vast storehouse of literary facts, with a minimum of casual comment; in intent scientific rather than popular, designed for reference, not for continuous perusal, hence addressed to the head chiefly. The reader may draw his moral sentiments himself, and find edification in abundance elsewhere. If these traits be disappointing to some, they will gratify others, and are a part of the Dictionary plan. If the arrangement (as already hinted) be somewhat confused, irregular, and inconvenient, with its appendices and multiplied indices, one must remember that the work grew upon its builders' hands. If the style be sometimes slovenly and awkward, the editor had too much to do to polish all his sentences, or those for which he leaves the credit to his contributors: the labor of revision was heavy, his was the directing mind, and many hundreds of articles had to be done over again. If the criticism sometimes misses the mark, as when a rival dignitary says that Dean Stanley's

"taste and felicity of diction seem to desert him when he is writing verse," the reader who thinks differently can make his own mental note. Both England and America are free countries, and those who find their favorite authors unjustly used here, or some topics scrappily and incompetently handled, may retain their prior opinions without blame. In short, the encyclopædist cannot always be also a stylist and an acute thinker. No human judgment is infal lible, no work of man can attain perfection at all points; certainly this one has not done it. Defective as it may be on its intellectual and literary side, it is such a treasury of information about the hymns of all lands and ages as we have not had before, and a monument of laborious zeal in collecting and tabulating minute facts in a field hitherto imperfectly tilled, and which we venture to consider in some sense a field at least appertaining to the huge farm of literature.

Travel and Outdoor Life. Travels amongst the Great Andes of the Equator, by Edward Whymper. (Scribners.) Mr. Whymper is a veteran mountaineer, and, like men who have a passion for high altitudes, he cast about for a special reason for making his next trip. Nothing so whets the appetite for climbing as the search for some bug, or plant, or glacial phenomenon, or what not. Mr. Whymper had debated the question whether or no there was such a thing as mountain sickness, and what its actual conditions were. He was prevented from going to the Himalayas or the highest Andes, so he went to Ecuador, and spent several months on Chimborazo and other poetical peaks. He accomplished his errand, but it must not be supposed that he perpetually discusses the subject of mountain sickNot at all. That was a mere excuse

ness.

for his journey, and the reader gets a lively account of Mr. Whymper's experience, with admirable pictures and a running description of such fauna and flora as came in his way. The book will have fascination for climbers. - Equatorial America, Descriptive of a Visit to St. Thomas, Martinique, Barbadoes, and the Principal Capitals of South America, by Maturin M. Ballou. (Houghton.) Mr. Ballou lingers among the West Indies, and then circumnavigates South America, touching at the principal places, but not going very far inland. He records personal impressions, and occasionally gives brief statistics or comments upon the political, commercial, and social life with which he comes in contact. The Spanish-American Republics, by Theodore Child. (Harpers.) The first impression produced by this book is of its

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pictorial value, since its great variety of illustrations gives to the eye a quick notion of the external features of the countries and inhabitants. The letterpress gives at first the same impression, and is marked by animated observation and agreeable narrative; but the reader discovers that the author sees below the surface, and is intent on bringing to light some of the underlying elements of this strange compound of barbarism and civilization. Mr. Child is an acute observer, and writes as a man of the world who does not mistake appearances for realities. The Mediterranean Shores of America, or The Climatic, Physical, and Meteorological Conditions of Southern California, by P. C. Remondino, M. D. (The F. A. Davis Co., Philadelphia.) The range of climate in Southern California is indicated by six well-marked divisions; hence the necessity of a clear understanding of the needs of the patient, and an intelligent perception of the different phases of climate, in order to make the punishment fit the crime. This work is an abridged handbook, designed chiefly for the invalid, but containing also a variety of information about the several sections of the country, and a number of pictures, among them one of a man a hundred and ten years old, whose figure and countenance are a warning to those who give up the pleasure of dying in their prime by living in Southern California. - Across the Plains, with Other Memories and Essays, by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Scribners.) The title essay recounts Mr. Stevenson's experience in trav eling from New York to San Francisco in 1879 by an emigrant train, and afterward he describes his sojourn at Monterey. Fontainebleau: Village Communities of Painters follows, and nine other papers of a miscellaneous character fill out the dozen numbers. The only thread on which they are strung is the shining thread of Stevenson's genius, which is at play here in its light, idle fashion. -Glimpses of Nature, by Andrew Wilson. (Harpers.) A collection of science jottings, originally contributed to the Illustrated London News by a scientist of standing, who brings his large knowledge to bear upon a great variety of topics capable of brief notice, such as lobsters, oysters, starfishes, dandelion down, the mistletoe bough, flies, the tongue and speech, a corner of Kent, and the like. The Rescue of

