Comment on New Books

Fine Arts and Holiday Books. Ben-Hur, a Tale of the Christ, by Lew. Wallace. Illustrated from Drawings by William Martin Johnson, with Photogravures. Garfield Edition, in two volumes. (Harpers.) The scheme of illustration adopted for this popular book is admirable. The pages have full marginal notes drawn from archæology and the characteristics of Oriental life ; they are not necessarily illustrations of the adjoining text, but are a free decorative setting of the page. They show both the value and the limitation of process work. Wherever architecture, for example, is under treatment, the reproduction of pen-andink drawing is what one wishes ; where coins are to be reproduced the result is entirely unsatisfactory. In many instances the total effect of the pages is marred by the scrimping of the margin. The photogravures which deal with landscape, figures, and structures are dignified and rich. The book is lavishly treated, and its popularity doubtless justifies the abundance in a commercial point of view ; the fullness of decorative detail in the text itself also invites it. — Three recent numbers of L’Art (Macmillan), which is published twice a month, indicate the range and the opulence of this substantial and effective magazine. Each has a large etching, the artist sometimes being also the etcher ; each has chalk studies, of great value to the student ; there are notes on salon or sales accompanied by reproductions, Watteau being shown thus in a number of examples ; there are copies of tapestry in an old French château ; and in general there is a fine blending of historical and contemporaneous art. — Mr. Howells’s Venetian Life (Houghton) has been reissued, with a new preface, in two delightful volumes. The text was always luminous with the fine color of Venice, and now near a score of illustrations have been added, reproductions of water-color designs, so delicate and transparent in effect that one’s anxiety over such an experiment is soon set at rest. The sunset hues and the browns are perhaps most pleasing, but there is a frank bravery about the blue which disarms the spectator of his first objection that the blue is too insistent to the eye. Altogether the book is a successful piece of work in the face of many perils. — Art and Criticism, Monographs and Studies, by Theodore Child. (Harpers.) Mr. Child collects in a dignified volume a number of papers which he has heretofore printed, most of them helped out by admirable engravings. The attractiveness of the book is in its appeal to the higher, more poetic appreciation of imaginative art. A writer who treats of Sandro Botticelli, of Rodin, of Whistler, Daunat, Sargent, Thayer, Abbey, among Americans, of Barye, of A Pre-Raphaelite Mansion, of Millet, of the Winged Victory of Samothrace, shows by his choice of subjects that his attention is directed toward the permanent, and not the transitory, in art. Nor will the reader be disappointed when he reads the intelligent praise of the best men, the discrimination with which such a subject as Munkacsy is handled, and the good sense and educated judgment which characterize Mr. Child’s criticism and description. The book, with its excellent reproductions of notable modern work not easily to be known, as in the case of Rossetti, is a distinct addition to the literature of art. — The Women of the French Salons, by Amelia Gere Mason. (The Century Co.) The very choice illustrations, chiefly portraits, which enrich this volume make it find a place among Fine Arts and Holiday Books, but it would be a mistake to reckon it as a mere gift-book. It is a sympathetic, careful survey of a subject which never can be exhausted, and is one of peculiar interest to Americans who, blindly or intelligently, are feeling after a condition of society which shall make woman the inspiration, and not the toy. These studies of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, Madame de Sévigné, Madame Roland, Madame de Staël, Madame Récamier, offer an admirable basis for the study of a profound problem. — A refined edition of Mr. Whittier’s Snow-Bound (Houghton) gives the text in a graceful page, and sets it off with designs by E. H. Garrett reproduced in delicate photogravure. The idyl is one which has become as much of a household favorite as was ever The Cotter’s Saturday Night, and is well worth all the pains of the graphic artist. We ought not to complain when we have these carefully studied pictures, yet we like to think that some day an artist whose youth has known just such an experience as the poet’s, on some lonely New England farm, will translate the verses into his own speech of line and tint, so that the marriage shall be a perfect one. — The Warwickshire Avon, Notes, by A. T. Quiller-Couch. Illustrations by Alfred Parsons. (Harpers.) A pretty book, rich and attractive as regards the vignettes and larger pictures which crowd it and preserve many features of fat Warwickshire ; somewhat meagre, but happily unpretentious, as regards the letterpress. Mr. Parsons is an artist. Mr. Quiller-Couch has a happy knack at sketching incidents, but there were no incidents on their uneventful canoevoyage, and he falls easily into a sauntering prose, helping himself to passages from antiquaries, and modestly sure, we think, that the reader will not ask much of him.