Comment on New Books

Theology. The Bible, the Church, and the Reason, the Three Great Fountains of Divine Authority, by C. A. Briggs. (Scribners.) Whatever the outcome of the ecclesiastical trial of Dr. Briggs, the real trial is by thinking people at large, and this book is one of the chief occasions of the trial. The fearlessness, the reverence, and the positive character of this tract — for it is a tract of three hundred pages — make it a most valuable solvent of men’s doubts. When men are disturbed in their minds, it is not the man who is carefully looking after his defenses, but the one who is a leader in faith, to whom they listen most readily. — Creation of the Bible, by Myron Adams. (Houghton.) A popular work which aims to coördinate the results of the higher criticism into a systematic account of the evolution of the Bible. One may think the writer a little too ready to accept as final the judgments of scholars like Kuenen, and too eager to find a parallel between the growth of the Bible and the development of nature according to the hypothesis of evolution ; but the author’s candor and his sincere love of truth make one ready to accept the book as a contribution toward a reasonable faith. — The second volume of Dr. Wendt’s The Teaching of Jesus (Scribners) is occupied mainly with the important section of The Testimony of Jesus to his Messiahship, and further illustrates the writer’s principal contention that there is a magnificent inner unity in the teaching of Jesus, and that the synoptic and Johannine gospels offer parallel indications of it. The freedom and intelligence with which Dr. Wendt uses his material are marked also by that high reverence which makes him not scrupulous of mere decorum, but earnest in his pursuit of the fullest truth. The entire work is a very interesting contribution to New Testament criticism. — Christian Ethics, by Newman Smyth. (Scribners.) A volume in the International Theological Library. Dr. Smyth writes in a refreshingly dear, manly manner. He seeks to follow the historical method, but he is constantly driven back by necessity from Christianity to Christ, recognizing in the words of Jesus not only the germ, but the test of organized Christianity. The work is divided into The Christian Ideal, in which the revelation of that ideal, its nature and its progressive realization, are set forth, and Christian Duties, in which the personal and social exercise of those duties, and finally their exercise in direct relation to God, are considered. The final chapter, on The Christian Moral Motive Power, brief as it is, shows how instinctively a Christian ethical philosopher goes straight to the impact of a personal Christ for his most complete and his profoundest explanation. — The Love of the World, a Look of Religious Meditation, by Mary Emily Case. (The Century Co.) A little volume devoted, in thirty brief chapters, to the meditative illustration of the thesis that there is nothing irreligious but sin. There is no such audacity in the treatment as one hearing this statement might fancy, but a gentle insistence on the religiousness of whatsoever things are lovely, of good report, etc. Occasionally a bright remark is made, but the book is reasonable and thoughtful rather than incisive and epigrammatic. — The Genesis and Growth of Religion, by S. H. Kellogg. (Macmillan.) A series of eight lectures given before Princeton Theological Seminary. Dr. Kellogg, after an acute examination of the current definitions of religion, makes a good one of his own, and then proceeds, after a study of naturalistic theories of the origin of religion, to scrutinize in particular the positions of Herbert Spencer and Max Muller. Having cleared the ground, he contends for a subjective and objective factor in the genesis of religion, treats of the development of religion with a criticism of Réville, examines the historic facts hearing on the subject, and closes with a special study of Shemitic monotheism. Within the narrow compass of his book Mr. Kellogg has given his theme a particular as well as a general critique. — Faith-Healing, Christian Science, and Kindred Phenomena, by J. M. Buckley. (The Century Co.) Dr. Buckley’s object is to furnish facts in regard to the subjects named in the title of his book, and under the head of Kindred Phenomena he treats of events connected with Astrology, Divination, Coincidences, Dreams, and Witchcraft. Many anecdotes are introduced, sometimes only alluded to, without much attempt at deduction or comparison. The statement of facts which have set so many minds agog is somewhat like a question half answered, and no doubt some readers will use Dr. Buckley’s material in a way to lead to conclusions opposite those reached by him.

