Comment on New Books
Fiction. The Men of the Moss-Hags, being a History of Adventures taken from the Papers of William Gordon of Earlstoun in Galloway, and told over again by S. R. Crockett. (Macmillan.) Mr. Crockett is often at his very best in this chronicle of the Covenanting days, and though a writer “ born of the hill-folk ” cannot be other than a partisan, he is so in no ill sense. He strives, with some measure of success, to deal justly with Claverhouse, and William Gordon is neither a zealot nor a fanatic, which fact makes his strong and vivid but unexaggerated narrative infinitely the more effective. As pathetic as the story of the child martyr Willie, in The Raiders, is the episode of the terrified but steadfast children in this book, while such sketches as the winter’s-night ride of the hero and his cousin into Edinburgh and their escape therefrom, to give no further instances, are in an unusual degree forcible and impressive. Mr. Crockett is so full of his subject that he overcrowds his tale with incidents, so that his personages, though they do not lack vitality, interest the reader less than the many moving accidents in which they are the actors. — Sir Quixote of the Moors, being some Account of an Episode in the Life of the Sieur de Rohaine, by John Buchan. (Holt.) The Sieur de Rohaine is, we suspect, a near kinsman of some of Mr. Weyman’s heroes, but is not on that account a less agreeable acquaintance. It was a rather whimsical fancy to place this gentleman of Franee amongst the Covenanters, but the fragment of his story is very well told, and will probably be found all too brief by most readers.—Red Rowans, by Mrs. F. A. Steel. (Macmillan.) We have heretofore known Mrs. Steel as a novelist of Anglo-Indian life, a field in which only one writer can outrank her ; but in this story she does not leave her native land, where at present she must meet not a few well-equipped competitors. It is pleasant to find that she holds her own as bravely in the misty West Highlands as in the glow and color of the Punjab, nor do we think that she has ever shown in character-drawing a firmer or truer hand. For the sincerity of feeling, the insight, and the sanity which are to be found in this book we are so grateful that we are not disposed to criticise the later complications of the plot, — entanglements which are summarily, if effectively, cut by the final catastrophe, which the majority of readers will be likely to find needlessly tragic ; feeling, perhaps, that the author is responsible for the event, rather than inevitable fate. — A Set of Rogues, their Wicked Conspiracy and a True Account of their Travels and Adventures, by Frank Barrett. (Macmillan.) Le Sage and Defoe have been Mr. Barrett’s masters in the construction and telling of this story, and he has proved himself no inapt pupil. Three merry rogues, players reduced to great straits by the long closing of the theatres during the Great Plague, are persuaded by the wiles of an astute Spaniard to personate the rightful owner of a rich estate and her friends, —the said owner being a prisoner amongst the Moors. To study these new parts they are obliged to travel in Spain, as the characters of a picaresque novel should ; and throughout the author shows a lively invention, and, as a narrator, has the right touch of realism and is invariably entertaining. He also assumes the later seventeenth-century manner and style with a somewhat unusual degree of success. — Centuries Apart, by Edward T. Bouvé. With illustrations by W. St. John Harper. (Little, Brown & Co.) Colonel Bouvé set himself a rather difficult task when he introduced a party of nineteenth-century Americans into the England of Henry VII., and it must be confessed that he is only moderately successful. His way of bringing about this combination of elements is an ingenious one, and no small part of the interest of the tale is due to that. The details are for the most part very well carried