—Westminster Abbey, by W. J. Loftie. With many (we are glad to say the title-page does not call them “ numerous ”) Illustrations by Herbert Railton. (Seeley & Co., London ; Macmillan, New York.) Mr. Loftie does not have Dean Stanley’s power of revivifying a great church and the men who have enriched it with their memories, but he writes with good attention to his task of elucidating the history of the abbey, and of describing its architectural features. There is an easy-going tone about his style which removes it from the charge of being formal without too great loss of dignity, though the book has much the air of having served the purpose of magazine articles. The illustrations are very effective woodcuts, in which strong masses and the large impressions of light and shade have not been sacrificed to delicacy and prettiness. — Mrs. Oliphant’s The Makers of Florence, which had already made a fair fame as a good presentation of Dante, Giotto, Savonarola, in their relation to the great city, has been issued in an extra illustrated edition (Macmillan), with a portrait of Savonarola engraved by Jeens, fifty illustrations engraved on wood from drawings by Professor Delamotte, and twenty reproductions of pictures by Florentine artists, and now preserved in churches and galleries of Florence. The chapter on The Cathedral Builders especially commends itself for the humane, sympathetic treatment of a great subject, by which the reader loses nothing of his reverence for the great works of art and faith, and gains something by being brought into closer connection with the great men, known and unknown, to whom they were due. The text of this book merits the enrichment it has received. — The little series of Literary Gems (Putnams), issued last year, books of less than a hundred pages, bound in limp imitation morocco and furnished with frontispieces, is reinforced this season by five new numbers: PreRaphaelitism, by John Ruskin ; Legend of Sleepy Hollow, by Washington Irving; Speeches on America, by John Bright; Lyrics from Robert Browning ; The Education of Children, by Montaigne. –Sharp Eyes, a Rambler’s Calendar of fifty-two Weeks among Insects, Birds, and Flowers, by William Hamilton Gibson. Illustrated by the Author. (Harpers.) After the reader has lingered over the effective cover of this cloth-bound book, he will linger even longer over the title-page with its dainty bit of color, and before he has read a word of the book will have been fascinated by the delicacy and grace of the printed page with its abundant decoration, wherein insect, bird, flower, and reptile disport themselves. Indeed, the refinement of the book, as it meets the eye, is, if we say so, almost too uniform. One might sigh for an occasional sharp accent, some bold piece of black printing, even, which should serve to break the monotony of the half-tone delicate work. The highly calendered paper on which the book is printed — a necessity, we suppose — heightens this effect of superfine finish. Mr. Gibson’s notes and comments are delightful in their expression of a joyous, genuine love of nature and a playful attitude in his work. — Life of Gustave Doré, with one hundred and thirtyeight Illustrations from Original Drawings by Doré, by the late Blanchard Jerrold. (W.H. Allen & Co., London.) The large number of examples of Doré’s work contained in this book seems to take it out of the category of biographies and place it in this division ; but after one has looked at the pictures he is ready to refer the book to the class of biography. The reproductions are for the most part disagreeable in style, and the selections are mainly from the repulsive side of Doré’s art. Now and then the vigor of this artist is so impressive that one is swept from his base of sound judgment, but to return to Doré is to find constantly the baser metal of art. Mr. Jerrold’s Life, which is not a new one, we think, is too undiscriminating to be of much service to the reader. He is Doré’s eulogist rather than his biographer ; yet in his enthusiasm and loyalty he renders a service, for he never hesitates to let Dord show himself as he is. — Messrs. L. Prang & Co., Boston, devote themselves with untiring energy and ingenuity to the task of satisfying the