Comment on New Books
History and Biography. History of England under Henry the Fourth, by James Hamilton Wylie, M. A. Vol I., 1399-1404 ; Vol. II., 1405-1406. (Longmans.) It is ten years since the opening volume of this work appeared, and students of English history had naturally begun to fear that Mr. Wylie’s minute study of the reign of the first Lancastrian king might never be completed ; for to students the book proved of exceptional interest and value, though possibly it made no very strong appeal to the general reader. The work might well be called The Story of a Usurpation, so typical is the history of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion contained therein, — a record of revolt in Wales, disorder in Ireland, quarrels with Scotland, and treason everywhere. With more exactitude than is often the case, the author’s labor may be called exhaustive ; it is history given in detail, and each item is annotated with extraordinary thoroughness, and complete sketches of the principal actors, sometimes of peculiar interest, are usually interpolated. This method of writing, of course, makes broad views of events or effective generalizations almost impossible, but it has in this case made a most authoritative and permanent book of reference, whether we regard the religion, statecraft, warfare, finance, trade, or social life of the time. So it is to be hoped that the index promised with the third and concluding volume will be fuller and more comprehensive than those which sometimes accompany English works of like importance. — Social England, a Record of the Progress of the People in Religion, Laws, Learning, Arts, Industry, Commerce, Science, Literature, and Manners, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, by Various Writers. Edited by H. D. Traill, D. C. L. Vol. I., From the Earliest Times to the Accession of Edward the First. (Cassell, London ; Putnams, New York.) A work encyclopædic in its scope, and probably destined to be so in its proportions, when we remember that the few definite divisions in which the subject of the social history of England can be satisfactorily treated in the first volume will later have to be divided and subdivided, and the subdivisions even divided again. While the book is evidently intended for the general reader, it is written throughout in the spirit of the latest and most enlightened scholarship, and the contributors to this volume give us always competent, and in some instances very excellent work. The editor’s admirable and all too brief introduction, outlining the plan of the history, and most effectively summarizing the story of English social progress through the centuries, imparts to the reader a feeling of confidence in the success of a project fortunate in such clear-sighted and able guidance. The four epochs considered in this volume begin as they should, with England Before the English, Celtic, and Roman Britain being relatively as adequately treated as Saxon or Norman England. The inevitable repetitions, resulting from the plan of regarding each section of the subject in turn as much as from the composite authorship, are generally as little evident as may be, and indeed the work, on the whole, so well fulfills its purpose that it would be an ungrateful task to particularize blemishes or weaknesses, usually of superficial importance. — Slav and Moslem, Historical Sketches, by J. Milliken Napier Brodhead. (Aiken Publishing Co., Aiken, S. C.) A demand, rather than a plea, for the recognition of Russia as a great civilizing force, particularly when confronted by the unspeakable Turk. — The Indian and the Pioneer, an Historical Study, by Rose N. Yawger. (C. W. Bardeen, Syracuse, N. Y.) In a couple of volumes bound in one, Miss Yawger, who is a teacher in Union Springs Union school, has collected various facts concerning the Indians, especially those near Lake Geneva, and also concerning the early settlers of the region, and the present local life in school and church. The local touches are frequent, and give a certain specific value to the work. — Samuel Longfellow : Memoir and Letters ; Essays and Sermons. Edited by Joseph May. (Houghton.) These two volumes contain the record of the character and work of a singularly refined and gentle nature, which yet had a rocklike stability. There was in the outward expression a certain wavering which seemed, superficially, the mark of an unstable mind, but it would be juster to liken it to the quivering of the needle which was struggling against untoward influences after a steadfast pointing to the north. The affectionate nature of the man, his dreamy temperament, forgetful of actualities apparently, yet always mindful in the most delicate manner of persons, won him a halfwhimsical hut always loving regard, and his fine sensibility as well as his frail physical being interfered with a full and rounded activity. Altogether an unusual man, with a touch of incompleteness which left one wondering if there were not somewhere else another half to him. — Whittier with the Children, by Margaret Sidney. (Lothrop.) A somewhat intimately written sketch of Whittier, first in his own boyhood, and then in his relation to children, especially two who are named. There are some pleasing little touches of incident, hut the writer scarcely reaches the point which she admires in Whittier when she says, “Mr. Whittier had the remarkable faculty of effacing himself in his intercourse with children.”
