Comment on New Books

History and Biography. Leonidas Polk, Bishop and General, by William M. Polk. Two volumes. (Longmans.) In writing the life of Lieutenant-General Leonidas Polk of the Confederate army, his son has availed himself with moderate success of an opportunity to make a picturesque and interesting book. He shows a fair yet very filial spirit, but he is a trifle dull. The descendant of Cromwellian and Revolutionary soldiers, Polk naturally entered West Point; but while there he became “ converted,” and abandoned the army for the church. In his sacred calling he displayed high efficiency, and became Bishop of Louisiana, High bred, energetic, earnest, and conscientious, he was a fine type of the best class of Southerners. When the war broke out, the fighting blood of Polk induced him, in his own phrase, “ to buckle the sword the gown,” and he was at once made a major-general. He served in the Western and Middle States, under Beauregard and Bragg, holding always high and responsible commands. It has not been the common opinion that he made altogether a brilliant success in his new calling, but his son indicates, without directly saying, that he was really a better general than his superiors. In fact, the son has had a somewhat difficult task before him, which he has fulfilled in a peculiar manner ; for he has so told his story as to leave upon the reader the broad, general impression that the Confederate army always had the better of every engagement, and yet always retreated afterward. This is accounted for by the suggestion that the commanding general habitually blundered, and too seldom took the sound advice of General Polk. This is perhaps a severe way of expressing a criticism upon the narrative, for the writer means to be fair, and generally states his views with moderation, and sustains them to some extent with documentary evidence. — Madame, a Life of Henrietta, Daughter of Charles I., and Duchess of Orleans, by Julia Cartwright [Mrs. Henry Ady]. (Imported by Scribners.) This is the first adequate English biography of the woman who was undoubtedly the most brilliant and attractive princess of her time, and who in her brief life produced an impression and exerted an influence which are vividly reflected in contemporary letters and memoirs. The distinguishing feature of Mrs. Ady’s volume is the publication, in their original form, of ninety-eight letters from Charles II. to the young sister whom he probably loved better and trusted more entirely than any other human being ; and seldom does that monarch appear in so agreeable a light as in this correspondence. Henrietta herself wrote with an ease and a grace which have not been lost in tlie translations here given. She was, in fact, an intermediary between her brother and brother-in-law, both having full confidence in what Charles called her “discretion and good talent.” No other of the descendants of Mary Stuart seems to have inherited so large a measure of her potent personal charm, a quality which Madame was to transmit in some degree to her equally short-lived granddaughter, the Duchess of Burgundy. In the most artificial of courts Henrietta remained lovably human, while her genuine and cultivated taste for literature and art gave her a distinction quite apart from that of her badly educated French kindred. This contrast is most striking in the case of her contemptible husband, who never ceased to be an ill-conditioned, spoiled child. In discussing the question of Madame’s death, the author sensibly concludes that there is no good reason to think it other than natural. — Customs and Fashions in Old Now England, by Alice Morse Earle. (Scribners.) Mrs. Earle has followed a well-earned success with another book in tlie same field of New England domestic antiquities. The range of subjects is wider. As her earlier book related chiefly to the ecclesiastical side of life, this is occupied with the secular side, and child life, courtship and marriage, domestic service, home interiors, travel, books and book-makers, supplies of the larder, clothing, physicians, funerals, burial customs, and other subjects are treated with that rare combination of patient accuracy and humorous delight which makes Mrs. Earle’s books exceptional. But why, oli why did slie not supply an index? — The Life and Writings of Gregory of Nyssa. (The Christian Literature Co., New York.) This is Volume V. of A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, under the editorship of the late Dr. Philip Schaff and Principal Wacc of King’s College, London. The translation and apparatus are by William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, both Oxford scholars. This is, we believe, tlie first attempt at anything like a full presentation of St. Gregory’s works. The student of Origen will be glad to have a volume which carries forward Origen’s speculations, and we would suggest to those wlio please themselves with contemporaneous books of meditation and devotion to try the effect of a bath in tlie stream nearer its source. Reading, for example, such a discourse as is here printed On the Soul and the Resurrection, Current questions would have a new answer in the old answers given in the fourth century. — The Church in the Roman Empire, before A. I>. 