crazed buyer of Christmas gifts. Be his or her mind, or the mind of the expectant receiver, religious, jocular, sentimental, matter of fact, dull, or lively, there is something on their list which makes the punishment fit the crime, as Gilbert says and Sullivan sings. The Prize Piggies, lithographed porklings turning up their lithographed snouts in lithographed straw, may be given to some disciple of realism who confronts nature only when nature goes on all fours. Bonnets and Hats, portrayed from Youth to Age, is a bright little poem with clever designs, the agreeable quality of the whole surprising one who finds the book presented in the elaborately cheap guise of bonnet shape. The Old Farm Gate, which likewise affects the form of a real gate with real hinges, contains some verses and pictures, both highly glossed. Wedding Bells has a simple white cover with gilt lettering ; it is intended as a souvenir, the date of wedding, names of high contracting parties, officials, and witnesses, and newspaper cuttings being provided for on blank pages opposite combined Verses and flowers. The newspaper cuttings have the delicate reminder of trumpet flowers. A similar book is arranged for a Family Record. The Story of Mistress Polly who did not like to shell peas, told by Lizbeth B. Comins, is a straight-away little tale in verse, which strikes in upon all this highly glazed sentiment with refreshing simplicity. The popular rhyme No Sect in Heaven is furnished with conventional pictures of representatives of various sects. Places that our Lord Loved has its text provided from Canon Farrar’s book, and its pictures, which in sepia are more endurable than when in the terrible colors elsewhere used, by F. Schuyler Mathews. Bits of Old Concord, Mass., illustrated by Louis K. Harlow, is, we are obliged to say, the only one of the lot which one might choose to keep instead of giving away. It has somewhat idealized portraitures of historic spots in Concord, and brief text accompanying each picture. There are, besides, Christmas cards and calendars and fancy little books. Occasionally one comes upon something less garish and more modest than the rest, but for the most part Christmas appears to salute the eye as the Chinese salute the ear on their New Year’s Day with firecrackers.— All Around the Year is a Calendar for 1892, by J. Pauline Sunter (Lee & Shepard) ; it has a pretty set of cards with childish figures and bright little mottoes, the designs printed in agreeable cool tones.

Books for the Young. Marjorie and her Papa, How they wrote a Story and made Pictures for it, by Robert Howe Fletcher. Illustrated by R. B. Birch from Designs by the Author. (The Century Co.) A piece of pleasantry which has the uncommon negative excellence of not attempting too much. It is a genuine bit of playfulness between a father and his child, full of sweet naturalness and the kind of condescension which is delightful because it is the grave adaptation of six feet to three feet. The book ought to be a nursery favorite, since the reader will get his or her own pleasure while the listener gets a like pleasure of its own sort. — A Queer Family, by Effie W. Merriman. (Lee & Shepard.) This writer has liveliness and a kind feeling for vagrant children ; so kind that, after imagining such in dire straits, she uses her ingenuity to settle them comfortably and find the requisite relations to provide for them. But we sincerely wish that she was either a closer observer of street boys and had a better ear for their lingo, or that, in her idealizing of them, she would not idealize their language in terms of the street. Her picture of the life she invites us to consider is a chromo. — A Box of Monkeys, and Other FarceComedies, by Grace Livingston Furniss. (Harpers.) Four extravaganzas with a sort of high jinks fun in them, which might be played to an audience once, if the audience were not very particular, and the stage were far enough off to soften some of the loudness, and to reduce the brightness of the aniline dyes of which the coloring seems to consist. — The Boy Travellers in Northern Europe, Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through Holland, Germany, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, with Visits to Heligoland and the Land of the Midnight Sun, by Thomas W. Knox. (Harpers.) This is the twelfth, as we count, in the series of journeys made by these unwearying youths, whom travel keeps perpetually young, and whose conversation remains at a stage of instructive fullness unparalleled in juvenile experience. We marvel at the amount of knowledge which these youngsters can receive and disgorge, but it must be remembered that, wherever they go, they have, besides their guidebooks, the special copy of the London Quarterly Review which treats of the subject in hand, or some book devoted to their interests. We would not be