Fiction. Sweet Bells out of Tune, by Mrs. Burton Harrison. (The Century Co.) One of the outspoken characters in this tale says to the heroine, “ It’s not a common experience you’ve had to bear so early in married life, even among what I call the most frivolous and brainless set of people on this continent.” It is a pity that Mrs. Harrison, with all her cleverness, does not succeed in extracting something more from this comedy of frivolous and brainless people than the hurried close of an evening’s stage melodrama. It is not so very difficult a matter to disclose the process by which a selfish man of society, with low ideals, estranges a pureminded and high-bred wife ; the real problem is to show how they can return to a genuine and not mock peace with each other, and that problem Mrs. Harrison has shirked. — Dostoievsky’s Poor Folk (Roberts), to which, by the way, George Moore has contributed a suggestive introduction, is written in one of the most artificial of all literary forms, — the form of letters which pass between the two chief characters. Whether such a manner be the best in which to tell the tale of the love and self-sacrifice of poor old Makar for the unfortunate Varvara may well be a question ; but there can be no doubt that Dostoievsky has produced here a tragedy of extraordinary power. He has made us feel, as perhaps no one else ever did, the hopelessness of the miserable fate of poor folk ; and, by way of alleviation, he has marvelously brought out the beauty of sncli a love as Mhkar bore for Varvara. He seems to say, as Mr. Flowells has said, “ Let us make men know one another better,”— know the despair of the poor, and the beauty not quite gone out from their lives. — The Ebb Tide, by Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osborne. (Stone & Kimball.) More than one lover of Stevenson must have read this story in the magazine in which it was first printed. From its opening chapters it seemed possible to such readers that the aroma might prove too pungent to he fixed in a more permanent form, but this feeling has been thoroughly dispelled, and the publishers, in spite of some inappropriateness in the coverdesign, have done their part of the work daintily and well. That phrase from the Missionary Hymn, contrasting antipodean man and his surroundings, is the keynote of the story. The reader is constantly struck with the writers’ design, we think, in the contrast between the vileness of the three principal characters, men of diverse temperament and history, and the lovely surroundings in which they work out their evil destinies. Again we feel, as for example, aforetime, in A Night with Villon, kinship with the lapsed, from whom only the barrier of adequate and regular nourishment divides at least some of the excellent. On this point Stevenson has elsewhere more definitely insisted. There is a touch of fin de siècle sharpness in a phrase or two, a suggestion of the manner to which, in him, we are unaccustomed. The style remains, however, a delightful thing; there is still the absolute clearness in seeing all with which the author deals, and there is happy selection, both of which qualities, it seems to us, more than any balancing of phrase and curiousness in epithet, give to his books a wonderful and un-English charm. It would appear from this that Mr. Lloyd Osborne has suffered the fate of the minor collaborator; but to him may possibly be ascribed the correctness of the American local color and the lack of grotesqueness in the use of American slang. — Salem Kittredge, and Other Stories, by Bliss Perry (Scribners), are, in a way, as interesting to the critic as they are entertaining to the general reader. Their author seems to look back longingly on the time and material of romance, but to step resolutely forward, nevertheless, into the present, the ordinary, the commonplace. With this contemporary life Mr. Perry does not seem deeply and completely enough in sympathy ever to do any really first-rate work. But he can already do some that is very diverting. His manner is that of the skillful raconteur at table : he handles his incidents excellently, and does not bother about much else. Usually he gives his stories a humorous turn that is sometimes a trifle farcical, and sometimes a bit satirical. — A Prodigal in Love, by Emma Wolf (Harpers), is a novel that somehow one reads through, despite the protest of one’s better judgment and taste; and yet the book is surely not worth the reading, for it is scarcely more than so much sensational trash. — The Hon. Stanbury and Others, by Two. The Incognito Library. (Putnams.) The Hon. Stanbury, a sketch rather than a story, is well told, in a terse, clean-cut, readable style. There is some originality shown in the choice of a subject and its treatment, — the history of the love of the Hon. Mr. Marks, a stolid, slow-witted, unimaginative man, whose besetting sin is gluttony, for a poor dancer, a woman broken in health and no longer young; and the reawakening of the man’s better nature wrought thereby is indicated delicately and without exaggeration. The two shorter tales which complete the volume, each having a pathetically forlorn and aging spinster as heroine, though fairly well done, are of no special importance. — The Wedding Garment, by Louis Pendleton (Roberts), is a Swedenborgian tract written in the form of a novel. As a tract, it undertakes to instruct in the doctrines of the Now Church concerning the life to come, but in this it is scarcely more successful than in its character as a novel. The author does not show enough literary instinct and power to make respectable use of his richly imaginative material of Swedenborg’s splendid vision of the other world.
