Comment on New Books

Theology. The Pauline Theology, a Study of the Origin and Correlation of the Doctrinal Teaching of the Apostle Paul, by George B. Stevens. (Scribners.) “ The aim which I have set before me,” Dr. Stevens says, “ has been to inquire into the genesis of Paul’s leading thoughts, so far as their origin may be the subject of historical inquiry, to define critically their content and relation to each other, and thus to present a systematic account of his teaching upon the great themes which he considers.” In carrying out this scheme, he discusses the Conversion of Paul and its Relation to his Mission and Theology, Paul’s Style and Modes of Thought, the Shaping Forces of Paul’s Teaching, the Sources of Pauline Doctrine, the Doctrines of God, Sin, the Law, Redemption, Justification, the Church, the Person of Christ, the Christian Life, and the Pauline Eschatology. The book is learned without being over-technical, and ought to be of real service to thoughtful readers. — Oriental Religions and Christianity, by Frank F. Ellinwood. (Scribners.) These lectures use a comparative method, taking up in turn Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, and other faiths, and contrasting them with Christianity. The author follows a topical arrangement, and enters upon wide fields in such inquiries as the Ethical Tendencies of the Eastern and Western Philosophies, the Traces of a Primitive Monotheism, and the like. He disclaims any first-hand knowledge of his subject, but uses with judgment, as any scholar might, the testimony of experts. Nevertheless, we suspect that the absence of first-hand knowledge vitiates his power to enter deeply into the spirit of the faiths which he attacks. His use of the term “ false religions,” although it may be a mere verbal infelicity, strikes the reader as starting with an assumption ; and throughout the book he seems to weaken his own position by treating Christianity as a competitive religion. Not thus have its real victories been won. It was not as a religion that St. Paul proclaimed it.

History and Biography. Sir Walter Ralegh, by William Stebbing, M. A. (The Clarendon Press, Oxford ; Macmillan & Co., New York.) A most lifelike portrait of the man who was at once poet, historian, politician, courtier, soldier, sailor, philosopher, orator, and many a thing beside, and who, in his splendid vigor and marvelous versatility, stands beyond all peradventure as the type of the Elizabethan age. Mr. Stebbing rightly calls his work a biography, and the personality of his hero is not constantly lost in the history of his time, of which, however, as should be the case, the writer shows a vivid and accurate knowledge. Though as a narrator he has not that picturesqueness and force which the subject almost demands, his historic insight, temperance of judgment, and critical acumen win the reader’s respect and confidence. As a writer, he has notable clearness and terseness of style, but the latter good quality sometimes degenerates into an undue use of curiously short, abrupt sentences. With all the loyal admiration which is the natural result of so faithful a study of Raleigh’s life, the biographer fully recognizes the difficulties and perplexities of his task, and is in no sense a blind partisan. Of the baseness of all concerned in the judicial murder of this great Englishman there has practically been but one opinion since the day of that heroic death in the Old Palace Yard at Westminster ; and it is a bitter thought that it should have been the hand of Bacon that used all its cunning in the vain attempt to apologize for that baseness to the righteously incensed English people. — Letters of Field Marshal Count Helmuth von Moltke to his Mother and his Brothers, translated by Clara Bell and Henry W. Fischer. (Harpers.) Count von Moltke, who could hold his tongue in seven languages, is here seen in undress, writing affectionately to his mother and his two brothers ; talking about scenery with enthusiasm, noting half carelessly his own prodigious labors, always unaffected, and, though holding reserve on military and political subjects, still now and then making frank comments on contemporaneous affairs. The reader needs to have a tolerably familiar knowledge of modern Europe to enjoy the book freely, and the translators have done scarcely anything to help out the uninformed. — The Life, Times, and Labours of Robert Owen, by Lloyd Jones ; edited by W. C. Jones. (Imported by Scribners.) This work, two volumes in one, has a great interest for all students of modern industry, for the life of the subject spanned three periods : that before the introduction of machinery, the period following, and, finally, the beginning of coöperation. The earlier chapters, narrating Owen’s rise in life and his experiments at New Lanark, are especially interesting ; and indeed one does not need to be a student of industrial history to find very great attractions in this frank, almost quaintly told life. There is an old-fashioned tone about it which imparts an undefined charm. — Jasmin, Barber, Poet, Philanthropist, by Samuel Smiles. (Harpers.) There is something a little amusing in the