ond installment of Mr. Motley's Dutch history. The work is diversified with close interior views of affairs in England and on the Continent, with life-like pictures of the leaders and heads of the jarring triangular parties in France, and with minute sketches of the exciting civil and military events that occurred in Holland, as also of the palace politics, court intrigues, and diplomatic methods and usages of that busy age.

In an introduction prefixed by the author of Ecce Homo to a memoir of the Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the lyrical poet of the unity of Germany, he places a high valuation upon the memoir for the historical light which it throws upon the Napoleonic age, especially by the opportunity which it gives the reader to see how that age appeared to one who was a minor but spirited actor in its drama, who personally knew many of the chief movers in it, and who was a close spectator of great events, and mixed in and formed a part of the crowd which met to discuss them and their bearings. So completely, Professor Seeley thinks, does Arndt reflect the average German heart and mind of his day, and represent the formation of opinion and crystallization of political character among the middle and inferior classes of the peoples who have been since welded into the German Empire, as relates to the period from the reconstruction of Prussia after the peace of Tilsit until the downfall of Napoleon, that he frank

the Eighty Years' War for civil and religions | ous quarter of a century covered by this secliberty, of which his Rise of the Dutch Republic was the first, and it carries us forward from the death of William the Silent, through twenty-four eventful years, to the "Twelve Years' Truce," in 1609, when the new Dutch commonwealth had become thoroughly organized, and had assumed a place among the family of nations. Many of those who had been foremost actors on the stage in the earlier scenes disappear in this act, and their places are filled by new men. William had perished at the door of his own dining-hall by the hand of a paid assassin; Egmont and Horn had suffered on the scaffold; Alva, and Margaret of Parma, and Granvelle, and Viglius, and Peter Titelmann, had vanished. And in their places, on one side and the other, we have Aldegonde, Hohenlo, Prince Maurice, and Barneveld; Mendoza, Richebourg, Mondragon, and Alexander of Parma; Drake and Leicester, Walsingham and Davison, Henry of Guise and Catherine de Medicis, Henry of Navarre and Elizabeth of England, and numbers more who were only less conspicuous. Of all who were the chief actors at the opening of the drama, one only remains upon the stage until nearly the close of the act that passes before us in Mr. Motley's historical panorama, namely, the loathsome spider of the Escorial, who continues as busy as ever in his seclusion, spinning a net-work of lies and perfidy, hatching murders of men and of states and peoples, and gloating himself with atrocities upon all who had the manhood to assert their civil and religiously confesses that the memoir of the poet's life rights, or to resist his claim to universal dominion. The theme of the drama is the conspiracy of this monster and the papacy combined against human rights-the rights not only of the people of the Netherlands, but of the France and England of that day, and of all men who have lived since then who cherish civil and religious liberty; and its incidents are the battles waged by him on the soil of the Netherlands for the destruction of these rights and liberties. The recital involves the secret details of this plot to crush religious and political freedom, and of the open and concealed counterplotting in England, France, and the Netherlands, and a rehearsal of the heroic actions, the wise counsels, the persistent sacrifices, and the self-helping energy by which two free nations were enabled to baffle the gigantic conspiracy. Mr. Motley aptly says of this deep-laid plot that it deserves to be patiently examined, "for it is one of the great lessons of history," and, further, that the crisis to which it gave rise "was long and doubtful, and the health, perhaps the existence, of England and of Holland, and with them of a great part of Christendom, was on the issue." It is not extravagant to say that there has been no epoch of modern history, not even excepting that of the Reformation, more crowded with absorbing and permanent interests affecting the race and the individual than the moment

might as appropriately as his own Life and Times of Stein bear for a second title the caption Germany and Prussia in the Napoleonic Age. This is no unmeaning compliment. In all that relates to the unconscious and almost imperceptible evolution of popular opinion among the men of the German race, till the idea of German unity and nationality became an all-pervading and intensely vivifying principle which dwarfed all other sentiments and interests, the life of Arndt is a better reflection of the spirit of the people and of the times than Professor Seeley's more ambitious and exceedingly able performance. It takes us nearer to the hearts of the common people, and more clearly reveals the influences that moulded their opinions, and created a public sentiment that at length became irresistible. Valuable, however, as the life of Arndt undoubtedly is for the historical knowledge that may be derived from it, it will be chiefly prized by the great majority of readers for its exquisitely artless, modest, unaffected, and transparently open and candid narrative of the personal fortunes of a man who was a child of the people— the son of a freedman-whose nature was remarkably fresh and buoyant, whose experiences

