I should as soon think of swimming across the Charles River when I wish to go to Boston, as of reading all my books in originals, when I have them rendered for me in my mother tongue. EMERSON: Essay on Books. Mr. L. L. Thaxter, of Boston, has been giving at the Hawthorne Rooms a delightful series of readings from Robert Browning; and at the same place Mr. Sidney Woollett has given this week a series of four recitations from Tennyson's "Idylls of the King," which have already attracted much attention in Providence, R. I. Mr. Horace E. Scudder has begun before the Lowell Institute a course of lectures on "Childhood in Literature," which will be the last course for the present season. There are hopes that Professor Corson of Cornell University, who visits Boston next week, may be induced to repeat here one or more of his studied lectures on Robert Browning, some of which the Philadelphians have been lately enjoying. Professor Goodwin of Harvard goes to Athens in the autumn for a year to take an educational position there. There is great commotion among the "herons of Elmwood" at the sudden and unheralded appearance of a "sketch" of Mr. Lowell by F. H. Underwood. Elmwood is occupied this year, as last, by Mrs. Ole Bull, who is steadily pushing forward the work on Mr. Bull's biography. Mrs. John T. Sargent's house on Buckingham Street, Cambridge, opposite Mr. Higginson's, is grad " ually becoming a new reception center, and a Sunday Club" is also collecting some of the leading minds in Cambridge for weekly interchanges of thought and feeling. AUERBACH AND HIS CONTEMPORA- the" Scholar "in fiction. By birth and train- that we seem to smell the pines of that hilly POE AS A POET. Auerbach too, was a Jew; but a Jew in whom the doctrines of the Talmud were early poisoned by the intellectual brilliancy of Spinoza, and his own strong sympathy for RECENT article in the Pall Mall Gazette modern life soon made him an ardent cham- A pion of progress in Germany. He is perhaps James Jr.'s statements, written several years stoutly disapproves one of Mr. Henry best known in this country as the author of ago and found in his admirable critical volume, Auf der Höhe (On the Heights) a novel which French Poets and Novelists, to the effect that has been vastly overestimated here, and criti- Poe was the author of "very valueless verses." cised with almost equal exaggeration in its Mr. James alludes to Poe's metrical work in author's native country. Its most ardent ad-general, without specification or reservation, and mirer would be obliged to admit, after a incurs, in consequence, the reproaches of the brief stay in Germany, that its characters are English journal. I remember, on meeting the unnatural to the last degree. On the other American critic's rather laconic condemnation, hand its most hostile critic might often well that it struck me as a somewhat daring posture toward a clique who have for years rhapsodized take example from the simple beauty of its language and the entire absence of turgid over the poetry of Poe; for Mr. James, though rhetoric. always a brilliant critic, has usually been a cool The Pall Mall Gazette thinks otherwise, however, and declares that he has committed a grave error. The adverse assertions of that journal, briefly summed up, are these: First, that the poetical force of Bryant, Mr. Longfellow, Dr. Holmes and Mr. Lowell is comparable to the "extraordinary gift of style" belonging to Poe. Second, that though Poe was not a man of much weight of character or even originality of intellect, he still possessed (in his headed one, flinging down no belligerent chalBut Auerbach's claims for fame will rest, lenges himself, and employing no specially sharp not upon his more ambitious novels of so- spear on which to lift up the gauntlets of others. cial life, On the Heights and the Villa on the But like most men whose criticism is seldom Rhine, nor upon his later works, Waldfried audacious and always acute, Mr. James seems and Brigitta, but upon a kind of work which to have taken the needed chance of denouncing was at first greeted with skeptical contempt an empty poetic method and an over-praised in Germany; namely, the Village Stories. literary artificiality. IN N our issue of February 25 we noticed He was the creator of the modern "village briefly the death of Berthold Auerbach. story." And it was not a work in which he It is an event in German Literature worthy made feeble beginnings with slow but sure of something more than a passing notice improvement. His first attempts were the Auerbach was one of the six leading novel- best, and served as models for what came ists of Germany, each one of them a master after. Many imitators he has had, but no in a special and distinctive field of fiction. equals in that field. Wilhelmine von HillGustav Freytag is the "National" author of ern, the authoress of Die Geier-Wally, itself Germany; the best writer of its historical a fine specimen of the "peasant-story," says verse) "a power of saying things as they were never said before and so that they can never be in her dedication to Berthold Auerbach: soil of German peasant-life capable of literary of manner, no American poet