Fiction. One of our Conquerors, by George Meredith. (Roberts.) The initiated may be left to analyze the elements of greatness in this book. To the reader bred on intelligible literature, the game seems hardly worth the candle. He finds characters enigmatically named whose story, simple in its main lines, is so swathed in envelopes of phrases which constantly suggest occult meaning as to make him wonder if he is not at work upon the inversion of a parable. One of our Conquerors is apparently loaded to the muzzle with meaning, and the result is likely to be nearly fatal to the innocent reader who touches it off.