out, but certain points are left unexplained ; as, for instance, why a nation of Englishmen had remained the same in customs and speech for three centuries and a half, a state of things which their seclusion from the world on an unknown and inaccessible island would hardly account for entirely. Colonel Bouvé naturally makes the most of his opportunity to show the differences between modern and mediæval warfare by a detailed and interesting description of a battle with the SouthEnglish, in which, be it said, the Americans are not the aggressors. Of course the book has its love-story, and the tragedy is necessary to its verisimilitude. The unusual conditions are handled with moderation and reserve throughout, and the narrative has an air of reality. — On the Point, a Summer Idyl, by Nathan Haskell Dole. Illustrated. (Joseph Knight Co., Boston.) A very mild little story, which seems to be pointless, in spite of its title. — Bullet and Shell, a Soldier’s Romance, by George F. Williams. Illustrated from Sketches among the Actual Scenes, by Edwin Forbes. (Fords, Howard, & Hulbert.) A reissue of a popular war book containing more fact than fiction, with letters of introduction from General Sherman and General McClellan.— The Artificial Mother, a Marital Fancy, by G. H. P. (Putnams.) It turns out to be nothing but a dream, after all. — The Doom of the Holy City, by Lydia Hoyt Farmer. (Randolph.) An historical romance, dealing with the destruction of Jerusalem and the lives of certain early Christian martyrs. — Aunt Belindy’s Points of View, and a Modern Mrs. Malaprop, Typical Character Sketches, by Lydia Hoyt Farmer. (The Merriam Co., New York.) In the conventional Yankee of such books as the Widow Bedott Papers Mrs. Farmer has essayed a comment on topics which come under discussion at women’s clubs. — An Initial Experience, and Other Stories, edited by Captain Charles King. (Lippincott.) A dozen soldier stories : the one which gives the title to the book by the editor; the others by seven different writers, most of them officers of the United States army. — Messrs. Estes & Lauriat have issued, in an attractive little volume, two characteristic short stories by Laura E. Richards : Jim of Hellas, or In Durance Vile, and Bethesda Pool. — Her Majesty, a Romance of To-Day, by Elizabeth Knight Tompkins. (Putnams.)—Mrs. W. K. Clifford’s The Last Touches, and Other Stories, and Mr. Crawford’s A Tale of a Lonely Parish, are reissued as the tenth and eleventh numbers of Macmillan’s Novelists’ Library. — Messrs. Harpers have added to their series of foreign novels Doña Perfecta, by Benito Pérez Galdós, admirably translated by Mary J. Serrano. The introduction is by Mr. Howells, who, while he finds the book a great novel, hardly thinks it realistic enough ; but he also owns that perhaps, because it is transitional from the author’s earlier romantic work, “it will please the greater number who really never arrive anywhere, and who like to find themselves in good company en route.” We agree with this judgment so far as to think that the majority of readers will find no lack of realism in the work. — Messrs. Lippincott have brought out in uniform style English versions of Daudct’s Fromont Junior and Risler Senior, translated by Edward Vizetelly, and Zola’s A Love Episode (Une Page d’Amour), translated by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly, who also contributes an introduction. Each book is profusely illustrated : the first by George Roux, the second by E. Thévenot. — Alfred de Musset’s The Confession of a Child of the Century, translated by Kendall Warren, has been published by Messrs. Sergel & Co., Chicago, in their Medallion Series.— A commendable addition to the Autonym Library is a translation of Cœurs Russes, by the Vicomte E. Melchior de Vogüé, to which the translator, Elisabeth L. Cary, has given the not inappropriate title Russian Portraits. She prefaces the book with a brief sketch of its author.