The Life and Adventures of Ernst Moritz Arndt, the German. With a Preface by JonN ROBERT SEELEY, M.A. Singer of the German Father-Land. Compiled from the 12mo, pp. 450. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

with occasional digressions into other fields of poesy, the author follows its course in English literature, illustrating his pleasant discourse with many examples from the works of the great masters of the art. The plan of the book permits the author to indulge in an easy, familiar, conversational style, which engages the attention and keeps the imagination alert. Unconsciously the reader puts himself in the questioner's place, and awaits the professor's answers with curiosity and interest. The work is one of great research and value in the branch of English literature to which it is devoted. As a critical but thoroughly popular history of the sonnet it is unsurpassed, while, in addition to its special purpose, it contains many felicitous criticisms on other forms of poetry, and displays an extensive familiarity with general literature. The book is one to be enjoyed by every reader endowed with poetic feeling. It is one which may be taken into shaded fields for a summer holiday, or kept to enliven the hours of winter evenings at home.

were deliciously varied, and whose character remained as sweet and healthful at ninety as it was in early boyhood. The larger part of the volume is abridged from Arndt's own autobiography, and the remainder is made up of quotations from his letters and other writings. What is told by Arndt himself sparkles with artless grace, and its frankness and naïveté are charming. His pictures of his early rural and sylvan life, of his sterling parents and grand old uncles, of his social and domestic surroundings, of his youthful trials and perplexities, of his education, and of the gradual growth of his literary instincts, are as attractive as any in Goldsmith's inimitable letters descriptive of his early years. There is in all these pictures a tenderness, a simple piety, a modesty, and a strength of filial affection such as we seldom find in biographies. As we read we fail to perceive when Arndt ceases to be young; and if the idea of increasing years is suggested, it is not by any diminution of his perennial gayety and child-like cheerfulness, but by the dropping out by the way of the friends of his youth, and the intrusion of new actors and When he was in his nineteenth year Mr. more imposing affairs upon the scene. That Tennyson published two parts of a poem, of Arndt suffered keenly in later years from do- which he had written three parts, styled The mestic affliction and from political ostracism Lover's Tale; but feeling its imperfections, is plain enough; but he was not a man to dis- he subsequently withdrew it from the press. play his wounds or solicit pity. In addition | One of his friends, however, he tells us, “boyto the engaging and life-like pictures of him- like, admired the boy's work," and distributed self and his more immediate friends which we copies of it among their associates, without the find in his biography, it introduces us more or corrections, omissions, and amendments that less familiarly to numerous personages, all of the author contemplated. Of late years the whom are historical, and many of them illus- poem has been "mercilessly pirated," and seeing trious, among others to the Emperor Alexan- that what he "had deemed scarce worthy to der, to Stein and Goethe and Niebuhr, to Blü- live is not allowed to die," Mr. Tennyson now cher and Scharnhorst, to Schlegel, Madame De publishes an authorized edition of it, accomStaël, and Kotzebue, to Romanzoff, Rostop- panied by a reprint of the sequel, which was chin, and Talleyrand, and many more. The the work of his later years. Although this volume also embodies an interesting account early poem is interesting chiefly as a literary of Arndt's literary productions, in the course of curiosity, there is nothing in its structure or which some of his inspiriting battle and nation- matter of which the veteran poet need be al lyrics, and of his famous war pamphlets and ashamed. It is true that it is not superior to appeals, are reproduced in spirited translations. many other youthful productions of writers In the guise of familiar conversations, in whose poetical genius afterward won general which the dramatis personæ are a genial pro-recognition; nor is it free from those crudities fessor and an inquiring friend, enjoying their summer vacation in the country, Mr. Deshler gives an interesting history of the English sonnet from the time when it was transplanted from Italy down to the present day. An enthusiast on the subject, as well as an acute critic, the author writes-it might be more in keeping to say talks--with an esprit that can not fail to awaken equal ardor in other minds, and imbue them with his own appreciation of the "diamond of literature," to adopt his own felicitous definition of the sonnet in its perfection. The volume opens with a brief but clear résumé of what is known respecting the origin of this form of poetic composition, and of its first appearance in England, after which,

