Comment on New Books
Books for the Young. Harper’s Young People for 1894 is a comely volume of 888 pages, with pictures sprinkled in so freely that we guess there are more than 888 of them. Fiction predominates, but ingenuity also is given a fair show, and the telephone, the bicycle, the bicycle boat, and aerial boats, kites, and the like, are described and illustrated. In the nature of things, boys seem to be more regarded in this particular than girls.— St. Nicholas has attained its majority, for the two parts for the year 1894 constitute the twenty-first volume. Kipling, Stockton, Miss Wilkins, Mrs. Dodge, Miss Cone, Stedman, Cable, Boyesen, Susan Coolidge, Mrs. Wiggin, Mark Twain, and a very large number of lesser lights (though children are not much affected by our distinctions of reputation) make up a varied miscellany, illustrated by Birch, Beard, Palmer Cox, F. S. Church, Oliver Herford, and many others. (The Century Co.) — The Story of a Bad Boy, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Illustrated by A. B. Frost. (Houghton.) It must have been a pleasure to illustrate this book, for the writer is a true artist, and in making his own vivid pictures of boyhood he did what every artist does, stimulated, not satisfied the imagination ; so that Mr. Frost, in taking up his pencil, could scarcely help catching an impulse from his author. The spirit in which he has added his touch is excellent, and the book ought to be sent on to a new generation with a fresh access of good will. —Robinson Crusoe has been published in the Children’s Library (Macmillan, New York ; T. Fisher Unwin, London), in an inexpensive but serviceable style. It is well printed, and Cruikshank’s familiar illustrations are reproduced. The story has been slightly modified by “ the sparing excision of now needless or irrelevant matter.” As is usual, the volume includes only the First Adventures. — The Land of Pluck, by Mary Mapes Dodge. (The Century Co.) Mrs. Dodge’s vivacious and cheerful Dutch studies, which appeared a few years ago in The Riverside, and afterwards in St. Nicholas, have been expanded to twice their original length, and now fill about a third of this book. From them children will get a more vivid idea of Holland and the Hollanders, past and present, than from many more serious and elaborate lucubrations, and some of the illustrations will prove a material help thereto. Nearly a score of stories and sketches, now first collected, complete the book. — The same publishers bring out When Life is Young, a charming volume of poems and rhymes by Mrs. Dodge, nearly all of which have already given pleasure to the large clientele of St. Nicholas. —Hope Benham, by Nora Perry. (Little, Brown & Co.) A pleasantly written story for girls, refined and unsensational in tone, and also steadily interesting. It should be gratefully noted that the writer is old-fashioned enough to bestow upon her youthful heroine parents quite capable of taking care of themselves, and of their daughter as well, and that the young dramatis personœ of the tale are regarded as still in a state of pupilage, — or if not, it is to their own detriment. Favorable mention should be made of Mr. F. T. Merrill’s illustrations. — Czar and Sultan, the Adventures of a British Lad in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, by Archibald Forbes. (Scribners.) Mr. Forbes has not succeeded in imparting much vitality to the British lad who is supposed to tell the tale, or to the fictitious incidents introduced on his behalf. But though the imaginary portion of the narrative hampers rather than helps the author, he has given a very vigorous and graphic history of the Russo-Turkish war, using as material some of his own personal experiences, and also those of his “ brilliant colleagues, Messrs. MacGahan and Millet,” with the aid of various authoritative memoirs and reminiscences. The work has a distinct value as a compact, vivid, and doubtless, as far as may be, an impartial account of the conflict. — Things Will Take a Turn, by Beatrice Harraden. (Scribners.) The success of the writer’s later works has brought us this revised edition of a tale first published live or six years ago. The earlier part of the story — the picture of the Second-hand book shop, the poor old scholar, its master, and his bright, helpful granddaughter—is charming ; but as the tale goes on, the older reader discovers that the incidents are of the most threadbare sort, and the general effect ultra-conventional rather than natural. But these objections will be of small moment to little girl readers, who will probably find the book fairly entertaining from beginning to end. But its revival was hardly worth while. — When Molly Was Six, by Eliza Orne White. (Houghton.) A record of a day in each month of Molly’s seventh year, told with charming grace and naturalness. It is a genuine little girl’s book, something