History and Biography. The Life and Letters of George John Romanes, written and edited by his wife. (Longmans.) A noble character shines forth from these letters, and that is the best offering a biography can make. The scientific suggestions which occur in the letters are admirable, and there are many delightful glimpses to be had of Romanes’s associates, particularly of Darwin, to whom he stood in an affectionate and reverential attitude ; but after all, the splendid devotion to truth shown by Romanes himself and the singlemindedness of his life are the great forces in character which glow in these pages and illuminate the track of a remarkable career. Mrs. Romanes has been very frank with the reader, and he will thank her sincerely for allowing him to see so clearly the workings of Romanes’s spirit, especially as regards his religious belief.—The Lite and Times of John Kettlewell, with Details of the History of the Nonjurors, by the Author of Nicholas Ferrar, His Household and His Friends. Edited, with an Introduction, by the Rev. T. T. Carter, M. A. (Longmans.) In reality a popular history of the Nonjurors, Kettlewell being used as a central figure. The book is well written and steadily interesting, despite the fact that the position of the men it commemorates can make little appeal, either religiously or politically, to readers of to-day, the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience having passed out of the domain of actual belief and experience. Indeed, because of this we can the more heartily respect the simplicity and unworldliness of the best of these adherents of a lost cause ; and after all, it is more to their personal qualities than to their public position that their exceedingly sympathetic annalist devotes himself. —The Oxford Church Movement, Sketches and Recollections, by the late G. Wakeling. With an Introduction by Earl Nelson. (Sonnenschein, London ; Macmillan, New York.) This book is not a history of the Oxford Movement, properly so called, but rather some rambling recollections of the growth of ritualism in certain churches in London and the provinces, with sketches of various persons, clerical and lay, concerned therein, and it is enlivened by a moderate amount of decorous ecclesiastical gossip. The naïve and thoroughgoing partisanship of the writer gives the volume more a commemorative than a historical value. The book has no index nor even descriptive headings to the chapters, a serious omission in a work of the kind. — Memoirs of Constant, First Valet de Chambre of the Emperor, on the Private Life of Napoleon, his Family and his Court. Translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin, with a Preface to the English edition by Imbert de SaintAmand. (Scribners.) The Napoleonic revival or craze, whichever it may be called, is of course responsible for the production — in excellent style, we may say — of an English version of Constant’s Memoirs, a book first published in 1830. But though the work has never before been especially presented to the English-reading world, we imagine that the part of that public interested in its hero will find the most noteworthy portions of the Memoirs not altogether unfamiliar, so largely have a legion of writers drawn upon this book for intimate details respecting the personal habits of the Emperor. Regarding military or state affairs, except in their spectacular aspects, the reminiscences of the valet naturally have no particular value. The most entertaining chapters in the Memoirs are those containing the too brief fragment of the diary of a lady-in-waiting, which Constant accidentally found, kept, and finally incorporated, with deprecatory annotations, in his work, where it shines greatly by contrast. This unnamed lady was a keen observer, and her touch - and - go sketches of Josephine are admirable.— A Metrical History of the Life and Times of Napoleon Bonaparte. A Collection of Poems and Songs, many from Obscure and Anonymous Sources. Selected and arranged, with Introductory Notes and Connecting Narrative, by William J. Hillis. With 25 Photogravure Portraits. (Putnams.) In his preface to Constant’s Memoirs, M. de Saint-Amand declares that “ the two names best known in the great American republic are those of Washington and Napoleon,” and the compiler of this extraordinary volume, who feels bound to apologize for our mistaken grandfathers’ estimate of his hero in view of our present enlightenment, would probably agree with him. Mr. Hillis has collected a great number of poems, — why, it is difficult to say, as the few that are good are generally exceedingly well known, while the many that are of indifferent quality or quite worthless have been mercifully forgotten, and to thus sumptuously reprint them seems a gratuitous unkiudness. As to the collector’s notes, it is sufficient to say that his attitude is always that of a worshiper, and it will depend