air of discovery with which the venerable biographer adds this to his other biographic feats. Mr. Smiles has availed himself, with a clever knack, of the abundant material at his command, but he cannot altogether keep his moral thumb out of the pie. The story will be attractive to many who come upon it for the first time, but we wish the author had been a little more discreet in his borrowing of English versions of Jasmin’s poetry. He is not ignorant of Miss Preston’s work, and so has less excuse for preferring to her rendering of The Siren with the Heart of Ice that of Miss Costello. — Lord Palmerston, K. G., by the Marquis of Lorne, K. T. The Queen’s Prime Ministers. (Harpers.) Lord Lorne’s work has been mainly editorial, for the greater part of his book is a compilation from hitherto unpublished letters and dispatches, so that Lord Palmerston may be said to be throughout his own biographer. The interest centres chiefly in the record of the years of his long tenure of office as Foreign Secretary, at a time when England still felt called upon to be an active agent in the affairs of all the states of Europe. One cannot fail to note how the minister, in his policy, faithfully reflected certain of the characteristics of the then controlling power in the British electorate, that middle class from which, whether for good or ill, the sceptre has passed away. — The Marquis of Salisbury, by H. D. Traill, D. C. L. The Queen’s Prime Ministers. (Harpers.) Mr. Traill has been singularly successful in the not easy task of writing even a political biography of a living statesman. His record of recent English political history, allowing for his point of view, is admirably intelligent, clear-sighted, and well-proportioned, and so will have a permanent value. Not following the bad custom of the time, the book is absolutely destitute of personalities ; even the fact, so interesting to the lovers of historic continuity and the students of heredity, that the first place in the state to-day should be held by the descendant of the all-powerful ministers of Elizabeth and James is alluded to fitly, but in the briefest possible fashion. — The latest volumes of M. Imbert de Saint-Amand’s historical series—The Youth of the Duchess of Angoulême, translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, and The Duchess of Angoulême and the Two Restorations, translated by James Davis (Scribners)—have all the attractive qualities of their predecessors, with the added interest that the period treated of is not nearly so well known to the general reader as that of the Revolution or the Empire. The story of the orphan of the Temple — a child in years, a woman in her experience of suffering unspeakable, a heroine in her courage and fortitude, a saint in her self-abnegation and forgiveness of injuries — cannot be too often retold. The less familiar record of her life during the first years of the Restoration shows that, though outwardly she resembled her father, in mind and soul she was the true granddaughter of Maria Theresa. It would probably have been infinitely better for the royalist cause had the Salic Law not existed.—The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World, from Marathon to Waterloo, by Sir Edward Creasy, M. A. (Harpers.) A new edition of a book which has held its place for more than forty years, and which will doubtless have all its old-time interest for a new generation of readers. — History of the FiftyFourth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, by Luis F. Emilio. (The Boston Book Co.) This is a book to stir one’s blood. It recounts in modest, temperate, reserved manner the origin and services of the first black regiment raised in the war. Here are given, too, the noble letters and speeches of Governor Andrew upon the formation of the regiment, and that august letter of Colonel Shaw’s father, forbidding the desecration of his son’s grave by a removal of his body from the trench where he was buried with his brave soldiers. Throughout the book there is an entire absence of hard words against the enemy, and the history of the regiment is told with a simplicity, a directness, a sincerity, worthy of all praise. — It may as well be said abruptly that Miss Wormeley’s Memoir of Balzac (Roberts) is a sad disappointment. Conspicuously successful as a translator, and entitled to general gratitude for rendering the great French novelist into English in a manner quite unrivaled, Miss Wormeley has shown no such qualifications for biography. Not only has she broken up Madame Surville’s charming fragmentary sketch of her brother, and scattered it through the book for chronological purposes, but the same facts are, in more than one instance, repeated in the words of different writers. Nevertheless, this illarranged volume contains more about Balzac than could ever before be read in English, and amusement at Miss Wormeley’s energetic attempt to set all the critics right in the matter of Balzac’s opinion of women must be blended with gratitude to her for so much that is welcome. The frontispiece, from a portrait painted after death, and now first reproduced, is extraordinarily interesting.

