Comment on New Books

History and Biography. Edward the First, by Professor T. F. Tout. Twelve English Statesmen Series. (Macmillan.) Professor Tout brings to his work wide and accurate knowledge, and he has produced an interesting, lucid, well-considered, and on the whole, in view of the limitation in space, well-constructed narrative. It hardly needs saying that here, as in any intelligent study of the character and achievements of the king who might well be called Edward the Great, the author must perforce be largely indebted to the masterly and authoritative work of the historian who has made this epoch peculiarly his own, A noticeable and much-to-becommended feature of this volume is the attention given to Edward’s career as Duke of Aquitaine and to his continental policy and influence, — subjects usually most inadequately dealt with. Other and better known aspects of the king’s life, as the victor at Evesham, crusader, conqueror of Wales, overlord of Scotland, wise lawgiver, and defender of civil and national rights against the never-ceasing encroachments of the Church, are successively treated. The author’s tone throughout is temperate and judicial, and his book worthily fills its place in the admirable series to which it belongs. — The reader of the interesting article in The Atlantic for October, 1891, on The Ascetic Ideal, by Miss Preston and Miss Dodge, will find in the sixth volume of A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (The Christian Literature Company, New York) ample material for satisfying the curiosity awakened by the article. This volume is devoted to the Letters and Select Works of St. Jerome, the great author of the Vulgate translation, and will surprise those who ignorantly suppose the Christian Fathers to be a sort of Desert of Sahara with occasional oases. Human nature in the fifth century was a very interesting study, and, for our part, we find St. Jerome vastly more interesting and instructive than that monitor of Christianity in the nineteenth, the religious newspaper.— History of the Jews, by Professor H. Graetz. (The Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.) The second volume of this work, which we have already noticed, covers the period from the reign of Hyrcanus, 135 B. C., to the completion of the Babylonian Talmud, in the year 500. We are reasonably grateful that Jewish chronology is not used, and that we are let off with c. E. for A. D. It will be seen that this volume covers the advent of the Christ, and it is the portion devoted to the life, teachings, and death of Jesus of Nazareth which will naturally attract the Christian reader. To a superficial student, the most marked characteristic is the studious manner in winch this incident is subordinated to the main purpose of the book, together with the exultant recognition of the fact that through Christianity Judaism burst its bonds, and became a message to all the world. — The Settlement of the Jews in North America, by Charles P. Daly. Edited, with Notes and Appendices, by Max J. Kohler. (Philip Cowen, New York.) Twenty years ago Judge Daly delivered an historical address, which was expanded by him in a series of papers in a Jewish journal. The book which contained these is now reissued, with a further contribution by Judge Daly, in which he gives entertaining sketches of prominent Jews of New York, and judicious notes by the editor. The work as now presented is an interesting monograph, which is at once scholarly and readable. — Women of Versailles. The Court of Louis XIV, By Imbert de Saint-Amaud. Translated by Elizabeth Gilbert Martin. (Scribners.) From the rich and abundant material illustrating the period covered by this volume, M. de SaintAmaud could not fail to produce an entertaining book. He writes, too, con amore, and is indeed somewhat dazzled by the rays of the Sun-King. By way of compensation, perhaps, he indulges in much moralizing, both raptures and homilies being so characteristically French that they lose much of whatever impressiveness they may possess by being done into English. Vivid, though of necessity brief sketches are given of the women who, either by right or by the favor of the king, held court at Versailles during the reign of the most magnificent of monarchs. In the midst of so much art and artifice, we feel that we have a most refreshing glimpse of nature when we meet, among more brilliant and seductive figures, the Princess Palatine, —that upright, generous, keen-witted, and plain-spoken granddaughter of Elizabeth Stuart, whom the author does not love, but whose personality has a unique interest. Despite certain inevitable limitations of her caste and time, she looks with such clear eyes on the world to which she never ceases to be alien that her strictures thereon might almost be called the verdict of posterity. — The Story of Mary Washington, by Marion Harland. (Houghton.) This narrative leaves the impression of Spartan strength rather than of womanly charm as the