poetic expression. They are largely in the minor key, though now and then there is a charming joyousness, as in the opening poem and in The Bobolink. The story In Every Port, also, is told as only a poet would tell it. Yet again and again one finds a poem, like A Winter Grave, of eight stanzas, of which five are explicatory of three. — The Happy Isles, and Other Poems, by S. H. M. Byers. (Chas. L. Webster & Co., New York.) A new collection, with additions, of Consul Byers's verses, which are characterized by honest feeling and a certain heartiness of speech. Nature and military reminiscences and kisses are accountable for a good share of the poetry. - Mosses, Under the Pine, Seaweed, Tales at the Manse, a Revised Collection of the Poems of Marcus Fayette Bridgman. (F. S. Collins, Boston.) There is a prevailing quietness of tone about these unpretentious lyrics and idyls, which makes them not unwelcome; the stories and sentiments are simple and natural, and the melody has the charm which belongs to careful and slowly played music. The book appears to have been written mainly at dusk, when there are not many disturbing sounds of life.Parnassus by Rail, by Marion Mills Miller. (Putnams.) A little volume of considerable variety as regards subject. It is rather noticeable in the work of a young poet, just out of college, apparently, that the most conspicuous omission is of himself. Whether in translation, adaptation, or comment, the verse keeps clear of this subjective pitfall. - Osbulbaha, and Other Poems, by Robert D. Windes. (The Author, New Orleans.) Between prehistoric Indians and reminiscences of classic Greek, our poet manages to keep pretty well aloof from contemporaneous interests, for into his antiquity he does not even decant the present. In the Genesee, Early Poems, by I. D. Van Duzee. (De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., Boston.) The author states that these poems were all written before the end of his twenty-fifth year, and yet, from some dates given, he would appear now to be about threescore and ten. Harp of Hesper, Songs and Poems, by Mary E. Butters. (C. W. Moulton, Buffalo, N. Y.) More than a hundred and fifty poems, besides the author's portrait. - Delphic Days, a Greek Idyl, by Denton J. Snider. (Sigma Publishing Co., St. Louis.) The reissue of a book which shows

Mr. Snider no novice in the elegiac distich, in which was also written the book to which we referred a month or two ago. This series of scenes at Delphi, in which the writer mingles his classic reading and his Hellenic living, has a liveliness which is not daunted by the form of the verse. Mr. Snider insists upon it that the measure is in some vague way impelled by the place itself, and some of the verses do have a rhythmic beat which impresses one as born of a buoyant, sunny-tempered air; but it is also true that the poet who rides his steed so bravely sometimes dismounts without previous notice. — Lyrics and Legends, by Nora Perry. (Little, Brown & Co.) Under the sub-titles Songs of Spring, Songs of Summer, Autumn, Winter, Love and Friendship, Loss and Gain, Hope and Memory, Songs of New England, and Ballads, Miss Perry has collected some twoscore of her poems, the best being such as have a story element, where her tripping melodies let the story run off in an attractive fashion. - Lyrics of The Living Church, compiled by C. W. Leffingwell. (McClurg.) A collection of original poems which appeared first in The Living Church, an Episcopal journal of Chicago. The order of the Church year determines about half the volume, the remainder being given over to poems of consolation, patience, meditation, childhood, and the like. - The Poet and his Self, by Arlo Bates. (Roberts.) A volume of poems decidedly individual, and striking. some notes with much force. The lighter verse, such as the group of poems in A Flower Cycle, is rarely without a grave undertone, and the more profound poems, like The Great Sphinx and The Beginning and Ending, have a fine courage in their strong lines which bear strong thought. Mr. Bates's seriousness, indeed, carries him too far in the direction of brevity, leading him into verse too compact for melody and lyrical beauty. But if his mastery of poetic form gives him at last freedom of song, we have a right to expect some notable work. - Launcelot and Guenevere, a Poem in Dramas, by Richard Hovey. (U. S. Book Co.) The long Dedication at once commands the reader's respect, and he enters upon the successive books, The Quest of Merlin and The Marriage of Guenevere, with a courage and hope which are not daunted even by the classic jocularity of Puck, or the half-Runic character of