to be noted in these days of miniature novels, and studies of, not for, children. The grown-up folk, who will probably often be called upon to read it, will also find their pleasure in its freshness, delicacy, and gentle humor. — Pushing to the Front, or, Success under Difficulties, by Orison Swett Marden. (Houghton.) The author calls his book further, on the title-page, “A book of inspiration and encouragement to all who are struggling for self-elevation along the paths of knowledge and of duty,” and he illustrates it with twenty-four portraits. The volume belongs in a well-known class, of which Smiles’s Self-Help was perhaps the most conspicuous pioneer. With a great multitude of anecdotes, Mr. Marden enforces the lessons of patience, perseverance, enthusiasm, energy, cheerfulness, resolution, pluck, and all the virtues which go to make up character and success. For it is to be observed that he does not hold up material success and prosperity as the goal to be reached, but has much more in mind the making of men. A fusillade of maxims and pithy sayings is kept up from first to last ; and though one anecdote may expel another, and the life of one strong man achieving success in spite of difficulties is likely to be more inspiring than a gross of anecdotes, there are, no doubt, natures which will be stimulated by this cheerful, energetic book. — Brother Against Brother, or, The War on the Border, by Oliver Optic. (Lee & Shepard.) This volume begins a new series by its multitudinous author, The Blue and Gray, on Land, — a series which is to include six volumes, the first of which is a Border State tale. — The Fables of Æsop, Selected, Told Anew, and their History Traced, by Joseph Jacobs. Done into Pictures by Richard Heighway. (Macmillan.)— Bible Stories for Young People. Illustrated. By a Dozen Well-Known Clergymen and Women Writers. (Harpers.) — Artful Anticks, by Oliver Herford. Rhymes and pictures. (The Century Co.) — The Butterfly Hunters in the Caribbees, by Dr. Eugene Murray-Aaron. (Scribners.) — The Lost Canyon of the Toltees, an Account of Strange Adventures in Central America, by Charles Sumner Seeley. (McClurg.) — Parables from Nature, by Mrs. Alfred Gatty. Illustrated by Paul de Longpré The two series are here given with delicate illustrations. (Putnams.) — Donald Marcy, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. (Houghton.) — The Making of Virginia and the Middle Colonies, 1578-1701, by Samuel Adams Drake. With many illustrations and maps. (Scribners.) — Melody, by Laura E. Richards. (Roberts.) The story of a child, by the author of Captain January. — The Boy Captain, by Captain Nautilus. (C. Eldridge, Chicago.)
Poetry. The Poetical Works of Robert Browning. (Macmillan.) The sixteen volumes of Browning’s poems, issued by his English publishers, Smith, Elder & Co., are imported by Macmillans, two volumes bound in one, and thus set forth in eight volumes. To this they have added a ninth volume, containing Asolando, and Biographical and Historical Notes to the Poems, alphabetically arranged. These notes are for the most part brief, and in many instances simply reproduce information of the sort to be obtained in classical or biographical dictionaries. The page of the poems is a clear one, and there is a general index of titles, and an index to first lines of the shorter poems. — The Poetic and Dramatic Works of Robert Browning. (Houghton.) This edition, in six volumes, contains the complete works of Browning. It is issued by Browning’s authorized American publishers. It might be bound six volumes in three, but it is not. A full volume of elaborate studies covering Browning’s poems, and explicatory of names and obscurities, by George Willis Cooke, accompanies the edition. The page of the poems is a clear one, and there are two indexes, one of titles and the other of all first lines. For convenience of students, both forms of Pauline are given, the first and the final revised one. — A second edition has been published of The Olive and the Pine, a collection of poems by Martha Perry Lowe. (Lothrop.) The contrast is in subjects drawn from Spain and from New England. If it would be fair to speak of poetry as old-fashioned, the term might be pleasantly applied to this volume. — Hannibal and Katharna, a Drama in Five Acts, by Lieutenant-Colonel J. C. Fife-Cookson. (Putnams.) This drama walks along with occasional quickening of the pace.— Unguarded Gates, and Other Poems, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. (Houghton.)—The TorchBearers, by Arlo Bates. (Roberts.) — Songs from Dreamland, by May Kendall. (Longmans.) — Poems, New and Old, by William Roscoe Thayer. (Houghton.) — Selections from the Poems of Aubrey De Vere, edited, with a Preface, by George Edward Woodberry. (Macmillan.) — In Russet and Silver, by Edmund Gosse. (Stone & Kimball, Chicago.)