Comment on New Books

History and Biography. Lewis Cass, by Andrew C. McLaughlin, is the twenty-second number in the American Statesmen Series (Houghton), and is a very good example of that treatment of public men which takes special account of the material in which they work. History is more than a background to this biographical study ; there is a blending of the personal and the social which evinces a keen desire on the part of the biographer to see his subject in all its relations, and to give the reader the whole benefit of his collateral study. Thus the book, besides being an admirable inquiry into the character and career of a notable figure in our history, is a full, particular, and vigorous sketch of a section and examination of conditions which made Cass a firstrate man, whereas under other conditions and in an older section he might have been a second-rate man. — The first number of A Journal of American Ethnology and Archæology (Houghton) contains two papers by the editor, J. Walter Fewkes, and one by Benjamin Ives Gilman. All the papers deal with the Zuñi Indians, and are further efforts to make available for students that curious museum of American antiquities which we know as Zuñi land. Probably the Zuñis themselves live and move and have their being without consciousness of their peculiar value as a survival, but never was there a more delightful surprise than when the cover was taken off this corner of America and we could all look in and see a mirror of antiquity. Mr. Gilman’s paper on Zuñi Melodies is based upon phonographic cylinders.— About an Old New England Church, by Gerald Stanley Lee. (W. W. Knight & Co., Sharon, Conn.) The Congregational church of Sharon, Conn., celebrated the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the joint founding of church and town, a year or so ago, with religious exercises, a mild bit of masquerade in the shape of an audience antiquely dressed, a dinner, speeches, singing, and an address by the young pastor. The address is preserved in this little book, and though sometimes rather conscious in its levity is a good-humored, lively running comment on manners and men in the local history, and a study in the Puritanism of a Connecticut town a century and a half ago. The offhand character of the address makes better speech than reading, but Mr. Lee may be thanked for so fresh an historical sketch. — The History of the Middle Ages, by Victor Duruy. Translated by E. H. and M. D. Whitney ; with notes and revisions by George Burton Adams. (Holt.) A great merit of this comprehensive work is the skill with which cause and effect in human history are kept clearly in mind in the midst of many and otherwise confusing details. The author has a clear conception of the large movements in process during the Middle Ages, and he has an artist’s perception of the facts which must be noted in order that the student may be able to grasp the masses into which these facts group themselves. — History of the Jews, by H. Graetz. (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.) The first volume of this work has been issued, covering the time from the earliest period to the death of Simon the Maccabee. The original work in eleven volumes has been translated, under the author’s supervision, into English, and compressed so as to occupy but five volumes, although somewhat extended. It is of interest to Christian students familiar with the facts of Jewish history through the Old Testament to see how a modern Jewish historian will use the same facts, weaving them into a continuous history. The writer does not ignore the supernatural element, but he seems disposed to treat it somewhat in the spirit of modern criticism, and the result is that Jewish history is as it were secularized and rendered less exceptional. Professor Graetz makes his early narrative a somewhat generalized one, and shows a singular absence of preciseness in the matter of dates. In speaking of the exodus from Egypt he says, “ The fourth generation of the first immigrants left Egypt after a sojourn of several centuries,” a sentence which carries its own contradiction. His whole method is that of a man who supposes in his readers an exact knowledge upon which he builds.— Mr. Gladstone is the subject of a volume in the series The Queen’s Prime Ministers. (Harpers.) Mr. George W. E. Russell, who writes the book, has done a difficult task well. The personal biography is necessarily brief, because the plan of the book calls for a political biography, and because Gladstone entered public life at twenty-two, and has lived and breathed the air of Parliament ever since. Yet it would not be possible to measure his public career justly without that knowledge of his personality which explains his temperament and his ingrained tastes. Mr. Russell has provided the needful information in a succinct form, and his final chapter, in which he analyzes Mr. Gladstone’s character, is eloquent in its restraint and vigor of touch. — With the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, a Narrative of the First Voyage to the Western World, drawn mainly from the Diary of Christopher Columbus, by Charles Paul Mackie. (McClurg.) Mr. Mackie attempts a half fictitious and wholly eulogistic sketch of the career of Columbus. He decorates it just so far as may be done by a slight imagination of scenes and conversation, but does not depart far from the record. The result is that the reader is somewhat uneasy, not knowing whether he is reading enlivened history or can let himself go in a story founded on fact. The author’s view of Columbus is that of an advocate and stout champion. It must be said, however, that it is a somewhat conventional figure presented to the eye, and one is scarcely helped to any discriminating judgment of Columbus. — Austin Phelps, a Memoir, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. (Scribners.) Mrs. Ward has been able to avail herself of an autobiographical fragment by her father, which is extremely interesting for its disclosure of his mind in the most formative period of his life; she has also used passages from his letters and from his printed writings, but she has been compelled, nevertheless, to draw much upon her own knowledge in order to give readers some notion of an experience of physical suffering which is appalling to contemplate. This experience helps one to discern Professor Phelps’s character, and if one can bring himself to go through with it he will know something of the power of human endurance. — England and the English in the Eighteenth Century, Chapters in the Social History of the Times, by William Connor Sydney. (Macmillan.) A two-volume work of some seven humdred and fifty solid pages, dealing with such subjects as the London of the time, dress and costume, amusements and pastimes, coffee houses, taverns and clubs, popular credulities, quacks, roads and traveling, health resorts, education, the literary and the political worlds, King Mob, the criminal code, and the religious world. Town life is more minutely recorded than country life, and in general the material side of human nature is most fully considered. This is not strange when one considers that it is the comfort-loving, sociable England of the eighteenth century which is under consideration. The book has a peculiar value at this time, when by a natural affinity not only literature, but art and morals are harking back to the time characterized in it. — The Sabbath in Puritan New England, by Alice Morse Earle. (Scribners.) Would not Mrs. Earle have kept closer to New England phraseology if she had said “ Lord’s Day ” ? Be this as it may, her collection of facts and incidents bearing on her subject is not only full almost to exhaustion, but set forth with an unflagging interest and a keen appreciation of the attitude which a modern reader holds to the theme, albeit her genuine regard for Puritan New England saves her from a mere flippancy of tone. Our readers have already had a taste of the work in Mrs. Earle’s account of the New England Meeting-House, and may be assured that the people in the meeting-house and every stick that went into the structure are equally well treated. The book is a readable addition to our antiquarian literature.