the literary reproduction of old-time spirits of the air and earth. Mr. Hovey is steeped in literature, and his whole work repeatedly suggests the sounds which it echoes; but it does much more than this: it excites strong hopes that one with so much dramatic skill, such striking poetic faculty, and so brave a spirit as he must have who would work in this material will sing in his own voice songs which shall wing themselves straight into the air we are breathing. Classical Poems, by William Entriken Baily. (Robert Clarke & Co., Cincinnati.) The title appears to indicate, not that the subjects of the verses are all taken from ancient classical themes, but that the writer pays respect in his verse to the classic writers of English poetry. We are afraid the effect upon mature readers will be something like the effect of much ancient classical poetry upon readers. — Memory's Casket, by Mrs. young Lucy H. Washington. (C. W. Moulton, Buffalo, N. Y.) - Zululu, the Maid of Anahuac, by Hanna A. Foster. (Putnams.) Fifty-three brief notes explain the slight difficulties of this Mexican story. Poems of Humanity, and Abelard to Heloise, by Lorenzo Sosso. (E. B. Griffith & Sons, San Francisco.) The curious who want more of Rabbi Ben Ezra than Browning saw fit to give will discover in Mr. Sosso's volume Ben Ezra Continueth, measure the same as in Browning. The Feast of the Virgins, and Other Poems, by H. L. Gordon. (Laird & Lee, Chicago.) The author finds suggestions for many of his poems among legends of the Dakotas; some themes, also, are derived from his experience in the army. The book is an octavo, and contains a portrait of the author. We would give a good deal to see a portrait of the artist who contributes the illustrations. -Sonnets, Songs, Laments, by Cora E. Whiton-Stone. (J. G. Cupples, Boston.) The verses, apparently, through which a man of emotion expresses her own experiA personal note sounds in almost all the work. - Phidias, and Other Poems, by Frank W. Gunsaulus. (McClurg.) A small volume reflecting the author's study and travel, with often a passionate burst and always intensity of feeling. The Bard of the Dimbovitza (Scribners) is the title of a volume of Roumanian folk-songs, collected from the peasants on her father's estate by Hélène Vacaresco, and translated into English by the Queen of Roumania

ence.

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(Carmen Sylva) and Alma Streltell. The songs possess a curious, dreamy, mystical quality which is hard to define, but which can be recognized by any one who cares to turn to He Who Took Nothing, Hay, or The Song of the Shroud. It is a distinctly original and interesting collection, which will command a small audience, but one worth having. A word should be said about the volume itself, which is a charming piece of book-making, possessing (in spite of some typographical affectations on the title page) marked elegance and distinction.

Fiction. The Squirrel Inn, by Frank R. Stockton. (The Century Co.) The friskiness of the name of the inn fits well the story, which is as nimble as one could desire. All the figures are on the alert, and succeed in placing themselves in the most unexpected situations at every turn. In this, as in other of Mr. Stockton's stories, there is an odd effect produced by the oldfashioned address indulged in by the men toward the women. It really seems as if, in this author's eyes, a woman were a most unaccountable creature, to be approached always not merely with respect, but with timidity. - Miss Wormeley, well known for her excellent translations of Balzac, has begun, apparently, to render a similar service to Paul Bourget. At any rate, we have the first and second series of his Pastels of Men (Roberts), containing in the first series the three titles A Saint, Monsieur Legrimaudet, and Two Little Boys. The skill of line, the touch of delicacy, the simplicity and yet subtlety of motive, make thesc portraits not only charming in themselves, but admirable studies in literature. If one could but learn this deft art! — A recent volume by Bret Harte is A First Family of Tasajara. (Houghton.) — Miss Bagg's Secretary, a West Point Romance, by Clara Louise Burnham. (Houghton.) A bright, entertaining story, not very elaborate in plot, but natural, and in these days, when novels are expected to carry concealed weapons about them, very grateful to the reader who asks for honest entertainment. Miss Bagg, a country maiden of uncertain age, unexpectedly falls heir to great wealth. Maxwell Van Kirk, who ought to have inherited the property, becomes her secretary. A woman who loves him, a woman whom he loves- But we leave the story to the story-teller. - The Children of the Abbey.