— Mr. Noah Brooks expresses the hope that his readers may find in his Tales of the Maine Coast (Scribners) “the same recreation that the writer has found, and at the same time gain some notion of the characteristics of the people.” Recreation the reader will find, undeniably, for the writer of these tales has something very much like the newspaper man’s instinct for the interesting. And, too, the render will gain some notion of the characteristics of the people, but of these characteristics as they manifest themselves under exceptional rather than ordinary circumstances. For the rare art of making the commonplace significant has not been given to the author. — Quaker Idyls, by Sarah M. H. Gardner. (Holt.) Between the appropriate drab covers of this little book one is given glimpses of oldfashioned Quaker life in Philadelphia, New York State, and Boston. The sketches — they can hardly be called stories — are as placid as they should be, but, unfortunately, lack something of the spice of humor, often unconscious, which is supposed, with reason, to be a distinguishing element of Quaker character. — Red Cap and Blue Jacket, by George Dunn. (Putnams.) A loosely constructed story, whose rather stilted style may perhaps be supposed by the author to indicate an eighteenth - century quality. The principal characters are, a nobleman, who, by an act of unspeakable baseness and cruelty, has succeeded to his victim’s title and estate, and a Scotch schoolmaster, given to discoursing at portentous length on any subject under discussion, who has adopted revolutionary theories, which a visit to France during the Terror naturally serves to bring to confusion. In the prison of the Luxembourg he meets the real Lord Wimpole, and escapes with him to England. The revelation of this gentleman’s wrongs is, on the whole, very calmly received by his friends, and the cousin, though forced to surrender his ill-gotten goods, is speedily supplied with love, honor, and distinction almost sufficient to counterbalance the loss. The closing incidents of the tale remind one of the final act of the ordinary comedy of the last century, in which all is summarily made right, and they bear the same relation to anything in actual life. Indeed, while there is some cleverness shown in certain portions of the story, an atmosphere of unreality surrounds the whole. — A Pound of Cure, a Story of Monte Carlo, by William H. Bishop. (Scribners.) The moral purpose of this rather tedious tale has perverted its author’s artistic sense, for Mr. Bishop has shown himself capable of better things. And the grim joke of it is that the book must be as ineffective morally as it is artistically. Here is one of “ life’s little ironies.”