170, by W. M. Ramsay. (Putnams.) This octavo volume, equipped with maps, illustrations, and index, is based on lectures given at Mansfield College, Oxford. The writer, who is professor of humanity in the University of Aberdeen, lias made a scientific examination of the documents to which all must turn, but be is greatly helped both by liis familiarity with the geography of Asia Minor, and bis sympathy with the Christianity of St. Paul. lie treats at length of tlie apostle in Asia Minor, and he deals with the attitude of the Roman government toward tlie new way in the first century and a half of its existence. The study strikes one as fresh and at first hand. — Sir Joshua Reynolds, by Claude Phillips. (Imported by Scribners.) Tlie author of this volume shows himself an excellent art critic, if a somewhat unsatisfactory biographer. Sir Joshua’s contributions to each year’s Academy exhibition are carefully recorded, with comments on tlie more important works, and an occasional welcome note on their subsequent history,— changes of ownership, present condition and abidingplace, — but the writer does not succeed in giving any vivid, sense of his subject’s personality. Indeed, the master holds a rather subordinate position in the biographical portion of the work, which might be briefly described as anecdotes of Sir Joshua’s sitters and distinguished contemporaries (if the two terms are not synonymous), with some account of the artist. But the wealth of entertaining material at the author’s command makes his discursive pages, despite faults of style and construction, always readable, while, as we have intimated, his critical competence gives the book a real value. Its usefulness would, however, be greatly increased by the addition of an index. — The Story of Parthia, by George Rawlinson, M. A., F. R. G. S. The Story of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) The ordinary intelligent reader, whose knowledge of the story of Parthia, we venture to say, is usually of a very fragmentary and sketchy sort, should be grateful for this clear, concise, and admirably arranged narrative of the rise, progress, and decline of the power which occupied the position of the second nation of the world for nearly four hundred yeai’s, but whose history can be found only in the records of its more civilized rivals, with such aid as its coins and the scanty remains of its art afford. The author argues.forcibly, but without undue positiveness, for the Turanian origin of the Parthian people, finding the nearest representatives of their primitive condition in the modern world to be the Turkomans, and of the time of their highest prosperity the Osmanli Turks ; and he is inclined to regard their “ barbarism ” as less than that imputed to them by the Greek and Roman writers, though barbarous in some respects they undoubtedly were, even in the days of their greatness. The volume closes with an exceedingly interesting study of Parthian Art, Religion, and Customs, which alone would give the work special value. Like all its predecessors, it is very well illustrated. — Russia and Turkey in the Nineteenth Century,by Elizabeth Wormeley Latimer. (McClurg.) A companion volume to the writer’s hook on France in the Nineteenth Century, both works, we infer, having been in their first’form a course of lectures. After brief introductions, some of the more salieut events in Russian and Turkish history, from the time of Alexander I. and Mahmoud II. to the present day, are treated in a readable fashion. The volume makes no pretense to originality, but a good deal of skill is shown in selection and arrangement, memoirs, reminiscences, and magazine articles being freely drawn upon for illustrative material. Newspaper gossip, even, is not altogether ignored, in the case of contemporaries, with less happy results ; for, always unprofitable, such “ personals ” often perversely confute themselves, if read a few months after date. There is a risk in endeavoring to bring the history of the passing day from the lecture and periodical to the greater permanence of book form, where some slight perspective is desirable. For instance, the rather unsatisfactory sketch of that hero of romance in the late nineteenth century, Alexander of Battenberg, which concludes the volume did not reach the reader until the unfinished story there given had been impressively completed by that solemn second return to Bulgaria, which, in view of the unexampled outburst of national feeling accompanying it, might almost be called triumphal.— Frederic Hill, an Autobiography of Fifty Years in Times of Reform. Edited, with Additions, by his Daughter, Constance Hill. (Richard Bentley & Son, London.) Mr. Hill was one of a notable family of brothers, Sir Rowland Hill being one, identified in the most practical way with reform the past seventy years. Mr. Hill is still living at the age of ninety, and the whole effect of the narrative is to give one a sense of extraordinary vigor well directed. The absence of mere talk, and the presence of hard work in prison reform, in education, and in the post office, as well as in every community in which lie was living, impress the reader, and give him a vivid notion of genuine public service of a high order. The book has, besides, many delightful reminiscences of men and scenes. One of the curious incidents is the Family Fund, to which the brothers contributed as a sort of mutual aid society in ease of reverses to any member. There are some capital portraits.— The Life and Writings of George Gascoigne, with Three Poems heretofore not reprinted, by Felix E. Schelling. (Ginn.) One of the publications of the University of Pennsylvania. A discriminating and close study of an interesting figure among the earlier Elizabethans. — In the December Atlantic, under the title Some New Light on Napoleon, there was an extended notice of the first volume, in the original, of the Memoirs of Chancellor Pasquier. The same volume, translated by Charles E. Roche and published by Scribners, has since then come to us.