has so much as You have, with strong hand, made the heavy forgotten." Third, that in his peculiar novelty and poetic cultivation. When we therefore, approached him, and that his verse, “like a roseyour disciples, reap harvests upon the field which think of you with gratitude and to "give honor tually decay," "though bound to decay because you have made productive, it is our first duty to petal in a drop of glycerine," will "never acto whom honor is due." of its ephemeral and disconnected condition." The influence of this distinctive genius of Auerbach may be traced in many of the writers of the day even though they be not conscious imitators. novels, and himself an historical scholar of large attainments. Friedrich Spielhagen represents in fiction the most advanced and most radical philosophical and religious (or, perhaps more correctly anti-religious) opinions of the day as applied to social questions. Paul Heyse belongs also to the glorifiers of The scientific chaos suggested in the lastfree thought and free love, but his skeptiquoted clauses I leave to the astonishment of cism and his bright visions of social Utopia any precise thinker who may choose to run and are based upon artistic feeling and not upon read. That Mr. Bryant, Mr. Longfellow, Dr. philosophic belief, as in the case of Spiel- Many of the best of the Village Stories Holmes or Mr. Lowell have not lifted themhagen. Spielhagen wields his pen as a sturdy are familiar to English readers, indeed our selves far above the trifling jingle of Poe's German knight who fights from conviction acquaintance with the Black Forest dates verse, is a question simply to be considered by those who have any regard for sincerity when for free thought in matters social and relig- from the appearance of Barfüssle or Edelplaced against attitudinizing. These pure and ious. Heyse is the champion of French weiss; but to our mind the crown of them noble writers are not to be named in the same and Italian liberty, and even license, because all is a little one which is most untranslatyear with Poe. His prose is remarkable, astonhis artistic and æsthetic nature is completely able, Joseph im Schnee (Joseph in the Snow), ishing, strongly fanciful, though never richly dominated by the superior grace and nim- a bit of simple, pathetic, soul-touching imaginative, like Hawthorne's. He is great in ble wit of the Latin races. Georg Ebers is village-life, told so vividly and so naturally prose, though not great in the first degree. He alarms, shocks, depresses, horrifies, but he never (or rarely) quickens to high flights of feeling or deep descents of suggestion. His work in prose will live, as it deserves to live, but not because of any except second-rate qualities. Even in The Fall of the House of Usher he never rises above theatrical terrorism. As regards Poe's "weight of character," it is time that oblivion came with her pitying quietus. As regards his "originality of intellect," volumes might still be said. That he possessed the power, in his verse, of saying things "as they recognition of how tame and meretricious are history of nations, three hundred Englishmen, Annabel Lee, The Bells, and Ulalume. EDGAR FAWCETT. singly, in pairs, and by squadrons, threw themselves up and into the thousands of gray-coated Russian cavalry which threatened them as an avalanche from the hillside, there was that in the meditation. In mere physical advantages, as of struggle to give all seers and poets pause and armament, horse power, and sword length, the men who struggled together were fairly matched. Yet the few rode through the many, dominated them as kings lay their stress on slaves, drove TENNYSON'S NEW BATTLE PIECE. Jupiter, they say, nods sometimes on Olympus; but Apollo on Parnassus, if he inspires poetry, must have been dead asleep when Tennyson wrote his new poem, "The Charge of the Heavy Brigade," which appears in Macmillan's Magazine, P. 97, for March. This is all the more strange, bethem as hinds were driven by medieval knights, cause in his "Charge of the Light Brigade," written years ago, he revealed both the poet's insight that Russian cavalry never faced English again and gave such bitter taste of their warlike cruelty, and majesty of melody, in the rush and onsweep in the Crimea. And why? Not because God is of the ill-starred horsemen, who, through the sheeted flame of Russian cannon on the unattain on the side of the heaviest battalions, as Voltaire fully thin bit of commonplace, done into rhyme able heights around them, rode straight at the said, but because these few were the men of the that entices the ear and almost insults the intelli- batteries before them in that valley of death, and West, with the strength of the life and faith of never were said before,” is most unquestionable. There are few bits of verse more ludicrous than his Ulalume, except, perhaps, Bret Harte's parody of the same poem. The Raven is a mourn gence. The Bells is a mere wanton abuse of linguistic harmonies. Annabel Lee is so absurd a mass of melodious nonsense that its very name touched the goal of their endeavor, a proud the West in their sword-stroke, and those many were the men of the East, of a