apparent and have greater value to one who reads the book at one or two sittings than was likely to be the case where a few months intervened between one's reading of the first chapter and of the last. The nervous compression of style commands respect, but also compels close attention, for it is not long before one discovers that he has to do with a work of art closely conceived and firmly executed. The appalling historical incident upon which Mrs. Catherwood builds her tale is well known to readers of history, but its tragical elements are heightened by an art which composes the picture with so much contrasting beauty and incisive grotesque

ness.

We cannot be done with admiring the poetic skill which constructed Le Rossignol and touched the whole tale with the fine nobility of Edelwald. Here is novel-writing which might go far to reconcile us with the theory that all forms of literary art are to be merged in that which goes by the name of fiction. If poetry has had its day in metrical form, the soul of poetry has suffered transmigration in such prose form as this, where one has not to contend with a hybrid prose poem, but is aware that a writer of poetic instinct has used a perfectly well-accepted mode of historical romance as the medium for impressing upon the mind a singularly exalted conception.

We have intimated our opinion that Mr. Thomas Hardy is the most notable artist in English fiction to-day. We do not institute a general comparison between him and a very admirable artist in design who has unexpectedly entered the field of the art of fiction, but we point out a resemblance of curious note: both in Tess and in Peter Ibbetson 1 is a murder committed. With Mr. Hardy it is virtually the conclusion of the whole matter; Mr. Du Maurier, on the contrary, makes his hero's deed but the be

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1 Peter Ibbetson. Edited and Illustrated by GEORGE DU MAURIER. New York: Harper &

Brothers. 1892.

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ginning of the end, and uses it as the foundation of the remarkable second half of Peter Ibbetson, which is one of the most original things in fiction. Yet, consummate artist as is Mr. Hardy, and amateur as the other consummate artist becomes on being removed from his own field, the author of Tess is scarcely more skillful than the clever new-comer in causing the tragedy to seem logical, or, as the modern phrase has it, inevitable. Circumstance follows circumstance unfalteringly, until in each case surprise is a very small element in the shock which the reader receives from the murder. It could not be expected that Mr. Du Maurier should be equally professional in all the details of his first novel, word, by the way, most imperfectly descriptive of a work so rare and so unusual, and a certain raggedness as to paragraphs, with even a Sigismundane attitude toward grammar on one or two occasions, betrays the 'prentice hand in writing. But these flaws are extremely trivial, and what appears to be a fault of inexperience on a larger scale is doubtless planned with reference to the following dream chapters of the book. although the charming recollections of child life at Passy, with all those handsome and unlucky and delightful people, in whom Mr. Du Maurier cannot take more pleasure than his readers, — although the early records of Gogo Pasquier, otherwise Peter Ibbetson, and Mimsey Seraskier, afterward Duchess of Towers, may seem to be too much protracted, it is soon discovered that the minuteness employed in them adds measurably to the verisimilitude and to the pathos of the dreams which take the poor prisoner and his lost love back to "Parva sed Apta" and happy hours.

For

But in one regard Mr. Du Maurier would certainly have done well to seek professional advice, which would have warned him against carrying his dream theory too far. We accept the baseless fabric of the lovers' ability to meet,

sleep having once set their spirits free, and, so strongly has Mr. Du Maurier's imagination willed, the duration of this marvel through twenty-five years makes little difference in one's credulity. But to see a great-great-grandmother in a vision is quite another thing, and still less do the lovers "dream true "—to use the now famous phrase · when they get back to the period of the mammoth. Mr. Du Maurier's hand is subdued here to what it has so long worked in, Punch; and the realism of the extranatural becomes for the moment its burlesque. As well might Gogo and Mimsey have climbed the ladder of dreams to the topmost branches of the family tree of the race, and there looked upon "Probably Arboreal," the greatest grandfather of all.

This, it should hastily be said, is the only real blemish in an exquisite and a very sad book. The latter word is used advisedly, although Peter Ibbetson contains not a few lively observations, and many persons, including most of the

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lovers or travelers in the world who look wistfully back on a childhood passed in some beautiful and distant place. Still less will the sadness of the spell Mr. Du Maurier has woven fail to touch those who are acquainted with grief. And more people than would be willing to admit it have contributed their own bit of pathos to Peter Ibbetson by trying to dream true. "It's very easy,' said the duchess; ce n'est que le premier pas. My father taught me: you must always sleep on your back with your arms above your head, your hands clasped under it, and your feet crossed, the right one over the left, unless you are left-handed; and you must never for a moment cease thinking of where you want to be in your dream till you are asleep and get there; and you must never forget in your dream where and what you were when awake. You must join the dream on to reality."'"