distinguishing quality of the grandmother of her country. It appears that the book was written at the request of the National Mary Washington Memorial Association ; and hence it may be that, as a piece of writing, it is not free from marks of haste and something like perfunctoriness. The nature of many of its details gives them an interest of their own. — Benjamin Franklin and the University of Pennsylvania, edited by F. N. Thorpe. (Government Printing Office, Washington.) This is one of the Circulars of Information which the Bureau of Education sends out, but the reader must not be misled by the term “ circular.” An octavo of four hundred and fifty pages might almost be called a book. Professor Thorpe has called to his aid various gentlemen connected with the university, and the volume, which begins with a rehearsal, in a fresh manner, of well-known facts in Franklin’s life, glides almost imperceptibly into a pretty full history and analysis of the university. There is much that is worth preserving, but the government blight falls upon this book, also, and there is a dreary amount of matter which is old and of little value as soon as the document gets published. —The Poet and the Man, Recollections and Appreciations of James Russell Lowell, by Francis H. Underwood. (Lee & Shepard.) It is too much to ask that the biography of any great man shall not be preceded by a troop of little biographical books. This estimate of Lowell and his work comes from a friend and editorial associate, and therefore raises expectations of things not known before. It is hard to repress all disappointment, and the reflection that brevity and adequacy are not incompatible. Yet, if Mr. Underwood’s book is not all unfamiliar, it leaves the reader with a strengthened sense of the poet’s personal charm, and some new cause to care quite as much for the man as for all he did. — Famous Composers and their Works, edited by John Knowles Paine, Theodore Thomas, and Karl Klauser. (J. B. Millet Company, Boston.) Four parts of this serial work have reached us, and they promise an interesting and well-ordered library for the lover of music. The strength of the work appears to be given to the biographical studies, which are full, and plainly worked up with care. So far, Bach, Handel, Gluck, Mozart, and Haydn have been treated. Portraits and historical monuments form appropriate illustrations, and each composer is further set forth by means of characteristic selections from his music. A series of essays upon the development of music is promised, and it is clear from what has been shown that the work is not an omnium gatherum, but a choice and carefully studied artistic whole. — The second volume of Pepys’s Diary, edited by H. B. Wheatley, carries the work from April 1, 1661, to the last day of 1662. The delicious old sinner gives one a tolerable notion of what “merry” England was in his days. We are not quite so outspoken now, and we do not treat our daily memorandum books with the same frankness ; perhaps our tomfoolery is more refined, but certainly the way Pepys goes on with “ Mrs. Rebecca ” and other friends of his gives a notion of the candor of social life which helps to interpret the plays of the day and the novels that followed. This new edition is publishing in Bohn’s Library. (Macmillan, New York.) — Mary, Queen of Scots, and her Latest English Historian. A Narrative of the Principal Events in the Life of Mary Stuart., with Some Remarks on Mr. Fronde’s History of England. By James F. Meliue. (Robert Clarke & Co.) A reprint of a work issued twenty years ago, with an introduction and additions to the appendix by the author’s niece. Like the historian whom he criticises, the writer is a partisan, but a partisan who can usually quote chapter and verse for the faith that is in him.

Literature and Literary History. The Literary Works of James Smetham, edited by William Davies. (Macmillan.) The volume of Smetham’s Letters was a contribution to the knowledge of a rare spirit. One would gladly see his paintings, because they must have been an equally high form of expression with his letters. The four essays on Reynolds, Blake, Alexander Smith, and Gerhard Dow, which make up the bulk of this volume, are interesting and readable, but only one of them, that on Blake, seems to test the writer’s fine insight. The clear, sound judgment displayed in this paper furnishes an admirable interpretation of a man who needs to be looked upon with the eye which is at once poetic and sane. Some of the poems, for the most part grave, and often deeply religious, intimate the more recondite nature of the man. That called An Antidote to Care is rememberable.