upon the unsympathetic reader’s mood whether he find them amusing or pitiable. — Two valuable additions to the professional commentaries on the military history of Napoleon are, Cavalry in the Waterloo Campaign, by General Sir Evelyn Wood, V. C. (Roberts), and Napoleon Bonaparte’s First Campaign, with Comments by Herbert H. Sargent, First Lieutenant Second Cavalry, United States Army (McClurg). The latter is a comprehensive, forcible, and lucid account of the wonderful campaign of 1796-97. It is a volume which will probably be largely used by both military and historical students, and they will be grateful for the exceptionally full index which accompanies it. Sir Evelyn Wood’s book will attract both technical and untechnical readers : the first particularly because of its vigorous and effective plea for the use of cavalry in the armies of to-day, while the second will be interested in so distinguished a soldier’s spirited account of the great battle.—The Story of the West Series, edited by Ripley Hitchcock (Appletons), very properly begins at the beginning with The Story of the Indian, by George Bird Grinnell. Dr. Grinnell has had so intimate and friendly an acquaintance with the Indians of the Great Plains that his interest in their lives has enabled him to write, to a certain extent, from their point of view. His book is neither a history of bloody wars nor a rehearsal of the red man’s wrongs, hut a description of the wild, uncivilized Indian’s ways of life and thought. His Indian is a man before he is a savage, and the picture, although not entirely rosecolored, is yet not unattractive, and is by no means as black as some writers have painted it. The author describes what he himself has seen, and retells the stories which the Indians themselves have told him. An especially entertaining story is that of the first discovery of white men by the Blackfeet. This came to Dr. Grinnell from an old half-breed, who had heard it when a boy from an Indian whose grandfather was one of the discoverers. The editor’s introductory note tells us that the series is intended to show the types of men which have made the West of Kansas and beyond what it is to-day, and that the stories of the explorer, the miner, the soldier, the ranchman, and others are to follow. — Headwaters of tinMississippi, comprising Biographical Sketches of Early and Recent Explorers of the Great River, and a full Account of the Discovery and Location of its True Source in a Lake beyond Itasca, by Captain Willard Glazier. Illustrated. (Rand, McNally & Co.) The first two Parts tell the interesting story of the discovery and exploration of the Mississippi River, and Part Third gives Captain Glazier’s narrative of his Second expedition to its headwaters, in 1891, which established the validity of the claim for Lake Glazier as the true source of the river. — A new and cheaper two-volume edition of The Life and Adventures of George Augustus Sala, written by Himself, has been issued by the Messrs. Scribner.
Literature and Art. Letters and Verses of Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, edited by Rowland E. Prothero. (Scribners.) A very acceptable addition to the two - volume Life. Stanley’s eager nature is here shown in its most favorable light. There is a smaller proportion of letters of travel, but the choice is a good one, especially as it includes the interesting letters to the Queen on the occasion of the marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh at St. Petersburg, when Stanley was a participant in the ceremonies. The brief passages, also, between Stanley and Jowett illuminate the character of each, and the whole volume is full of generous life. We are not sure but the reader would do well to read this before he reads the Life and Letters. — The latter halt of The Princess and Enoch Arden, Aylmer’s Field and Lucretius, form two volumes in the new so-called People’s Edition of Tennyson. Popular the little books are in price and form, but as an entire edition the long series of small volumes hardly suggests the title. (Macmillan.) — The complete, uniform edition of Thomas Hardy’s writings has reached The Trumpet Major, surely one of his most brilliant pieces, and The Woodlanders. Each has an attractive etched frontispiece. (Harpers.) — Tales of a Traveller, by Washington Irving. Buckthorne Edition. (Putnams.) An elaborate production in two octavo volumes, with a lithographed border to the page, and illustrated with photogravures from drawings and photographs. The artists represented are Frederick Dielman, F. 8. Church, Henry Sandham, Arthur Rackham, W. J. Wilson, and Allan Barraud. — Contemporary French Painters, an Essay. Painting in France after the Decline of Classicism, an Essay. A new and good edition of these two books of Philip Gilbert Hamcrton’s has been issued by Messrs. Roberts Brothers, with photogravure reproductions of the original