Poetry and the Drama, Poems, by Francis Thompson. (Elkin Mathews & John Lane, Loudon ; Copeland & Day, Boston.) Small as the sum of Mr. Thompson’s work is, he seems to be preeminently a poet who should be published in selections, for at his best he is capable of beautiful lines, passages, and even whole poems. At other times his preposterous extravagance of conceit and phrase renders his verses successful only after the manner of the humorist who knows not that he is one. Wordsworth, in his different fashion, is the prince of poets for selection, and the sonnet inscribed to him by the author of Lapsus Calami is not wholly inapplicable to Mr. Thompson. Its last three lines concern those “ other times ” when Wordsworth is not beautiful : —

— The Poems of William Watson. (Macmillan.) The book is described as a “new edition, rearranged by the author, with additions.” If “ with omissions ” could have been part of the plan, the dropping of The Prince’s Quest woidd have made this edition of Mr. Watson still more valuable than the last. As it is, an interesting portrait at the beginning, and the addition at the end of Vita Nuova, which appeared in The Spectator last spring when Mr. Watson took up his work again, give the book its freshness. The grouping of the Elegiac Poems in the opening pages of the volume is merely giving them the place of honor they deserve. — Such As They Are, Poems, by Thomas Wentworth Higginson and Mary Thacher Higginson. (Roberts.) To say that this book is the result of collaboration is to use the word in a broad sense ; for by means of a Part I. and a Part II. an inexorable fence is put up between the work of Colonel Higgiuson and that of his wife. The title on the pretty eover is so modest that we must he modest, too, and select only An Egyptian Banquet and An Outdoor Kindergarten from Part I., and Ghost-Flowers from Part II., for mention as more than commonly attractive. — Gleams and Echoes, by A. R. G. With Wood Engravings from Drawings by Eminent Artists. (Lippiucott.) A half dozen full-page drawings of subjects from nature aud human life accompanying as many copies of verses, which are faint, yet pursuing. — Atlinu, Queen of the Floating Isle, by M. B. M. Toland. (Lippincott.) Although this poem has a chilly classicism about it which will scarcely win many readers, it has at any rate given occasion to more than one charming picture, the artists called in to set it off being F. S. Church, Twachtman, Dielman, Jaceaci, Alden Weir, and others. — The House of Life, hv Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Being now for the First Time given in its Full Text. (Copeland & Day, Boston.) The question of ethics involved in bringing forth poems suppressed by the living representatives of a dead poet has been raised in relation to this book. A further question of decency is suggested by the manner in which the paper eover comes off and opens to exposure the plain boards of binding. We would protest, too, against the confusion of printing the part of a line of verse that overruns as if it were going on in prose; that is, without any indentation. But, protests made, there is only praise to he said of the luxurious manner in which the hook is printed, and especially of the borders and initial letters. — On the Road Home, Poems, by Margaret E. Sangster. (Harpers.) One knows what to expect in Mrs. Sangster’s verses, and the expectation is not disappointed. No modern subtleties of doubt and revolt against the scheme of things engage her, but the simpler themes of domestic love, the festivals of the home, and a clear religious faith. Within this grateful province of song Mrs. Sangster’s note is sincere and true, and there is every good reason for the welcome it wins. — Father Junipero