their inhuman cruelty, stood at bay, and withdrew under cover of night, to begin their long flight, fraught with unspeakable hardship and suffering, through the iron winter weather, to the camp of Crazy Horse.

Not the least of the many admirable qualities of Captain Bourke's book is its healthy and thorough-going Americanism. It is a good thing to have some adequate tribute paid to the generals and soldiers who have done honor to the nation by their feats of arms during the last quarter of a century of what we are accustomed to consider profound peace. We are, as a people, curiously ignorant of the noteworthy military deeds performed by our troops in the grim frontier warfare of this period. In this we offer a by no means pleasant contrast to the English, who always show a prompt and hearty appreciation of what their soldiers accomplish on their Indian and African frontiers. Mr. Rudyard Kipling has done nearly as much for Tommy Atkins and his Indian friends and foes as Bret Harte before him did for the Californian miners; but no such writer has arisen to bring home to us the life work of our own Western soldiers. So it is

-

with their commanders. It is to the credit of the English that their reading public is so quick to recognize and record the services of Sir Frederic Roberts and Lord Wolseley. Contrast this with the attitude of our own reading public. Only a small fraction thereof is acquainted with the campaigns waged against foes more terrible than Pathan or Zulu - infinitely more terrible than the contemptible soldiery of Arabi Pasha - by Crook, Custer, and Miles, to mention American soldiers with whose exploits and military standing those of Roberts and Wolseley can legitimately be compared. Many of our people who know well enough by name the Sikh and Ghoorka auxiliaries of the British army would be puzzled by a reference to Major North's Pawnee scouts or the Apaches of Captain Crawford; and it is possible that some of them, at least, are better acquainted with the campaigns in Ashantee land and Afghanistan than with those in Montana and Arizona. To these good persons we recommend Captain Bourke's book as an urgently needed piece of missionary work concerning their own history and their own land; and we earnestly hope that we shall see more such books in the future.

History and Biography. My Threescore Years and Ten, an Autobiography, by Thomas Ball. (Roberts.) There is that in Mr. Ball's Autobiography which reminds us a little of Chester Harding's, - a frank, kindly account of a life which, with untoward beginnings, seemed to blossom into artistic success, keeping all the while a goodnatured self-respect in the midst of a clear recognition of deficiencies. There are many pleasant passages in this rambling narrative, which reads as if it were jotted down at odd moments, in disregard of any very consecutive form. The picture it gives in

cidentally of Boston in the middle of the century is often one of interest from its betrayal of provincial tones. Salem Witchcraft in Outline, by Caroline E. Upham. (The Salem Press, Salem.) Mrs. Upham has gone mainly to Mr. Charles W. Upham's historic work for her material, but has aimed to make a brief narrative which shall present the facts in the case in a fresh, vivid manner. This she has done effectively, and in a compass more convenient than we remember to have found before. If she views this terrible outburst with indignation at the pitiless clergy, and admi

He

ration for stout-hearted Rebecca Nourse, she is in accord with most readers of the day. Yet, blind as our ancestors were to their own cruelty, it is to be said that this tornado of superstition which swept away so many souls gathered its irresistible force from many generations of men, and expended it on one. The Life and Times of Niccolò Machiavelli, by Professor Pasquale Villari. Translated by Madame Linda Villari. In two volumes. (Scribners.) This new edition of a work whose importance was recognized when the original appeared reflects special credit on author, translator, and publishers. It is a thorough English version, unabridged and well equipped, of a history which covers the most genetic period of Italian life. The subject of the biographical treatment offers an excellent starting point for a consideration of the modern state in its relation to the Renaissance, and Professor Villari, whose mind is scientific in its cast, has perceived with great clearness the movement of the political, religious, and artistic thought of Italy in the time of Machiavelli. writes with modern Italy for a background to his thought; that is, his history is meant for people of this day to read, and he has fortified his position with abundant documents. It is the philosophic treatment which will most attract readers. The illustrations, largely portraits, are admirable, and admirably printed. Life of Jane Welsh Carlyle, by Mrs. Alexander Ireland. (Charles L. Webster & Co., New York.) Mrs. Ireland's task has been to separate Mrs. Carlyle from her husband; to collect into one convenient volume the letters and memorials which, for the most part, lie scattered in several publications; and thus to permit one to see by herself a person who, had she not married Mr. Carlyle, might still have made an impression upon her countrymen and countrywomen. We question the wisdom which thus seeks to dispart this remarkable pair. Mrs. Carlyle was Carlyle's wife, and Mrs. Ireland does not succeed any more than death did. The amount of new material in the book is inconsiderable. - Journal of Maurice De Guérin, edited by G. S. Trebutien, with a Biographical and Literary Memoir by Sainte-Beuve. Translated by Jessie P. Frothingham. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) A new translation, in good English,