church and a serfdom which may give passive virtues, but not that ought to be a warning to unborn poetasters. And say that in "The Charge of the Light Brigade" dominancy of manhood which rules in battle. yet the Pall Mall Gazette presumes to say that Tennyson blazoned forth in a new glory the ancient legend of England's arms, "Duty." In his other occasional poems, touching the current English life of the court and camp, he has had they beheld, was of that Covenanter strain which had borne so much and smote so fiercely for that varying success. Longfellow's "Warden of the religion which long ago consecrated the hills of no American poet has approached Poe in the "extraordinary gift of style." What style did he have, except a tangle of meaningless mannerisms? The same writer goes on to state that The Greys were Scotch, and the rage of their battle, at which men versed in war shuddered as Mr. Tennyson has borrowed from him. Where Cinque Ports" is, in most ways, the poetic mas- Scotland into temples. The Inniskillens were has Mr. Tennyson done so? In what one of hister of his "Ode on the Death of the Duke of of Protestant North Ireland, and had the blood Wellington." Only in his welcome to Alexan- of Cromwell's soldiers. The rest were at least dra does his achievement, as poet laureate, run Britons, fellow-citizens of Milton, and heirs of a incontinent epithets, as everywhere abound in under gas light and sings prosody in presence of level with his opportunity. His muse droops self-contained, beautiful, and artistic poems has Mr. Tennyson aped such wild phrases, such Poe's hectic, shallow, and trivial verse? Of style, Poe, in his metrical work, had positively none. He was inflamed with the ambition to the Court. Criticism of a poem which treats of an histori free though troubled history, with leaders whose personal pride taught them to speak truth and to know honor, and their swords were sharp with the keenness of the free. In that fray the be poetic and the craze to be eccentric. He cal fact like that of "The Charge of the Heavy English rode and smote with ringing cheers, and, employed adjectives that were senseless, a measure that for the most part was tiresomely vulgar, and a trick of void verbal conceits that no unbiased man of letters can regard with anything except contempt. He had no "style," but he employed, for the most part, a silly artifice. And it is time that the vapid inanity of his "poems" should be pointed out to those who blindly adopt the shibboleth of certain prejudiced spokesmen. I scarcely know of a single instance in which Mr. James has chosen, as a critic, to treat the works of living writers. Here he has shown a part of that keen good-sense which has made him unpopular as a novelist among all clamorers for gushing sentimentality in the place of honest feeling, and for factitious romanticism in the place of spontaneous candor. But the virtue of good-sense is frowned on at present; it is denounced as unsympathetic coldness. Because Mr. James is keenly analytic he is denied. the right of being esteemed human, or even humane. And yet it seems to me that today no living writer of English fiction maintains so fine an equipoise between the folly of over-expression and the dryness of forced self-restraint. With a diction ample and luminous as that of Macaulay, he unites a sense of character-drawing for which it would be difficult in all letters to find a rival power. Naturally he possesses repose; all great artists possess that. Just now it is called frigidity; in a few years it will be called the native grandeur of a great style. No one, it seems to me, was better fitted than Mr. James to pierce the absurdity of Poe's so-called "poetry." It appears quite in the logical way of things that he who wrote The American, Roderick Hudson, and The Portrait of a Lady, should waken us to a actual and the possible achievement. Actually, a success. But Scarlett was far on ahead, and he dash'd up alone The measure has variety, as befits the ebb and downright struggle between horsemen winning For our men gallopt up with a cheer and a shout But it is as having actually missed the greater Russians in silence or with a hiss between we must admit, with plain English curses; the clenched teeth, or at most a stifled roar. It was the West against the East in a plain struggle of manhood, and the East fled behind its hills. showed longer struggle and endurance; but at Inkermann was bloodier; Sebastopol trenches Balaclava Western manhood indicated its religion and civilization by a supreme mastery. In such things lay the possibilities of Tennyson's theme. His missing of them entails his most signal failure. N. H. CHAMBERLAIN. Table Talk. The acquaintance that I have with Ger man current literature leads me to believe that the influence of the press in Germany and in Austria, does not begin to be what it is in America. The majority of the people seem to read the papers in the cafés, and not their own private copies at home. I remember hearing a lady, at the time of the Vienna disaster, promise to take her little boy, provided he was good, to a café in the afternoon; there they could read the papers, and get the latest news. And