Recent Literature

THE Scintillations from Heine’s prose works which Mr. Stern gives us are passages from essays and letters not before translated, and that weird, romantic monologue called Florentine Nights, in which a man tells in part the story of his life to a dying girl, and beguiles her last moments with the wildest inventions and caprices. It is incoherent, changeful, lawless, natural, and enchanting as a dream, full of the tenderness and insult of Heine’s passion, with enough of his fine and coarse suggestion ; the slight thread of narrative is dropped whenever the author likes, and his fancy ranges satirically to anything else in the world, — art, politics, religion, and the odiousness of England and the English people, the delightful ness of Paris and the Parisians, the violin playing of Paganini, and the apparition of Paganini’s agent, “the dramatist and anecdotist Harris of Hanover,” whose form Satan has borrowed, while “ along with other trash the poor soul of that poor creature remains locked up in a chest in Hanover, until the Devil returns its carnal envelope ; when, in the nobler disguise of a black poodle, he will accompany his master Paganini through the world.”

Heine can never be read aright save in the pale moonshine of the German tongue; dragged into the daylight of our speech, he loses that softness of outline, that play of light and shadow, which characterize him ; he becomes harsh, sharp, sometimes shabby, and you see how, occasionally, he forces his fantastic attitudes. Perhaps also he is best read by very young men not past the age of liking even the faults of genius ; he wearies middle life a little, though he remains wonderful. However, there are passages of the Florentine Nights which do not suffer mortally from translation and the years of discretion, and one of these is that very Heinesque bit where Max tells of his passion for the beautiful statue which he found when a boy in the neglected garden of his mother’s château : —

“ The wrath of time and of man had spared but one statue, and even that had been thrown from its pedestal and was lying in the high grass. It lay there, uninjured,— a marble goddess, with pure, lovely features, and noble, finely chiselled bosom, shining forth from the high grass like a Grecian revelation. I was almost frightened when I first beheld it ; the sight filled me with a strange feeling of oppression and fear, while awkward bashfulness prevented me from spending much time in looking at the beautiful object..... What with the strange couch and the excitement, I could not sleep. The moonlight streamed in through the broken panes, as if to entice me out into the clear summer evening. I tossed from right to left, closed my eyes and opened them again without being able to banish the thought of the beautiful statue out in the grass. I could not account for the bashfulness that overpowered me when I beheld it, and felt vexed because of my childishness. ‘To-morrow,’ I muttered, ‘ I will kiss thee, thou beauteous face of marble ! on the corner of thy beautiful mouth, where the lips, joining, lose themselves in the lovely dimple.’ Wondrous impatience consumed me, and at last, losing all control over the strange desire, I sprang from my couch, exclaiming, ‘ What odds, lovely creature ! I shall kiss thee this very night! ’ .... All lay quiet and solemn, bathed in the gentle moonlight. The shadows of the trees looked as if they were nailed to the ground. When I approached the lovely, goddess lying motionless in the grass, I almost feared that by the slightest sound I might awaken her. Her beautiful limbs seemed locked in deep slumber, rather than chained by some marble deity. I bent over her in order to admire her perfect features; shuddering fear held me back, while boyish desire impelled me towards her; my heart beat as if I were about to commit a murder ; and at last I kissed the lovely goddess ! Since that time I have never kissed with such ardor, such tenderness, or such wild despair. Nor have I ever forgotten the sweet, shuddering sensation that flowed through my soul while my lips pressed the cold lips of marble. And let me tell you, Maria : while I stood there looking at you, I was reminded of the white statue in the green grass..... We left on the following day. I never saw the beautiful statue again, but it filled my heart for nearly four years, and awakened a strange passion for statuary, that has clung to me ever since. It was only this morning that I again felt its strength. After leaving the Laurentian library, I found myself, scarce knowing how I got there, in the chapel where Italy’s noblest race peacefully rests on the bed of jewels it prepared for its couch. For full an hour I remained lost in contemplation of a female statue, whose powerful physique revealed the force and boldness of Michael Angelo, while the whole figure seemed enveloped in an atmosphere of ethereal sweetness, rarely looked for in the works of that master. It seemed as if the spirit of dreamland, with all its serene blissfulness, lay buried in that marble form ; as if graceful repose dwelt in its beautifully proportioned limbs, and gentle moonlight flowed through its veins. It was NIGHT — By Michael Angelo Buonarotti. Ah ! how gladly would I sleep the sleep eternal in the arms of such a night! ”