Afternoons with the Poets. By CHARLES D. Deshler. New York: Harper and Brothers.

of thought and expression which are natural to immature but gifted minds. But every where in it there are intimations of the fine grace and fancy, and instances of the felicities of style and diction, which characterize the more reserved and more severely polished later work of the laureate; and it requires no microscopic scrutiny to detect in this early bud the germs of the excellences that we find in the ripe fruit. Forms of expression, phrases, collocations, images, and turns of thought constantly present themselves which have the distinctive Tennysonian ring; and as constantly we recognize the same ideals,

The Lover's Tale. By ALFRED TENNYSON. "Harper's Half-hour Series." 32mo, pp. 57. New York: Harper and Brothers.

The Same. 16mo, pp. 32. Boston: Houghton, Osgood, and Co.

the same rich and leisurely amplitude of adornment and illustration, the same graceful imagery, the same intellectuality, the same absence of virile strength and passionate force, that we observe in his maturer poems. It also has interest as revealing the poetical school in which the youthful aspirant was training his powers, and from which he drew inspiration. The resemblance of large portions of it to Shakspeare's early poems-more especially to the sonnets-is even more remarkable than the correspondences that we discern between it and its author's riper offspring. Though the poem has numerous and not inconsiderable beauties, it will not excite enthusiastic admiration, or make a deep or lasting impression.

An

his best novels-Mr. Trollope considers it "so much the best that there is no second to it"— Thackeray himself did not so consider it, for while acknowledging that he had intended it to be his best, he pronounced it a failure. author's judgment of his own works, however, is scarcely more authoritative than a mother's opinion of her children; and we imagine few will be found, even among those who rank Esmond below Vanity Fair or Pendennis, who will concede that it is in any sense a failure. For ourselves, while recognizing its inferiority as a work of high art to some other of his masterpieces, and especially while missing from it the fine touches of raillery and satire, and the masterly dissections of character and motive, which distinguish them, we yet find a charm in the geniality, sweetness, and naïveté of Esmond that we discover in none of the others, except on occasion in the Newcomes. Its perusal leaves the mind free from that sense of the bitter, the mocking, the hard and disagreeable, which is inseparable from a perusal of the others. Esmond himself is an exquisite character, even though he be, as Thackeray was wont to say, a good deal of a prig. Surely, however, there never was a more delightful prig; and in his case, as in that of another fine specimen of the kind-old Pepys-it is to this characteristic foible we are indebted for a recital whose mi