photographs. — Two more volumes of the Messrs. Roberts’ edition of Balzac continue the tales of the division Scenes from Private Life : one containing Béatrix, a romance, whose heroine and her literary rival were probably, after a sort, suggested by the Comtesse d’Agoult and George Sand ; and the other giving A Daughter of Eve, and that little masterpiece L’Interdiction, here called A Commission in Lunacy, as well as The Rural Ball (Le Bal de Sceaux). Again the excellence of the translator’s work calls for a word of hearty praise. — Other Times and Other Seasons, by Laurence Hutton. (Harpers.) A collection of gossipy little papers, first contributed to Harper’s Weekly ; and though the book is small, it contains a great deal of curious information as to old-time celebrations of high days and holidays, the origin and history of many out-of-door sports, as well as a consideration of the beginnings of tobacco and of the early-day coffee-house. A portrait of the writer serves as frontispiece to the volume.—Readings and Recitations for Jewish Homes and Schools, compiled by Isabel E. Cohen. (The Jewish Publication Society of America.) For the object in view, this compilation has been made with excellent judgment and unfailing good taste. — The Aims of Literary Study, by Hiram Corson, LL. D., and The Novel, What Is It? by F. Marion Crawford, have been reissued in Macmillan’s (paper) Miniature Series.—Stevenson’s The Suicide Club has been brought out in the pretty Ivory Series. (Scribners.) — Art in Theory, an Introduction to the Study of Comparative Æsthetics, by George Lansing Raymond, L. H. D„ Professor of Æsthetics in the College of New Jersey at Princeton. (Putnams.) — Messrs. L. Prang & Co. have sent some attractive Easter cards, books, and booklets, the flower designs for which are unusually graceful and pleasing, and — as well as the accompanying texts or verses — altogether appropriate to the season for which they are intended, a thing by no means a matter of course in many publications of the kind.
Nature and Travel. Mentone, Cairo, and Corfu, by Constance Fenimore Woolson. (Harpers.) Hardly a good quality that should be found in a travel-sketch is wanting in the delightful papers which are reprinted in this volume. In Mentone we are introduced to a group of chance acquaintances, American and English, who spend many weeks together in the busy idleness of sojourners in the Riviera, the very atmosphere of which is felt in these pages. At Cairo and Corfu we have only the charming and all-sufficient companionship of the author in her own proper person, and go with her, to our great content, in her desultory, leisurely sight-seeing ; her delicate appreciation, insight, and humor never failing by the way. The illustrations which accompanied the sketches in their magazine publication are reproduced in this volume. — Three Gringos in Venezuela and Central America, by Richard Harding Davis. Illustrated. (Harpers.) Despite the arrangement of the title, it was in Central America that the three young men first found themselves “gringos,” but Venezuela proved so much more attractive to Mr. Davis that we do not wonder at his giving that country the precedence. In Venezuela he found civilization, even Paris, — the Paris of South America; and though to see and report life in many and various phases seems to be the chief of this young author’s aims, yet his leaning is decidedly towards civilized life. With only this one condition, he cares not how different it may be from the life of his “ little old New York.” And yet he can rough it, too, on occasion, like a “ thorough sport,” riding cow - catchers, climbing mountains, and swimming torrents with more than the enthusiasm of youth. It is interesting to learn from him the feeling of Venezuelans for the United States, and their view of the Monroe doctrine. We have no complaint to make against Mr. Davis for changing his mind about the application of this doctrine to the boundary dispute, but surely, in revising the original magazine article for book publication, he should have taken the pains to make all his text conform to his changed opinions. As it is, the reader is left to choose between two flatly contradictory statements in successive sentences. — New Orleans, the Place and the People, by Grace King. With Illustrations by Frances E. Jones. (Macmillan.) The author tells the romantic story of New Orleans, from its settlement by French Canadian voyageurs through all its eventful history up to the present time, in graceful and entertaining style, and with the sympathy and interest of a loving and indulgent daughter. There is nothing formal or prosaic about the book, nor do facts and dates assert themselves unpleasantly, but an interesting and varied panorama is opened before the reader, — a city successively French, Franco - Spanish, and Franco - Spanish - American. Miss King writes plainly and sorrowfully, but