Travel and Nature. Eskimo Life, by Fridtjof Nansen. Translated by William Archer. (Longmans.) Dr. Nansen is well known by his The First Crossing of Greenland. In this book he gathers the results of his study and observation during the winter when he was housed among the Eskimos, and describes their mode of life, their social ideas, and their religion. He was much attracted by their affectionate nature, and though the descriptions are somewhat lacking in sharpness and individuality, they serve to justify tiie general impressions which Dr. Nansen seeks to give. He passes in review the whole course of European influence, and draws a final conclusion that this influence has been almost wholly mischievous. He counsels the Danish government to withdraw its officers and leave the Eskimos to themselves. — In the Wake of Columbus, Adventures of the Special Commissioner sent by the World’s Columbian Exposition to the West Indies, by Frederick A. Ober. (Lotlirop.) Although the main part of this book is occupied with a record of the journeys which Mr. Ober made when interesting the authorities of the West Indies in the Chicago Fair, the author had an intelligent plan of visiting all the places, whether in the Old World or the New, which were connected historically or by tradition with Columbus. The book thus is in the nature of a series of illustrations, both by pen and camera, of the scenes in which Columbus was a figure. As such it has an added value to the historical student who may not be able to make the pilgrimage himself, her Mr. Ober is a persistent sight-seer and an animated narrator of his experience. — A Year amongst the Persians, Impressions as to the Life, Character and Thought of the People of Persia, received during Twelve Months’ Residence in that Country in the Years 1887-88, by Edward G. Browne. (Macmillan.) Dr. Browne, who is lecturer in Persian to the University of Cambridge, England, was most admirably equipped for his year in Persia : not only had he a colloquial familiarity with the language as well as an academic knowledge of it, but be had enthusiasm, an open mind, and a passion for the acquisition not merely of the external life which awaits every intelligent traveler, but of the inner, especially the religious mind. Hence his book, while a most interesting narrative of personal adventure, has a profounder value as an exposition of the Báti faith, and a sympathetic study of the religions of Persia. The writer is so lively and withal so naïve that his work is a treasure trove to the reader of travels. — Wayside Sketches, by Eben J. Loomis. (Roberts.) A book made up partly of sentiments regarding nature, in which fancy plays an undue part without playing it well, and partly of stories or allegories which could be classed as products of the imagination only in a subject catalogue. It is fact and fancy of an old-fashioned sort ; we seem to detect a Byronie influence in “the voice of the mountain speaking to its brother peak ” (only Byron would have made it a sister) ; but the sentiments uttered are those of a Sunday-school paper. At every allusion to the moral sentiment the page breaks out into capitals, — The Friendship of Nature, a New England Chronicle of Birds and Flowers, by Mabel Osgood Wright. (Macmillan.) A miniature collection of essays done in a manner suggestive of miniature painting, with delicate stippling and fresh light colors. The effects produced are very pretty, and tlie feeling of the book is true and sweet ; but one wonders now and then whether the picture is not completed by a touch of invention, or at least whether the objects brought together do not come in sight, like Chateaubriand’s moon, just in time to prevent him from bringing it perforce into his page.— Our (treat West, a Study of the Present Conditions and Future Possibilities of the New Commonwealths and Capitals of the United States, by Julian Ralph. (Harpers.) A lively, picturesque book, in which practically each locality is allowed to play its own brass band. It is exhilarating to read of the splendid energy and dauntless hope and faith which are engaged in laying bare the great material resources of the West. Mr. Ralph does not shut his eyes to the reverse of the picture, yet he opens them only for a moment. There is, for example, but little concerning the uninformed public opinion, and the ease with which combinations arc made for the enrichment of the few and the impoverishment of the many. — On and Off the Saddle, from the Great Northeast to tlie Antilles, by Lispenard Rutgers. (Putnams.) The ground covered in this slender volume is extensive, and the pace at which we are carried over it (the programme for the first day is a drive of a hundred miles) fairly takes away our breath. The motion is rendered uncomfortable by the continual jerks with which the narrative proceeds from the past to the present tense and back again. The following sentence will afford a fair example of the writer’s style : “ A drive of twenty miles back from tlie railroad, where the shriek of the locomotive is never heard, we began to see signs of animal life : prairie chickens fly up in front of our horses, alighting fifty feet off, so tame were they.” For sheer incoherence this would be hard to match. The book ends appropriately with a cyclone. —Eastward to the Land of the Morning, by M. M. Shoemaker. (Robert Clark & Co., Cincinnati.) The rambling discourse of a traveler from Brindisi to Japan. He does not weary the reader with the matter-of-fact details of his journey, but seeks to give a scries of magiclantern slides of scenes. He is disposed to advise his friends not to make a single journey round the globe, but to bisect the world, and take half at a time.—The Partridge : Natural History, by the Rev. H. A. Maepherson ; Shooting, by A. J. StuartWortley ; Cookery, by George Saiutsbury. Fur and Feather Series. (Longmans.) One of a series of monographs on English game birds and beasts. It is not so limited in scope as would appear at first sight, for the partridge touches English life at a number of points. In fact, if there were room on the title-page for the sub-title English Traits, it would not more than cover the range of a delightful volume in which we learn all about the partridge from the egg to the dinner table, besides having an incidental glimpse of some of the finest traits of English character, and an opportunity to observe the admirable training for literature and politics afforded by an organized national sport. Mr. Maepherson celebrates the partridge in sober and simple fashion, Mr. Saiutsbury shows literary skill and zest, and Mr. Stuart-Wortley’s writing is clever, spontaneous, and thoroughly felicitous in tone.— Beyond the Rockies, a Spring Journey in California, by Charles A. Stoddard. (Scribners.) Dr. Stoddard, who has served his apprenticeship as a traveler in foreign countries, here shows his training in the natural manner in which he touches lightly on the mere circumstance of travel, and occupies himself with the more permanent impressions formed on a journey from New York to New Orleans, thence to Texas, to New Mexico and Arizona, in Southern California, California, and home by Salt Lake. It is a journey which many people take, and which they will find agreeable to repeat in this easily flowing narrative.