of a French classic which has a peculiar interest to-day, since, written sixty years ago, the attitude toward nature and toward society found in it is far more common to educated and sensitive minds than when the journal was penned. The delicacy of sensibility which it discloses has a purity and freedom from mawkishness most agreeable to the reader, who ventures upon the perusal with a little timidity at first, from the fear of encountering a soul too high strung to make a partnership in its experience possible. Peel, by J. R. Thursfield. (Macmillan.) One of the Twelve English Statesmen Series. The treatment of the subject is of the best order of English political writing. It is a study, acute, discriminating, and resolute, of a character simple in its lines, but set in such complex relations as itself to seem complex. Mr. Thursfield, in the course of his narrative, makes some capital reflections upon other than strictly biographical phases of his subject, as when, for example, he touches in a few sentences upon the characteristics of the eighteenth century. It may be said, in general, of political subjects in English history that they have a special charm for the student, since no other nation has given such singular opportunity for the practice of statesmanship. The conditions of government have stimulated the development of men who have worked in affairs as an artist works in his material. — Literary Industries, a Memoir, by Hubert Howe Bancroft. (Harpers.) In this moderatesized volume Mr. Bancroft has given an account of his life and its product in the vast work on the Pacific coast, for which he accumulated materials, and which he organized as it stands. It has been acutely said that biography is sure to be false, autobiography sure to be true: because in writing the life of another man the author inevitably and unconsciously impregnates the work with his own personality; in writing his own life the author in vain seeks to conceal his personality; inevitably and unconsciously he discloses it. That remarkable result of business enterprise, organizing power, and scriptorial ambition to be found in the History of the Pacific States well deserved to be recorded in detail, and no one could have done the task so surely as Mr. Bancroft. - In the series of Johns Hopkins University Studies (the Johns

Hopkins Press, Baltimore), a recent issue is Public Lands and Agrarian Laws of the Roman Republic, by Andrew Stephenson. The author's plan has been to sketch "the origin and growth of the idea of private property in land, the expansion of the ager publicus by the conquest of neighboring territories, and its absorption by means of sale, by gift to the people, and by the establishment of colonies, until wholly merged in private property."— Harmony of Ancient History, and Chronology of the Egyptians and Jews, by Malcolin Macdonald. (Lippincott.) The author's method is first, in a series of chapters, to determine Egyptian chronology and establish certain epochs, then to inquire into the technical chronology of the Jews and ascertain the chronologic epochs from the exodus to the reign of Hezekiah, and finally to trace the synchronous history of the two peoples. He makes use of documents, monuments, astronomical observations, coins, and the like.

Poetry and the Drama. Lyrical Poems, by Alfred Austin. (Macmillan.) There is an affectionate regard for nature in these verses, which is not less genuine that it has a touch of self-consciousness in it. That is to say, Mr. Austin poetizes, though he does not attitudinize. He is in love with nature, and there is nothing shy about his devotion. Indeed, there is often a freshness which half suggests the Dorset Barnes; but Mr. Austin is always the cultivated poet, to whom nature is a graceful part of a fair life. He turns, when not in face with nature, to the refined England of high breeding, and intimates by his verse that his associations are with the best people. The melody of his verse possibly deludes him into a fluency of expression which sometimes wearies the reader. A second series of Poems by Emily Dickinson has been issued (Roberts), edited, as was the first, by T. W. Higginson and Mabel Loomis Todd. It has an interesting preface by Mrs. Todd, and a fac-simile of Miss Dickinson's handwriting. A classification of her verse has been attempted under the headings Life, Love, Nature, Time, and Eternity. What strikes one afresh, as he takes up the book, is his interest in reading, independent of his poetic preferences. The quick contact with another nature, and that a singularly aggressive one, makes reading Miss Dickinson an intellectual excitement. We raise our