Economics. The Tariff Controversy in the United States, 1789-1833, with a Summary of the Period before the Adoption of the Constitution, by Orrin Leslie Elliott. (Lelaud Stanford, Jr. University, Palo Alto, California.) The first number of a series of Historic and Economic Monographs. The most interesting portion is that which details the entanglement of the subject with the political heresy of nullification. The work shows industry, research, and a commendable desire to treat the topic in an historical spirit. — The Old English Manor, a Study in English Economic History, by Charles McLean Andrews. (The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.) The introduction to this carefully written study has a special interest as marking the decline, at the centre of its greatest activity in America, of the exclusive theory of village communities as historically antecedent and necessary to the development of Teutonic freedom. The body of the book is devoted to an examination of manorial rights, laws, and customs among the Anglo-Saxons, the date taken being that of about the year 1000. — The Economy of High Wages, an Inquiry into the Cause of High Wages, and their Effect on Methods and Cost of Production, by J. Schoenhof. (Putnams.) Mr. Schoenhof’s contention in the former half of this tract is that high wages result from the demand made upon laborers by a rapidly expanding civilization, and that the prosperity of the United States is due to the widely distributed ownership of land and the freedom of educated employment. In the second part, his contention is that the effect of high wages is to improve production, and he goes into detail in a variety of industries to maintain his proposition. He believes that legislative enactments have little to do with this prosperity, but in another breath he deplores the effort made to encourage high wages by protective tariff. The great variety and particularity of his facts save his book from being the mere illustration of a theory. — Echoes of the Sunset Club, comprising a Number of the Papers read and Addresses delivered before the Sunset Club of Chicago, during the past two years. Compiled by W. W. Catlin. (Howard, Bartels & Co., Chicago.) The subjects discussed are largely those of a sociological and economical character, and the form is practically that of a debate by two or three speakers. The debate does not necessarily suppose two opposite sides, but sometimes two points of view. One might profitably be a member of such a vigorous club. If he prefers reading, or perhaps if he has no choice, since all cannot live in Chicago, he will find pointed, forcible discussion of Land Taxation, Municipal Control of Heat, Light, etc., Party Allegiance, The Sunday Question, Our Jury System, Our Public School System, and similar topics, in this energetic volume. — The Case against Bimetallism, by Robert Giffen. (Macmillan.) A collection of Mr. Giffen’s papers, in which he treats both the general theory and the specific illustrations provided by Laveleye and by American advocates. In his plea for monometallism, he maintains that the subordinate coin would perform its functions more naturally and more obediently to law than if the attempt were made to adjust by law the relation of the two metals to each other.

Domestic Economy. Letters to a Young Housekeeper, by Marie Hansen - Taylor. (Scribners.) Mrs. Taylor has achieved a success. She has entered a field which seemed fully occupied, and has made a place for herself in it. Her method is so orderly, her instructions are so clear and definite, and her sense of the needs of young housekeepers in the provision for their families is so intelligent that the result is seen in a singularly useful handbook. — Common Sense in the Household, by Marion Harland. Majority Edition. (Scribners.) The coming of age of this widely popular manual has been celebrated by the publication of a new and revised edition of it, — a fit compliment to a book which still continues to hold its own against later and wellequipped comers in the same field. — The Little Dinner, by Christine Terhune Herrick. (Scribners.) In this attractive little volume, Mrs. Herrick again proves good her inherited right to act as an intelligent and competent household guide. She does her best to solve the not altogether easy problem of dinner-giving by mistresses of small establishments, who are forced to combine an abundance of good taste with strictly limited incomes. For her suggestions in regard to the little dinner, which she follows through its whole course, from Laying the Table to Something about Sweets, giving a number of well-approved receipts by the way, she will doubtless earn the gratitude of many perplexed or inexperienced hostesses.