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by Regina Maria Roche. (McClurg.) We suppose that there are still a large number of unsophisticated readers who can weep over the long-drawn-out and multifarious woes of Amanda Fitzalan as sincerely as our grandmothers did. It can at least be said of this novel that, in spite of its enormous sentimentality, it has had vitality enough to live through a century. The Scottish Chiefs. (McClurg.) We are glad that so attractive an edition of this romance has been issued. To be sure, its highly colored sentiment is as old-fashioned as will be most of the introspective, analytic fiction of to-day eighty years hence, and its rather Grandisonian hero is far awaycenturies away from the real Wallace; but the story has sufficient vigor and movement and enough real feeling to make it still a favorite with many bright boys and girls,—that is, if they are not already familiar with their Scott, for then they are apt to find Miss Porter's thrilling tale but 'prentice work. - Pudney & Walp, by F. Bean. (Lovell.) A queer production. The writer appears to have satisfied himself as to the general scheme of his story, -two men beginning in humble life as partners in a stone quarry, and rising quickly to affluence, with families that hated the plebeian origin, and then to have let the minor incidents take care of themselves, with little attempt at a consistent story, but with occasional bursts of realistic description and portraiture which suppose a much closer regard for the probabilities in character and incident than the reader finds.

But we

must look for realistic details nowadays before writers have had a realistic change of mind. Culture, a Modern Method, by Elliott E. Furney. (I. H. Brown & Co., St. Louis.) We wish science joy of this novel of the future, in which a biological machine constructs a child that reads the newspaper before his first breakfast. The Spanish Galleon, being an Account of a Search for Sunken Treasures in the Caribbean Sea, by Charles Sumner Seeley. (McClurg.) This story, told in the first person, recounts the adventures of a young man who needed a hundred thousand dollars to clear off the incumbrance on an ancestral estate, and bethought himself of the record he had found of the loss of a Spanish galleon with portable property to the amount of three hundred thousand. He sails from Martinique

for Key Seven, off which the galleon was sunk, is shipwrecked, reaches the island with his chest, finds it uninhabited, resorts to all the devices known to such experience, receives in course of time a shipwrecked missionary and his beautiful daughter, meets with enemies in the form of a wicked pearl-fishery man and his assistants, foils his antagonists, raises the galleon, gets his money, marries his beautiful guest, and in the last page of the book sits on his ancestral porch. The ingenuity of the writer in all that relates to his Crusoe-like experience is considerable. The story is told in a straightforward way, and, though not designed for the young, will find its most appreciative audience in that class. - Down the O-hi-o, by Charles Humphrey Roberts. (McClurg.) The reader must not make the mistake, from the title, that this is a book of cheap jocularity. On the contrary, though a story in form, and one of some merit even as a story, its real value is in a series of scenes, often felicitous, and sometimes extremely spirited, of rural life, chiefly among Quakers, on the north bank of the Ohio in the period shortly before the war for the Union. The writer may well have been part of what he saw; and though there is almost a careless manner about some of his narrative, and he is more or less artificial in his treatment of the plot and the lawyers who are needed by it, his genuine interest in the more simple parts, as, for example, in the capital racing scene, carries the reader as well as the writer along at a good pace. - Ben Beor, a Story of the Anti-Messiah, by H. M. Bien. (Isaac Friedenwald Co., Baltimore.) The prophet Elijah, when he went up in a fiery chariot, landed in the moon, and found affairs in a bad way there. Rebellion and other naughtiness were going on, and at the same time, as nearly as we can make out through the smoke and fire of Mr. Bien's prose, equally iniquitous proceedings were on foot on earth. We get into a little clearer atmosphere in the second section of the book, which portrays, under a sort of allegory, the war which always has been waged between freedom and righteousness in the person of Moses and despotism and iniquity in the person of Ben Beor, the anti-Messiah or Wandering Gentile. The design of this tumultuous book is probably clear to its author, but the reader has to content himself in the main with a succes

sion of somewhat turgid historical scenes.