All expressions of Heine’s mind were tinged or interspersed with the same sort of passionate sentimentalism, —his criticism, satire, politics, religion, even his contempt. There was always something creative, too, in his writing; the poet in him constantly strove to give objective shape to what he felt or thought, and the process was the same, whether he was allegorizing his youthful love of beauty or recording his youthful detestation of England. No extract, however, can give a general idea of Florentine Nights ; in fact, the tale is a wandering and wilful expression of Heine’s mind upon anything that comes into it; and there is no unity in it save that of charm. We need not say, we suppose, that something of it is not for reading aloud to young ladies.

The other scintillations are as satisfactory as such selections can very well be ; but probably each lover of Heine will find fault with them, as not the best, and, in his turn, would doubtless choose passages which Mr. Stern might condemn for the same good reason. The book is prefaced by a very sensibly written sketch of Heine’s life, with some study of his genius ; and this also will not meet with much favor from his habitual readers. Indeed, he lends himself as little as any author that ever lived to the purposes of the biographer or critic, perhaps because he has himself so thoroughly done the work of autobiography and selfcriticism that nothing really remains for others. He eludes even so subtile and delicate a touch as that of Mr. Matthew Arnold, whose essay on Heine is so inadequate ; and even for the reminiscencer there was very little of him.

— This unmanageablenesss of Heine’s character is also felt in the paper devoted to him among Lord Houghton’s Monographs. The old ground is gone over again : Heine was born a Jew, with strong sympathies for romantic art, and an equally strong regret for the beauty of Greek paganism, and so he held a very perplexing relation to modern Lutheran, Philistine Germany, which was not simplified by his turning Christian, after a fashion ; he was so much a democrat in principle as to be obliged to exile himself from Prussia, and he loathed the commonness of his fellowrevolutionists with such contemptuous frankness that they hated him ; he adored the grandeur of the religions, Christian and Hebrew, which he scoffingly denied; he endured a martyrdom such as few men suffer with a patience which was not resignation, and a courage which was founded on no faith, or a faith that he laughed at and clung to by turns. These facts have been stated many times, but they always fail to explain Heine. He was a poetic humorist, and there is an end of the chapter; comment can only add obscurity. His character, perhaps because it is so hard to fathom or explain, remains perpetually fascinating; and the lover of his work is always so eager to learn more of his life that he will be thankful for some memories of Heine’s last days, which Lord Houghton gives from the letter of an English lady. He had petted her and played with her when she was a child, and in Paris she went to see him when he lay stretched upon his ten years’ bed of death, “his body so wasted that it seemed no bigger than a child under the sheet which covered him ; the eyes closed ; and the face altogether like the most painful and wasted ‘ Ecce Homo’ ever painted by some old German painter. His voice was very weak, and I was astonished at the animation with which he talked. Evidently his mind had wholly survived his body. He raised his powerless eyelids with his thin white fingers..... When I kissed him, his beard felt like swandown or baby’s hair, so weak had it grown, and his face seemed to me to have gained a certain beauty from pain and suffering..... On the whole, I never saw a man bear such horrible pain and misery in so perfectly unaffected a manner. He complained of his sufferings, and was pleased to see tears in my eyes, and then at once set to work to make me laugh heartily, which pleased him just as much. He neither paraded his anguish nor tried to conceal it, or to put on any stoical airs.” This lady’s reminiscences are given with a feeling that quite imparts the fantastic pathos of Heine’s humorous personality in its most tragical attitude ; but after all, the sketch is a very slight one, and for something fuller the reader must go to Alfred Meissner’s Erinnerungen, which form in some sort a history of Heine’s last years.