Fiction. The Medicine Lady, by L. T. Meade. (Cassell.) An English novel of strong characteristics. The writer has conceived a woman of impulses, and set her in a position where the mingled good and evil of her nature have full play to the end. In doing this, she has been faithful to life, even though her invention takes her along some slightly improbable avenues. There is a good deal of irregularity in the telling of the story, but there is a story, and at times a very forcible one. The book lies outside the range of commonplace fiction, though the crudeness of the execution scarcely permits one to give it a very high place as a piece of art. — The Woodman, by Jules de Glouvet ; translated by Mrs. John Simpson. (Harpers.) An admirable translation of a notable book. M. Guernay de Beaurepaire, who has of late years made his own name famous as that of the most fearless of French magistrates, is also, as the novelist “ Jules de Glouvet,” a leader of the Idealists in their contest with the dominant school in French fiction; Le Forestier being; one of the earliest protests, so to speak, against the prevailing cult. If this shall prove other than a temporary revolt, and the New School have the fortune to produce many works comparable in quality to the story of Jean Renaud the Poacher, the battle need not be a hopeless one. — Fifty Pounds for a Wife, by A. L. Glyn. (Holt.) Starting with a highly improbable incident, in which a young man buys for fifty pounds a theatrical manager’s so-called daughter whom heis misusing, this story goes on heedlessly through a series of equally improbable incidents, until the reader finds he has been occupying himself with a cheap piece of fiction, even though the characters a re supposed to he gentlemen and ladies. — Vesty of the Basins, by Sarah P. McLean Greene. (Harpers.) An odd mixture of real humor, fantastic sentimentality, and allusive story-telling. The exaggeration in which the author deals cannot wholly conceal her genuine appreciation of humorous situations, but it is hard luck for the reader when he has to scrape off such an accumulation of artificiality to get at the real nature in the book. — The Reputation of George Saxon, and Other Stories, by Morley Roberts. (Cassell.) A collection of eleven single-number stories, not without subtlety and some power, but bearing a somewhat amateurish and artificial character, as if the writer were a clever man of taste, who tried his hand at work of this sort much as he might amuse himself with wood-carving or water-color painting. — Beggars All, by L. Dougall. (Longmans.) The reader of this novel will be a little puzzled by the comings and goings of the characters, for the author, having conceived a certain mysterious central design in the structure of the story, has, wittingly or not, allowed the mystery to spread by a kind of contagion ; but an interest in the characters is readily formed, and from being puzzled one comes to be thoroughly engaged in the movement. It is a story out of the common run. — Christmas Stories from French and Spanish Writers, by Antoinette Ogden. (McClurg.) A little volume of holiday aspect, containing translations from a dozen different writers. On the whole, the stories are well selected, and so as to give sufficient variety to the collection. The reader is impressed more by the unlikeness than by the likeness to Christmas tales of English and German origin ; but in at least one respect there is a strong resemblance, falling snow being apparently as necessary an accompaniment to the great festival in French and Spanish stories as in those of more northern climes. — From A. C. McClurg & Co. come two attractive little books of the series of six Tales from Foreign Lands. England is represented by Mrs. Gaskell’s Cousin Phyllis, a Story of English Love. Marianela, a Story of Spanish Love, translated by Helen W. Lester from the Spanish of B. Perez Galdos, is the touching story of a poor little misformed girl who served as guide to a blind youth, expounding all things by him unseen in accordance with her quaint beautiful notions. Her great unhappiness was fear that he should discover her real ugliness and lose his avowed love for her, — which indeed happened when sight was restored to him. — In the new and revised edition of William Black’s novels, a recent number is Green Pastures and Piccadilly (Harpers), in which the author amiably, but with wise caution, sets his characters on foot in America.