Serra, by Chester Gore Miller. (Press of Skeen, Baker & Co., Chicago.) The author calls his work an historical-pastoral drama on the life of the Franeiscan friar who supplies the play with its title. In the epilogue the writer says of the way the world has treated Father Serra, “ Though honored some, he’s honored not enough ; ” and into the same terms we are led to compress our opinions of this hook. — Beatrice, a Tragedy in Four Acts. (N. Wilson & Co., Boston.) Time, the fifth century before Christ ; dramatis personae, a deformed sculptor, his father, the chief of the pirates, two more pirates, various women, ballet girls, and so on. The worst man in the play makes the remark, near the end, “ Your words sound like the jumbled utterances of a lunatic,” and it would not be difficult to pick out such jumbled utterances from this queer production. Yet the cheerful air with which the writer concocts his brew may be seen on every page. — Mr. Aldrich has published his drama of Mercedes as it was performed at Palmer’s Theatre, and the student of literature will find it interesting to note the occasional change, reduction or expansion, which the author has made in adapting a very dramatic passage of literature to use on the stage. The slightness of the variation, for the most part, attests the writer’s high dramatic sense. — We have received from the publishers, Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic, by John Henry Brown (J. Durie & Co., Ottawa) ; Napoleon, a Drama, by Richmond Sheffield Dement (Knight, Leonard & Co., Chicago), in which about sixty characters appear ; and, by a numerical coincidence, “Five Dozen Fancies ” (Earhart & Richardson, Cincinnati), by Charles B. Morrell, M. D.

Philosophy and Religion. The Religion of a Literary Man (Religio Scriptoris), by Richard Le Gallienne. (Putnams, New York ; Elkin Mathews & John Lane, Loudon.) “ Nowhere more than in religion is it wise to do without as much as we can.” This is one of Mr. Le Gallienno’s main propositions, and, following Out its best moaning, his book concerns itself with separating the essential from the unessential in religion. If this single quotation gives the impression that the book is irreverent and “ destructive,” it is ill chosen, for reverence and constructive readjustment of beliefs distinguish it in a high degree. It is not by single sentences, against some of which objections might well bo brought, but by the spirit of the whole book, that it should be judged. As becomes the utterances of a literary man, what the author has to say is admirably said. Many books of the same kind must be written in the years immediately to come, and it will be well if for each class of men in turn so individual a word may be spoken. — The Philosophy of Individuality, or, The One and the Many, by Antoinette Brown Blackwell. (Putnams.) A somewhat complicated piece of writing, designed, apparently, to demonstrate the dependence of individualism upon its relationships, the existence of organism as carrying forward the life of the unit, the development of consciousness till it embraces the widest possible complexity of life. — The Secret Harmony of the Spheres, a Philosophy of Human Nature, by Gay waters. (American Printing and Engraving Go., Boston.) In his preface the author tells just why he uses the phrases entelechic-sensuous-adequate and entelechic-propensional-adequate, and just what they mean.—The Wonderful Counselor, all the recorded sayings of the Lord Jesus, chronologically arranged on a plan for easy memorizing, in single passages, —one for each day in the year, with brief notes connecting words and phrases, by the Rev. Henry B. Mead, M. A. Thus runs the title-page, and it only remains to be said that Randolph is the publisher.