as a matter of fact, for the cost of two copies of a daily paper she could have a cup of chocolate, and with it, free of charge, the daily papers of the leading cities of Germany and Austria; also papers from Paris, London, and Brussels. I do not believe that in either the German or the Austrian Empires there exists a paper like The Literary World; though I may be mistaken. If a German once feels it necessary to go below the surface he keeps on going till he reaches the opposite surface. Consequently I have found their slight reviews of but little value, generally highly laudatory; while the more careful reviews were so deep as to be 7 Florence, Italy. H. E. G. appalling. I believe that the Germans and Norwegian Two Years before the Mast; only faded summer." Next to these figures stands a French use superlatives habitually to an extent the "years" are five instead of “two." In a land Margaret Albury, a woman whom men soon knew that would ruin the reputation of an English like Norway, so many of whose sons spend their pretty well and then seldom cared to know betwriter, if he copied them. lives on the blue waves, we should not be sur-ter, but who serves as a good adviser to little prised at an abundance of such books. This Polly. In the hands of these people "the dingy line of literature was really opened by Jonas house at Kensington" becomes the scene again Lie, whose The Pilot and his Wife and The of the old sad story of lovers parted by needless Barque Future, both of which have been trans- misunderstandings. Polly has a lover, Richard lated by Mrs. Ole Bull, are well known to Amer- Blandford, in whose sincerity and honor she has ican readers. Mr. Flood gives us in the present every reason to trust, until informed on good auwork his own experiences, and the fact that he thority that he is already married. Not betells his stories in seaman's phrase imparts to thinking herself then of the very simple expethem a peculiarly rich flavor. He is both witty dient of asking him a very plain question, she and humorous, and though the work is not pre- believes what she is told and resigns herself to tentious, it is sure to make many friends, espe- misery. Richard, not to be outdone in idiocy, cially among the young. [Malling.] Novellistiske also submits to fate without a word. When at Tidsbilleder (Romances of our Time), by Constan- last Polly finds out that she and her lover have tius Flood, is of somewhat similar character, deal- been unhappy for nothing, the two are brought ing largely with life on the coast and on the sea, together to part no more. We have no other but the author is a more finished writer than J. condemnation for the story than that of a faint W. Flood, and deals with more ambitious plots. praise. His descriptions are very life-like. [Malling.] NEW FOREIGN BOOKS. The two portly volumes of Selected Speeches of the Earl of Beaconsfield, which M. T. E. Kebbel has arranged and edited, with an introduction and explanatory notes, contain the whole or parts of some seventy orations extending over the whole of Beaconsfield's career as a statesman, a period of fully half a century. The collection shows editorial judgment, patience, and skill, the chief defect, perhaps, being in the point of arrangement. [Longmans.] Miss C. F. Gordon-Cumming's Cruise in a French Man-of-War consisted in a homeward voyage from the Fiji Islands, in a French government vessel, under the convoy of a Roman Catholic bishop in partibus, who was making a tour of his Pacific Ireland diocese! She-that is to say both the "Seignelay" and Miss Cummingtouched at the Friendly and the Society Islands, and the lonely Easter islet, but the Society Islands occupy the larger part of the book. [Blackwood & Sons.] Mr. Percy Fitzgerald's New History of the English Stage is a bulky work in two volumes,| based on original authorities, ample in documentary materials, and exhaustive in treatment. Condensation would have made it better for the reader. [Tinsley.] FICTION. A Tallahassee Girl. J. R. Osgood & Co. $1.00. Her Picture. Roberts Brothers. $1.00. The first two chapters of the first volume of Mr. Andrew Tuer's work on Bartolozzi treat of Bartolozzi himself; the remainder of the work of old prints, print collecting, descriptions of printsellers, reprints, plates, etc., in general. This latter part is full of curious and interesting information. Bartolozzi was a Venetian engraver who came to England in 1764 and lived there thirty-road between which two fine old towns some of eight years; a man of greater name than ability. Mr. Tuer's volumes are luxuriously made and gorgeously appareled. [Field & Tuer.] Another translation of Björnson's novels has been begun in England; Synnövë Solbakken, at least, having made its appearance in an English version by Julie Sutter. But it is not equal to Prof. Anderson's, and the book lacks the biographical introduction which our American edition contains. [Macmillan & Co.] In Ernest Daudet's Mon Frère et Moi may be found a description of the youth of Alphonse Daudet, and also that account of the construction of the plots of his books to which we have hitherto referred. It is admitted that the Duc de Mora in The