History and Biography. Life in Ancient Egypt and Assyria, from the French of G. Maspéro; with one hundred and eightyeight Illustrations. (Appleton.) An admirable example of the use and function of imagination in scientific research. The eminent author of this work has not sought, like Ebers, to cast the results of his investigation into the form of fiction, but he has drawn upon the great store of his knowledge of antiquity to give minute and vivid pictures of the life, both courtly and common, which is revealed by monuments and inscriptions. There is something extraordinary in this rehabilitation of ancient life, and its very smoothness and certainty do not greatly imperil one's confidence in the accuracy of the work. The third and closing volume of H. Morse Stephens's A His

tory of the French Revolution (Scribners) takes up the narrative at the meeting of the Legislative Assembly in October, 1791, and carries it forward to the close of the Reign of Terror. There is a studied temperateness of tone, for the most part, but the narrative is by no means colorless; a vigorous characterization attests the author's independence of thought, and the reader commits himself to Mr. Stephens's guidance with the confidence that his leader is not a mere raconteur, nor so philosophical in his bent as to have arranged the French Revolution upon a neat ground plan. The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon, the Story as told by the Imperial Ambassadors resident at the Court of Henry VIII., by J. A. Froude. (Scribners.) Mr. Froude calls this a volume supplementary to his History; it is in effect

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a recapitulation and reassertion of the points made by him which were most severely criticised. He uses material not at his hand when writing the History, but he finds it now reinforcing the positions he then took. - History of the Buccaneers of America, by James Burney. (Macmillan.) A reissue of Captain Burney's book published seventy or eighty years ago. He relies, of course, a good deal on Dampier, but he uses also the French narratives. There is a British hostility to Spain latent in the book, but the author himself plainly makes an effort at impartiality, and writes with a capital eye to good narrative effect. The personal tales of the buccaneers themselves are often very racy. Spanish Institutions of the Southwest, by Frank W. Blackmar. (Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore.) most welcome work, for while it is scarcely more than a full sketch of the subject treated, it opens the way for students into a very inviting field, and not only suggests lines of investigation, but inspires with a wise spirit. Professor Blackmar shows a keen appreciation of the interests involved in his pursuit, and does not stop with any near-sighted view of the existing remains of Spanish civilization in the southwest, but seeks to trace their origin beyond the immediate origin in Spain to the primitive source in Rome. The book ought to stimulate other minds. The Afghan Wars, by Archibald Forbes. (Scribners.) The two wars which Mr. Forbes recounts took place, the first in 1839-42, the second in 187880. The first, springing out of British complications with Persia, ended in disaster, and was relieved only by some signal acts of heroism; the second, arising from the desire of the English to interpose the force of an independent state between their possessions in India and the Russian frontier, was attended by more satisfactory conduct, and resulted practically in the accomplishment of what was aimed at. The volume has plans and some good photogravure portraits. — The Battle of Gettysburg, by S. A. Drake. (Lee & Shepard.) A small volume in the author's series of Decisive Events in American History. It is rather a popular than a scientific military piece of work, and gives in animated fashion a summary of the battle, with some criticism on the parts played by Lee, Meade, Halleck, and others. Life of Benjamin Harris

Mr.

Brewster, with Discourses and Addresses, by E. C. Savidge. (Lippincott.) It was scarcely necessary for Dr. Savidge to assume such a majestic tone in his biography, nor was it expedient, for the reader almost inevitably confuses the subject with the author, and thinks of Mr. Brewster as taking fine attitudes at every turn. Yet the material out of which this biography is constructed is most valuable and interesting, and the student who wishes to remind himself of the stirring scenes which accompanied the opening of Garfield's administration will find this book a useful aid in recalling the particulars of the great Star Route trial. Life of General Oglethorpe, by Henry Bruce. (Dodd, Mead & Co.) In the series Makers of America. Bruce has hunted his subject down with diligence, and availed himself, apparently, of all the printed material bearing upon it, and possibly also had access to unpublished documents, though he appears to have made little or no direct use of such material. As a mosaic, the book seems to offer one a ready reference to pretty much everything that has been said about the hero, and by means of his varied extracts the author has added a borrowed liveliness to his own rather slap-dash comments. The effect is somewhat crude, as though the material needed to be worked over, and there is considerable that is remotely relevant and needs to be adjusted by the reader to its true relations, but the faults are at least not those of dull and uninterested book-making. - Mark Hopkins, by Franklin Carter. (Houghton.) A volume in the series American Religious Leaders. Dr. Hopkins can never be left out of account in any study of American religious life during the second and third quarters of this century, and, whatever our colleges may be in the future, the country college of New England was so distinctly the model of a great many colleges elsewhere, especially in the northwest, that a study of one of the most characteristic is essential to any clear understanding of our educational system. Dr. Carter has made his book at once an inquiry into the sources of Dr. Hopkins's power and into the force resident in the college over which he presided. He is often penetrating, always candid, and sometimes, as in his story of Dr. Hopkins and the manikin, in his account of the college rebellion, and in