— Narragansett Ballads, with Songs and Lyrics, by Caroline Hazard. (Houghton.) — Sonnets of the Wingless Hours, by Eugene Lee-Hamilton. (Stone & Kimball.) — Arthur O’Shaughnessy, his Life and his Work, with Selections from his Poems, by Louise Chandler Moulton. (Stone & Kimball.)— Balder the Poet, and Other Verses, by George Herbert Stockhridge. (Putnams.) — Duck Creek Ballads, by John Henton Carter. (H. C. Nixon, New York.) — Dramatic Poems, by William Entriken Baily. (The Author, Philadelphia.) — Quintets, and Other Verses, by William Henry Thorne. (The Author, 100 Washington St., Chicago.) — The Aztecs, by Walter Warren. (The Arena Publishing Co., Boston.) — The Story of Partus, and Songs of the Southland, by Mary H. Leonard. (Charles Wells Moulton, Buffalo.) — My Garden Walk, by William Preston Johnston. (F. F. Hansell & Bro., New Orleans.) — The Medea of Euripides, translated from the Greek into English Verse by John Patterson. (John P. Morton & Co., Louisville, Ky.) — Dixie Poems, by Orie Bower. (The Bower Book Co., Denver, Colo.) — The Land of Heart’s Desire, by W. B. Yeats. (Stone & Kimball.) — Rhymes by Two Friends, Albert Bigelow Paine and William Allen White. (M. L. Izor & Son, Fort Scott, Kansas.) — A Light Through the Storm, by Charles A. Keeler. (William Doxey, San Francisco.)—Elsie, and Other Poems, by Robert Beverly Hale. (R. B. Hale & Co., Boston.) — Back Country Poems, by Sam Walter Foss. (Lee & Shepard.)—Odes, and Other Poems, by William Watson. (Macmillan.)
Fine Arts and Illustrated Books. Frederick Keppel & Co., New York, publish an admirable portrait of Lord Tennyson etched by Rajon. It was taken when the poet was seventy years old, before the fire had died down, and he had apparently covered himself from view with his big slouch hat. The head is a noble one, and the delicacy and freshness of the complexion, the alertness of expression, and the dignity of the figure are superbly rendered. The texture, too, of the drapery is given with most effective skill. This portrait must remain an ideal, but not idealized representation of the poet. — The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, from May to October, 1894 (The Century Co.), appears to gravitate toward the position of a magazine of art accompanied by good text. In this view we look with a little apprehension upon its use of half-tone reproductions. — Greek Vase Paintings, a Selection of Examples, with Preface, Introduction, and Descriptions, by J. E. Harrison and D. S. MacCall. (Fisher Unwin, London ; The Century Co., New York.) There are forty-three large plates taken from objects preserved in the British Museum, at Munich, Naples, Florence, Paris, and other places, including Baltimore. Miss Harrison’s introduction is, like all her work, spirited and direct, and neither the artist nor the student of Greek archæology will be likely to overlook a volume which helps to reconstruct Greek painting and design to the modern eye. —Italian Gardens, by Charles A. Platt. (Harpers.) In this most attractive volume, Mr. Platt, using a great number of plates, both from photographs of existing gardens in Italy and from historic works describing them, has given a clear and methodical account of gardens which belong to a period of Italian landscape gardening which produced a distinct school. We hope he will follow this interesting study with an inquiry into the adaptation of our own gardens to the demands of villas which are themselves copies of Italian villas.— The Masters and Masterpieces of Engraving, by Willis O. Chapin. Illustrated with sixty engravings and heliogravures. (Harpers.) This is a work of great beauty, and the beauty is in large part due to the excellence of the printing. The reproductions are clear where steel engravings or the early engravings on wood are copied by the heliogravure process, and the woodcuts are printed with great brilliancy. Besides the survey which these give of the several processes of engraving, the designs themselves have distinct beauty, for the most part, and excellent taste has been shown in the selection. The text is modest, and not overburdened with technicalities. The book indeed is addressed to the layman rather than to the professional artist. — American Book-Plates, a Guide to their Study, with Examples, by Charles Dexter Allen. With a Bibliography by Eben Newell Hewins. (Macmillan.) A very full and careful index renders this book one easy of access, though a lover of hooks for their own sake, not their author’s, will not consult the index at first, but turn the pages with increasing interest as he advances from those plates which mainly represent family pride in coats-ofarms to those which stand for individual taste and caprice. Here one is admitted to the shelves of gatherers of books who are artists in their way, and we are much mistaken if this worthy volume does not make a new group of book-lovers among the younger generation. — A smaller book, somewhat