Nabob stands for the Duc de Morny. A successful French novel is Michael Achkinasi's Les Victimes du Tzar, the interest of which, however, is largely political. It is a study of Nihilist ambition and intrigue in the last decade. A love-thread runs through it and lightens a little its tragic quality. [Dentru.] the story's action lies. "The Tallahassee girl" About The Dingy House at Kensington there is nothing very strongly to attract or to repel. It relies for its interest on character rather than circumstance. The heroine, Polly Dawson, is described as “wilful and impatient, indolent and coquettish," "but proves to be simple and affec tionate, patient more than wilful, and not so very indolent after all. Polly's father is a rich and stingy lawyer, "not clever even at his business, only sharp and persevering." The beautiful, imperious, and penniless woman who marries him to save herself and her father from the discomfort In Fem Aar Tilsös, by J. W. Flood, we have a of living by their wits, has a face with "a look of Carl Emil Franzos has just published a new novel, Ein Kampf ums Recht; which is said to be in his best vein. We fancy a translator would find hard work in giving in English the subtle shades of color in Franzos's oriental pictures, but it seems strange that the very difficulty has not yet excited the imagination of some German scholar in this country. Mr. Hamerton has written a No Name novel, and the title of it is Her Picture. That, at least, is our guess. What makes us think of Mr. Hamerton as the author is the fact that it is a French story, the action beginning at a chateau near Pau, and being transferred afterward to Paris and then to a country-house at Montrémy; while there is a painter in it, and pictures, and sweet music, and a good many lines and tints which suggest Mr. Hamerton; without anything, however, which equals the photographic distinctness and dramatic power of Marmorne. The interest of the book as a story is slender at the outset, the author's method consisting chiefly in the passage of a succession of conventional scenes before the reader's eye. Further on the interest deepens, and toward the end one really becomes curious to know how Rue Belmont is to extricate herself from her unfortunate and not very creditable dilemma between two lovers, Rex Winthrop and Ronald Graham. She was a weak girl to get entangled as she did, and we do not think this element in the plot is either very natural, or worked out to a very logical conclusion. There are a number of lively people in the book, of a Parisian sort; there is an enfant terrible who makes some amusement; there is a crusty old millionaire who dies at the right time and leaves his money in the right place; there is a good deal of merry society incident and party conversation; there are some pleasing pictures of French life; there is no villain or villainy. The story is refined and agreeable, but not by any means absorbing. P. S. We have just heard that it is written by a "live countess." BIOGRAPHY. American Statesmen. Ed. by John T. Morse, Bain. Henry Holt & Co. $2.00. John Stuart Mill. A Criticism. By Alexan- Why a series of "American Statesmen" should open with John Quincy Adams we are not informed. Certainly there were heroes before this Agamemnon. Are they "all unmourned and consigned to oblivion" because they have no "bard to sing their praises"? One would have said that Washington, Franklin, John Adams, or even Sam Adams would better have taken the lead; but then this series is not to concern itself much with personages of or before the Revolution. In the twelve large octavo volumes of his diary and memoir John Quincy Adams left ample and authentic materials for such a sketch as Mr. Morse has written. Such a boiling down as this was needed for popular uses. Mr. Morse has put the story into about 300 16m0 pages, though his three chapters are too few for the easiest division of the subject. An analytic table of contents would have been a help to the reader. The inter est of the treatment is almost wholly political, and to read the book is to get not an inadequate idea of the whole first half century of United States politics; Mr. Adams having begun public life in 1797, and being, when he died in 1848, literally in his seat in Congress. Hickock's Psychology. Univ genius, was an English landscape painter, chiefly hensive argument in favor of Bacon, these vol- Dr. Bain's two books on the Mills, father and son, are richly worth two notices which we shall give them; one now, in brief, another hereafter more at length. Apart from the extreme personal attractions of the subjects, Dr. Bain's method, in the case of the elder Mill especially, is simply admirable. What a benefit an author confers upon his reader, and in what an advantageous light he sets himself, when he maps out the contents of his work by such preliminary pages of structural dissection as are here to be found. The fame of John Stuart Mill has somewhat obscured the figure of his father, but the father was a man of commanding proportions, and his life as here depicted is full of literary interest of a high sort. Scotchman, divinity student, Presbyterian licentiate, private