The Pocket Piece, Short Stories and Sketches by American Authors. First series, Number 1, by Edgar Mayhew Bacon. (Walbridge & Co., New York.) Mr. Bacon's clever work is already known to readers of The Atlantic. In this little volume he has collected a half dozen of his magazine stories. A new and uniform inexpensive edition of F. Marion Crawford's novels has been begun (Macmillan) with Mr. Isaacs and Dr. Claudius. A similar issue of William Black's novels (Harpers) opens with A Daughter of Heth, with a steel-plate portrait of the author for frontispiece. Mr. Black has taken the opportunity to give his work a careful revision. - William Morris's The Story of the Glittering Plain makes so sure a demand upon readers that it has been reissued in the ordinary style of books to be read. (Roberts.) Freytag's The Lost Manuscript, already issued in two handsome volumes, is now brought into a single solid but very readable one. (The Open Court Publishing Co., Chicago.) Recent numbers of Harper's Franklin Square Library are Mr. East's Experiences in Mr. Bellamy's World; Records of the Years 2001 and 2002, by Conrad Wilbrandt, translated from the German by Mary J. Safford; Mrs. Dines's Jewels, a Mid-Atlantic Romance, by W. Clark Russell; The Baroness, a Dutch Story, by Frances Mary Peard. - Number 15 of Good Company Series (Lee & Shepard) is Dreams of the Dead, by Edward Stanton. This is not a reissue, as are many of the numbers in this paper series. It is a fantastic work, in which the writer lays hold of some of the current speculations, to say nothing of his own discoveries, regarding astral bodies and the like, and undertakes to make an uncanny sort of netherworld book of travels. The result in the author's mind is the conversion of an agnostic materialist into an occultist. The general effect of the underworld upon the reader is not to make him feel goosey, but to make him yawn.

Science. Electricity and Magnetism, translated from the French of Amédée Guillemin. Revised and edited by Silvanus P. Thompson. (Macmillan.) This well-known work has been enriched in its passage from France to England; for, besides the many minor additions made by Dr. Thompson, the chap

ters on Dynamo-Electric Machines and on the Telephone have been largely rewritten by him, and the final chapter on Transformers, by Professor Walmsley, as well as appendices on Modern Views about Lightning-Rods and on the Nature of Electricity, are wholly new. The work, which is an octavo of nearly a thousand pages, has six hundred illustrations, large and small, and. in its combination of scientific thoroughness with a regard for popular interest in the application of the principles of electricity and magnetism to modern life it is full of value and attractiveness.- Nature and Man in America, by N. S. Shaler. (Scribners.) The effect of critical conditions of the earth on organic life in general, and of geographic influence on man, both in the past and more especially in the present in North America, - these are the great themes which engage Professor Shaler's attention; and the very notable physiographical chapter which he contributed to the Memorial History of Boston prepares the reader to look with eagerness for what this suggestive writer has to say when dealing with more comprehensive material. The book is one which cannot be neglected by any thorough student of American history, and it ought to be on the shelf of every teacher of geography. — The Living World, Whence it Came and Whither it is Drifting, by H. W. Conn. (Putnams.) The title page bears also the condensed summary of the contents as "a review of the speculations concerning the origin and significance of life, and of the facts known in regard to its development, with suggestions as to the direction in which the development is now tending." The author clears his way as he goes in a reasonable fashion, and shows an instinct for the essential as discriminated from the incidental points in the discussion, so that the reader respects the logic of the writer, and is not incumbered with a bewildering mass of particulars. His general deductions are that the organic world is approaching a limit in its conclusion, and that man, seizing upon the last undifferentiated faculty, the intellect, is developing this to the extreme. — Taxidermy and Zoological Collecting, a Compact Handbook for the Amateur Taxidermist, Collector, Osteologist, Museum - Builder, Sportsman, and Traveller, by William T. Hornaday; with chapters on Collecting and Preserving Insects, by W. J. Holland.