Education and Textbooks. — Shelley’s Prometheus Unbound, edited by Vida D. Scudder (Heath), contains the text, preceded by an Introduction, which is in substance the papers on the subject published by the editor in The Atlantic, and followed by notes, extracts from criticisms, and a bibliography. There is also an interesting paper of Suggestions towards a Comparison of the Prometheus Unbound with the Prometheus Bound of Æschylus, by Miss Lucy H. Smith. Altogether, the book is a treatment of an English piece of literary art more upon the lines of an edition of a Greek classic than we often meet.— Free-Hand Drawing; Light and Shade and Free-Hand Perspective. For the Use of Art Students and Teachers. By Anson K. Cross. (The Author, Normal Art School, Boston.) This little book is in effect the notes used by the author in his classes at the Normal Art School. Many of the points brought out were suggested by inquiries of the pupils. Thirty-two plates illustrate Mr. Cross’s methods. It is a book which teachers can use better than students. — It was a capital notion to bring together for school use Wordsworth’s Prefaces and Essays on Poetry with his Letter to Lady Beaumont. This has been done by A. J. George (Heath), who has already shown himself a close student of the poet. These prefaces, besides being very helpful to the reader of Wordsworth, constitute a most valuable aid to the intelligent study of all poetry. — Goethe’s Faust, edited by Calvin Thomas. (Heath.) The first part only is given in this volume. Mr. Thomas furnishes an interesting preface, in which, we are glad to see, he does not worry himself much over the Faust legend. The text is in clear, clean type, and the book is not overloaded with notes. — A Primary French Translation Book, by W. S. Lyon and G. de H. Larpcnt. (Heath.) An ingenious system of retran station is adopted, by which a French exercise has a corresponding English exercise ; not a direct translation, but a fresh statement using the words found in the French. — The Bible and English Prose Style, Selections and Comments, edited, with an Introduction, by Albert S. Cook. (Heath.) An interesting little book, though we could have spared some of the comments, by a variety of authors, if we could have had more representative selections. It is singular, indeed, that Mr. Cook should have drawn nothing from the book of Job, perhaps the most consummate piece of English in the Bible, and nothing, either, from the parables. — Outlines of English Grammar, with Continuous Selections for Practice, by Harriet Mathews. (Heath.) The writer of this textbook has reduced to form the practice which she has followed, and the form is in the main simple and intelligible ; but we think it possible that some teachers not taught by her would be puzzled over a few of her directions. The main idea of giving continuous passages rather than brief sentences for the application of the rules and definitions seems a sensible one.

Books for the Young. The two hound volumes of St. Nicholas for 1892, covering the twelve months from November, 1891 (The Century Co.), show a goodly range, from nonsense verses to biographical sketches, scientific studies, and sketches of travel. By rights, story-telling holds chief sway, and an effort is made to treat the young of the human race as pretty equally divided into male and female. — The End of a Rainbow, by Rossiter Johnson. (Scribners.)

Mr. Johnson calls his story, on the titlepage, An American Story, and the characters and scenes are native, even to a somewhat free and independent use of the English language. But it is a little hard to believe in the laborious self-delusion of the first chapter, and these American young people resemble more the denizens of Mr. Stockton’s solemn world. If one can part with his critical faculty, however, he can get a good deal of honest entertainment out of this lively book. — Condemned as a Nihilist, a Story of Escape from Siberia, by G. A. Henty ; illustrated by Walter Paget. (Scribners.) Mr. Henty is a practiced story-teller, and it makes little difference to him whether his scenes are laid in England or Colorado or Russia or India, in this century or in a remote antiquity. All he asks is scope for adventure, and ho has no lack of material in modern Russia. His hero is of course a boy, though no chick, and he passes him through all the possible contingencies of a suspected Nihilist. It is a manufactured story, but .skillfully manufactured. — A Rosebud Garden of Girls, by Nora Perry. (Little, Brown & Co.) A half dozen stories of girl life, each with its slight sub-cellar stocked with lessons in good manners and minor morals. Miss Perry writes with a strong sympathy for the class to whom her characters belong, and the manifest qualities of young maidenhood are emphasized. Perhaps, in her desire to set forth these figures, she has unconsciously been betrayed, in her descriptions and narrative, into something of a young girl’s extravagance of manner. — Stories from the Greek Comedians, by the Rev. Alfred J. Church, M. A. (Macmillan.) Mr. Church has been exceedingly successful in the difficult task he set himself in this volume. He has put into narrative form nine of the comedies of Aristophanes, and six of the new comedies which we know only from the versions of Terence and Plautus, occasionally introducing snatches of the dialogue, as well as some of the beautiful verses to be found in the older dramatist. He acknowledges his indebtedness to several eminent translators, especially to Mr. Hookham Frere ; but he has used these authorities with great freedom, and has again shown his excellent judgment and good taste in selection, arrangement, and condensation. While the book is intended for young readers, we suspect that it will prove even more attractive to their elders. — Tom Paulding, the Story of a Search for Buried Treasure in the Streets of New York, by Brainier Matthews. (The Century Co.) A capital story for boys, full of bright invention, good humor, and boyish sport. The young people have enough reality to save them from the fate of most story-book boys and girls, but the reality is not secured at the cost of good manners and decent English. — The Children’s Life of Abraham Lincoln, by M. Louise Putnam. (McClurg.) Miss Putnam writes with sincere veneration for her hero, and gives the accredited acts of his life in orderly sequence. We could wish she had enriched her narrative with more of the characteristic anecdotes of the President, since they serve to make his personality vivid ; and we suspect that children old enough to read a biography of Lincoln will resent, perhaps silently, the extreme simplicity of some of the phraseology and the direct address, which Miss Putnam uses somewhat freely. — Axel Ebersen, the Graduate of Upsala, by André Laurie. (Lippincott.) A Swedish tale, illustrative mainly of the advantage gained by manual training in a boy’s education. The story is, besides, quaintly descriptive of scenes in Swedish life. — The Wild Pigs, a Story for Little People, by Gerald Young. (Macmillan.) A story of pigs and their adventures, of dogs, and of one or two human creatures. The forced gayety of this narrative does not delude one, and we think children, as well as their elders, will justly demand that the animal kingdom be exhausted before pigs are made dramatis personœ.