Mrs. Bassett or Dr. Bronson and travel about with these two youths for a good deal. All the same, if one dismisses the notion that the people in the book are real, one may help himself to a vast amount of assorted knowledge and illustrative pictures; and that, no doubt, is just what boys and girls who read this book do. —Lady Jane, by Mrs. C. V. Jamison. (The Century Co.) A bright story of New Orleans life, which might have been written a little differently if it had not been preceded by Little Lord Fauntleroy, but would in any case have been attractive to young girls. Mrs. Jamison is very kind to her good characters, and though she has so much inventiveness that her story is a novel in petto, she has a strong sympathy with youthful life, and much picturesqueness of imagination ; thus she will find readers who will enjoy her work. — Among the Camps, or Young People’s Stories of the War, by Thomas Nelson Page. (Scribners.) Four stories told of children of the Confederacy. Home life and camp life are contrasted, and mutatis mutandis the tales might have been written north of the line. That is to say, so far as youthful life is concerned, the principles involved are those of loyalty to home, and the incidents those of troubled times. It must be confessed that the South has the advantage of the North in war stories, since the background of childish life is one of action and change. The young boy does not have to be a drummer boy or to do uncommon deeds ; he has only to stay at home, and he will have adventure enough. — The Abandoned Claim, by Flora Haines Loughead. (Houghton.) There is an ever fresh pleasure in reading the old story of how two young people, left to struggle with the world, conquer a position and livelihood. It is all unnatural, we say ; youth should be shown in the shelter of home; but we cannot help watching with interest the fight against odds and the victory which always follows in story-books. Here the interest is quickened by the surroundings, which are those of the Pacific coast. There is a mystery mingled with the tale, and an element of clouded human life which removes from the book an exclusively juvenile character. Mrs. Loughead writes with earnestness, and with a strong interest in the fate and fortunes of her young people. — The Burning of Rome, or A Story of the Days of Nero, by Alfred J. Church. (Macmillan.) Early Christianity and decadent Roman civilization give Mr. Church plenty of opportunity for contrasts. His work is fluent, and may be archæologically correct, but the result strikes us as a story made to order rather than one of spontaneous freshness. — Little Marjorie’s Love-Story, by Marguerite Bouvet. Illustrated by Helen Maitland Armstrong. (McClurg.) “ One day — Marjorie never quite knew how it came about — they found themselves in a pretty village of France.” This little sentence, early in the story, is characteristic of the book. The author, wishing to tell of the devotion of a sister to a brother, who grew up with a great gift which made him selfish, until he put his sister outside of hislife, and preferring to treat the subject romantically rather than realistically, takes refuge in a vague period at a vague spot in France, apparently for the purpose of obtaining a cathedral and a monseigneur. The details of the story cannot be inquired into, but we wish, when young writers write pathetic stories about children, they would at least get a firm grasp of the world in which we all live. — Lyra Heroica, a Book of Verse for Boys, selected and arranged by William Ernest Henley. (Scribners.) It is not always clear by what principle Mr. Henley makes his selection. Action, movement, devotion to high ideals, — these are present to him, no doubt ; but even under these influences one wonders why he should select Blake’s The Tiger, which he rechristens The Beauty of Terror, and Mrs. Hemans’s Casabianca with its false ring. His notes are not always accurate. The Mayflower did not sail from Southampton in 1626 any more than the breaking waves dashed high on a stern and rockbound coast in the poem thus annotated. Nevertheless, there is abundance of spirited poetry in the volume. We suspect Mr. Henley’s chief concern was to give as few hackneyed pieces as he could, and yet to make a representative book. — Prince Dusty, a Story of the Oil Regions, by Kirk Munroe. (Putnams.) Mr. Munroe, with his love of adventure and his knowledge of actual experience, surely does not need to make his Stories of youthful life so distorted from nature as this. In fact, literature of this class seems to us distinctly objectionable, since it bases heroism upon the perversion of ordinary experience, and leads boys to demand a different