The most notable characteristic of Lord Houghton’s book is the universality of the sympathy it expresses,—an amiable trait which Disraeli scarcely exaggerated in sketching him under the name of Mr. Vavasour in Tancred: “With catholic sympathies and an eclectic turn of mind, Mr. Vavasour saw something good in everybody and everything..... Vavasour liked to know everybody who was known, and to see everything which ought to be seen. His life was a gyration of energetic curiosity, an insatiable whirl of social celebrity. There was not a congregation of sages and philosophers in any part of Europe which he did not attend as a brother. He was present at the camp of Kalisch in his yeomanry uniform, and assisted at the festivals of Barcelona in an Andalusian jacket. He was everywhere and at everything; he had gone down in a diving-bell and up in a balloon. As for his acquaintances, he was welcomed in every land ; his universal sympathies seemed omnipotent. Emperor and king. Jacobin and Carbonari, alike cherished him. He was the steward of Polish balls and the vindicator of Russian humanity ; he dined with Louis Philippe and gave dinners to Louis Blanc.” The notices of Heinrich Heine end a book of reminiscences which begins with Lord Houghton’s recollections of the old Bonapartist soldier, Colonel Selves, who died a Mohammedan in the service of the Egyptian Viceroy and is known as Suleiman Pasha. Such very diverse characters as Humboldt and Cardinal Wiseman and Walter Savage Landor and Sidney Smith, Lady Ashburton and the Miss Berrys, are remembered with the same generous and delicate perception, and yet with a conscientiousness which saves the record from being a mere eulogy. Each paper is in fact a very just if very gentle study of character ; and the reader, whose conception of the vast London world is enlarged by the book, is also made to feel its limitations. We are not sure whether the portrait of so strong and wilful a humorist as Lady Ashburton is more delightful, or the pictures of the two Miss Berrys, with the pensive light of their love-disappointments thrown upon them, and the charm of their eighteenth-century old-fashion so pleasantly kept. We imagine them to be of the people totally impossible now, while Lady Ashburton is essentially of our outspeaking, somewhat rude time. Many of her sayings which Lord Houghton gives are delicious, though they hardly bear repetition without his previous account of her. Still it is possible to feel without this the wit of her declaration that “ A bore cannot be a good man, for the better a man is the greater bore be will be, and the more hateful he will make goodness.” “ The most dreadful thing against women is the character of the men that praise them,” and “ I like men to be men ; you cannot get round them without,” are each charming expressions of wit and humor.

It is not saying that the reminiscences of the other persons named are not delightful, to say that they are not so delightful as this. Landor, Sidney Smith, Humboldt, and Wiseman are hackneyed associations of all readers, but Lady Ashburton is in every way new. We cannot leave the volume without expressing our regret that so good a house as that of Messrs. Holt and Williams should have kept the archaic spelling of the English printers in such words as “humour,” “honour,” etc. In American reprints such orthography is a feeble affectation.