an Old Place, by Mary Caroline Robbins. (Houghton.) A score or more of chapters relating the experience of the buyer of a neglected spot on the shores of Massachusetts Bay. The place was a small one; everything was on a minute scale except the zeal and ingenuity of the restorer. The charm of the book is in the graceful manner in which the little place is gradually built up before the imagination; and the very modesty of the experiment attracts the reader, who sees that the materials from which all this beauty grows were of common, and not exceptional sort. The style is winning, and the pretty book ought to awaken a desire in many to go and do likewise. Little Brothers of the Air, by Olive Thorne Miller. (Houghton.) Readers of The Atlantic need only to be reminded of Mrs. Miller's characteristics as a narrator of bird life. She is after the individual bird, and an opera-glass is her deadliest weapon. No one has written more . precisely and more affectionately of this and that winged creature, and the studies which lie at the basis of her description are so patiently and steadily conducted that one comes to have as much confidence in Mrs. Miller's accuracy as he has unflagging interest in her charming narratives. — Wood Notes Wild, Notations of Bird Music, by Simeon Pease Cheney. (Lee & Shepard.) Mr. Cheney was a singing-master, who spent the spare moments in the last few years of a long life in collecting and noting down the bird songs of New England. His enthusiasm is delightful, and the text, which is a running comment on the birds and their music, is fresh, unconventional, and hearty. The book is edited by Mr. Cheney's son, John Vance Cheney.

Fiction. A Fellowe and his Wife, by Blanche Willis Howard and William Sharp. (Houghton.) A very skillfully constructed story. The theme is simple. A man and his wife are separated by the passion of the wife for art, which leads her to study in Italy, while he remains on his estate in north Germany. A correspondence ensues which supposes entire confidence between the two; so much so that the wife unconsciously betrays her peril through a net of intrigue woven about her. Her art blinds her to the danger she is in, and at the same time makes the danger real. The whole narrative is conducted by the corre

spondence, and though in the most dramatic portions this vehicle is strained to carry the action, there is no outrageous departure from probability, and the device permits the story to avoid mere incident in the culminating passages, and centre upon the relations of these two persons to each other. The scheme excites one's admiration the more that Mr. Sharp writes all the letters of the wife, and Miss Howard all those of the husband. In the new and revised edition of William Black's novels (Harpers) a recent number is A Princess of Thule. The freshness which made Black's early novels so attractive to novel-readers does not vanish when one returns to them. It is perhaps most noticeable after one has been reading the more jaded novels which have done service under his name of late. Another volume in the same series is his lively and provocative Strange Adventures of a Phaeton. Grania, the Story of an Island, by Hon. Emily Lawless. (Macmillan.) One of the islands of Arran - Inishmaan is the scene of this story. It is a faithful, if rather sombre, picture of Irish fisher-life, well written, and with a real love and appreciation for the wilder aspects of nature and of human nature. The exigencies of the final situation demanded perhaps the sacrifice of the heroine, although it would have been well if the dull and somewhat monotonous picture could have been lightened rather than deepened at the close. But the book is worth reading, and vastly better than the average novel. The Chevalier of Pensieri -Vani, by Henry B. Fuller. (The Century Co.) A reissue of a little book which is well worth its prettier dress. The charm of the style is somewhat elusive, and doubtless to some readers the book teases rather than charms; but the half-serious, half-mocking tone is too consistent and persistent to be regarded as an affectation. How well it will wear it is impossible to tell, but here is an individual note struck firmly and delicately. The matter of the book is partially concealed by the style, but the writer has not traveled, observed, and reflected in vain. - The Three Fates, by F. Marion Crawford. (Macmillan.) The three seem in turn to be the arbiters of George Wood's destiny, and Mr. Crawford has set his pieces and played them against each other with a cool, dispassionate skill which assures the reader

that his confidence in this author will not be misplaced. Roger Hunt, by Celia Parker Woolley. (Houghton.) A story in which a man, unhappily married, leaves his wife in an inebriate asylum, and seeks redress by taking to himself another woman. The moral of the tale is the misery which follows upon a selfish consideration of happiness. The writer has written with careful attention to details, but always with an eye upon the issue of the whole matter.Cecilia de Noël, by Lanoe Falconer. (Macmillan.) This story, not too long to read at one sitting, has some really admirable character-drawing, and the treatment of the supernatural shows both originality and force. There is undoubtedly a monotony in the regularly expected and regularly recurring appearances of the ghost; but as the mission of the lost spirit is to show the true quality of the mortals visited, this does not matter greatly. "Lanoe Falconer's" style is so bright and graphic, and generally so good, that we the more regret certain small faults, notably her persistent use of the word like for as. In this, and in nothing else, she continually reminds us of the late Mrs. Henry Wood.