more technical in character, is On the Processes for the Production of Ex Libris, by John Vinycomb. (A. & C. Black, London; Macmillan, New York.) Some of the illustrations are very attractive, but we question if the instructions given would be of much use to the amateur, as they certainly are superfluous to the regular engraver. — Somewhat allied to these two books is a generous quarto, Heraldry in America, by Eugene Zieber. (The Bailey, Banks & Biddle Co., Philadelphia.) After an introductory sketch of heraldry in general, Mr. Zieber proceeds to delineate the seals of states, societies, institutions, and persons, and to initiate the reader, and especially the draughtsman, into the mysteries of heraldry in general and particular. Nearly a thousand illustrations, some in color, decorate the volume, and a copious glossary and good index add much to the usefulness of the book.
Literature and Literary Criticism. A Shelf of Old Books, by Mrs. James T. Fields. (Scribners.) Under the general divisions, Leigh Hunt, Edinburgh, From Milton to Thackeray, Mrs. Fields has written some very agreeable sketches of books and men, suggested by a collection of books containing autographs and other personal memorabilia. She takes down one book after another, and makes it the text for some little reminiscence, or some bit of criticism or appreciative comment. The accompanying illustrations, both in the way of portraits and of facsimiles of handwriting, are choice and sometimes unique. Altogether the book is one which a book-lover will linger over, browsing in it as he would browse in the library itself. —Two little books, numbers of the Elizabethan Library, previously noticed here, are, Green Pastures, a selection from Robert Greene’s works made by A. B. Grosart, and The Poet of Poets, being the love verse from the minor poems of Edmund Spenser, by the same editor. (A. C. McClurg & Co., Chicago.) It would be enough to have Spenser’s sonnets brought thus together into convenient form, but Mr. Grosart has culled from other parts of Spenser’s works those verses which come strictly within his plan. In the selection from Greene we have both prose and verse : apothegm on the one hand, and on the other such dainty verse as his Cradle Song. We cannot wholly praise the format of these books. Pretty outside, they have an unnecessary affectation of old age in their rheumatic backs and stiff; joints. — The Poems of William Drummond of Hawthornden, edited, with a Memoir and Notes, by W. C. Ward. (Imported by Scribners.) Two volumes of the Muses’ Library. When we come to value poetry and to read it with delight, we shall not be so affected by the contemporaneous as we are in other forms of art, and Drummond’s poems, with their delicate fragrance, their gentle reflection of a great age of poetry, will be more familiar than they are now. But a generation of readers which overestimates the quatrain is not likely to inquire very earnestly after the leisurely work of a recluse. — Two small volumes introduce a new series, The Lyric Poets (J. M. Dent & Co., London ; Macmillan, New York), which commends itself by the prettiness of binding and the beauty of typography ; for the print, though small, as it should be on a small page, is clear and sharp. They are both edited by Ernest Rhys ; the first being a collection, under the title The Prelude to Poetry, of notable prose and verse by poets in defense of their art, — Chaucer, Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Gray, Wordsworth, and others being drawn upon. An etched portrait of Sidney prefaces the volume. The second contains the Lyric Poems of Spenser, and covers a little more ground than Mr. Grosart’s selection already mentioned. — Talk at a Country House, by Sir Edward Strachey, Bart. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic who have read these papers as printed in the magazine will need only to be reminded that they have been gathered into a comely volume, with a charming frontispiece, showing the Squire among his family portraits, and Foster, shall we say, transformed for the nonce into a comfortable cat. An engraved title-page gives a hint, also, of the old manor house where the talks were held. The genial mellowness of tone which pervades this book is most welcome, for grapes which have long hung in a sunny exposure have a flavor which is wanting to mere hothouse culture. — In the Dozy Hours, and Other Papers, by Agnes Repplier. (Houghton.) We are half disposed to look the other way when we praise this little book, for Miss Repplier is so identified with The Atlantic as an essayist that it is like looking at the most thumbed pages of the magazine to turn these leaves. The light touch is here, the penetrating shaft of the other light, the generous appreciation of good things in literature, the witty turn upsetting mere conventions, the sense always of abundance and spirit in life.