Fiction. Love Letters of a Worldly Woman, by Mrs. W. K. Clifford. (Harpers.) The Love Letters of a Worldly Woman is the most ambitious of the three stories in this volume. Perhaps it is enough to say of it that the heroine is a young lady who allows herself to be frequently kissed by a gentleman who never speaks of marriage. However, she finally becomes the wife of an elderly person whom she does not care for (a proceeding for which she seems to take unto herself great credit), although apparently still in love with the demonstrative admirer already spoken of, — who would be recognized as a brute by any “ worldly woman ” from the moment of meeting him. The whole tone of the story is demoralizing. There remain two tales in the volume. A Modern Correspondence is between an amiable, sensible, good-hearted man and a young woman in search of a career. The hero finally escapes a union with this magnificent creature. On the Wane, a Sentimental Correspondence, is the story of a man who, tiring of his fiancée, breaks his engagement, and then returns to her. Upon his return she discovers she no longer loves him, and the letters are a slow “ letting-down,” first of the heroine, and then of the hero. It is the best thing in the book, because the least pretentious. — The Governor, and Other Stories, by George A. Hibbard. (Scribners.) These stories are of American manufacture, but their ornamentation is imported. Rather an old-fashioned form of realism, which strives for “actuality” and is merely prosaic, is succeeded by sentences redolent of Old World aristocracies ; as when we learn that “ the sleek, spirited horses picked their scornful way up the avenue, held in restive subjection by the impassive coachman, — stouter than his companion the footman, — fresh-faced, clean-shaven.” The mixture is so incongruous that the reader is in danger of forgetting that the stories are, after all, fairly interesting. But we are led to believe that The Governor will not be the success of the season, in spite of the concessions made to those whose unpatriotic tastes lead them to prefer “ two men on the box.”— It is understood that an earlier English edition of Mr. George Moore’s Vain Fortune (Scribners) contained several lively pictures of Bohemia in London. But as the book now stands, with the first half rewritten, the drabness of its morbid intensity is relieved — and the relief is not alto— only by Rose Massey, the ambitious utility actress at the Queen’s. The delineation shows an accurate knowledge on Mr. Moore’s part of the theatrical temperament; but this excellent little person is not enough seen to afford much change from the dreadful three-handed game of love, which is so far “ cut-throat ” that one of the dismal players kills herself. Zola has let Mr. Moore go for the present, and Ibsen —with or without the clever worshiper’s consciousness of his attitude — is evidently the god of his idolatry. The change is not salubrious, for even Thérèse Raquin is a healthier creature than Hedda Gabler. Mr. Moore’s style is less fickle than he who wields it, and former readers will not be shocked to read of “ the plausive and willful sweetness of life,” “ the thick obsession of his dream,” “ a sort of emotive numbness,” and all that sort of thing. — Elton Hazlewood, by Frederick George Scott. (Whittaker.) This supposed memoir is written by a clergyman. The hero, Elton Hazlewood, a young gentleman of astounding brilliancy and marvelous fascination, goes to Oxford to study for the Church. He becomes, however, entangled with a girl of humble class, leaves the university, and goes upon the stage, where his genius holds the public spellbound. He marries, and his wife then deserts him for a friend, Mr. Byrne, his evil genius, who was the means of their first meeting. Hazlewood leaves the stage, and lives in retirement with his little boy, of whom he is passionately fond, and who, as usual, dies of membranous croup (far too graphically described) in the next chapter. The hero then enters the Church, and is about to be ordained priest, when he suddenly disappears forever. Years roll on. The narrator goes to Cornwall, where, for no particular reason, on a remote crag jutting far into the Atlantic, he meets Mr. Byrne, who at once informs him that he pitched the Rev. Elton Hazlewood into the ocean about ten years before come LadyDay. The parson expresses surprise. At this Byrne states that he lured Hazlewood to the spot to taunt him, and that, maddened at his contempt for him, a deadly struggle