— The Highway of Letters and its Echoes of Famous Footsteps, by Thomas Archer. (Randolph.) In this handsome volume, Mr. Archer gives, in a sketchy and desultory way, what may perhaps be called a gossipy chronicle of Fleet Street, in its relation to English letters, from the time when, in imagination, he stands with Chaucer and Gower on Fleet Bridge, to the days of Punch and its journalistic neighbors. He touches upon the famous thoroughfare’s historic associations as well, and glances at changing customs and manners. Fleet Street is sometimes to him but a point of departure, as he follows the fortunes of some of its habitués even past the limits of the City. The result is an entertaining medley, which yet is not without form and conseeutiveness, and which in the matter of accuracy of detail will, on the whole, compare favorably with most works of the kind. So many of the landmarks of old London have disappeared during the last fifty years, and the existence of many that still remain is so constantly threatened, that a memorial of Dr. Johnson’s “ favorite street ” is welcome. The volume is profusely illustrated, largely by reproductions from old books and prints. — The very pretty and readable edition of the M orks of Charlotte, Emily, and Anne Brontë (J. M. Dent & Co., London ; Macmillan, New York) has been further increased by The Professor, Wuthering Heights, and Agnes Grey, and the Poems of the three sisters together with Mr. Brontë’s verses. The rage for completeness keeps even pace with the ascetic severity of selections, and one cannot find much fault with the zeal which has made this full edition, but we greatly doubt if the world will ever care for another. It would be hard for the world to get a prettier one, if it did have any such appetite. —Messrs. J. M. Dent & Co., London, have done another service to good letters in their reissue of the works of Henry Fielding in twelve volumes, nine of which have reached us, — two given to Joseph Andrews, four to Tom Jones, and three to Amelia. The series is edited by Mr. Saintsbury, who contributes to the first volume of each novel a characteristic essay, irritating by reason of its cocksureness, and the sort of obtrusion of the editor which is tolerable only because the editor really knows something about his subject. The volumes are much like the Brontë volume, though with a prettier binding ; they are delightful in the hand, and have etchings which partake of the old-time flavor. And then, what a treat awaits one who has a genuine love of literature, and reads these books not so much as novels as splendid pieces of English literature, couched in a style so masculine, and yet so pliant, as to be the despair of the careful writer of to-day! — In the Cameo Edition (Scribners), Mr. Andrew Lang’s Letters to Dead Authors appear in a new, attractive form, and are the better for the addition of four epistles, — to Maister John Knox, to the Reverend Increase Mather, to Homer, and to Samuel Pepys, Esq. Indeed, the letter to Pepys is one of the best of the entire series, for it enters as thoroughly into the spirit of the frankest of chroniclers as the verses Mr. Lang once mixed with those of Thomas Haynes Bayly caught the flavor of their model ; and this, it will be remembered, they did to the desired point of bewilderment. It is something more than “the mock-bird’s note” which enables Mr. Lang to address these dead worthies, not merely in their own outward mannerisms, but in a vein of approbation or remonstrance to which each of them in turn must have given heed, if he could have heard. — Messrs. Macmillan & Co. have issued a new edition of Coaching Days and Coaching Ways, by W. Outram Tristram. Illustrated by Hugh Thomson and Herbert Railton. It is uniform with the attractive series of which Old Christmas was the first and best, and, like all its companions, is a charming volume to the eye. The author considers the seven great highways of England, the Bath, Exeter, Portsmouth, Brighton, Dover, York, and Holyhead roads, ami his itineraries are a curious melange of history, tradition, anecdote, legend, fact, and fiction. His lively description (following Ainsworth) of the ride of Dick Turpin we find has lingered longest in our memory, and it is a good Specimen of his manner. But the writer is very much overshadowed by the artists, whose illustrations, over two hundred in number, are, as a rule, admirable, and give the book its principal value.— Windfalls of Observation, Gathered for the Edification of the Young and the Solace of Others, by Edward Sandford Martin. (Scribners.) One need not be a symbolist to catch from the title-page of this book a suggestion that it is of the Sandford and Merton variety. No first impression, however, could be more wrong, for the work consists of a number of very pleasant little essays, adapted to the last pages of magazines, on every-day topics of universal interest, such as marriage, death, horses, and climate. In his Little Brother of the Rich, Mr. Martin showed his power to amuse in rhyme. Here, with a very occasional tendency towards too deliberate funniness, he displays the same power in prose, and by its side exhibits a thoroughly assuring element of good sense. The book, in consequence, is a capital tiling to be left lying where it may easily be picked up.