field for the exercise of noble conduct than that on which they find themselves. — Jock o’ Dreams, by Julie M. Lippmann. (Roberts.) A book of eight stories, each a pretty play of fancy embroidered on a simple truth of conduct. There is a purity of tone throughout which gives the little book a value of its own, and separates it from many of its class which have more distinct literary skill. — The Last of the Giant Killers, or The Exploits of Sir Jack of Dauby Dale, by Rev. J. C. Atkinson. (Macmillan.) Mr. Atkinson has woven a number of local Moorland Parish tales and bits of folk lore into the old stories of Jack the Giant Killer and Little Red Riding Hood. There is a frankness about his manner which is attractive, but the book would be more easily understood by the child to whom it was read than by the one who, at the age when such stories interest, should try to read it without any other aid than the printed page. — Children’s Stories in English Literature from Shakespeare to Tennyson, by Henrietta Christian Wright. (Scribners.) Mrs. Wright has undertaken somewhat too much of a task, we think, in this book. She has attempted in a familiar manner to give some notion of the personality of the greatest writers, their relation to the times in which they lived, and the work which they produced. The result is a sort of skimble-skamble which we fear would conduce more to a smattering of knowledge than to a real awakening of interest. No doubt the author would be the last to regard the book as anything more than an introduction to good literature, and it certainly is better than a dry compendium of dates and facts ; but we suspect it would be less likely to send a child to the authors characterized than to make a superficial reader more superficial.— The Boy Settlers, a Story of Early Times in Kansas, by Noah Brooks, Illustrated by W. A. Rogers. (Scribners.) A capital, hearty book, in which the author, who knows boys, gives an excellent historical background to a series of adventures upon the frontier. — Redskin and Cow-Boy, a Tale of the Western Plains ; The Dash for Khartoum, a Tale of the Nile Expedition. By G. A. Henty. (Scribners.) These two new books by a popular English storyteller illustrate the writer’s method. He takes a good solid story of the familiar sort, — mixed children, for instance, or a scapegrace and his better brother, — which permits a character to be found naturally in wild surroundings, and then develops his story through the action belonging to the violent conditions. He has not been among the cow-boys, and it is not clear that he ever went to the Nile ; but other people have done one or the other, and from their reports he is able to lay his colors on bravely and broadly. There is plenty of action and a good deal of honest sentiment, so that boys who like go in their literature will find it in Mr. Henty’s books, and in the course of their pursuit of his writings will see their heroes turn up in any country or age where something is going on.—The Pilots of Pomona, a Story of the Orkney Islands, by Robert Leighton. (Scribners.) A brisk seafaring tale.

Fiction. Life’s Handicap, being Stories of mine own People, by Rudyard Kipling. (Macmillan.) A little fewer than thirty short stories, with scenes laid for the most part in India. It is odd how the abrupt, brief manner of these tales seems to bring them into a sort of likeness to tales told to children. There is even a quaintness in the tone which now and then reminds one of Andersen. — A Romance of the Moors, by Mona Caird, is one of the Leisure Hour Series (Holt), but does not rise to the general excellence of that series. It is a weak piece of work, in which an aspiring young man, a country girl, and a cultivated woman are the chief factors. The scene is laid in Yorkshire, and the romance effect is sought for mainly in somewhat highly wrought sentiment by the author respecting her characters. — On Newfound River, by Thomas Nelson Page. (Scribners.) A somewhat less successful book than Mr. Page’s Two Little Confederates, or his collection of stories. The plot is so threadbare that it seems to convey a conventional air to the Virginian scenes and people otherwise so fresh under Mr. Page’s pencil. As soon as the reader hears of the scapegrace Bruce he is ready to identify him with Browne ; the hat found floating in the river is by all the evidence of fiction a sure sign that the owner of the hat did not die. The meeting of the two children in the ingenuous style of children who are to be separated by a feud in the families, and afterward to come together in marriage ; the departure of the young man for a term of years to school and college ; the softening of the heart of the cruel father by the vision of the young girl ; the appearance of death in the young