Education and Textbooks. A new edition has been published, in five volumes, of the Life and Works of Horace Manm. (Lee & Shepard.) It is substantially the same as that issued by Mrs. Mann about twentyfive years ago, and contains the Life in one volume, with reports, addresses, passages from the Common School Journal, and miscellaneous papers in four volumes. Mr. Mann’s son, George Combe Mann, a name which at once recalls an inspirer of Mr. Mann, has supervised the edition, and added a review of Horace Mann’s work and writings by Félix Pécaut. The edition has much that educators and historians cannot afford to disregard, although many of the practical problems of Mann’s day take a different form now. — The Complete Music Reader, for High and Normal Schools, Academies, and Seminaries, by Charles E. Whiting. (Heath.) The completeness is acquired by devoting the first fifty pages to instruction and exercises in musical notation, after which the editor has arranged a good selection of two - part, three - part, and four-part songs, anthems and choruses, hymn tunes and patriotic tunes. It is a pity that in the last are not included any of the hymns and songs which sprang from the war for the Union.—A sensible textbook by which the study of French is made to carry with it an acquaintance with the history of France is Readings from French History, edited by O. B. Super (Allyn & Bacon) ; ten passages being taken from Thierry, Louis Blanc, Michelet, Lamartine, Thiers, Guizot, and others. The notes are brief and pointed.

Ecclesiasticism. The Peace of the Church, by W. R. Huntington. (Scribners.) In these Bohlen Lectures, Dr. Huntington takes for his text the four points upon which the Lambeth Conference of 1888 rested their plea for church unity, namely, the Scriptures as the rule and ultimate standard of faith, the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, the sacraments of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, and the Historic Episcopate “ locally adapted ; ” each of these propositions, as carefully expressed in concise language, he justifies at some length and in a most admirable spirit. The scheme was an eirenic one, and its effect upon those who support it is to deepen and enrich their catholicity. Whether one agrees with Dr. Huntington or not, he cannot fail to be impressed by the good temper and the generous mood in which he writes. The great advantage of the Lambeth plan is that it is a distinct scheme offered by two branches of the Church, and permits, therefore, practical action as well as discussion. Such a treatment as Dr. Huntington has given it will do much toward familiarizing the religious public with its provisions and making ready the way for action. — A looser, less careful book is R. Heber Newton’s Church and Creed (Putnams), which looks, nevertheless, to the same general end ; or rather, assuming the catholicity which is Dr. Huntington’s objective point, Mr. Newton, impelled by the occasion which his own deliverances have brought about, pleads for clerical freedom of thought and action. The personal equation in his case easily accounts for a certain zeal for liberty which will be regarded by some, otherwise sympathetic, as beyond discretion.

Humor. The Albany Depot, by W. D. Howells. (Harpers.) Mr. Howells’s farce is the conception which a thoroughly delicate-minded man has of the petty accidents of life. The farce which holds the stage is for the most part the conception of these accidents by coarse-minded men ; but what a distance from grinning through a horse collar to this little bit of fun, in which the author, after inviting us all to join in a laugh at the expense of his refined people, turns about suddenly and through his own characters asks us what we are laughing at! — As We Were Saying, by Charles Dudley Warner. (Harpers.) In collecting the brief essays contributed to the Editor’s Drawer of Harper’s Monthly Mr. Warner might well have erased the direct reference to the Drawer. His papers are too good to have this ephemeral mark upon them ; they have a literary charm and a delicacy of satire which give them the stamp of currency among pieces of genuine wit. If one likes to have satire lurk behind airy phrases, and to know the keen thrust of irony from places of ambush, let him read these papers, which, with their ease and penetration, are dabs of caustic laid upon the vanities of American manners. What could be lighter than his humorous touch ? — yet it knocks nonsense flat. One is tempted to quote freely, and it is easy to find such clever bits as this upon Christmas : “We have appropriated the English conviviality, the German simplicity, the Roman pomp, and we have added to it an element of expense in keeping with our greatness. Is anybody beginning to feel it a burden, this sweet festival of charity and good will, and to look forward to it with apprehension ? Is the time approaching when we shall want to get somebody to play it for us, like baseball ? ”