Sport. University Foot-Ball, the Play of Each Position treated by a College Expert, edited by James R. Church. (Scribners.) The whole duty of the foot-ball player is set forth in the series of short papers which make up this volume. It is not permitted every one to play or even to watch the game, and practically all that is to be learned in other ways is given here. One may be old-fashioned enough to wish for a modification of rules that seem to make for brutality, and at the same time may feel the spell of the game, and assent heartily to the spirit of the editor’s concluding remarks on foot-ball “ generally considered.” “ To be good in the game,” he says, “ one must be in perfect physical health, must develop pluck and endurance, patience unending, and absolute self-control. Coming in a young man’s life when these are traits and qualities needful of exercise, why should we wish for a better, a manlier, or a more innocent method of their development ? ”

Fiction. A Gentleman of France, by Stanley J. Weyman. (Longmans.) In The House of the Wolf Mr. Weyman showed his admirable quality as an historical novelist, and the favorable impression made by that work will be confirmed by this later tale. The time chosen is the closing year of the reign of the last Valois, a period when it may be believed that a soldier whose fortunes are at the lowest ebb can rise in a few months to a position of honor, wealth, and influence, by a series of chances taken advantage of with indoubtable courage and never-failing readiness of resource. The time and manner of the story will, of course, suggest comparisons with Dumas ; but while the author cannot rival the master, he proves an excellent second. The narrative is exceedingly well constructed, and till the end is reached it is not certain that the Sieur de Marsac will win his way through the dangers encompassing him, and gain his heart’s desire. Without affectation of style or obvious effort, the book has the spirit of the time ; and though it is a story of adventure, the adventurers have character and life. Foremost among these is the brave, modest, and loyal Huguenot gentleman who in telling the tale unconsciously depicts himself, while the historical personages introduced, the two King Henries, Rosny, and the rest, are sketched with a touch at once vigorous and true.—The Wheel of Time, and Other Stories, by Henry James. (Harpers.) The other stories are but two, and Collaboration and Owen Wingrave are their titles. On the whole, it is Collaboration which makes the keenest impression of the three. This may be merely because it comes so soon after The Lesson of the Master, and by a new example of the sacrifices the children of art are capable of making for art’s sake quickens an impression already produced. In order to collaborate with a German musician, a young French writer gives up his vehemently Gallic fiancée; and where in the previous story the irony of the sacrifice was made very bitter, it is merely suggested here in the intimation that in the end the German wins the love the Frenchman had abandoned. One might almost be cynical touching the coin in which art pays her children back. — Twenty Years at Sea, or, Leaves from my Old Log - Books, by Frederic Stanhope Hill. (Houghton.) When one considers that Mr. Hill recounts an experience in the merchant service, taken up in boyhood, followed by an interval of business, and then by an engagement in some of the exciting events of the war for the Union, in the naval service, it is easy to see what stuff he had out of which to weave his yarns. The best of it is that the story has been told simply, strongly, and with keen spirit. We regret only that, by recourse to a semi-fictitious form, Mr. Hill has robbed the book a little of that appeal which fact makes to the reader’s imagination, and to his entire confidence in the narrator.— Tom Sylvester, a Novel, by T. R. Sullivan. (Scribners.) It is hardly so much in incident or character as in the total impression of scenes and phases of life that the value of this book lies. Not that it is ill conceived or executed as a novel ; on the contrary, it is put together with skill, especially of the sort that bespeaks the constructive work of a writer of plays. The passing of a New England hoy from quiet village life into the whirl of work and pleasure in Paris, where he suffers hard knocks, and his return to his native land, which he looks upon with changed and wiser eyes, give an opportunity for a careful and interesting study, and the opportunity is taken, —A Book of Strange Sins, by Coulson Kernahan. (Ward, Lock & Bowden, Limited, London.) After all, these “ strange sins ” are merely the novel-reader’s old friends, drink, lust, murder, suicide, and so on through the catalogue of crimes. The short stories of which the book is made up are a series of studies in criminal fiction, so to call it without any purpose of questioning the author’s innocence. Here and there are touches of vigor and originality, but on the whole one cannot feel that Mr. Kernahan adds materially to one’s understanding of the motives and sufferings of the criminal. — Marked “Personal,” by Anna. Katharine Green [Mrs. Charles Rohlfs]. (Putnams.) A