— “ On the Eve,” by Ivan Turgénieff, is a story in which, as usual with this author, the sweet phases of human existence are but slightly, if at all, brought into notice, the bitter everywhere made insistent and apparent. Ellen Nicholaevna, the heroine, is passing a summer in the country, near Moscow, with her mother ; the father, Nicholas Artemvitch Stachoff, being generally absent, neglecting his sick wife for the society of a dubious kind of German widow in Moscow. The time is the year 1853. Ellen, “ tall in stature, of a pale olive complexion, and slightly freckled, with a regularly formed nose and forehead, a mouth somewhat drawn in, and a pointed chin,” indicates in her manner a certain abruptness and precipitancy " which could not please everybody, and which must have been repellent to many.” Her characteristic singularity is, that she has a great tenderness for all injured and oppressed creatures, even insects and worms. Two young men are passing the summer near Ellen,— Shoubine, a handsome, pleasure-loving, careless youth, a sculptor; and Bersieneff, whose ambition it is to become a professor of law, or a philosopher. Bersieneff, in his timid, ungainly way, is in love with Ellen ; and Shoubine suddenly declares to him that he also loves her, but that Ellen returns only Bersieneff’s regard. The latter introduces to her a friend of his, Insaroff, a Bulgarian, who lives with the single aim of liberating his country from the rule of the Turks. Ellen, who has really only verged upon attachment to Bersieneff, falls in love with this friend, though not without strange dreads and dark forebodings which she cannot define. He, finding that he loves her, resolves to fly, that he may not turn aside from his patriotic purpose. Ellen cannot let him go : he attempts to return to Moscow, without saying good by. She wanders vaguely forth from her mother’s house, in irresponsible despair, and encounters him. Again he tries to escape by an assumed coldness, but fails ; and they become engaged. This episode is wrought out with such delicate art that we are troubled by no suspicion of boldness in her conduct; we see that she has been urged beyond reserve by the overpowering sympathy she has learned to feel in Insaroff’s life-work. He returns to his studies in Moscow; and meantime Ellen’s father brings into the field an approved suitor for her hand. There follows an interval of suspense for Ellen,— of doubt and reaction, and renewed loyalty to Insaroff. On her return to Moscow, Insaroff learns that he must at once repair to Bulgaria. She is ready to go with him, to die with him. But Insaroff falls sick : his life is even despaired of; and the winter passes off. Meantime, Bersieneff, disappointed in his love, and even before their engagement cognizant of Ellen’s love for Insaroff, devotes himself faithfully to his happier rival. On his recovery, Ellen is secretly married to him. That she has maintained an intimacy with Insaroff, and even been to his room during his illness, is discovered by her father, whose virtuous indignation, however, proves a failure. Ellen and her husband leave Moscow for Venice, but there Insaroff dies. Ellen embarks for Dalmatia with his body, and is overtaken by a storm. Nothing more is ever heard of her; but, as she had previously written to her parents, bidding them a final farewell, in any case, it remains uncertain whether she lives or has perished.

The book is full of Turgénieff’s peculiar power, that by which he gives us again the fresh, abruptly fractured surfaces of ordinary life, together with the immeasurable depth of their suggestions. It abounds in touches of high power and pathos; very tender is that last relenting of the flimsy father, where, arriving in hot haste, before his daughter’s departure, he drinks champagne with her and with Insaroff, while the tears roll down his cheeks; and the style is marked by that studied independence of mere literary graces which appears in the author’s other novels. We observe, also, his clear painter’s eye for nature ; and his fine, artistic impartiality, which enables his characters to stand apart from him, and be themselves : only, there is the all-pervading, grim sarcasm of the Russians. It may be doubted whether Turgénieff’s determined realism does not sometimes carry him too far, in the description of passages which will hardly bear such treatment, however pure the artist’s motive, without becoming a little more acceptable to the vicious than the virtuous. But, for the rest, too much cannot be said, in urging a faithful study and careful record, by all readers, of his keen poetic sensibility and his finished and forcible method.

— Betsy Lee, a Fo’c’s’le Yarn, is the latest outcome of a kind of writing that is popular just now, but the best examples of which date as far back as the first series of The Biglow Papers, and the Ballads of Policeman X. It is hardly fair, however, to class the pithy lyrics of the bard of Jaalam, or even the witty rhymes of the London policeman, with the mongrel dialect poems of the day. Mr. Thackeray’s verses are at least consistent in their orthography, and the Glossary which the Rev. Homer Wilbur has added to the later editions of The Biglow Papers shows with what painful care that editor has studied the peculiarities of rural New England language. A little dialect is a dangerous thing. The poetic feet which have attempted to walk in the footprints of Hosea Biglow’s delicious muse have done so, it must be confessed, in a singularly lame and piteous fashion. It is only the utmost amiability that will accept a pot-pourri of London street slang and stage Yankee, with a sprinkling of Southern and Western phrases, as a dialect. A wise Providence, for reasons not always visible to the naked human eye, has permitted many strange things on earth ; but, surely, it never allowed a class of people, or even a solitary individual, to talk as Artemas Ward and the disciples of his school have written.