Biography. The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, edited by Augustus J. C. Hare. (Houghton.) Mr. Hare has limited his editorial function almost exclusively to the selection of letters, and he has based his work on the privately printed collection of Miss Edgeworth’s letters which her stepmother gathered. Inasmuch as this is in effect the first full and authoritative memoir, we think Mr. Hare would not have exceeded his privileges if he had given a fuller commentary both in the way of connecting passages and of notes. For the reader who is in a measure familiar with the subject these two volumes are most delightful reading, and even he who makes Miss Edgeworth’s acquaintance here for the first time will encounter a pretty distinct figure, though he may not at first clearly grasp the family connections and the course of her career. — Three Heroines of New England Romance. (Little, Brown & Co.) The three heroines are Priscilla, Agnes Surriage, and Martha Hilton ; the tellers of the romance are Mrs. Spofford, Miss Alice Brown, and Miss Guiney ; and Mr. Edmund H. Garrett has illustrated the book liberally with sketches, besides providing an agreeable little running comment of notes at the end of the volume. The three narrators have rendered Longfellow and Holmes into prose, and Mr. Bynner is lightly hinted at. The product is graceful, but we suspect a good deal of the reader’s pleasure is like that given by outline memoranda of pictures, dependent upon the lively filling up which the memory supplies. — Lucy Larcom, Life, Letters, and Diary, by Daniel Dulany Addison. (Houghton.) The reader who is already familiar with Miss Larcom’s early life through her own delightful A New England Girlhood will turn with most interest to that portion of her life which shows tbe outcome of the early years. Mr. Addison has wisely allowed the letters and diary of Miss Larcom to speak for her wherever it is possible, and the narrative, consequently, of her religions expansion is almost autobiographical. It is noticeable how her friendship for two men, Whittier and Phillips Brooks, colored and enriched her own experience. The mellowness of her later years, in spite of privation and ill health, is very apparent. — The Life of John Patterson, Major-General in the Revolutionary Army, by his Great-Grandson, Thomas Egleston. (Putnams.)—Memoirs of William Nelson Pendleton, D. D., Rector of Latimer Parish, Lexington, Va.; Brigadier - General C. S. A.; Chief of Artillery, Army of Northern Virginia. By his Daughter, Susan P. Lee. (Lippincott.) — More Memories, being Thoughts about England, spoken in America, by the Very Rev. S. Reynolds Hole, Dean of Rochester. (Macmillan.)