tutor, journalist in London, pamphleteer, contributor to the Westminster and Edinburgh Reviews and to the Encyclopædia Britannica, historian of India, friend of Brougham, Grote, Hume, Ricardo, and Bentham, chum of the latter for four busy years amid the picturesque surroundings of Ford Abbey, Examiner of Correspondence in the East India House - these were the steppingstones in a career of great intellectual activity and productiveness. Almost every subject of his times felt the touch of his vigorous pen, and his philosophical and economic teachings left a marked impress on the thought around him. Besides, was he not the father of John Stuart Mill? Of the latter Dr. Bain's account is expository and critical rather than purely biographical; but with a flavor of reminiscence. We have not space in this paper to tell our readers all that is due to them about these excellent books. Edward Coles of Illinois and Tom Corwin of Ohio were representative men of the West, but men of very different scope and range. Hon. E. B. Washburne has written what is truly a Sketch of the former [Jansen, McClurg & Co. $1.75.], and Hon. A. P. Russell has written what he calls a Sketch of the latter [Robert Clarke & Co. $1.00.], but what is more exactly a chapter of reminiscences and anecdotes which are highly entertaining, and which give a better idea of the man than any more formal writing could do. Mr. Corwin was that sort of a man that he created anecdotes as a locomotive throws off sparks, and this book of them is racy reading. Mr. Coles was a sedater character, but his place as the second governor of his State, and his part in the slavery struggle of 1823-4, give his life considerable importance. Frederick Douglass having written an account of his Life and Times, is presented to the public by George L. Ruffin, in the introduction to the book, as “the most remarkable contribution this country has given to the world." Of a sober work which sets out in that extravagant tone little might be expected. The book, however, is better than its introduction, the first half especially. This tells the story of the author's early slave life, and one might go through many volumes before he would find a simpler, truer, more pathetic picture of what American slavery was at the full. This part of the volume is a original and valuable contribution to the personal details of history. The second part, which details the abolition movement, the war of secession, and the result of emancipation, as seen through the author's eyes, is of secondary importance. [Hartford: Park Publishing Co.] David Cox, whose Biography has been written by William Hall, with remarks on his works and Spedding, Macaulay, and Bacon. from Experience. By Laurens P. Hickok. ReEmpirical Psychology; or the Science of Mind vised with the cooperation of Julius H. Seelye. [Ginn, Heath & Co.] This little volume bears all the characteristics of its author's writings - their excellences and defects. It is designed as an introduction to Psychology; and aims to be comprehensive and compact, and at the same time clear. The first and second aims are accomplished; concerning the third we have our doubts. Parodying President Hickok's style, we should say in describing it that anarthrous conjunction of abstract substantive with vaguely descriptive adjective renders intellectual apprehension of metaphysical deliverance gymnastically difficult of accomplishment. A peculiar infelicity attends our author's attempts to illustrate his philosophy and his psychology from the natural sciences; in that respect this little volume reminds us of his Rational Cosmology. But in the strictly psychological, as in the philosophical parts, he is more fortunate; and the student is repaid for the labor necessarily involved in untangling his meaning. Forty pages are given to the natural history of the race; one hundred and ninety to the analysis of the mind, the heart, and the will; the remaining forty to a retrospective and prospective glance at general philosophy; confirming the author in his general views of Christian faith. Goncourt's La Faustin. La Faustin. By M. E. de Goncourt. [Paris : Charpentier. Boston: C. Schöenhof.] This work was written thirty-five years ago. It was called out by Macaulay's essay on Bacon, and is devoted to a most thorough-going examination in the form of a dialogue, of every sentence in the biographical portion of that famous The writing of novels in France is no longer piece of rhetoric. Writers like Sir G. C. Lewis an art: it is a science. A man takes notes and entertained at the time a sufficiently contempt writes a novel as he would write a biography. uous opinion of Macaulay's estimate of Bacon as Then, if the public does not value his work as a a philosopher, and Mr. Spedding, who had been contribution to literature, it will at least be interfor some years at work on his edition of Bacon's ested in finding the key to his characters. M. E. works, handled the great rhetorician very severely de Goncourt in La Faustin has followed the natuwhen the latter virtually amplified Pope's lines ralists afar off with a certain fastidiousness not to about "the wisest, meanest of mankind." The found