Betsy Lee is a story supposed to be told by a Manx sailor to a knot of messmates assembled in a forecastle. We are far from being familiar with the Manx dialect; but if this is in any sense a reproduction of it, it is a very uninteresting dialect indeed. It appears that a Manx sailor, in his ordinary conversation, pronounces the same word in two or three different ways ; that he has read Herbert Spencer, and Carlyle, and Prof. Huxley; that he can be in the same breath nearly sublime and wholly ridiculous; and that he possesses at once the coarseness of an Elizabethan dramatist and the delicacy of a Tennyson. The story is not without a certain flow of its own, and is not lacking in sharp characterization ; but the reader is repelled at every turn by some vulgarity that seems almost incredible, until he rereads the offending line. From an artistic point, the really lovely passages in the poem are nearly as offensive as the coarse ; the latter are, likely enough, dramatically correct, but the former are simply impossible on the lips of the speaker. It is only when they are removed from the hopelessly gross context that one discovers and appreciates the homely beauty which lurks in verses like these : —

“ For it’s no use the whole world talking to me,
If I ’d never seen nothin of Betsy Lee
Except her foot, I was bound to know
That she was as pure as the driven snow.
For there ’s feet that houlds on like a cat on a roof,
And there’s feet that thumps like an elephant’s hoof;
There’s feet that goes trundlin on like a barra,
And some that’s crooky, some as straight as an arra;

There’s feet that’s thick, and feet that’s thin,
And some turnin out and some turnin in ;
And there ’s feet that can run, and feet that can walk,
Ay, feet that can laugh, and feet that can talk ;
But an innocent fut —it’s got the spring
That you feel when you tread on the mountain ling;
And it’s tied to the heart, and not to the hip,
And it moves with the eye, and it moves with the lip.
I suppose it’s God that makes, when He wills,
Them beautiful things —with the lift of his hills,
And the waft of his winds, and his calms and his storms,
And his work and his rest ; and that’s how He forms
A simple wench to be true and free,
And to move like a piece of poethry.”

The plot of the poem is scarcely worth analysis ; it is neither very fresh nor very ingenious, but it might have been made effective by a skilful hand. In brief, Betsy Lee, in spite of incongruous bursts of genuine pathos, and occasional evidence of descriptive power, is a tiresome performance. You feel that the story-teller is masquerading in the thinnest of disguises ; it is evidently a young London literary swell, who has hired a sailor’s costume from the wardrobe of the Adelphi Theatre. There is only one thing that can be said in praise of his poetry, and poetry of this kind generally,— the less you read it the better you like it.