Literature and Literary History. Prose Fancies, by Richard Le Gallieime. (Putnams.) Some twenty-five brief essays on light topics more or less connected with the life of a man of letters. They are graceful, touched now and then with genuine poetic feeling, and gay with a merry humor. They are, nevertheless, — shall we say it ? — affected by what we may term a journalistic consciousness, a cleverness of the moment which means good “ copy.” Coming across them singly in a weekly journal, one is glad of such a sauce of good literature ; coming upon them together in a deliberate book, one thinks how journalism is tingeing literature. — History of the English Language, by T. R. Lonnsbury. (Holt.) The general history of the language and the detailed account of the changes in inflection — both of which, by the way, have been revised and enlarged — are addressed, of course, chiefly to scholars, and for the needs of such the book is, within its own limits, admirably adequate. But it is surely not only to scholars that a history of the language of Shakespeare and of modern London must appeal, — the language of the man who knew life best, and of “ the particular spot where,” as Henry James says, “ one’s sense of life is strongest,” For it is only by this intimate union with life — with what is best and most vital in life — that a history of even the mother tongue can hold the attention of the general reader. And Such a union — the meaning and the promise of it — Professor Lonnsbury shows in his clean-cut, vigorous account of the varying fortunes of our language.
Philosophy and Religion. La Définition de la Philosophie, par Ernest Naville. (Georg et Cie., Geneve et Bâle.) It is philosophy “ in the aibstract ” that M. Naville defines, but the bounds of his definition form the outline of a system of modern Christian philosophy. Rejecting both rationalism and empiricism as exclusive of one or another set of phenomena, he preaches spiritualism, and seeks to reconcile science and religion by means of a synthesis which shall account at once for physical laws and the course of history. He first considers the explanation of phenomena according to class, law, cause, and design (l’explication par la elasse, par la loi, par la cause, et par le but), laying stress upon psychical laws, introducing the will as a cause libre, and putting design on equal footing with cause as a subject of investigation. He then discusses the scientific method of arriving at truth through proposition (constatation), supposition, and verification, and then proceeds to the treatment of the philosophic processes of analysis, hypothesis, and synthesis, giving hypothesis equal rank with the others, and considering the doctrines included in religious dogma as hypotheses to be examined by philosophy. The style is very clear and simple, and the arrangement of the book is almost geometric, each axiom being printed in italics at the head of the chapter which elucidates it, duly numbered for purposes of cross-reference, and included in a summary at the end of the volume. — The first of four volumes to be devoted to the writings of Thomas Paine has been published. The writings arc collected and edited by Mr. Moncure D. Conway, who has already rendered important service by his Life of Thomas Paine. This volume covers the period from 1774 to 1779, and, with the exception of a few trifles at the beginning from a magazine edited by Paine, is occupied with his political papers, including Common Sense, The American Crisis, and other papers bearing the signature “ Common Sense.” The homely force of these papers is distinguishable now, and it is easy to see what an impression they must have made when the subjects were not historical, but related to conduct and action immediately. — The King and the Kingdom, a Study of the Four Gospels. (Putnams, NewYork; Williams & Norgate, London.) There is no occasion to criticise with undue severity an anonymous author who writes in his preface, “ Not scholarship, as may easily be seen, but only earnestness of thought and sincerity of purpose can be urged in favor of this work.” Its object is to present a diatessaron, drawn from various translations, amplified by remarks of the commentators, especially Dean Alford, and lavishly expounded by the author himself. His wish has been to present the simple gospel, innocent alike of dogmatic theology and "higher criticism.” This, it seems to us, could have been done more effectively than in three goodly volumes without the reliefs of subdivisions into chapters or parts. And Surely, the writer, when he came to the Widow’s Mite, should not have let himself be enticed