The Literature of Childhood. Five Hundred Books for the Young, a Graded and Annotated List, prepared by George E. Hardy. (Scribners.) Mr. Hardy has accomplished well a difficult task, for he has aimed at classifying and arranging in successive grades the most available and desirable books for the young. Available, we say, since he has introduced a number whose special value is in their cleanliness and their capacity for expelling meaner literature appealing to a like taste for excitement and adventure, He has made a list, not of what children ought to read, but of what the great rank and file may be won to read with no great difficulty. Ten years from now, we think it not unlikely that a similarly planned list would have even a higher standard. — Children’s Rights, a Book of Nursery Logic, by Kate Douglas Wiggin. (Houghton.) Mrs. Wiggin’s enthusiastic interest in kindergarten work has given her exceptional opportunity for the sympathetic study of childhood as it is at large, not of some selected favorites of fortune ; and she has taken up the subjects of playthings, books, the relation of the kindergarten to the public schools and to social reform, and similar matters, treating them with no less good sense that she treats them with lightness and humor.— Children, their Models and Critics, by Auretta Roys Aldrich. (Harpers.) An admirable book, written by a true mother, on Early Influences, Discipline, and Kindergarten, the advice pointed with apt examples, and always wise ; as good for those of us who have not children, and are all the more disposed to reflect how wisely we could bring them up if we had them, as for the parents themselves, who need a great deal of teaching.

History and Biography. Thomas Carlyle, by John Nichol. (Harpers.) In the English Men of Letters series, and a praiseworthy addition. Dr. Nichol writes as a Scotsman tamed by English association. He never parts with his right to judge and to state roughly his own conclusions, but he seems to make a desperate effort to be cosmopolitan, and not to treat his hero on too limited a scale. His analysis of Carlyle is shrewd and effective, though assessments of this sort have an irritating power, and especially does one crave simplicity and evenness in a summary of a man whose own explosive style furnishes all the condiment of quotation required. — The Three Episodes of Massachusetts History, which Mr. Charles Francis Adams details at length in two volumes (Houghton), are The Settlement of Boston Bay, The Antinomian Controversy, and A Study of Church and Town Government ; the last being based on the town of Quincy, as indeed the whole work is an examination of the New England life which there had its exposition. By concentration of his subject Mr. Adams allows himself all the more room for expansion of treatment, and we have thus a minute display of facts ordered and generalized and set in relations with so much precision and largeness of temper that we are enabled to trace the personality of the town as a microcosm of New England life, social, political, and religious. The thoroughness of the survey is most satisfying, and the vividness which results from the imaginative foree of a hard-headed business man of history is most captivating to the reader insatiate of details. — History ot the Nineteenth Century in the United States and Europe. Period I. During the Triumphs of Napoleon’s Empire. By Henry Boynton. (Press Co., Augusta, Maine.) Mr. Boynton has written a book which is in part annalistic, in part personal judgment ; for in spite of his assumption that the history of the period has been written heretofore in a partisan spirit, it is not impossible to discover Mr. Boynton’s own likes and dislikes. To the willing reader this history is a queer jumble of facts whose relation to one another is not immediately apparent. — The Battles of Frederick the Great, abstracted from Thomas Carlyle’s Biography of Frederick the Great, edited by Cyril Rausome, M. A. (Scribners.) There may be differences of opinion as to the desirability of “ abstracted ” books in general, but in this case there will be but one in regard to the intelligence, good taste, and we may add modesty, with which the editor has done his work. In his brief