Poetry. Selections from the Verse of Augusta Webster. (Macmillan.) When a volume of Selections, very like a book in the Golden Treasury Series, can be made from the poems of one person, and stand clearly forth as a book of distinct merit, there can be no question of its writer’s power. Mrs. Webster has published ten or a dozen volumes of verse, and yet, we venture to say, is less known in America than many a poetess of one or two books. Can the reason be that her Muse is not dressed according to all the fashions of the day ? Tt is not necessary to join a cult in order to understand Mrs. Webster, but readers who do not yet know her, and care for poetical simplicity, sincerity and strength, will find them in this little book ; and the rest of the world, which knows her already, will not grudge the wider spread of her name and work. — Wanderers, the Poems of William Winter. (Macmillan.) A single one of the new poems in this enlarged edition of Mr. Winter’s Wanderers would have justified the appearance of the volume, and that is the poem on the death of George William Curtis. It is a beautifully simple and genuine lament, such as no common loss could have evoked, and no unsensitive pen could have written. The note of lament, indeed, sounds through the book, and few singers could have struck it so often with such constant sincerity as Mr. Winter has shown. — The Æueid of Vergil, Books L-VI., translated by James Rhoades. (Longmans.) The translator disarms one sort of criticism by half acknowledging in his preface that his work is a labor of love, a thankless task, a “ sum of more to that which hath too much.” It would be pleasant to assure so modest a person that he is quite wrong. Unhappily, we find ourselves inclined to agree with him, and to lament this new instance of misdirected labor. Before people are old enough to print books, they translate Vergil with fidelity, and in maintaining this youthful standard Mr. Rhoades has permitted himself to write journeyman English verse. — Poems Dramatic and Lyrical, by John Leicester Warren, Lord De Tabley, with illustrations by C. S. Ricketts. (Elkin Mathews and John Lane, London ; Macmillan, New York.) The liberal use of such words as “ dædal ” and “ rathe,” no less than the pale green and gold cover and the severely mediaeval illustrations, set this book apart, beautifully made as it is, as belonging to the order of the precious, and crying out more than half in protest against what its author calls our “ huckster age.” Yet others than the illuniinati can find something to enjoy in the vigor of portions of the dramatic poem Jael, and in such verses as A Song of Faith Forsworn and A Madrigal. In another way readers may find their appetites whetted by coming upon the poet’s Arcadian landscape in which “crisp lambs are merry.” Verily the cook is forestalled. — Columbian and Other Poems, by Francis Browning Owen. (Register Publishing Company, Ann Arbor, Mich.) The prose in this volume is quite as remarkable as the poetry. The author is at once in advance of his times and behind them. His innovation is a generously appreciative autobiography ; his return to the past, a revival of the eighteenthcentury fashion of dedications. He has a separate patron for his collection, and for each of its longer pieces of verse. With a persistency which argues a guilty conscience, he trusts that these friends will not find the time given to the “ perusal ” of his works “ entirely squandered.” Of the works themselves it is needless to speak, except to say that a better poet than Mr. Francis Browning Owen might suffer something like a recoil from the guileless heading given to each page, to wit, Browning’s Poems.—The Conquest of Mexico and Peru, prefaced by the Discovery of the Pacific. An Historical Narrative Poem, By Kinahan Cornwallis. (The Daily Investigator, New York.) What fun Mr. Cornwallis must have had writing this poem in the intervals of business ! The ticker mayhave served as a metronome.

Fiction. Two Bites at a Cherry, with Other Tales, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. (Houghton.) Seven tales and fantasies, in which the reader will find not so much the story, which is supposed to be what he is after, and does not always get in modern fiction, but the whim, the expanded incident, the graceful embroidery of a character or scene. They are tales to be sipped, not gulped, and there are no dregs at the bottom. — The Petrie Estate, by Helen Dawes Brown. (Houghton.) The reader need expect no intricate legal problems in this carefully constructed story. The writer has chosen to interest herself rather in the development of the character of the heroine, who comes not only into the possession of the estate, but into that ownership of herself which is of vastly more consequence. There is no straining of situations or characters, and there is an undercurrent of serious meaning which gives strength to the book without intruding itself on the reader’s notice. — In Blue Uniform, an Army Novel, by George I. Putnam. (Scribners.) Granting that one half of a novel should be dreary, is it better to have it the first or the second ? This question is not propounded for debating societies, but suggests itself to the reader of this story. Ho has to endure much until