Roman Day is the fruit of a visit to Rome by the accomplished Swedish scholar, critic, and poet Viktor Rydberg during 1873 and 1874. In it, under four heads-The Roman Emperors in Marble, Antique Statues, Roman Traditions of Peter and Paul, and Pencil Sketches-he groups an exceedingly interesting series of historical and artistic studies and a number of picturesque sketches. His studies on the emperors include Julius Cæsar, Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero; and in these, and also in his studies on the antique statues of the Aphrodite of Milos and of Antinous, his biographer has well said that Ryd-nuteness of detail and fascinating garrulity berg" places us face to face with ancient Rome, have few rivals in our literature. But Esmond throwing the light of new views on some of was more than a prig. He is besides, as Mr. the most debated characters among its rulers." Trollope justly says, "a gentleman from the In the traditions of Peter and Paul he care- crown of his head to the sole of his foot”— fully reproduces the legends linked with the brave, polished, gifted with old-fashioned courtlife and death of these great Apostles as he esy, true as steel, loyal as faith, and with a found them current among the people of Rome, power of self-abnegation that surprises ns and he clothes them in a dress midway be- without seeming forced or unnatural. As we tween the historical style and the simple at- read his story—told autobiographically in the tire of popular imagination. These reproduc- phraseology of the time of Queen Anne aud tions, which are legendary treasures of great the first Georges, with a fidelity to the dialect beauty, have the following captions: Paul in and general style that is almost literal--we Naples; Paul in Rome; the Ascension of Simon are drawn to him as if he were a man of real the Sorcerer; Prisca and Prudentia; Nero and flesh and blood, and not an ideal creation. his Love; Lord, Whither Goest Thou? and the Aside from the sympathy we feel for the hero, Death of the Apostles. The Pencil Sketches and the interest with which we listen to his consist of five lively pictures depicting the story of love and intrigue, of foibles and virphysiognomy of Rome under several aspects. tues, of incident and adventure, his narrative The book is remarkable for the breadth and is a more faithful representation of the real subtlety of its criticisms, for its poetic ideal-life and events of the period in some of its asism, and for the acuteness and vigor of its historical deductions and discriminations. The letterpress is supplemented by five illustratory. tions of the statues of the emperors, of Antinous and Agrippina, and of the Venus of Milo, that of the latter being a photograph from the most precious pearl of the collection of marble antiques in the Louvre.

Although there can be little doubt that Thack eray's History of Henry Esmond, Esq., is one of

Roman Days. From the Swedish of VIKTOR Rydberg. By ALFRED CORNING CLARK. With a Sketch of Rydberg by Dr. H. A. W. LINDKEN. Authorized Translation. 12mo, pp. 332. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The History of Henry Esmond, Esq., Colonel in the Serv

|

pects, and gives us a truer and more graphic picture of them, than can be found in any his

In his recent novels Mr. Anthony Trollope seems to have abandoned the special field so long and assiduously cultivated by him, in which curates and rural deans, bishops and Dukes of Omnium, together with their wives and children, "their sisters, their cousins, and their aunts," were the staple crop, and undertakes to depict another less exclusive phase

ice of her Majesty Queen Anne. Written by Himself. A Novel. By WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 87. New York: Harper and Brothers.

of English society. His latest novel, John | belonging to the humbler ranks, and is imCaldigate, is as remote as possible from these pressed by her extraordinary beauty and vigor, others in its treatment, incidents, and actors. and by her native refinement and her frank The hero of the story is the son of a country and fearless purity. She is a model of physsquire, whose tastes are intellectual rather ical beauty as to form and feature; all her prothan bucolic, and who, despite a well of latent portions are grand; and she has an instinctive tenderness for his family, has the knack of loftiness of thought and demeanor, of grace making himself as unlovable as a bear, among and delicacy, which seems marvellous for one others, to his son. On his part, the son de- in her lowly position. After an accidental velops tastes and habits the opposite of his meeting, followed by other meetings that were father's, which lose him the old man's confi- not accidental, in which the young soldier and dence, and result in their estrangement. The peasant maiden form impressions that are to father purchases from our hero his right of influence all their after-life, they are separated. entail to the paternal property, and the young He is ordered to the Crimea, where he wins fellow starts with the proceeds in his pocket, distinction by his bravery, and she remains at and a stout and resolute purpose in his bosom, | home, sinking into still greater depths of povto try his fortunes in the gold fields of Aus- erty, but amid it all nursing in her heart the tralia. In Australia he is sharp, shrewd, in-memory of the gallant soldier who had gleamed dustrious, and so proverbially lucky that his name is a synonym for good fortune, and in a few years he is able to return to England with a fortune, to clear off heavy incumbrances from the paternal home, to win back the steadfast affection of his father, and to marry a pure and sweet maiden whose image he had treasured in all his devious ways. When every thing seemed thus prosperous and happy, his relations while in Australia with a woman who had entangled him returned to plague him. He had consorted improperly with her, had even talked of marriage to her, but had never married her. Hearing of his marriage, she and some disreputable male associates, who had been connected with Caldigate's Australian enterprises, conspire to extort money from him by trumping up evidence that he had been previously married to the Australian adventuress. The interest of the plot hinges on this conspiracy, which was at first so successful as to plunge Caldigate into prison, after a trial in which he was proven guilty. An important link in the evidence against him was an envelope bearing the postmark of the Sydney post-office. After his conviction it is discovered by a post-office employé that the postmark was not in use at Sydney at the date it bore, and also that the postage-stamp belonged to an edition that had not been issued until a year later. This being established, the conspiracy is unravelled, John is liberated, is reinstated in society, and the woman and her accomplices are condignly punished.