—Along with the wide-spreading scientific work of the present time, which goes far toward determining the character of the age, there are also indications of a very profound and almost equally new form of intellectual investigation, which has borrowed from science that judicial quality which consists in looking things straight in the face, and of drawing conclusions without any undue dread of shocking conventional prejudice or our tender feelings. The problems of life are as old as life itself; but nowadays we are more inclined to be lenient to a man who confesses his inability to solve them than was the case when all were taught a solution, and any doubter was as likely to be vainglorious with his doubts as were those who were attacked to be arrogant with their answers. It is certainly an interesting time to live, when one sees all the most important questions which the mind of man can ask brought forward for discussion without irreverence, and without impatient eagerness for an answer. We may be as far from their solution as ever, but the existence of a spirit of toleration on both sides is something to be glad of. Mr. Greg’s Enigmas of Life is neither a collection of puzzles nor a guide-book to Utopia, but a series of chapters with the following titles : Realizable Ideals, Malthus Notwithstanding, Non-survival of the Fittest, Limits and Directions of Human Development, The Significance of Life, De Profundis, Elsewhere, — vague-sounding names for his discussion of some of the questions which are continually calling for the attention of every thoughtful man. He is far from coming to their consideration from what is the common and somewhat conventional starting-point for the treatment of such questions, namely, one of theological partisanship ; nor, on the other hand, does he stand aloof, regarding them unsympathetically, from the outside. He everywhere, as he is careful to tell us in his Preface, assumes the existence of a Creator, and of a continued life beyond the grave. With regard to this life and the difficulties which beset it, he writes with a temperate optimism, a subdued hope in the future, with a fair statement of what might be done, and we can all hope may yet be done, when men will do what they know to be best. He looks forward with hope to the time when science will be more systematically directed to the improvement of the condition ot men, when its laws will have more weight in controlling human conduct, when the human race will give to itself the attention which it gives to everything else in the world. Not, it is hardly necessary to say, that he expects human beings to be transformed into faultless machines; but he does expect a slow improvement in the world, with regard to sanitary laws, control of the passions, treatment of others, lawmaking, etc. Nowhere does he give a series of practical directions which shall set the world running in a smooth groove, and teach its inhabitants calmly to sit by and rejoice over their own perfection and happiness : he merely indicates what may be done, but with no expectation that life will ever be too easy.

His mode of treating other questions — the eternal whence and why — may perhaps be best seen by an extract:

“ Of the dark riddles and incomprehensive anomalies and strange perplexities of which life is full, some, very few, we can unravel ; of others we can discern just enough to guess at the solution. The deepest and the saddest must ever remain to try our faith, and to grieve our hearts. We see enough to make us believe there is a solution, and that that solution is such as will accord with the serene perfections of the Godhead..... The infinite slowness with which man marches to his final goal; the feebleness and vacillation with which he works out his allotted destiny ; his frequent apparent retrogressions into barbarism and iniquity ; the ebbs and flows of the tide of civilization, — to all these we may be reconciled by the supposition that perhaps the imperfect conditions of our Being render this progress at once the surest and fastest possible. But there are stranger and gloomier perplexities than these. There are chastisements that do not chasten ; there are trials that do not purify, and sorrows that do not elevate ; there are pains and privations that harden the tender heart, without softening the stubborn will; there is ‘ light that leads astray ’ ; there are virtues that dig their own grave.” In this extract he does no more than state the difficulties which are forever presenting themselves to all who are not engrossed with material cares. Perhaps as curious a thing to observe in this book is the way in which everything is treated by the light of the intellect alone, or, rather, more nearly alone than is generally the truth. All that the intellect can do is to state the case ; it can hardly do anything further, any more than the emotions can be of use in science, say, in the study of chemistry. Still, even to state fairly these baffling problems, to look at them dispassionately, is more than most do. It is healthful to the mind, it is a preservative against morbidness, as well as against overweening self-confidence. In conclusion, we would warmly commend the book as a valuable contribution to one of the most interesting questions always agitating the human mind, and now and notably by this author discussed with great fairness. He nowhere lifts the veil of mystery that overhangs the universe ; but he does a good deal towards removing the obscurity that enshrouds much of what lies between what man can consciously amend, and what he must leave to time to set right and, possibly, explain.

— Every student of history, and especially of ancient history, will gladly welcome a volume of Mr. Freeman’s Essays, in which he collects much of his work that has been contributed to various English reviews and journals during the last fifteen years. Before presenting them anew to the reader, he has given them a careful revision, scrupulously correcting former statements by frequent foot-notes, and omitting much that time has made too familiar or less useful at the present day. As we have said, this volume contains his writings on ancient history, and of, perhaps, the widest interest will be found the essays on Curtius’s History of Greece and Mommsen’s History of Rome. Mr. Freeman never loses himself in blind admiration of what he is writing about, and we cannot help feeling grateful to him for his good words for Grote, whom he is by no means disposed to lay on the shelf in his devotion to his later German rival. Nor, we take it, is he carping in what he says about Curtius. He says : “ It is really wonderful how many