Fiction, Synnövé Solbakken, by Björnstjerne Björnson. Given in English by Julie Sutter. (Macmillan.) The first of a series of translations of Björnson’s writings, and so introduced by a leisurely essay by Edmund Gosse. If a new translation of Björnson’s writings was needed, especially in America, where the complete series can be had in good form, it is a pity it should not be closer to the original than this, — more tinctured with the peculiar Norse flavor. — Pomona’s Travels, by Frank R. Stockton. Illustrated by A. B. Frost, (Scribners.) Mr. Stockton shows his art in this amusingbook by the care with which he preserves the image of Pomona, and yet recognizes the development of that ingenious handmaiden into the presentable wife of Jone. She writes her letters descriptive of travel in England with just enough departure from the correct usage of the English tongue to make them in keeping with her education, and not so much as to cheapen them. It is the same Pomona who used to read aloud her thrilling stories in Rudder Grange that now goes to a hunt on a tricycle, and has dealings with the family-tree man. It is an example to our humorists, this nice reserve, this stopping short of the burlesque, and the result is a thoroughly characteristic and delightful book.— Two Strings to his Bow, by Walter Mitchell. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic who recall Mr. Mitchell’s capital story with this title ought to know that, in reprinting it in book form, he has added as much more, giving the entertaining love passages of the Rev. Cresswell Price with the complications which grew out of his early masquerade. — Out of Step, by Maria Louise Pool. (Harpers.) — His Vanished Star, by Charles Egbert Craddock. (Houghton.) — What Necessity Knows, by L. Dougall. (Longmans.)— A Flower of France, a Story of Old Louisiana, by Marah Ellis Ryan. (Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago.) — In Exile, and Other Stories, by Mary Hallock Foote. (Houghton.)
Religion and Philosophy. Religious Progress, by Alexander V. G. Allen. (Houghton.) It is possible that to those who do not know Dr. Allen’s writings the title of this small volume may not be especially suggestive or inviting ; yet we do not believe any one ready to be interested in the large problems of life could fail, after he had read a few pages, to go on to the end, and then because there was no more to turn back and re-read certain portions. The book, containing two lectures originally delivered before the Yale Divinity School, is a searching and illuminating inquiry into the “ reconciling power in life,” as he finely says, “ which builds the institution under which we live, without regard to intellectual consistency, and to this end makes compromises, or bridges the abysses and contradictions of human philosophies.” Dr. Allen is concerned broadly with the religious nature of man, but he has provided a touchstone by which other great interests of human living are given their true value. — Historical Philosophy in France and French Belgium, and Switzerland, by Robert Flint. (Scribners.) The able author of a treatise on Theism has begun with this volume the issue of a series of works on the history of the philosophy of history. He proposes to examine those writers who have undertaken in their philosophy to account for the development of human history, and his plan leads him thus into a critical examination of literature which is itself critical on a large and generous scale. The advantage of the scheme is that the reader never gets far away from the facts of human history, and that he is engaged in the study of some of the most interesting of philosophical writers, as Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Condorcet, Michaud, Thierry, De Maistre, Saint-Simon, Comte, Taine, among others. — A History of Philosophy, with Especial Reference to the Formation and Development of its Problems and Conceptions, by Dr. W. Windelband. Translated by James H. Tufts. (Macmillan.) The author states his design in these words : “ What I offer is a serious textbook, which is intended to portray in comprehensive and compressed exposition the evolution of the ideas of European philosophy, with the aim of showing through what motives the principles by which we to-day scientifically conceive and judge the universe and human life have been brought to consciousness and developed in the course of the movements of history.” This serious textbook has 640 large octavo pages.
History and Geography. Venice, by Alethea Wiel. The Story of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) To recount the history of Venice, its rise, glory, and decay, a history extending over fourteen centuries, within tire limits set by this series, is no easy task. Necessarily, the record will sometimes take the character of, so to speak, an annotated catalogue of facts, but Mrs. Wiel’s work is in the main very well proportioned, and the more significant events are duly dwelt upon, though we wish, for the benefit of the general reader for whom the book is intended, that not quite so few pages should have been devoted to Venetian art and architecture. The volume will serve as an excellent introduction to the story of Venice, reflecting as t does enough of the splendor and romance which pervade the annals of that unique city to lure, it is to be hoped, many of its readers to further study. — The Dominion of Canada, with Newfoundland and an Excursion to Alaska, Handbook for Travellers, by Karl Baedeker. (Imported by Scribners.) It is a pleasure to find Baedeker’s methods applied to travel on this side of the water, for heretofore the traveler has been at the mercy largely of railway companies. The dry, explicit statement of well-sifted facts is very acceptable, and there is a suppressed glow about the information relating to the Canadian Pacific which well prepares the tourist for a splendor of scenery which ought to discourage the ordinary guidebook writer, but does not. The editor, by the way, ought not to have overlooked the little pocket cathedral at Winnipeg. —Civilization during the Middle Ages, especially in Relation to Modern Civilization, by George Burton Adams. (Scribners.) A most interesting essay, in which Professor Adams, gathering up the various threads of life in the Middle Ages, traces the development of ideas and institutions from the end of the fifth century to the beginning of the sixteenth. The commercial, the legal, the ecclesiastical threads are by turns followed ; the gradual rise of nationalities, the influence of the papacy, and finally the Reformation are all considered, and very intelligently marshaled. The student finds himself in the hands of a clear, orderly thinker who deals with phenomena ; if, in addition, he will read Professor Allen’s Continuity of Religious Thought, he will find a still more profound line of orderly development. The two books complement each other.