Although sometimes a little tedious, there have been many tales by veteran novelists less entertaining than General Hamley's chapter in the history of The House of Lys.10 The family of Du Lys, of which it is a partial chronicle, is of old and noble blood, and when the story opens has for one of its scions a high-spirited and handsome young soldier, who meets a lass

John Caldigate. A Novel. By ANTHONY TROLLOPE "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 96. New York: Harper and Brothers.

10 The House of Lus: One Book of its History. A Tale. By Major-General W. G. HAMLEY. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 69. New York: Harper and Brothers.

upon her like a Paladin of old, and had won her heart. Realizing the hopelessness of her love, because of the disparity of their social rank, she can only cherish the recollection of her ideal hero as if it were a delicious dreamwhen an unexpected change in fortune brings her comparative wealth, and reveals that she is of gentle blood-an offshoot of the same ancient house to which her hero belongs. Thenceforward she applies herself, with the resolute firmness of purpose that distinguishes her, to acquire a degree of culture that shall fit her to be his social equal; and under the influence of prosperity and culture combined she develops into a magnificent woman, her mental and moral nature keeping pace with her expanded and ripened physical beauty. After many hard and some bitter experiences the soldier returns, having also kept alive the memory of the young peasant girl, but without having heard of her changed fortunes. We have then an engaging picture of his discovery of her, and of the difficulties and obstacles, fears and doubts, that interposed, till at last the sullen clouds are dispersed, and the two faithful hearts become one.

Mr. O'Reilly's Moondyne' is a novel with a serious purpose. Intended to reflect his ideas on prison management, prison discipline, prison abuses, and prison reform, he carries the reader inside English prisons and among the convicts in Australia, and enacts before him scenes drawn largely, but not exclusively, from thence, which have their counterpart in reality, and which excite the tenderest commiseration. As it is no part of his plan to lay bare the more revolting incidents of prison or convict life, his story contains nothing that is repellent to the most exacting taste, or that can shock the most delicate sensibility. All the characters have a legitimate claim upon our sympathy, and for some of them it is excited to a high pitch by their unmerited misfortune. Especially is this the case for the heroine, Alice Walmsley, who had been wrong