introduction he clearly traces the causes leading to the War of the Austrian Succession, and then gives Carlyle’s spirited and vivid descriptions of the battles of that conflict and of the later Seven Years’ War, — omitting much matter not strictly relevant to the object in view, but scrupulously adhering to his author in what remains. Concise introductory notes to each chapter make a connected narrative of the whole. The illustrations are exceedingly good, and the book is well supplied with maps and plans. — Mr. Whitelaw Reid in France, 1889-1892. The Farewell Dinner to the United States Minister. (Breutano’s, Paris.) A comely pamphlet of sixty pages, in which is gathered the series of complimentary speeches made to and by Mr. Reid. One reads with special interest M. Ribot’s speech. — Cæsar, a History of the Art of War among the Romans down to the End of the Roman Empire, with a Detailed Account of the Campaign of Gains Julius Csesar ; with 258 Charts, Maps, Plans of Battles and Tactical Manœuvres, Cuts of Armor, Weapons, and Engines. By Theodore Ayrault Dodge. (Houghton.) The third in Colonel Dodge’s important series of Great Captains. Even more, perhaps, than was the case with the other volumes is this a military history. Although written for mature readers, the style is so clear and the arrangement so orderly that a schoolboy spelling out Cæsar’s Commentaries would find this book more serviceable and more enjoyable than any amount of ordinary textbook notes, and we commend it for this particular use. — Writings of Christopher Columbus, descriptive of the Discovery and Occupation of the New World, edited, with an Introduction, by Paul Leicester Ford. (Webster.) A convenient little collection of the letters, will, and other documents which are constantly cited by critics of Columbus. The faithful reader will get closer to the navigator by means of these papers than his admirers or judges will always permit.

Poetry and the Drama. Songs of Sunrise Lands, by Clinton Scollard. (Houghton.) Mr. Scollard has done well to bring into one group the poems which have been suggested by Oriental travel. He is not the first, as he certainly will not be the last poet from the West to be strongly affected by contact vvitli Eastern life. In his case, a thoughtful, careful, observant nature has been inflamed by the color, the richness, the luxury of the eye, which one may encounter in this new experience, and the result is seen in a flowering forth not into mere extravagance, but into imaginative beauty of a lawful sort. We may fairly expect that, having thus gathered the store of his Eastern experience, Mr. Scollard’s fine poetic taste will be equally enriched when he deals with nearer themes. — Alaskana, or Alaska in Descriptive and Legendary Poems, by Bushrod W. James. (Porter & Coates.) The writer has turned his visit to Alaska into this metrical form. One would think that a diligent reading of Hiawatha would give one who had any rhythmical faculty the power to reproduce its general effect, yet this author has made his verses look like Hiawatha to the eye, but not sound like it in the ear. — The End of Time, a Poem of the Future, by L. D. Barbour. (Putnams.) Scenes in heaven contrast with earthly scenes of warfare and religious discussion. The long metre of Milton’s Paradise Lost is used to uphold the solemn parts, while shorter measure is brought in frequently to relieve it. Hell and the Devil are disappointingly prominent at the finale, and get plenty of booty. Though the poem does not offer much religious satisfaction, it raises many questions of controversy. — Three Plays, by W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson (Scribners), have little in common except vigor of treatment. Deacon Brodie, or The Double Life, is the first, and follows the notion of a person who is a carpenter and most estimable man by day, and a burglar by night. Thackeray once used a similar situation in an amusing fashion. Beau Austin, the second, has its scene laid at Tunbridge Wells in 1820 ; and Admiral Guinea, in which our old friend David Pew figures, works up the bold scheme of a blind man planning and executing a burglary. There is no lack of plot and characters in these masculine productions.