not bitterly, of the Federal occupation in 1862, directing her animadversions against the commanding general rather than against the people of the North. —Handbook of Arctic Discoveries, by A. W. Greely. (Roberts.) In this third volume of the Columbian Knowledge Series, edited by Professor David P. Todd, we have a ready reference book on a subject of perennial interest, written by an acknowledged authority. Eleven maps, bibliographical matter, and an index add to the book’s usefulness. In spite of its condensed form and the consequent omission of enlivening details, it is not unreadable. — In New England Fields and Woods, by Rowland E. Robinson. (Houghton.) It is not as a new writer on out-of-door themes that readers of The Atlantic will welcome Mr. Robinson, for several of these papers were first published in its pages. Though most of the others are addressed to sportsmen, they are marked by a humane feeling of kinship with bird and beast, and a genuine sympathy with nature in all its rural phases, which give them a very general interest. After reading A Voyage in the Dark one can easily account for the cheerfully reminiscent strain which runs through the book. Mr. Robinson has been a careful observer as well as a sincere lover of nature. The life of the woods is the life which appeals to him most strongly, and the incense of the camp-fire seems to be as the breath of his nostrils.—Garden and Forest, a Journal of Horticulture, Landscape Art, and Forestry, conducted by Charles S. Sargent, Director of the Arnold Arboretum, Professor of Arboriculture in Harvard College, etc. Illustrated; Volume VIII. January to December, 1895. (Garden and Forest Publishing Co., New York.) To say that this excellent and attractive journal has made no important change in its character and aims during the past year is to give it the highest possible praise. When a thing is good enough, improvement is unnecessary.
Psychology. An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, by C. Lloyd Morgan. (Imported by Scribners.) Mr. Morgan, in an introductory chapter, defines his position as a monist, but the body of the work is devoted to psychology alone, and can be read with pleasure and profit by persons who find themselves unable to accept the author’s philosophy. Comparative as distinguished from introspective psychology is the subject, and special attention is paid to the mental phenomena of animals as related to the human mind. Mr. Morgan finds that animals are capable of sense experience, and possess memory and intelligence to enable them to profit by it, but he cannot credit them with a perception of relations or with the power of reasoning. Adopting the rule — very proper from a scientific point of view — that when an act can be explained from a lower motive it should not be ascribed to a higher, he considers that no case of animal intelligence has come to his attention which could not be explained as readily by denying the animal’s reasoning power as by affirming it. His experiments with chickens and ducklings have led him to restrict his belief in the operations of instinct to the most elementary actions, such as peeking at food. Other habits come from observation, imitation, practice, and memory. Mr. Morgan writes modestly and sensibly, in a lucid style, with an occasional touch of humor, and his book will interest laymen as well as psychologists. — Primer of Psychology, by George Trumbull Ladd. (Scribners.) — The Diseases of the Will, by Th. Ribot. Authorized Translation from the Eighth French Edition by Merwin - Marie Snell. (Open Court Publishing Co.) — How to Study Strangers by Temperament, Face, and Head, by Nelson Sizer. (Fowler & Wells Co.) — A Scientific Demonstration of the Future Life, by Thomson Jay Hudson. (McClurg.)
Ethics. Menticulture, or The A-B-C of True Living, by Horace Fletcher. (McClurg.) An interesting and stimulating small book which is an expansion of the prophet’s charge, “Cease to do evil ; learn to do well.” Character-formation by prescription is not without its place in human morals, but one may question the power of Mr. Fletcher’s gospel to exorcise demoniacal possession.
Social Science. Eighteenth Year Book of the New York State Reformatory, Elmira, N. Y., containing the Annual Report of the Board of Managers for the Year ending September 30, 1893. Besides the special matter of interest principally to penologists, this volume has a chapter of Notes in Anthropology, giving a record of many valuable observations. The book was printed and bound by prisoners at the Reformatory, and is a very creditable piece of work.—The Blind as Seen through Blind Eyes, by Maurice de la Sizeranne. Authorized Translation from the Second French Edition, by F. Park Lewis, M. D. (Putnams.)— Marriage a Covenant — Not Indissoluble, or The Revelation of Scripture and History, by the Rev. J. Preston Fugette. (Cushing & Co., Baltimore.)