into the great questions of philanthropy, — from Foreign Missions down to the Country Holiday Charity. — A Chorus of Faith, as heard in the Parliament of Religions held in Chicago, September 10-27,1893, with an Introduction by Jenkin Lloyd Jones. (Unity Publishing Co., Chicago.) To judge from Mr. Jones’s Introduction, and from the many pages of extracts from addresses of welcome and farewell which stand at the beginning and end of this volume, there was no dearth of flamboyant oratory in Chicago. The speakers were “ strangely moved ” with the sense of a "supreme moment” and with many another great thought. The bulk of the book gives brief passages from many speeches by many types of men on such universal themes as Brotherhood and the Soul. Of course there was harmony, and much prophecy of great good to all the world ; and sad enough it is to reflect that within a year Chicago, the very seat of the Parliament, has had its Debs, and the country its session of Congress. It is still very much the same world. — Papers of the Jewish Women’s Congress, held at Chicago, September 4,5,6, and 7, 1893. (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.) The papers and discussions were almost wholly by women in this congress, and treated historically of Jewish women at different periods, women as wage-workers, Influence of the Jewish Religion in the Home, Mission Work among the Unenlightened Jews, and finally considered How can Nations he Influenced to Protest or even Interfere in Cases of Persecution ? where the topic was specifically the current persecution of the Jews in Russia. — A True Son of Liberty, or, The Man who would not be a Patriot, by F. P. Williams. (Saalfield & Fitch, New York.) A somewhat confused attempt at setting off a single-minded adherence to Christ against what the writer appears to think an entirely worldly conception underlying the principles of American nationality. A little more effort at seeing God in history might release him from his very strained attitude. — The Question of Unity, edited by Amory H. Bradford. (The Christian Literature Co., New York.) We have already commented on Dr. Shields’s remarkable essay on the Historic Episcopate. Dr. Bradford conceived the notion of inviting criticism upon the hook from representative leaders of different religious orders. He introduces the collection, and allows Dr. Shields the final word in gathering up the general impressions. They are scarcely more than impressions, for the space given each is limited, and as such they are rather the outcome of general thought than specific studies of the question under consideration. The little book will hardly give impetus to the movement for unity, but it makes a sort of weathercock to show which way the wind is blowing. It veers like most weathercocks, but is reasonably steady.
Books for and about the Young. Twenty Little Maidens, by Amy E. Blanchard. Illustrations by Ida Waugh. (Lippincott.) Twenty pretty stories with little girls for heroines. They are natural children, and the story-teller has pleasing fancies about them while she is telling the trifling incidents of their adventures. The good taste and refined feeling of the book make it somewhat exceptional, and the simple manner in which the children are shown either helping or being helped marks the wholesomeness of the tales. — The Chronicles of Faeryland, Fantastic Tales for Old and Young, by Fergus Hume. Illustrated by M. Dunlop. (Lippincott.) Mr. Hume uses his inventive power more effectively here than in his grown-up stories, for his skill is in the narrating of adventures without too close regard for their logic or their probability, and these fairy tales are a free handling of the familiar conventions. They have a zest about them which is quite attractive.—No Heroes, by Blanche Willis Howard. (Houghton.) A bright story of generous self - sacrifice in a boy, and so couched in the natural language of boyhood, half formed, fun concealing feeling, and nature concerning herself more with the block than the sculpture, that a manly boy will read it without discomfort, and take to heart a lesson which he might refuse to commit to memory. — The Sunny Days of Youth, a Book for Boys and Young Men, by the Author of How to he Happy Though Married. (Scribners.) The writer, in his accustomed colloquial and informal fashion, gives very sound advice or warning on a great variety of matters relating to both major and minor morals. Even careless or unliterate youth will probably find the book easily readable, as its admonitions are plentifully illustrated by anecdotes, always apposite, and sometimes new, or as good as new.