(Scribners.) Mr. Hornaday is an enthusiast as well as a very practical guide, and the reader of this serviceable book will enjoy the frequent outbursts of indignation at unsportsmanlike or unscientific practices, as well as the up-and-down style in which he goes about the business of his work. Especially to be commended are his strong words at the thoughtless destruction of birds by collectors who merely count the number killed. "There is a way," he says, "to prove whether a juvenile collector has really a love for the study of birds. Let the one who furnishes the sinews of war -parent, guardian, or elder brother-demand that he shall mount every good specimen he kills, and be able to tell all about its habits, food, economic value, etc. This will in any event result in great good. If the collector is not really absorbed in the study of bird-life, the labor such a course involves will soon deter him from indiscriminate slaughter."- New Fragments, by John Tyndall. (Appleton.) Fifteen addresses and papers, chiefly on topics connected with science and men of science, though among them is an interesting paper, Personal Recollections of Thomas Carlyle. The Evolution of Life, or Causes of Change in Animal Forms, a Study in Biology, by H. W. Mitchell. (Putnams.) The writer brings to an ardent study of the results of the great workers in biology the added advantage of observation in travel in unfrequented regions. The book, which is liberally illustrated, is rather a contribution toward the solution of a great problem than a comprehensive treatise.

Sociology. English Social Movements, by Robert Archey Woods. (Scribners.) An instantaneous photograph, catching with vivid precision the present aspects of that social movement which changes with so bewildering a rapidity from hour to hour. Mr. Woods tells of the labor movement, of socialism, of university settlements, of university extension, of the social work of the church, of charity and philanthropy, of moral and educational progress. On all these subjects he gives just the facts which intelligent people wish to know, and which are hard to learn at a distance because they are still matters of experience rather than of history. It is impressive and cheering to read this account of the vast energies which, in the England of to-day, are

turned toward social reform. It is more impressive and less cheering to think of the greatness of that sorrowful need which is hardly as yet affected to a perceptible degree by activities so multiform and so vigorous. - White Slaves, or The Oppression of the Worthy Poor, by Rev. Louis Albert Banks. (Lee & Shepard.) The sermons which form the basis of this book were delivered in South Boston, and contain an arraignment of clothing merchants and tenement-house owners, as well as a criticism of some of the public charities of Boston. The facts brought forward are fresh evidence, if any were needed, of the close connection between degradation and greed. We are members one of another in a terrible as well as a comforting sense, and the rich merchant and poor toiler have a Cain and Abel brotherhood. It is, indeed, the facts rather than the rhetoric which make this book one to be heeded. As a reverse picture, the author has given a pleasing account of a humanely conducted factory in Newark, N. J. - The Woman's Manual of Parliamentary Law, with Practical Illustrations especially Adapted to Women's Organizations, by Harriette R. Shattuck. (Lee & Shepard.) A delightfully minute and very sensible little book, in which the reader, if he be male, is given a glimpse into the room of a woman's meeting, and permitted to know what troubles the members when they desire to organize. If the reader be a woman, she will be met by the most explicit instructions. We notice that there is no fussy attempt at getting rid of masculine nomenclature, but "chairman" is used boldly, with no reference to the other form with its dangerous lapse into "charwoman." The Rights of Women and the Sexual Relations, by Karl Heinzen. (B. R. Tucker, Boston.) There is such a thing as the disease of liberty, and we think this author suffers from it, since it makes him absolutely nearsighted when he tries to look at Christianity.

Literature and Criticism. The fourth volume of Landor's Imaginary Conversations, as edited by Mr. Crump (Macmillan), continues the Dialogues of Literary Men; containing, by the way, the exquisite little Walton, Cotton, and Oldways. An etched portrait of Landor at sixty-five fronts the volume, a pugnacious face and attitude.