ensued, and both had perished had not Hazlewood sacrificed his life to save Byrne from drowning. The story ends with pious reflections on the exemplary conduct of Hazlewood, and some strictures upon the unkind conduct of Mr. Byrne, who, the reader may like to know, is in the last stages of a convenient consumption. But, O tempora! O mores! this book is intended for Sundayschools ! — Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, by Ambrose Bierce. (E. L. G. Steele, San Francisco.) We are told by the author that, “ denied existence by the chief publishing houses of the country, this book owes itself to Mr. E. L. G. Steele, merchant,” of San Francisco. We have heard much of the book in certain quarters, and we feel wholly safe in saying that in one particular the half was not told us. It has never been our fortune to read a collection of tales so uniformly horrible and revolting. Told with some power, and now and then with strokes of wonderfully vivid description, with plots ingenious in their terror and photographic in their sickening details, we must pronounce the book too brutal to be either good art or good literature. It is the triumph of realism, — realism without meaning or symbolism. — The One Good Guest, by L. B. Walford. (Longmans.) A pleasantly written story of the sort popularly supposed to be suitable for summer reading. It will cause two or three hours to pass agreeably enough, and will be almost as speedily forgotten. To exacting reader’s, who are inclined to judge Mrs. Walford by the high standards set by the author of Mr. Smith and The Baby’s Grandmother, the book will prove more or less a disappointment. — Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have added Zoroaster and A Tale of a Lonely Parish to their attractive new edition of Mr. F. Marion Crawford’s novels.

Literature and Art. From the Easy Chair, by George William Curtis. (Harpers.) In a trig little volume Mr. Curtis has gathered twenty-seven of the mellow essays with which he has graced the closing pages of Harper’s Monthly for more than thirty years. What strikes the reader is the uniform key in which they are all written, though dealing with a variety of topics. Mr. Curtis has never lost that youthful touch which characterized his earliest work ; a little strengthening of the fibre, a little firmer grasp of his theme, but always the delicate air of golden youth. The essays are models for those new writers to study who affect cynicism and seek staccato effects. — Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, by S. H. Butcher. (Macmillan.) A collection of lectures delivered before the Greek class at the University of Edinburgh, upon such themes as What we Owe to Greece, The Greek Idea of the State, Sophocles, The Melancholy of the Greeks. We should hardly know to what better book to send the young student engaged in classical studies for an inspiring, regulating, and comprehensive interpretation of the Greek spirit. The ripeness of Mr. Butcher’s scholarship is attended by a rarely luminous conception of the part played by Greece in the world’s history; and he succeeds in conveying a notion of the Greek restraint under obedience to law without suggesting the frigid hardness which is so often the resultant of scholarly characterization. The book is a good one to place in the hands of American students. — Shakespeare’s England, by William Winter. (Macmillan.) A new and carefully revised edition of this charming little book, the pocket companion of so many summer travelers. — China Collecting in America, by Alice Morse Earle. (Scribners.) This is a brightly written book, and tells us all we are likely to wish to know about the china to be found in New England ; and though not professing to be a scientific manual on the subject, it shows research and, what is better, a hearty love of its subject. To us the most valuable chapter is that devoted to the so-called Lowestoft china, most of which Mrs. Earle believes, we think rightly, to be of India make and decoration. Among much other valuable matter, there are interesting chapters on early pottery, English porcelains in America, Washington, Franklin, and Lafayette china, with tabulated descriptions of their various specimens. We are surprised, however, at the value the author sets on Staffordshire ware. The chapters on China Hunting and China Memories, which embody Mrs. Earle’s own experiences, are delightful; and the book will interest any one who takes it up, whether he cares much about old china or not.