man when he has saved the life or honor of the girl ; the long-lost brother clasped in the arms of the one who stayed at home, — are not all these things written in the chronicles of such fiction as Mr. Page has no need to copy ? — Captain Blake, by Captain Charles King. (Lippincott.) There have been so few novels dealing with garrison life in our country that a poorer one than any by Captain King would be received with some favor ; but this story is so flushed with all that is dear to the heart of the confirmed novel-reader that it will not be weighed in any balance, but accepted as a first-rate story. Whether it will be accepted, in these days of stern inquiry into the facts in the case, as a true picture of life in garrisons is another matter. The garrison and all its occupants exist for the sake of the story. — Monk and Knight, an Historical Study in Fiction, by Frank W. Gunsaulus. In two volumes. (McClurg.) Mr. Gunsaulus’s description of his work is a good one. He has taken the period of the Protestant Revolution, and has considered the several elements of religious, intellectual, and social activity which went to make up the movement. These elements he has made operative in the persons of several figures, historical and imagined, and thus has supplied himself with characters in his dramatic epitome. The reader soon becomes aware that Mr. Gunsaulus has familiarized himself with his theme, and has brought to the execution a fertile imagination as well as historical analysis. If the imagination is rather sympathetic than creative, if the result appeals to the thoughtful student rather than to the seeker after excitement, this is only to say that the author cares first for his subject, and second for his characters. The book is not such a masterpiece of literary art as The Cloister and the Hearth, but it is better worth the reader’s trouble than such a book, for instance, as Chronicles of the Schönberg Cotta Family, for its scope is wider and its insight more penetrating. –Tales of Two Countries, from the Norwegian of Alexander Kielland by William Archer, with an Introduction by H. H Boyesen. (Harpers.) Mr. Boyesen furnishes interesting particulars of Kielland’s life, and makes some acute comments on his art. The stories themselves, often no more than studies in story - telling, have that peculiar Norse flavor which, if not universal, is generally characteristic of northern work, — a flavor which is like a faint perfume, now present, now absent. These writers just raise the lid of life a trifle and let us look into the pot where the boiling is going on. We have seen enough to set us thinking. — The Story of the Glittering Plain, which has been also called the Land of Living Men, or the Acre of the Undying, written by William Morris. (Roberts.) And now, forsooth, this mad and merry book is even printed in the types as it were of the men who first as speechfriends set down in black and white the parlous words of them that have overweary tales to tell. Here be people riding through garth-gates, also, and dwelling on hapless isles, and crying out, — tho’ it be not the same folk, — “ Where is the land ? Where is the land ? ” Moreover, they top stony bents and lay gear within shut-beds and the spear on the wall pins ; yea, and the reader who patiently follows the bobbery begins to think it a pretty story, but wonders if William Morris, who prints it at the Kelmscott Press, Upper Hall, Hammersmith, in the County of Middlesex, and finishes it on the 4th day of April (narrow escape, that!) of the year 1891, did not at six o’clock in the evening of that day stretch himself vigorously after thus cramping himself into a fourteenth-century attitude through near two hundred pages. Why such infinite pains to get out of one’s skin ? And ought not the reader, if he sits down to the reading sincerely, himself get into a jerkin, or whatever the proper garment is, and take on a wall-paper frame of mind, before he attempts to enjoy this piece of beautiful but painful literature ? — Colonel Carter of Cartersville, by F. Hopkinsou Smith With Illustrations by E. W. Kemble and the Author. (Houghton.) The combined effect of characterization in text and characterization in drawings is singularly unitary, and is intensified by what may be called the gesture of the book. That is to say, the author seems so to have vivified his figures in his own mind that when he sets them down in his pages he succeeds in transferring their tones, their motions, their presence, and the reader listens and looks as he reads. The grotesquerie of the book heightens the general effect, but the author uses it so consistently that it serves as a. kind of medium through which the Colonel is seen steadily refracted, with the result that there is no loss of respect for him.