objections, we rule out poem after poem, yet we keep on reading, never sure but irritation will give way to delight. The lawless is sometimes more interesting than the lawful. — The Golden Treasury Series (Macmillan) is enriched by the addition of Balladen und Romanzen, selected and arranged, with notes and literary introduction, by C. A. Bucheim. The title page has a pretty vignette of Uhland. The contents are grouped chronologically under three periods: from Bürger to Chamisso, from Uhland to Heine, and from Freiligrath to the present time. The second period is the fullest, including, besides Uhland and Heine, Rückert, Körner, Platen, Wilhelm, Müller. Mr. Bucheim has shown good judgment in giving the largest number of examples from the acknowledged masters, and in keeping the whole number of names represented small. — Drauss un Deheem, gedichte in Pennsylvänisch Deitsch, bei'm Charles Calvin Ziegler von Brushvalley, Pa. (Hesse & Becker, Leipzig.) A thin book of verse, with an Appendix devoted to the pronunciation of Pennsylvania German. The writer points out the considerable infusion of English words in this odd naturalization of German. His own poetical work embraces several translations from Longfellow, Bryant, and Emerson, and his serious poems inevitably set one to recalling Hans Breitmann. Homer in Chios, an Epopee, by Denton J. Snider. (Sigma Publishing Co., St. Louis.) An ingenious piece of work. Mr. Snider weaves a hexametrical web about the meeting and marriage of Hesperion from the northland and Praxilla, daughter of Homer. Homer and David and Hesiod all take part in the story, which is, if we are not too daring or blundering in our guesses, a sort of apologue of the blending of Greek and Hebrew influences in the life of the modern world. The hexameters trip along in an amusing dance which might make the author of Evangeline smile, but would surely make the author of Empedocles on Ætna frown.

Modern Love, by George Meredith. (Thomas B. Mosher, Portland, Me.) A choicely printed and bound edition of this sequence of sonnets. The book is introduced by an admirable essay by Mrs. Elizabeth Cavazza, in which, with interpretative skill and good taste, she points out the underlying argument of this splendid

achievement. However impatient one may be, in these days of swift directness, at the involutions of Meredith's art, here is a work which, subtle and elusive, is yet so impressive by its dignity of speech and its restrained power as to take possession of the mind and give one a sense of the wonderful possibilities of poetry. The form of a sonnet sequence has much to do with the success of the work; for it enables Mr. Meredith to concentrate his verse upon each moment of the tragedy, and yet to expand that moment into a rich poetic statement. Lovers of poetry owe a debt to editor and publisher for offering them this book in so convenient, beautiful, and intelligible a form. Days and Dreams, by Madison Cawein. (Putnams.) When Mr. Cawein is not feverish, when he has some simple theme which calls for simple expression, his poetic nature betrays itself. But it must be said that his verse too often reads as if it were written late at night, not early in the morning; under the gaslight, and not in the cool shade. Mere lavishness is not splendor, and his words sometimes rush along in a stream too much knocked about by the storms to carry safely any very costly freight of thought or passion.

If one wishes to see what a melodramatist bitten by realism can do, let him read the entertaining Chihuahua, a New and Original Social Drama in Four Acts, by Chester Gore Miller. (Kehm, Fietsch & Wilson Co., Chicago.) As one of the characters says: "Some people complain of having a skeleton in their lives; I feel at times as though I owned a graveyard. I am too weak; but then these mental strokes are frightfully realistic." The returned dead man in this drama hypnotizes the rascal, and with a little bottle for hypnotism appears to the writer to be a sort of drug rearranges the world in which he finds himself. An Idyl of the Sun, and Other Poems, by Orrin Cedesman Stevens. (Griffith, Axtell & Cady Co., Holyoke, Mass.) The title poem, which is in blank verse, has a lofty design, and contains at least one striking passage. A certain splendid apparition named Vivero, formed in spirit like the ancient Titans, challenged Heaven. The on-lookers saw him spread his glorious wings,

"And, like a winged avalanche in air,

Hurl himself straight upon the awful goal.

When lo he vanished like the thinnest flake
Of tenuous snow upon a sea of fire."

There is much exalted imagination and spiritual insight in the work, and if the author always thought clearly and married his imaginations to artistic form, he would unquestionably make a strong impression on his readers. As it is, they find it worth their while to surmount the obstacles which the author raises. Sunshine in Life, Poems for the King's Daughters, selected and arranged by Florence Pohlman Lee, with an Introduction by Margaret Bottome. (Putnams.) A collection of hymns and poems having a religious spirit. An inexact chronological order has been followed, and in the last part of the volume a good many poems by writers unknown to the compiler, and by persons whose names are not yet known to fame, are included. As the title intimates, the collection is intended to be cheerful rather than consolatory. — Odes, Lyrics, and Sonnets, from the Poetic Works of James Russell Lowell. (Houghton.) A little volume in the White and Gold Series. The difficulty with such a selection is that, however well pleased the reader may be with what he finds in it, he always wants at least one other poem. It is a convenience, however, to have in a handy volume the Commemoration Ode, The Courtin', Aladdin, Villa Franca, The Dancing Bear, Endymion, Under the Old Elm, Without and Within, and other verses illustrative of the range of Lowell's power.