in the gross lucubrations of M. Zola; work, though written so long ago, was only finally nevertheless he has made good use of what a prepared by Mr. Spedding for the press a short recent writer has happily styled "human docutime before his death last year, yet it is a ments." "A romance-writer," says M. de Gonmuch more readable defense of Bacon than the court in his preface, "is simply an historian of very elaborate Life and Letters. As a specialist, people who have no history." And he not only Mr. Spedding was often able to correct the acknowledges his dependence upon living mod. brilliant but superficial and antithetical essayist; els, but begs his lady admirers to send him perand this work will be indispensable to any one sonal revelations for use in future narratives. La wishing to read both sides of the controversy on Faustin has been interpreted as a representation Bacon's character. What Macaulay called the of more than one famous actress, living or dead; lues Boswelliana is yet undoubtedly present in but the person is of little moment. She creates all Mr. Spedding's work. He could see little to the rôle of Phédre, and is so devoted to her art blame in the hero, except in the bribery cases, that she acts the part off the stage with such ferand he thought Modern Science quite wrong in vor that even at the bedside of her stricken lover, its practical rejection of the philosopher's meth-whom she worships, she imitates the terrible ricods of research. One who was once obliged to tus with which he is afflicted until in a burst of read somewhat extensively the later essays by passion he drives her away as a heartless wretch Mr. Spedding, Dr. E. A. Abbott, and others on incapable of genuine feeling. The dénouement this mixed question, came out convinced that a is terrible, and it is cleverly managed, but it is man for whom such constant excuses were totally out of harmony with the character analy deemed necessary could hardly be called noble sis that goes before. There is a flaw in M. de in character. The reader of Bacon's essays Goncourt's work that seriously impairs its value cannot be surprised that he should have been as a realistic study. It needs not to be said that charged at least with crooked ways. Dr. Abbott a theme like this is not particularly idyllic, and appears to be more judicial than Mr. Spedding the author hesitates at nothing which he thinks in his summing up; but as a minute and compre- may serve his purpose in showing forth the per sonality of his heroine. But he moulds his degenerate clay with dainty touch, and has a care to the refined gilding of art. La Faustin is not a novel for youth and maidens. The student of literature may possibly glean a moral from its perusal and preach therefrom a very eloquent discourse on the degeneration of French litera ture. CURRENT LITERATURE. Rawlinson's Works. printing of Spurgeon's Treasury of David, a use of the high standard displayed by the previous work. By aid of the Rev. Wm. H. Simcox's WinS. E. Cassino, of Boston, has brought out an chester Cathedral lectures on The Beginnings of edition of Rawlinson's Egypt, which deserves the Christian Church [Dutton. $3.00] and the more than passing notice. The work, originally Rev. A. C. Jennings's Ecclesia Anglicana [Whit published last year in London by Longmans, in taker. $2.25], placed end to end, one may pick two volumes at $21, was reviewed in the Literary out the thread of Anglican Church history from World, Vol. XII, p. 224. Its expensiveness was the beginning until now. Mr. Jennings's book remarked upon at that time. Mr. Cassino's is intended as a handy volume for theological edition is new and American throughout, being students, and its nineteen chapters cover the a product of the University Press at Cambridge, ground thoroughly and completely, four of them Mass., and a very close imitation of the other. being given to those early periods of Christianity We have not the English work by us as we in England which are wrapped in so much write, but as we remember it this compares with obscurity. Mr. Simcox's lectures are politely it very well in all respects. The type is large made to serve as a sort of rejoinder to the late and clear, the paper and binding are solid and Dean Stanley's Christian Institutions and to the strong, and the whole execution is excellent. Rev. Edwin Hatch's recent Bampton lectures The hieroglyphic characters which are so con- on The Organization of the Early Christian spicuous a feature of the text, and the several hun- Churches. They too touch a very obscure period, dred engravings on wood which illustrate the two chiefly within the second century; but, though volumes, have all been cut especially for this written loyally from an Anglican point of view, edition, and are very well done. The price at are singularly candid and fair. They are clear, which Mr. Cassino puts the work, $6, is certainly too, and picturesque, and make much out of extremely low, when the large cost of it is con- scant materials. sidered, and we shall hope that what is a pub. lisher's venture of considerable risk will be made an entire success by the hearty support of the book-buying public. No scholar