Nature and Travel. Wild Beasts, a Study of the Characters and Habits of the Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Panther, Jaguar, Tiger, Puma, Wolf, and Grizzly Bear, by J. Hampden Porter. (Scribners.) The author of this very readable volume makes an earnest and praiseworthy attempt to depict the true nature of each of his subjects, letting neither popular fancies nor fallacies influence him. Sometimes, perhaps, in combating views which seem to him imaginative or mistaken, he errs a little in the opposite direction; but be this as it may, he shows unusual fitness for his task, and a good deal of skill in its accomplishment. With one striking exception, his studies do not appear to have been made, at least to any considerable extent, at first hand, but he reviews the testimony of many mighty hunters, making liberal excerpts from their works. By far the most noteworthy pages in the book are those which tell the story of Gato. Generally tales of domesticated wild beasts end abruptly when the pet has passed babyhood, but this puma of pumas lived in close intercourse with his human friend from infancy to “ splendid maturity,” and the tie was unbroken when the poor animal perished untimely. In this vivid but all too brief record of personal experience the writer is at his best; but why should he try to analyze the kind and degree of regard or respect received from Gato ? Was it not enough to be honored with his preference ? The illustrations to the volume are from excellent photographs. — Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty, being a Complete History of all the Songbirds, Flycatchers, Humming - Birds, Swifts, Goatsuckers, Woodpeckers, Kingfishers, Trogons, Cuckoos, and Parrots of North America, by Henry Nehrling. (George Brumder, Milwaukee.) This is the first volume, quarto, of an extended work, and contains thirty-six colored plates after water-color paintings, by Professors Robert Ridgway and A. Goering, and Gustav Muetzel. The author’s residence in Wisconsin and his travels in the South and Southwest render his work complementary to those more distinctly Eastern, and he enters his field with genuine enthusiasm and first-hand knowledge as well as discriminating reading. — Across Asia on a Bicycle, the Journey of Two American Students from Constantinople to Peking, by Thomas G. Allen, Jr., and W. L. Sachtleben. (The Century Co.) — Hoofs, Claws, and Antlers of the Rocky Mountains, by the Camera, Photographic Reproductions of Wild Game from Life. With an Introduction by Hon. Theodore Roosevelt. (Frank S. Thayer, Denver, Colo.) These pictures were taken by Mr. and Mrs. Wallihan, and are truer to life, undoubtedly, than if the photographers had been dominated by some inscrutable artistic purpose. Their own notes on the pictures are simple, direct, and effective.
Entertainment. A Century of Charades, by William Bellamy. (Houghton.) The character of this truly ingenious book is well sustained by the felicitous manner in which the would - be guesser is given the key to the answer in each case without at the same time having any other secret unlocked. The very human sphinx and the puzzled owl on the cover typify well the attitude of questioner and guesser engaged on these one hundred poetical charades, which range from a distich to a page in length, and from ease to great puzzlement in quality. We hope the book will divert many from the profitless attempt at the solution of graver riddles. — Four farces by Mr. Howells and a comedy by Brander Matthews are included in Harper’s Black and White Series. Mr. Howells’s little group appear in The Mouse-Trap, Five O’Clock Tea, The Garroters, and A Likely Story, and disport themselves with that delightful extravagance which in real life, if kept up, would take them all to Somerville or the Nervine. Mr. Matthews has made a capital little comedy, which is not above being a possibility on the stage.