--

Nature and Travel. Land of the Lingering Snow, Chronicles of a Stroller in New England from January to June, by Frank Bolles. (Houghton.) Mr. Bolles is an eccentric stroller; we hasten to say that we are using the word in its proper sense, and mean only to point out that even the footpath is too much trodden for him. He goes off at a tangent, and this habit intimates a certain individuality of observation which has its own charm. The precision of his chronicle as to hours and days and places is the sign, on the other hand, of his perpendicularity of mind, and one tendency constantly corrects the other. If he were only precise, he would be tiresome, he would be set like a clock; if he were only vagrant, his desultoriness would weary one by its aimlessness. As it is, the reader who follows him in his strolls always comes back

and is refreshed as by a breezy companion; and now and then there is a phrase, a passage struck out on the moment, which is like a staff plunged into a snow bank, revealing color and depth not to be seen by one merely brushing the surface of the bank. A Year in Portugal, 1889-1890, by George B. Loring. (Putnams.) Dr. Loring has printed the journal which he kept during his brief career as United States minister to Portugal. His own interest in agriculture led him to be somewhat more specific in his study of this industry, but his observations generally are those of a traveler with a wide range of tastes, and a readiness to hear and see whatever came in his way, whether of historical or of contemporaneous consequence. — The Business of Travel, a Fifty Years' Record of Progress, by W. Fraser Rae. (Thos. Cook & Son, New York and London.) A jubilee volume, in which the note of exultation over the fifty years of Cook's Tours is sounded, not with a trumpet, but with a whole orchestra. The record is really a very interesting one to any who would see an illustration of organization applied to one of the most difficult branches of human pleasure. It is safe to say that Thos. Cook and Son have been the means of moving a larger number of persons to a larger number of historical shrines than ever Peter the Hermit incited to go to the Holy Land, and Mr. Thomas Cook may well content himself with the thought "that, on the whole, he will leave the world a pleasanter place to travel as well as to live in."

Fiction. Ursula is the latest in the series of Balzac's novels, translated by Miss Wormeley. (Roberts Bros.) Ursule Mironët bears marks of the author's studies in clairvoyance. It was written in 1841, not long before its author put forth his programme of the Comédie Humaine, and when thus he was bringing into a systematic whole the separate studies in human life which to the readers had been so far quite independent of any connection with one another. It is quite possible that in writing it Balzac had in mind its constituent part in his scheme; it is certain that he pleased himself with the reflection that he was portraying the contact of a young woman with life without loss of her virtue. Brunhilde, or The Last Act of Norma, by Pedro A. De Alarcón. Translated from the Spanish

by Mrs. Francis J. A. Darr. (Lovell.) Between the Spanish and the English, this tale belongs to the fizz, pop, bang! school of literature. There is a catharine wheel constantly whirling before the reader's eyes, and the result is much dazzle, little light, and total darkness after the show is over.

-

Master William Mitten, or A Youth of Brilliant Talents who was Ruined by Bad Luck, by Rev. Augustus B. Longstreet, D.D., LL. D. (J. W. Burke & Co., Macon, Georgia.) The unsuspecting reader who takes up this book fancies, very likely, that he has come upon a burlesque of the oldfashioned moral tale. But the reader who remembers Georgia Scenes, that delicious bit of old-fashioned humor, and discovers that this book is by the same author, will prefer to think it a curious survival, with its italicized words and phrases, its highdicky style, its genuine love of fun, and its reflection of a bygone period of Southern society. The book is a most interesting document for the sociologist, and a surprise to the hardened novel-reader. From Timber to Town, down in Egypt, by an Early Settler. (McClurg.) "One day, arter me an' mother was a livin' by ourselves agin, our chillern all marri'd an' gon', one o' them ar scribblin' fellers step'd in wi' a paper he wanted me ter sine, a settin' forth thet he was a gittin' the names o' the leedin' c'aracters o' the kounty wi' the intenshun o' ritin' a passel uv 'em up es representatives o' the balence, an' bring 'em out in a big book tergether wi' ther rale steal plate picturs," and so on for nearly three hundred pages. This is realism gone to seed. We wonder if the residents of southern Illinois, a hundred years from now, will be using this book with annotations as a textbook in reading, with incidental use as a picture of manners in this antediluvian period? — St. Katherine's by the Tower, by Walter Besant. (Harpers.) A spirited tale of English life as affected by the French Revolution. Mr. Besant gives his historical novels a just realism by the power which he has of vivifying persons and scenes, materials for which are derived alike from books and from human nature. - Rabbi and Priest, by Milton Goldsmith. (Jewish Publication Society of America, Philadelphia.) Mr. Goldsmith states that he is indebted for some of the more personal material out of which he has woven