need now go without this valuable historical treatise in a very satisfactory form. On pp. 184-5 of our last volume we called attention to Dodd, Mead & Co.'s low-priced edition of Rawlinson's earlier massive work on The Five Great Monarchies, Chaldæa, Assyria, Babylon, Media, and Persia. To those three volumes they now add the fourth, in similar style, the subject of which is The Sixth Great Oriental Monarchy, or Parthia, treated after the same manner in its geography, history, and antiquities. This work was first published ten years ago. This is a good edition of it at the low price of $3. The final volume on the Seventh Monarchy, The Sassinian, or New Persian, is, we presume, to follow in due time. Garfield. Mr. David Monrad Schoyen is the author of a Life of Garfield (President Garfield, Hans Liv og Snigmond) written in the Norwegian language, and published by "Verdens Gang" in Chicago. While the book has intrinsic merit, it is also of note as showing that our Scandinavian fellowcitizens in the Northwest are having the best American examples of character and statesmanship placed before them. Mr. Schoyen has done good service in a similar direction heretofore, as the author of a comprehensive history of the United States in three volumes, of which more than ten thousand copies have been distributed among the American Norsemen. Works of this nature tend to make good and intelligent voters of the foreign-born citizens, and the author is to be encouraged in his enterprise. The present volume contains several moderately good illus trations and a good portrait of Garfield. Three formal eulogies on Garfield in English are now before the public in book form: that of Hon. J. G. Blaine, delivered before Congress, February 27, official, but heartfelt, simple, and forceful [Osgood. 50c.]; that of Hon. G. F. Hoar before the city government of Worcester, Mass., in December last, which is somewhat narrow in its dimensions, but deep and strong in utterance [Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 50c.]; and Garfield's Place in History, by Henry C. Pedder, an essay, not an oration pronounced, which, to say the least, is worthy of being in print [Putnam. $1.25]. Each of these books has a steel portrait of the President, neither two alike, and all excellent. Religious and Theological. Canon Westcott's studies of The Revelation of the Risen Lord are a continuation of his Gospel of the Resurrection, but have interest only for clergymen and theological readers. [Macmillan. $1.75.]-The fourth and concluding volume is out of the New Testament portion of what is known as The Bible or Speaker's Commentary, by bishops and other clergy of the Church of England; extending from Hebrews to the Revelation inclusive, and completing the entire work, for both Old and New Testaments in ten volumes. [Scribner. Each $5.00.]- Few printed sermons are really interesting, except to the ministers who preached them—and to some other ministers; but it can fairly be said of Dr. J. K. Norton's Short Sermons for Families and Desti- Since our last reference to Mr. Rolfe's edition tute Parishes that they are such as the common of the single plays of Shakespeare two volumes people would really enjoy reading; of which have been added to the series, namely, The here is a 13th edition in proof. [Whittaker. Merry Wives of Windsor and Love's Labour's Lost, $2.00.]—I. K. Funk & Co. have begun the re- both of them following closely and successfully Rolfe's Shakespeares. NOTES AND QUERIES. [All communications for this department of the Literary World, to secure attention, must be accompanied by the full name and address of the author, and those which relate to literary topics of general interest will take precedence in receiving notice.] 457. Spanish Periodicals. I wish to sub scribe for a Spanish periodical and would thank monthlies and weeklies, with whatever informa- Corning, Iowa. The best of Spanish periodicals of which we have knowledge is the Revista Contemporanea of Madrid. It contains biographical, historical, and scientific articles, fiction in a serial form, also a "Boletin Bibliográfico" and a "Crónica Política." The latter is especially valuable to any one desirous of following up De Amicis's luminous account of Spanish parties. This is a semi-monthly of 128 pp., about the style of Lippincott's Magazine. Costs about $10.00 a year. Next we should put the Revista Europea also of Madrid. This contains educational, scientific, and general translation of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister as a serial. Forarticles. For fiction the early numbers of 1880 had a merly a weekly, it is now issued twice a month, and is about the same size as the Nation. Costs about $4.00 a year. Last, comes La Academia, Semanario Ilustrado Universal, of Madrid, an illustrated weekly on the pattern of the Monde Illustré, but more given to art. Costs about $12.00 a year. Our correspondent would do well to call upon F. W. Christern of New York, who makes a specialty of foreign periodicals, and order through him. 458. Miriam. Will you be so kind as to inform me whom Hawthorne meant by his character of Miriam in The Marble Faun? St. Louis, Mo. P. S. |