the romance and tragedy, which end the book, begin, and then h ■ feels himself brought very near to the genuinely human life of a frontier post. There is comfort in the opportunity of saying these words even of a portion of an “ army novel,” for the common impulse is to admit at once that the sword is mightier than the pen, and have done with it. — Can This Be Love ? by Mrs. Parr. (Longmans.) The story of a will made in a passion, whereby a nephew is disinherited, and a little girl, the daughter of a poor clerk, becomes an heiress. That the child, brought up by a friend of the testator, a widow of good social position, should drift away from her kinsfolk, should fancy herself in love with her guardian’s only son, and should finally marry the disinherited one, now a popular author, and become the benefactress of her family, is the natural sequence. The tale is entirely conventional, both in incident and character, barring certain unfortunate attempts at originality in the portrait of the æsthetic Vivian ; but it is pleasantly written and readable, and so youthfully ingenuous in tone that it will probably prove attractive to the unexacting young reader. — A Literary Courtship, under the Auspices of Pike’s Peak, by Anna Fuller. (Putnams.) This trifle, by the clever author of Pratt Portraits, almost tempts one to think that her earlier book was taken from life, and this one from newspaper cuts. — Day and Night Stories, Second Series, by T. R. Sullivan. (Scribners.) The Spanish Doha of A Toledo Blade and the Italian Marchesa of The Anatomist of the Heart are women, different as they are in type, that one does not easily forget. Magazine readers will be glad to find them in a book, and to renew acquaintance with Mr. Sullivan’s men, among whom, though the bachelor malgré lui is rather persistently in evidence, the gentleman, happily, is always present. It need not be said that the stories as a whole show skill and power of no mean degree. — The New Eden, by C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne. (Longmans.) A wholly unnecessary tale of a new Adam and Eve, —or a new Miranda who has not even had a father, and an aboriginal Ferdinand who drifts on a raft from his island to hers. They make proof of various human experiences, including drunkenness and fighting, and in the end become sun-worshipers, A mysterious archduke, who appears in the Prologue and Epilogue, is, with the exception of their little Cain, the only link between these “Probably Arboreals” and the rest of the human race, — The Opinions of a Philosopher, by Robert Grant. (Scribners.) As a frivolous girl, Mr. Grant has confessed ; as a bachelor, he has reflected ; and now, as a philosopher, and of course a married one, he is entitled to opinions. The philosopher of his tale has formed them through the course of the pleasantest married life in the pleasantest Boston ; and when they are set forth in the manner of which Mr. Grant has command, it is no surprise that the result is agreeable. The quiet humor of normal, “satisfactory ” life pervades the book, which ends with a page of such genuineness in its showing of what man and wife may be to each other that it may well produce in frivolous girls and bachelors alike a tendency towards turning philosophers. — The Story of a Story, and Other Stories, by Brander Matthews. (Harpers.) The line between realism and reality is drawn very taut in some of these stories, and the reader cannot help feeling that the writer half shirks the honest work of his imagination when he veils real people and places so thinly as in the instances of the Metropolis magazine office, of Mr. Laurence Laughton at “ the club,” with Mr. Booth in the cut illustrating the story, and of the nameless Spanish dancer, with a picture definitely establishing her identity. According to Mr. Matthews’s own words, however, in the dedication of his book, it is “ the trade of story - telling ” which he practices. It is enough, then, that his stories should be well knit, workmanlike, and effective ; and all this, with here and there a touch of something better, many of them are. But “ betarded dinners,” — are they Americanisms or Briticisms ?—Late volumes in the new edition of William Black’s works (Harpers) are : White Heather, the love story of Ronald Strang, gamekeeper and poet, whose verses are scattered through the tale, and who numbers among his friends a rich Chicagoan and his pretty daughter, who, in Mr. Black’s hands, bear more resemblance to such characters in the flesh than they would be apt to do in those of most of his co-workers ; and Sabina Zerabra, the history of a contemporary Cinderella, given to good works in contrast to her family’s frivolities and worldly ambitions, who, after an unhappy matrimonial experience, is enabled, in the fifty-first chapter, to accept as her second husband the true prince. — Messrs. Lippincott have republished in holiday guise, and with illustrations by Edmund H. Garrett, four of the short stories of Louisa de la Ramé,— The Dog of Flanders, and Other Stories. Those who know Ouida only from her more popular novels have little conception of the beauty and pathos of some of her shorter tales, notably the title story of this volume, and one of its companions, A Leaf in the Storm.