11 Moondyne. By JonN BOYLE O'REILLY. 12mo, pp. 327. Boston: The Pilot Publishing Company.

fully convicted of the murder of her child. | and some true touches, but its exaggerations The situations in which several of the charac- are so numerous and manifest, and its actors ters are placed by the vicissitudes to which so exceptional, as to reduce it to the rank of they are exposed afford opportunities for de- superficial caricature. The scene of Mrs. Alscriptive and narrative passages of considera- | exander's Maid, Wife, or Widow ?1 is laid in a ble power. Occasionally the action of the pleasant Saxon village, during the war bestory is spirited, and it is interspersed with tween Prussia and Austria in 1866, when the scenes that have a fine savor of pathos and little kingdom sided with the latter against poetry. It may be objected to its principal Prussia. The tale opens just as the struggle figure, Wyville, that he is too miraculously en- has been decided in favor of Prussia, and when dowed with physical, intellectual, and moral some of the officers of the victorious state have gifts, and that his control over men and cir- been quartered upon the sequestered, lindencumstances is magical rather than natural; shaded home of the Herr Gerichtsamtmann, or but, after all is said, we are still attracted by great man of the village, in whose absence its his inexhaustible reserve of force, and by the enforced hospitality is dispensed to the concommingled energy, sweetness, and serenity | querors by his beautiful eldest daughter. The of his nature. The tale vibrates between officers, though treated as courteously as if Western Australia and England, and its pic- they were more welcome guests, are constanttures of rural life and prison scenes in the ly made sensible of the adverse sympathies of mother country, and of life in the colony, es- their hosts; and one of their number, a brave pecially its descriptions of life among the and dashing soldier, the senior in rank of his aborigines and the convicts, are forcible and companions, is captivated by the grace and picturesque. Aside from its interest as a ro- dignity, the sweet cordiality tempered with mance, the philanthropist who will look be- matronly reserve, and the remarkable adminneath the surface will find it to be rich in istrative powers of the young mistress of the suggestive thought, even when its specula- mansion. He is perplexed, as are his comtions may at the first glance seem the most rades, by a mystery which envelops her, and visionary. which makes it impossible for them to discovBesides these more elaborate novels, there er whether she is a maid, a wife, or a widow. is a group of romances among the publications This is the riddle which he and the reader are of the month, by their brevity and structure set to unravel in these pleasant pages, and deserving to be styled stories rather than nov- which is at length solved to the satisfaction els, which merit passing notice. Cousins, by of the gallant Rittmeister.-Truly idyllic in the author of Mr. Smith, is a vivacious tale, in its setting, very graceful, very calm and peacewhich the author, following a fashion now ful, and very tender, is Mr. Meyers's simple greatly in vogue, depicts the loves of a couple story of Miss Margery's Roses.15 It is redobetween whom there is a serious disparity of lent with the odor of womanly purity and sis years, and a still greater disparity of temper- terly self-sacrifice, and rich with the wealth ament and appearance, the heroine being a of a love that is as luxuriant and as modest bright butterfly of a girl, scarcely yet emerged as the flowers in the "old-fashioned garden" from childhood, and with all a child's buoy- where Miss Margery tends her rose-trees.—— ancy and mischievousness, and a thousand Even yet briefer than this, but in a very diftouches of hoidenish grace and archness; and ferent vein, are two brilliant novelettes, the one the hero a man of thirty-eight, but grave and a characteristically sensational Italian story, sedate beyond his years, with a physiognomy | by Wilkie Collins, The Yellow Mask, and the as severe as his demeanor, and manners of Pu- other a wild legend of the Tyrol, entitled ritanical straitness and reserve. The difficult Geier-Wally." Both are strongly spiced with task of reversing Shakspeare's maxim that the extravagant and the tragic, and each has "crabbed age and youth can not live togeth-scenes of genuine power and pathos.—For a voler" is executed with cleverness, and affords an ume of the true gossamer lightness, requiring opportunity to develop a pleasant little drama no mental exertion in the reading, we commend of cross-purposes, mishaps, and misunderstand-our readers to Hetty's Boarder, a blithe New ings. The Colonel's Opera Cloak13 is a sprightly England tale, whose pictures of rural life have extravaganza that will pleasantly while away a homely gracefulness, and whose reproduca vacant hour (if the reader has the good sense to stifle the resentments it may possibly revive), in which the author a little maliciously parades the improvidence, the shabby gentility, the insolence, and the sectional pride of a reduced Southern family resident at the North. The performance has many humorous

12

12 Cousins. By L. B. WALFORD, author of Mr. Smith. "Leisure Hour Series." 16mo, pp. 313. New York: Henry Holt and Co.

13 The Colonel's Opera Cloak. "No Name Series." 16mo, pp. 228. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

16

14 Maid, Wife, or Widow? By Mrs. ALEXANDER. "LeiHolt and Co. sure Hour Series." 16mo, pp. 267. New York: Henry

15 Miss Margery's Roses. A Love Story. By ROBERT C. MEYERS. Sq. 12mo, pp. 256. Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson and Brothers.

16 The Yellow Mask. By WILKIE COLLINS. "New Handy Volume Series." 16mo, pp. 162. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

Geier-Wally. A Tale of the Tyrol. By WILHELMINE VON HILLERN. "New Handy Volume Series." 16mo, pp. 237. New York: D. Appleton and Co.

18 Hetty's Boarder. 12mo, pp. 267. Boston: Loring and Co.