Poetry. Selected Poems, by Walt Whitman. (Charles L. Webster & Co.) Mr. Arthur Stedman has made a judicious selection from the mass of Whitman’s printed poems, and has done thereby a real service to the general reader. He has not followed a chronological order, except in giving Good-By, my Fancy, the last page ; but under the divisions Nature, Man and Self, Interludes, Drum-Taps, Memories of President Lincoln, Old Age, Death and Immortality, and Leaves of Grass he has given excellent specimens of a genius which is best approached slowly. Like eating olives, a genuine liking for Whitman is an acquired taste ; but the first experiment is pretty sure to begin the cultivation of that taste, and no better introduction can be found than this little book. Mr. Stedman has done wisely in sacrificing the more inflammatory portions of Song of Myself, in order to save for the reader the general outline of that most characteristic production.— Poems by the Way, by William Morris. (Roberts.) We are not of those who find The God of the Poor, with its effective refrain, Deus est Deus Pauperum, by any means the most attractive verse in Mr. Morris’s new volume. Indeed, although it has been so widely quoted, there are a dozen pieces with greater power to charm, if only because there are a dozen with less tendency to breed contention, — to summon the conscience to consider questions of the day. In short, Poems by the Way, although no one of them shows the poet at his greatest and best, is highly grateful as a return to the legitimate in poetry, and a reminder of much that is most characteristic in Mr. Morris’s past accomplishment. The subjects are various, with a preponderance for love and death. Error and Loss, Thunder in the Garden, Meeting in Winter, and Love Fulfilled will not leave the reader unrewarded ; there are several poems of adventure, written under a strong Norse influence ; and Verses for Pictures show perfectly one of Mr. Morris’s rarest gifts.

Education. A Text-Book of Physics, Largely Experimental, by E. H. Hall and J. Y. Bergen, Jr. (Holt.) This book grew out of the demand made by Harvard College for examinations for entrance in laboratory work as an alternative for textbook work. The college issued a Descriptive List of Elementary Physical Experiments, by Dr. Hall, which served as a guide to teachers in the preparatory schools ; but a more explicit manual was found necessary, and this is the result. The authors have studied carefully the conditions on which physics is taught in the preparatory schools, and have made their book upon admirable lines of economy and simplicity. — Nature Study for Common Schools, by Wilbur S. Jackman. (Holt.) Mr. Jackman’s theory is that a wide survey of nature in a systematic study is better for our schools than the persistent and more thorough study of some selected field. Accordingly, after some general chapters, he lays down, chiefly in the form of questions, work to be done in observing in successive months of the school year, in zoölogy, botany, chemistry, meteorology, astronomy, geography, geology, and mineralogy. Under trained teachers, such a wide survey might be saved from confusion and superficiality. — Gestures and Attitudes, an Exposition of the Delsarte Philosophy of Expression, Practical and Theoretical, by Edward B. Warman. (Lee & Shepard.) The book puts forward as its special claim upon notice more than one hundred and fifty outline drawings of the human figure, to illustrate practice and to present the range of emotions, We should like to see the expression tested by the exhibition of the pictures without the text. As in other Delsartean books, there is an offhand reference of the subtler emotions to certain bodily expression which is not always easy of imitation. There is no doubt, however, that, given a fine sense of feeling, the formulas offered will be of real service to the student.

Archæology. The Remains of Ancient Rome, by J. Henry Middleton. In two volumes. (A. & C. Black, London ; Macmillan, New York.) An expansion of the well-known work originally published in 1885. The destruction of old Rome since the Italians made it their capital has gone forward with so much zeal that there has been a very large addition to the stock of our knowledge of its antiquities. Every new boulevard or building is likely to bring to light some precious relique, and Professor Middleton has condensed the reports of antiquaries in a most thorough manner, a footnote sometimes representing a pamphlet. The work is so recent that he has brought in a brief account of the discovery of the pillars which Comm. Lanciani described so vividly in his article in the February Atlantic. The two volumes are admirably illustrated, and show signs of great thoroughness in every detail, the maps and index being especially commendable. The first interest of the work is for classical students ; but it is by no means a dry compend, and the general reader will find it for the most part straight reading. — The New York Obelisk, Cleopatra’s Needle, by Charles E. Moldenke. (Randolph.) This volume opens with sketches of the history, erection, uses, and signification of obelisks in general, which form good introductions to the chief subject of the essay. The history of the New York obelisk and an account, of its removal follow, with an elaborate annotated translation of the inscriptions upon it. The remainder of the book is devoted to glossaries of Egyptological terms, of hieroglyphics, of Egyptian words on the obelisk, and an index of names. While not impressing us as the work of a great scholar, the book gives a good deal of interesting data in a popular way. The form of the volume as a piece of book-making leaves, however, much to be desired.