Biography. Recollections of a Happy Life; Being the Autobiography of Marianne North. Edited by her Sister, Mrs. John Addington Symonds. In two volumes. (Macmillan.) Miss North, an English lady of high connection, daughter of a member of Parliament, when her father died, in 1870, began a series of wanderings which took in a large part of the world, and continued for a score of years, until her death carried her off to another world, where her cheerful, investigating spirit may haply be engaged on another series of adventures. In the last years of her life, Miss North, drawing apparently from her journals, wrote out the recollections of her life, and the reader may travel comfortably, with a most enjoyable companion, to India, South Africa, Australasia, Brazil, Japan, the Pacific coast, and Boston and its neighborhood. Miss North's passion was for flowers and plants. She was an inde fatigable botanist, and drew and painted what she saw. There is something delightful in the picture of this sturdy English dame going up and down the world with her box of water colors, her sketchbook, and her plant-press; meeting interesting

people, keeping her eyes open for all the beauties of nature, and scrambling over the difficulties of travel with a buoyant spirit, careless of petty annoyances. We hope Mrs. Symonds has had the help of judicious friends in other parts of her work; the pages relating to America have a number of petty errors, which do not detract from the solid worth of the book, yet are needless.-The Life of Father Hecker, by Rev. Walter Elliott. (The Columbus Press, New York.) An interesting addition to our knowledge of the movement known as Transcendentalism in New England. Father Hecker was a member of the Brook Farm community and of Fruitlands, but entered the Roman Catholic Church about the same time as Brownson. This volume is very full as to the period, the material being drawn from Father Hecker's diaries and letters. Of his later life as the founder of the Paulist society the details are somewhat less than we could ask. Some space is taken up with the internal conflict which accompanied the formation of the society, and the reader has many opportunities of becoming acquainted with Father Hecker's brusque, energetic spirit; but there is a lack of proportion and coherence in the latter part of the volume which makes the book somewhat troublesome reading. It is interesting to note the effect of a religious brotherhood in cultivating hero-worship. A second and enlarged edition of Helen Keller has been issued by the Volta Bureau of Washington. The additions consist of the extremely interesting account of the supposed plagiarism by the child in one of her stories. The investigation brought to light a far more fundamental fact, which is clear as day when once recognized, namely, that Helen has an extraordinary faculty for receiving and appropriating language, and that in making use of it afterward she employs it as she would any instrument placed in her hands, entirely regardless of its origin; her memory is for phrases and sentiments, and, deprived as she is of sight, hearing, and natural speech, she does not associate this language with the place, time, or circumstances of its delivery to her. The whole narrative is most affecting and inspiring, and in nothing more than in the transformation of the child after a true vent had been found for her pent-up nature. Pitt, by Lord Rosebery. Twelve English NO. 416.

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Statesmen Series. (Macmillan.) Though this memoir is hardly such a masterpiece as the author's enthusiastic admirers would have us believe, it is full of cleverness, is steadily readable, and, viewed as the work of a non-professional writer, exceedingly well written. The candor and justness of its tone are strikingly shown in the comments on Pitt's career as a war minister, and the treatment of the still vexed question of his Irish policy. It is a noteworthy and indeed an impressive fact, when one remembers the persistent and virulent abuse with which the great Tory statesman was assailed by his political adversaries, even for a full generation after his death, that today his Liberal biographer has, in his eloquent summing up, only unstinted praise for the leader, than whom he finds in all history "no more patriotic spirit, none more intrepid, and none more pure." - Queen Elizabeth, by Edward Spencer Beesley. Twelve English Statesmen Series. (Macmillan.) Considering that the life of Elizabeth not only abounds in personal interest, but also necessarily comprises the annals of forty-five of the richest, fullest years in English history, we find this little book a marvel of well-proportioned condensation. Professor Beesley writes with admirable impartiality, showing neither temper nor prejudice even when discussing the religious questions of the time and the tragedy of the rival queens. The characteristics of each of these most remarkable women are drawn with a few vigorous, incisive touches, and nowhere does the author more conspicuously show his intelligent and easy mastery of his subject than in the lines of these portraits which differ from the ordinary historic conventions. Sir Philip Sidney, by H. R. Fox Bourne. Heroes of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) Mr. Fox Bourne has recast and largely rewritten his excellent memoir, published twenty years ago, to fit it for its place in this series. For this reason, too, we suppose, he shows Sidney more as the courtier, man of affairs, and soldier than as the author of Arcadia and of some of the sweetest love-sonnets in the language, though this side of his character is by no means neglected. We feel anew the undying charm of the man who surely deserves to be considered, in the highest sense of that much-abused word, the typical gentleman of our race, and whose greatness,

notwithstanding all his accomplishments, all his share in the many-sided life of his time, was the greatness of character rather than of achievement. The illustrations are numerous and very well selected, though they vary in merit, after the manner of process plates.