Fiction. Earlier Stories, by Frances Hodgson Burnett. (Scribners.) Mrs. Burnett has collected in two series certain youthful work which she contributed to Peterson’s Ladies’ Magazine, and now revises for an authorized edition, since the popularity of her later stories had led to an unauthorized publication in book form. The stories are Kathleen Mavourneen, Pretty Polly Pemberton, Theo, Miss Crespigny, and Lindsay’s Luck. — Donald Ross of Heimra, by William Black. (Harpers.) Published both in cloth and paper. The charm of naturalness which attaches to so much of Mr. Black’s work, a charm that is not the less because a slight veil of literary grace covers his incidents and conversations, is heightened for the reader by the ease with which the author treads his native heath. Crofters and factors and younglady proprietors and gallant young men give him all the characters he needs for a lively and sometimes moving tale ; and if his heroine grasps her fate somewhat confidently, one may refer the boldness to the strenuous Scottish climate. — Recent issues in paper covers have been : What’s Bred in the Bone, by Grant Allen (Benjamin R. Tucker, Boston), written apparently for a wager as well as a prize, and we doubt if the other man crowded as many improbabilities and distortions of life into the same space ; Romain Kalbris, translated by Mary J. Serrano from the French of Hector Malot (Harpers) ; The Captain of Company K, by Joseph Kirkland, author of Zury (Donohue, Henneberry & Co., Chicago) ; Monsieur Judas, by Fergus Hume (The Waverly Co., New York), a detective conundrum ; Tales for a Stormy Night, being translations from the French of Tourgeneff, Balzac, Mérimée, Daudet (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati) ; The Late Mrs. Null, by F. R. Stockton (Scribners) ; Color Studies and A Mexican Campaign, by Thomas A. Janvier (Scribners) ; Iduna and Other Stories, by George A. Hibbard (Harpers) ; The Bachelor’s Baby, by Coyne Fletcher (Clarke & Zugalla, New York), a confused, farcical tale, with a rowdyism about the men such as women sometimes conceive.

Literature. Letters of John Keats to his Family and Friends. Edited by Sidney Colvin. (Macmillan.) Mr. Colvin has omitted the letters to Fanny Brawne, which he regards as too symptomatic of cardiac disease, but otherwise has made a full and careful collection. The letters are the man, and one may well accept the series as the best biography of Keats ; for his short uneventful life contains nothing to note but the expression of a nature which matured early, and sang and wrote for very love of art and speech. How interesting the world was to Keats, and how much more interesting to him was Keats himself, with his ever fresh discoveries, his indomitable spirit breaking down all the barriers which seem to shut one in from nature and men ! The ease of Keats’s soul is indicative of its greatness, and these letters bring one very close to a singer who found an instrument of some sort always in his hand. — Familiar Quotations, a Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs traced to their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature, by John Bartlett. (Little, Brown & Co.) In this ninth, and the editor says final edition, new sources are drawn from in ancient writers and French literature. The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the fact that it represents a growth, a steady development, and not a mere accretion. The painstaking and accuracy of the editor are seen on every page, and the thoroughness of the work is illustrated by the three hundred pages of index which make reference to it a delight. — Points of View, by Agnes Repplier. (Houghton.) The nine papers in this volume have, with one exception, been printed in The Atlantic, and none will be so ready to get the book itself as the reader who has once read them in the magazine. The piquancy of the writing is not a mere mannerism, but corresponds to a freshness of observation and reflection and an independence of judgment which are rare in these days, when one has usually to choose between academic order and superficial smartness. — The second volume of the new edition of Landor’s Imaginary Conversations, edited by Charles G. Crump (Macmillan), continues the classical Dialogues, and proceeds with Dialogues of Sovereigns and Statesmen. It gives fresh evidence of Mr. Crump’s scrupulous care in editing.

Travel and Nature. Across Russia, from the Baltic to the Danube, by Charles Augustus Stoddard. (Scribners.) A compact narrative by a writer who has been trained in journalism to select quickly the most important points to be noticed, and has missed the note of forced jocularity which is a blemish in much journalistic narrative. Mr. Stoddard contents himself in the main with plain, matter-of-fact description, avoids everything which might border on indecorum, and wisely refrains from those inferences which a hasty traveler is apt to draw from superficial observation. The directness of his attack is noticeable and commendable. — Our Common Birds and how to Know Them, by John B. Grant. (Scribners.) The important feature of this little book is its sixty-four photo-engraved plates of as many birds, which, with brief accompanying notes, are intended to serve as guides to the observer in identifying the species. The photographs were taken from stuffed specimens, but these were mounted as closely as possible in the order of nature ; only the birds are thus always on the perch, and the observer is frequently obliged to see his bird on the wing. With this drawback, and with the more serious one that color is indicated only by description, the book ought to prove very serviceable in its modest way, doing for birds what Mr. Newhall’s handbooks do for trees and leaves.