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this book impresses the reader as the work of an honest and a courageous thinker. His courage does not disclose itself in the declaration of results which imply a loneliness of position, on the contrary, in his final outcome he will be found at one with a great body of men, but in the manly way in which each step in the process of his thought is taken, as if the author found satisfaction in frankly facing whatever might be the consequences of his step. The whole argument is fresh and full of vitality, far removed from merely scholastic exercise. Hora Sabbaticæ, by Sir James Stephen. First and Second Series. (Macmillan.) These papers were originally contributed to The Saturday Review, and, roughly speaking, are devoted to a consideration of English and French theologians and philosophical writers of the seventeenth century. The subjects are chosen often because they furnish opportunities for administering unpalatable advice alike to friend and foe, to whom it is irritating chiefly because it usually happens to be true. Thus the author possesses a mind which would fit him to be either a legal-minded bishop or an ecclesiastical lawyer. His essays are scholarly, shrewd, incisive, but saturated with a legal weighing of evidence uniformly calculated to confuse the reader, who would like to penetrate the diplomatic silence of Sir James Stephen as to his own views on the questions he suggests. Thus the essays form, as a whole, an interesting and clever though peculiarly baffling and inconclusive book.

Science and Travel. The Horse, a Study in Natural History, by William Henry Flower. (Appleton.) The first of a series Modern Science Series-edited by Sir John Lubbock, in which the design is "to give on each subject the information which an intelligent layman might wish to possess." Mr. Flower considers the horse's place in nature, its ancestors and relations; then its nearest existing relations, like the tapir, wild ass, zebra, and quagga; and in the latter half of the volume analyzes the structure of the horse, chiefly as bearing upon its mode of life, its evolution, and its relation to other animal forms. The illustrations are to the point, but ineffective as the result of process work. There is a running reference to the bibliography of the subject. My Canadian Journal,

Extracts from my Letters Home written while Lord Dufferin was Governor-General, by the Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava. (Appleton.) Lady Dufferin abstains from political comment, but, writing in diary form, gives a great many details, some petty, some piquant, of the social life, sports, and occupations of Canadians, with much description of scenery. She made a flying visit to Boston, and some of her Boston readers will be mildly grieved at learning that she went to King's Chapel for service and supposed herself in a Universalist church. The book has the liveliness of good nature about it. -Glimpses at the Plant World, by Fanny D. Bergen. (Lee & Shepard.) A pleasantly written series of sketches, in which one who is at home out of doors sets forth in untechnical language, yet not wholly at random, some of the features of plant life which might attract the notice of a good observer. One of the merits of the book is in its attention first to particular plants rather than to general. — The Chinese, their Present and Future, Medical, Political, and Social, by Robert Coltman, Jr. (F. A. Davis, Philadelphia.) Dr. Coltman has recently returned from a few years' residence and travel in north China as a missionary physician, and records his experience and observation in a lively, readable book, in which there is some technical matter relating to his profession, but which is for the most part taken up with a free and easy narrative of light adventure and classified reflection. His enthusiasm and frankness make him a good companion. — A Song of Life, by Margaret Warner Morley. Illustrated by the Author and Robert Forsyth. (McClurg.) A little volume, its pages decorated with copies of fauna and flora, which may be described to those who know Mrs. Barbauld as a sort of scientific hymn in prose. From flowers, through fishes, frogs, and birds, the development of life into the human form is traced, and the common as well as the distinctive elements of physical life are pointed out. The book is sugges tive, and is conceived in a reverent spirit, with due restraint also when once the halfrhythmical style is accepted.

Fiction. The Tragic Comedians, a Study in a Well-Known Story, by George Meredith; with an Introductory Note on Ferdinand Lassalle, by Clement Shorter. (Rob