histories of Greece may be written, each of them thoroughly good in its own way, and yet none of which allows us to dispense with the others. We believe that the impetuous generation which now presides over education at Oxford has long ago thrown Bishop Thirlwall behind the fire. Yet no rational English student of Grecian history would think that he had mastered his subject, unless he had compared both Thirlwall and Grote with one another, and with the original writers. So now, though we should recommend every such student to read Curtius without fail, we in nowise hold that his reading of Curtius at all lets him off from the duty of reading both Grote and Thirlwall also.” And furthermore : “ In a subject like Grecian or Roman history, it is specially mischievous to rely on any one modern guide. Each writer, if he is fit for his work, will suggest valuable matter for thought; but none of them can be entitled to implicit submission. Each will look at things differently, according to his natural turn of mind, according to his place of birth, his political party, and the many other influences which affect a man’s point of view. One writer will succeed best in one part of his subject, another in another. Thirlwall, Grote, Curtius, others besides, all have their use ; each teaches something which the others do not teach ; each is the strongest in some particular part of their common subject. A careful student will read and weigh them all, but he will decline to pledge himself as the bond-slave of any one among them.” With these words we think our readers will agree, even if their practice should be different. Not all, we must remember, can call themselves students of Grecian and Roman history ; for it is the historian, after all, it might not be unfair to say, who leaves the impression on the reader’s mind. A few pages, consisting of an article reprinted from the Saturday Review, contain his charges against Mommsen, the reading of whose work is nowadays held to be the crowning piece of a thorough education. He gives him credit for all his good qualities, which do, indeed, deserve praise, but he blames him for his abuse of certain men, such as Pompey, Cato, and, specially, of Cicero. He objects also to his inaccuracy in defining the position of Sulla and Cæsar by the terms Regent and King, respectively. The most serious charge is that of his indifference to the notions of right and wrong. “ He cannot understand,” Mr. Freeman says, “that a small state can have any rights against a great one, or that a patriot in such a state can be anything but a fool.” In other words, Mommsen is a human being with prejudices like all the rest of us. But that fact does not establish his innocence. With all Mr. Freeman’s praise of Mr. Grote, there are long discussions of his treatment of the Athenian democracy, and of Alexander the Great, in which he tempers his approbation with blame. The essay on Mr. Gladstone’s Homer and the Homeric Age was an excellent one at the time, but, from the point of view from which it was written, it reads now like slaughtering the dead, at least as far as the influence of the book in this country is concerned. The essays on The Historians of Athens, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, and the Flavian Cæsars, will all be found interesting reading. In the first named, specially, the author is at his best, in the discrimination between the three great historians of Greece. The last two are important chapters to any student of Roman history. Everywhere in this volume, we must say in conclusion, we find traces of great care, of thoroughness, and an earnest seeking of exactness. There is a certain pugnacity in the manner ; but the writer is very careful to fix himself on facts, to make sure of his ground before hazarding rash statements. It will be found to be a very suggestive book.

1. Scintillations from the Prose Works of Heinrich Heine. Translated from the German by SIMON ADLER STERN. New York : Holt and Williams. 1873.↩
2. Monographs, Personal and Social. By LORD HOUGHTON. New York : Holt and Williams. 1873.↩
3. On the Eve. A Tale. By IVAN TURGÉNIEFF. Translated from the Russian by C. E. Turner. New York : Holt and Williams. 1873.↩
4. Betsy Lee, A Fo'c’s'le Yarn. New York and London : Macmillan & Co. 1873.↩
5. Enigmas of Life. By W. R. GREG. Boston : James R. Osgood & Co. 1873.↩
6. Historical Essays. By EDWARD A. FREEMAN, M. A., D. C. L., late Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. Second Series. London and New York : Macmillan & Co. 1873.↩