Textbooks. From Henry Holt & Co. we have four textbooks for French classes, each prepared by an instructor of American youth. The first, except for the type and the publishers’ imprint, has an air entirely French, as its title-page will show : Ilistoire de la Littdrature Franqaise, par Alcée Fortier, Professeur à l’Université Tulane de la Louisiane. In the language of the works with which it deals, it enumerates and briefly characterizes the principal authors and books in the whole course of the history of France, — “ ce grand pays,” as the writer declares with pardonable zeal, “qui s’appela la Gaule de Vercengétorix, et qui est maintcnant la France republicaine.” Of the other books it is necessary only to say that they have been carefully equipped with all devices to aid the learner. Their titles are : Michel Strogoff, par Jules Verne, abridged and edited, with Notes, by Edwin Seelye Lewis (Princeton) ; Selections from Victor Hugo, Prose and Verse, edited, with Introduction and Notes, by F. M. Warren (Adalbert College) ; and Contes de Daudet (including La Belle-Nivernaise), edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Indices, by A. Guyot Cameron (Yale). — Livre de Lecture et de Conversation, by C. Fontaine. (Heath.) A judicious mingling, entirely in French, of simple readings, questions, and drill in the forms of language, especially the verbs. It is the author’s belief that the expression of Goethe regarding the Greeks as his favorite writers may well be modified by learners of the French tongue into “ les verbes, les verbes, et toujours les verbes.” But it is not forgotten, as teachers sometimes forget, that conjugations and language are distinct things ; and the writer’s practical purpose is to bring them vitally together. — In Heath’s Modern Language Series a new number is Genin’s Le Petit Tailleur Bouton, edited, with Notes, Vocabulary, and Appendices, by W. S. Lyon. The pupil is lifted bodily over every stone in the way. In the same series is Gustav Freytag’s Der Rittmeister von Alt-Rosen, edited by J. T. Hatfield. The book is judiciously equipped with historical apparatus and a reasonable body of notes. — A somewhat novel venture is Petite Histoire de la Littérature Française depuis les Origines jusqu’a nos Jours, par Delphine Duval, Professor of French in Smith College. (Heath.) Here the somewhat dubious introduction of the pupil to the history of literature by means of a manual, illustrated sparingly by examples, at least in verse, is justified by the fact that the pupil is at the same time enjoying practice in the language. — Old English Ballads, selected and edited by Francis B. Gummere. (Ginn.) In the interesting and valuable introduction to this well-selected and carefully - edited volume of ballads, Professor Gummere discusses thoroughly the question of their origin. He concludes in favor of a very sensible sort of “communal ” authorship. Incidentally, he suggests the deep human interest and meaning of these “ survivals of a vanished world of poetry.” In doing so, however, he seems to disparage what he inadequately Calls the “poetry of the schools.” But perhaps this is due only to his effort to gain a wider hearing for that poetry which is distinguished by its lack of personal sentiment and reflection, and by a peculiar charm of spontaneity.
Social Philosophy. The Cosmopolis City Club, by Rev. Washington Gladden. (The Century Co.) Cosmopolis is a city of Utopia, though its club and the doings thereof pertain wholly to our own land. This book, which readers of the Century Magazine will recall, tells of the talks and achievements of an imaginary group of men who believed with Andrew D. White that “the city governments of the United States are the worst in Christendom, — the most expensive, the most inefficient, and the most corrupt.” Believing as they did,these men banded themselves together to improve the affairs of their own city ; and this they accomplished, establishing in the end a new and reformed city charter. Though in the form of fiction, the book describes what might perfectly well be, indeed in several cities has been, fact.