Education and Textbooks. Milton’s Paradise Lost, Books I. and II., in the Students’ Series of English Classics (Leach, Shewell & Sanborn), shows marks of much painstaking by the editor, Albert S. Cook. It is distinctly a schoolbook, with questions in the notes, and a goodly array of learning. The side-notes, which serve as an analysis of the poem, are perhaps too much in the way of a topical index, and of too little use as disclosing the construction. In spite of Professor Cook’s plea in his preface, we hope Paradise Lost will be read through many times and long before it as studied thoroughly. — Coleridge’s Principles of Criticism, with Introduction and Notes by Andrew J. George, M. A., is the latest addition to Heath’s English Classics. It contains twelve chapters of the Biographia Literaria, including the seven (XIV.—XX.) in which, as Mr. Traill says, the main value of that “literally priceless” work is to be found. The editor’s notes often make Coleridge his own commentator, but also draw from a wide range of other sources, and aim to impress the lesson which Coleridge once gave to a London actor : “ Think, in order that you may be able to observe ! . . . Always think ! ” — Silk, its Origin and Culture. Illustrated. (Nonotuck Silk Co., Florence, Mass.) An interesting little pamphlet, with good half-tone illustrations. The publisher’s note indicates that it has been prepared especially for use in schools. — Apperception, a Monograph on Psychology and Pedagogy, by Dr. Karl Lange, Director of the Higher Burgher-School, Plauen, Ger. Edited by Charles De Garmo. (Heath.) — Manual of English Literature. Era of Expansion, 1750-1850. Its Characteristics and Influences, and the Poetry of its Period of Preparation, 1750—1800. With Biographical Appendix. By J. Macmillan Brown, Professor of English Literature, Canterbury College. (Whitcombe & Tombs Limited, Christchurch and Dunedin, N. Z., and London.)— How Gertrude Teaches her Children, an Attempt to Help Mothers to Teach their own Children, by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi. Translated by Lucy E. Holland and Frances C. Turner, and edited, with Introduction and Notes, by Ebenezer Cooke. (Sonnenschein, London ; Bardeen, Syracuse.) — A System of Physical Culture prepared expressly for Public School Work, by Louise Preece. Analyzed and arranged by Louise Gilman Kiehle. Illustrated. (Bardeen.) — Biennial Report of the State Superintendent of Free Schools of the State of West Virginia, for the Years 1893 and 1894, by Virgil A. Lewis. (Moses W. Donnally, Public Printer, Charleston, W. Va.) — The French Verb Newly Treated, an Easy, Uniform, and Synthetic Method of its Conjugation, by A. Esclangon, Examiner in the University of London. (Macmillan.) — The Principles of Rhetoric, by Adams Sherman Hill, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in Harvard College. New Edition, Revised and Enlarged. (Harpers.) — Elements of Inductive Logie, by Noah K. Davis, Ph. D., LL. D., Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Virginia. (Harpers.)
Science. Electricity for Everybody, its Nature and Uses Explained, by Philip Atkinson, A. M., Ph, D. (Century Co.) A clearly written and interesting description and explanation of electrical science and its application as known and practiced today. So eminently practical and useful a book must, of course, be indulged in the matter of cover-design ; else we should protest against so hideously violent and violently hideous a thunderstorm. — Parts III. and IV. of the Sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey are devoted to the Mineral Resources of the United States in 1894, — to Metallic and Nonmetallic Products respectively. They are ponderous tomes, containing a vast amount of valuable information in statistical form. The mineral products of this country for the year 1894, estimated at the original cost of raw material, amounted to nearly five hundred and thirty millions of dollars in value. This is, however, the lowest production since 1887. The decrease is laid to the general financial depression, and to certain special causes which operated on individual industries, such as the strike of the soft-coal miners and the low price of silver. Part III. contains special reports of investigation into the production of iron ore, iron and steel, and tin all over the world.