Literature and Criticism. Two recent numbers of the Knickerbocker Nuggets Series (Putnams) are Johnson's Rasselas and Mrs. Gaskell's Cranford. Could two more delightfully opposite specimens of fiction be found? Contrast and comparison are constantly suggested by a consideration of the two isolations of happiness. - Three volumes of the Dilettante Library (Macmillan) are, Goethe by Oscar Browning, Dante by the same author, and Ibsen by Philip Wicksteed. The two former are expansions of articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica. The third is in the form of four lectures, and is an honest, thoughtful effort to reach a solution of Ibsen's philosophy rather than to philosophize upon his art. - Tales and Legends of National Origin, or Widely Current in England from Early Times, with Critical Introductions by W. C. Hazlitt. (Macmillan.) Under the head, successively, of Supernatural, Feudal and Forest, Romantic, Descriptive, and Humorous Legends, Mr. Hazlitt tells such stories as Friar Bacon, Robin Hood, Whittington, and The Miller and the Tailor. Sometimes he has recourse to an original form, sometimes he modernizes, and sometimes he turns verse, particularly ballad verse, into prose. His introductions are designed to account for the spirit of the stories, and he rarely troubles the reader with specific information as to the sources of his material. The book is of little value to the scientific student of folk lore, and would be more interesting to the general reader if Mr. Hazlitt were at once more scholarly and more graceful as a raconteur. It is a convenient medley, however. The Quintessence of Ibsenism, by G. Bernard Shaw. (B. R. Tucker, Boston.) Mr. Shaw gives analyses of the several plays, and prefaces the whole with some fifty pages, in which he undertakes to clear the way by a general discussion of the grounds of conduct, especially as exemplified by modern criticism. It is not quite clear what his own conviction is as to the basis of conduct, but it appears to be "ag'in' the government."

Art. L'Art (Macmillan) for February 15 and March 1 has illustrated papers on the Chicago exhibition, and critical studies of Delaunay and Henriquel. — American Architecture, Studies by Montgomery Schuyler. (Harpers.) This handsome book is made up of papers on the so-called Queen Anne style of building, on the Vanderbilt houses, the Brooklyn bridge as a monument, Mr. Richardson's plans for Albany Cathedral, and a survey of architecture in the West. The volume is prefaced by the reprint of an address given before the Association of Builders, called (with the flattery of imitation) "The Point of View." In spite of its somewhat pretentious form, the book has an air of being made up of spoken or hastily written addresses. The papers are a little over-technical in matter for the popular reader, and too popular in the manner of presentation for the serious student, Mr. Schuyler's style being profuse and overloaded, and obscure in proportion. But the short paper on the Brooklyn Bridge as a Monument seems to us valuable, and Glimpses of Western Architecture is worth reading. A word should be said of the profusion of admirable illustrations which elucidate the essays, although the abomination of highly glazed paper prevents the reader from looking at the pictures or reading the text with comfort. Jules Bastien-Lepage and his Art. (Macmillan.) This volume, which seems needlessly clumsy, contains first a Memoir, by André Theuriet; then a criticism, Jules Bastien-Lepage as Artist, by George Clausen; a paper on Modern Realism in Painting, by Walter Sickert ; and A Study of Marie Bashkirtseff, by Mathilde Blind. The matter first to attract the eye, and over which one is likely to linger longest, is the group of illustrations from the works of Bastien-Lepage, together with a copy of St. Gaudens's bas-relief and two or three pictures by Marie Bashkirtseff. M. Theuriet's sketch is full of color, and contains in addition some interesting bits from the artist's talk and letters. The book is not all eulogy, for Mr. Sickert, in his paper, undertakes to set forth the limitations of Bastien-Lepage, which he does in a somewhat dogmatic fashion. Dawn of Art in the Ancient World, an Archæological Sketch, by W. M. Conway. (Macmillan.) An interesting group of essays treating in