Travel and Nature. The Wilderness Hunter, an Account of the Big Game of the United States, and its Chase with Horse, Hound, and Rifle, by Theodore Roosevelt. (Putnams.) Mr. Roosevelt has the advantage over many mighty hunters that he sallies forth from his own ranch, so that his hunting excursions are not so much special tourneys as the regular accompaniments of daily life. The spirited descriptions of his adventure, the graphic pictures of wild life, and the running commentary on men and classes of men combine to give this handsome volume the air of solid, substantial record of a manner of life which will one day be historic. The wholesome, virile force of the book is of a sort to stir the sluggard, and set him to a fresh valuation of his own powers of living.— A House - Hunter in Europe, by William Henry Bishop. (Harpers.) Readers of The Atlantic will recall with pleasure the narrative of Mr. Bishop’s experience as he rambled up and down Europe, and even touched Africa, in his search for ideal conditions of modest housekeeping. He has brought his papers together, made valuable additions to them, and offers thus a most desirable handbook, in anything but the dry handbook manner, for the increasing number of sensible Americans who wish, when living in Europe, to worship their own household gods. — Blackfoot Lodge Tales, the Story of a Prairie People, by George Bird Grinnell. (Scribners.) Legend and history are judiciously mingled in this record of a man’s intimacy with the Blackfoot Indians. The traditional tales of the tribe have their full share of interest as folk-lore, and startle the reader now and again with their close resemblance to the primitive stories of other lands. Mr. Grinnell puts them in effective form, and adds to them so straightforward and sympathetic an account of Indian life before and after its contact with “civilization” that the saying, “The best Indian is the dead Indian,” gains a new meaning, — it is best for the Indian. — The Shrubs of Northeastern America, by Charles S. Newhall. (Putnams) Mr. Newhall has done here for shrubs what he has already done for trees, — made a sort of finding list, by means of which the student may identify through leaf and flower the shrubs he meets in his walks. The simplicity of the book, and the rudeness but intelligibility of the cuts, which are plain in both senses, render it a serviceable companion.

Politics. Practical Essays on American Government, by Albert Bushnell Hart. (Longmans.) The point of view of the writer of this book is an interesting one, and it determines largely the worth of the treatment. He is a student of history, especially of American history ; he is a teacher of it in Harvard ; he belongs to the group of students and teachers who seek to employ scientific methods. When, therefore, he applies himself to such themes as the electiou of a President, civil service reform, the functions of the Speaker, the course run by a bill in Congress, the exercise of the suffrage, he takes up matters of great import in legislation and administration, and studies them from a basis of historic investigation and philosophic analysis, hut he uses actual, living conditions. Dr. Hart demonstrates by this book, as we think no one else has so well demonstrated, the possible close connection between academic study and practical politics. — History of Elections in the American Colonies, by Cortlandt F. Bishop. (Columbia College, New York.) A volume in the series of Studies in History, Economics, and Public Law, and a studious examination of general and of local elections as regards the qualifications required of electors and the management of elections, with an appendix of forms and unpublished statutes. The hook is a welcome addition to the literature of the subject, which indeed we think never has been brought into so orderly and comprehensive a form.

Illustrated Publications. The Book of the Fair : an Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World’s Science, Art, and Industry, as viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893. Designed to set forth the Display, made by the Congress of Nations, of Human Achievement in Material Form, so as the more effectually to illustrate the Progress of Mankind in all the Departments of Civilized Life. By Hubert Howe Bancroft. (The Bancroft Company, Chicago and San Francisco.) So reads the title-page of a work which has been projected to cover a thousand imperial folio pages, twelve by sixteen inches, and to contain over two thousand illustrations. It is issuing in twenty-five parts, of which two have reached us ; and if the other parts correspond in interest and beauty to these, the completed book will be a very substantial, and in many ways satisfactory record of the great fair. It is almost too much to ask that so splendid an achievement should be set forth modestly, but there are not many examples in these parts of that pernicious attempt to describe the big fair in words and sentences of exaggerated rhetorical splendor which has had so many illustrations in the correspondence of the day. If there is a single lesson to be drawn from the fair applicable to all arts, including the art of writing, it is the supreme value of proportion. The gigantic buildings do not impress the looker-on as gigantic, because the proportions are so fair and harmonious that size becomes subordinated to beauty, and we trust that this commendable record of (he fair will preserve a like simplicity of line and dignity of proportion. — Picturesque Chicago and Guide to the World’s Fair, issued by the Religious Herald, and presented to its subscribers as a souvenir of fifty years’ publication of the paper. (D. S. Moseley, Hartford, Conn.) A collection of process cuts with such text as the pictures demand. Some of the narrative is flowing, hut most of the explanations are of the dictionary order. Yet even the dictionary can be fervid, as witness this passage : “ Among the many magnificent structures of Chicago, the Auditorium is the greatest. It is the most famous building on the American continent. [Italics ours.] At once a grand opera house, a superb hotel, and a mammoth office building, there is not to be found on the face of the earth a pile that will compare with it. [Italics again ours.] It represents the modern idea, ax the Coliseum at Rome represented the ancient. It is in construction representative of Chicago as a city, where art, beauty, and utility are so strongly defined, though NEARLY ALWAYS BLENDED ON EVERY SIDE.” All the rest of the italics ours, faintly indicative of an admiration of the rhetoric. Small capitals mean great applause from us. — In turning over the numbers of L’Art, the fortnightly journal which, published in Paris, is supplied here by the Macmillans, one always finds interesting and well-studied papers and illustrations, and is quite sure now and then to come upon a thoroughly satisfactory etching, photogravure, or other reproduction of a work of art, historical or contemporary. In the half dozen numbers before us, closing with that for September 15, there are, for example, a Salon picture of 1893, Grande Marée dans la Manche, painted by Hagborg, in which the toilers by the sea are capitally rendered ; an etching from Babieu’s Bergerie, with an admirably reproduced interior of a sheepcote ; and a spirited Relais de Chiens, by Hermann-Leon.