Travel and Chorography. An American Missionary in Japan, by Rev. M. L. Gordon, M. D. (Houghton.) The candor and simplicity of Dr. Gordon’s narrative will win many readers who might be indifferent to a more studied and formal treatise. The author, who has been long resident in Japan, tells with the familiarity almost of conversation the experience which a missionary is likely to meet in his work in Japan. He does not minimize difficulties, and he certainly does not exaggerate the value of the work. His sense of humor is a saving quality, and the genuineness of his testimony is apparent. The book affords a true glimpse of missionary life. — Paddles and Politics down the Danube, by Poultney Bigelow. (Webster.) Given a canoeist who has had exceptional opportunities for forming independent opinions on the people among whom his route lies, let him travel leisurely, stop when he will, make acquaintances, have light adventures, and then make a book of the journey, and you have material for an interesting sketch ; but if to this be added a really clever faculty for writing, and a good nature which keeps one on the alert, you may have an exceptionally readable book, and that is what one gets in this lively production of Mr. Bigelow’s. — Harper’s Chicago and the World’s Fair, by Julian Ralph. (Harpers.) Mr. Ralph contributed a series of papers on Chicago to the Harper periodicals, and has collected them, together with notes on the Fair as it could be assessed in the summer. He is a picturesque writer, quick to note salient features, and with a clever touch in description. His book is more satisfactory as a lively exhibit of the city than as a precursor of the Fair, since his notes on that are fragmentary, and the result of hearsay rather than observation.

Literature and the Library. Twelve English Authoresses, by L. B. Walford. (Longmans.) The pleasurable anticipations with which one naturally begins this book will be apt to end in the disappointment of readers at all exacting. The dozen studies here collected are slight and commonplace. An admonitory tone which occasionally appears in them leads us to think that, as originally published, they may have been intended for young persons. If this is the case, the want of careful revision is the more to be regretted. For instance, in the sketch of Jane Taylor, one of the best in the book, and evidently written con amore, the place of honor in that author’s Original Poems is given to The Spider and the Fly, which is somewhat unfair to a still more admirable writer for children. Though the question of Mrs. Browning’s birthday has been definitely settled, the incorrect date, 1809, is here given; but we are also told that she was exactly twenty-one in 1825, and in her thirty-ninth year in 1846, all of which is rather confusing. Mrs. Walford, in these studies, seldom leaves the beaten path, but when she does so the result is sometimes not particularly happy. She speaks of Jane Austen and Mary Russell Mitford as having been in all probability playfellows in childhood ; oblivious of the fact that there was eleven years’ difference in their ages, and that the death of Dr. Russell and the removal of his widow and daughter from the neighborhood of Steventon brought all intercourse between the two families to an end several years before Miss Mitford’s birth. The impression left by the book throughout is that of hasty and perfunctory work. — Essays in Miniature, by Agnes Repplier. (Webster.) Readers of The Atlantic have a friendly acquaintance with Miss Repplier, and they will find in this little book some of the papers which they have already enjoyed ; they will not mind reading them over again, and making, too, the happy discovery of the authorship of some delectable contributions to the Contributors’ Club. Miss Repplier’s generous love of good literature is contagious, and her routing of shams is one of the most refreshing literary adventures we have nowadays. — The volume of The Century from May, 1892, to October, 1892 (The Century Co.), is a good index to the subjects uppermost in the minds of readers during that period : as Columbus, which is treated rhetorically by Emilio Castelar, and liberally illustrated with portrait, pictures, and poem ; The Columbian Exposition (unnecessary adoption into the English tongue with a new meaning, when we had a firstrate accredited word in “ Exhibition ”), with Mr. Van Brunt’s admirable studies and their helpful illustrations. Besides these and the dignified series of Mr. Stedman’s papers on Poetry, the most notable points in the volume are the strong full-page designs, with or without accompanying text. The Century is also very hospitable to the poets.— Mr. Andrew Lang has taken advantage of a new edition of his small treatise, The Library (Macmillan), to add a new preface, and to have Mr. Dobson’s chapter on Modern English Illustrated Books extended. A few new illustrations are given, but the book remains substantially what it was when first published a dozen years ago, an agreeable, not too learned compagnon de voyage of the book-hunter. Any one who collects books can read it with pleasure, and some will read it with profit.