sensational novel, pure and simple, wherein the author shows her usual skill in constructing an ingenious plot, pervaded by a mystery not to be solved till the last pages are reached. In this instance, it is the case of two apparently exemplary gentlemen, who are summoned, one from Washington, the other from Buffalo, to meet in a house in New York, and there simultaneously to commit suicide in the presence of the sender of the messages. They escape for the time, only to be shadowed by Revenge, and brought to account at last. Of course the characters exist merely as necessary agents in carrying on the story. —The Copperhead, by Harold Frederic. (Scribners.) Mr. Frederic has told a story of war times in the Mohawk Valley before. In this book, as tlie title indicates, it is the civil war which provides him with his theme. The story’s interest lies mainly in the clear picture it draws of the feeling of country people who stayed at home, — the feeling, when a “ copperhead ” was involved, which divided houses against themselves, and neighbors against one another even to the shedding of blood. In the form of fiction such phases of the war are best brought out, and Mr. Frederic’s story may be taken as a telling contribution to the history of the period. — Polly Oliver’s Problem, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. (Houghton.) Mrs. Wiggin is at her best in this story, for it enables her to throw herself by imagination into the life of a young girl just opening into womanhood, and to busy herself with a problem which more and more confronts the young girl, namely, how to find genuine expression of herself, and at the same time retain all that makes womanhood essentially different from manhood. Without any consciousness of a mission, the book does contribute toward the solution of the problem. — Two Soldiers and a Politician, by Clinton Ross. (Putnams.) This very small book is defined as a study in portraiture, and the three subjects who have sat to the painter are General Wolfe, Talleyrand, and an imaginary British officer in our own Revolution. The miniature stories in which these characters figure are moderately, not supremely successful ; and when so little of quantity is given, one feels the more justified in looking for a maximum of quality. — The Watchmaker’s Wife, and Other Stories, by Frank R.Stockton. (Scribners.) There is always an access to honest pleasure when a fresh volume of Mr. Stockton’s stories comes out. He scatters his separate tales so in the magazines that some parts of every volume are sure to be new to his most faithful readers, and a new story by Stockton is always new. Never did one keep the same manner so unchangeably, and yet vary the incidents so widely. It is interesting, by the way, to note how frequently this writer adds to the effectiveness of his stories by making the storyteller one of the characters. It is an affidavit of the credibility of the tale, which the tale sometimes requires. — Drolls from Shadow Land, by J. H. Pearce. (Macmillan.) The best of the little tales in this book are bits of Cornish folk lore, or what may easily pass for it, even if the author’s invention is their true source. Most of the other Drolls are allegories of life and death, and, falling short of supreme excellence in their way, are only as satisfactory as the shadow dance that fills the time between acts. — Truth in Fiction, Twelve Tales with a Moral, by Paul Cams. (The Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago.) We had almost written Twelve Morals with a Tale, so evidently is the tale in each case a somewhat clumsily constructed cart for carrying moral burdens of greater or less value. Truth on the title-page, also, does not mean truth to nature in the stories, but simply the author’s conception of this or that phase of truth which he has tried to illustrate by fiction. O Fiction, Fiction, how many crimes are committed in thy name ! — Rachel Stan wood, a Story of the Middle of the Nineteenth Century, by Lucy Gibbons Morse. (Houghton.) A spirited story, full of that subtle reality which is incommunicable by books or documents, and comes only from a participation in the life itself. The abolition society of New York, with its infusion of Quaker blood, is admirably presented, and the humor as well as the tragedy involved springs naturally from the author’s use of her material. — Since our last mention of Magazine Books, Stories of Italy have been added to the series of Stories from Scribner, and Short Stories to Harper’s Distaff Series.

Education and Textbooks. If any one wants his German declensions simplified and symbolized, so as to make their acquisition rapid and permanent, let him send to the publisher (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.) for Mr. William A. Wheatley’s little. treatise on the subject. — To the list of Literature Primers (Macmillan) should be added Chaucer, by Alfred W. Pollard, a sensible little volume, though we could wish the author had troubled himself less about the poet’s rank, for that is one of the most unprofitable of exercises.—History of the Philosophy of Pedagogics, by Charles Wesley Bennett. (Bardeen.) This title and thirty-seven small pages !