Ethics and Religion. Tasks by Twilight, by Abbot Kinney. (Putnams.) The special appeal of this book is to parents, that they will instruct their young sons and daughters explicitly in all that is involved in the true meaning and dignity of marriage. The writer speaks with sufficient directness, but whether dealing with his favorite theme, or making more general remarks upon education and life, he reminds one of Dr. Hale’s Double ; for on these topics, certainly, much has been said, and on the whole very well said. — Verbum Dei, the Yale Lectures on Preaching, 1893, by Robert F. Horton, M. A. (Macmillan.) The best type of English non-conformist thought upon the Christian ministry is represented in this book ; and it is a very spiritual calling for which Mr. Horton pleads. Of necessity, the book’s appeal is distinctly to the clerical class ; yet no layman need he denied the satisfaction of know ng what sometimes he is inclined to doubt, — that standards as high as any the laity can set up for its spiritual leaders are earnestly urged by the leaders themselves. — Our Animal Friends is an illustrated monthly magazine issued by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in New York, and its yearly volumes bound make evident the various and often ingenious modes by which the prophets of this calling encourage humanity in the treatment of animals, and especially awaken in the minds of the young a somewhat dormant sense of pity and kindness.

Books for the Young. A Child’s History of France, by John Bonner. (Harpers.) As is usual in books of this class, the author lays stress upon dramatic and picturesque incidents, connecting them by a thread of narrative, thus giving a continuous history of France from the time of Clovis to the downfall of the Second Empire. The more salient points in this history have been judiciously selected, the work is well proportioned and readable, but the writer has not escaped some of the pitfalls lying in wait for the makers of such compendiums. The style is at times needlessly colloquial, some measure of grace and dignity not being out of place even in a child’s history ; and the tendency to offer simple and offhand explanations of complex matters occasionally leads to questionable results, as in the remarkable reasons given for England’s long life-and-death struggle with Napoleon. We are surprised to read in the preface that the book is not intended exclusively for children, but also for “ boys and girls who are ready to enter college.” We had imagined that young persons who had attained that degree of culture had left such elementary works far behind them, and were able to read histories that are also literature. The volume is attractive in its make-up, and is fully and well illustrated.— Heroic Happenings, told in Verse and Story, by Elbridge S. Brooks. With Illustrations by Garrett, Birch, Ogden Meynelle, Singren, and others. (Putnams.) The happenings date from Egypt B. C. 1340 to the present day. Mr. Brooks has caught up various incidents of history and common experience, and set them forth with that dashing style which seems, if not required, yet readily stimulated by heroism — Topsys and Turves, by P. S. Newell. (Century Company.) Most of us have learned in childhood to imagine in a vague way a world in which everything is upside down, but few have worked out for themselves a scheme of things in which objects inverted shall become no less objects of respect and proper formation. This is what Mr. Newell has done for us all in his colored pictures and the rhymes under and over them, which look and read as well one way as the other, if not better, —to adopt a topsy-turvy method of speech. The book is designed for the young, but possibly it may be found to resemble the circus in permitting many older persons to superintend the children’s amusement.