these marvellous stories as subjects for illustration. [Scribner, 2 vols., 12m0, $3.00.]

Sir Charles Napier is the subject of the last brief biography in the English Men of Action Series. The author, Colonel Sir William F. Butler, has described Napier's heroic, adventurous, and romantic career with a great deal of spirit. The book is, therefore, one of the most readable of the series. [Macmillan, 12mo, 60 cents.]

On the Hills is the title of a series of talks on geology by Professor Frederick Starr, who has a happy faculty of making the subject alive and interesting to young readers. His descriptions of his journeys through different parts of the country and of his discoveries of fossil remains form instructive reading. [Lothrop, 12m0, $1.25.]

A book for girls is Cooking in the Public Schools, which advocates the teaching of the art of cooking, and has several chapters of useful hints and instructions for beginners. The book, which has a few illustrations, is by Sallie Joy White, and ought to direct attention to this useful branch of industrial training. [Lothrop, 12mo, 75 cents.]

A new edition, revised and enlarged, appears of Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Fable; or, Beauties of Mythology. Several of the chapters have been entirely rewritten, and over a hundred outline-drawings of the masterpieces of ancient art have been added. Edward Everett Hale supplies an introduction to the volume. [Lee & Shepard, 8vo, $2.50 net.]

We have received Colloquial French for Travellers by H. Swan, a little book of the usual conversation sort, with an attempt at giving instruction in pronunciation in English. It is not unlikely that many natives will be awfully shocked by the self-taught users of these "phonetic" equivalents. Besides the "talk" there is some useful information on getting about. [Brentano, 50 cents.]

46

Some of the many American admirers of Owen Meredith's popular Lucile" will be interested in a little volume of verse selected from the author's writings and introduced by M. Betham-Edwards. It is called Poems of Owen Meredith, and is a pretty volume, with clear type and rough edges. The selections represent many aspects of the author's mindthe sportive, the narrative, the picturesque, the dramatic and the reflective. [A. Lovell & Co., square 16mo, 40 cents.]

A collection of Count Tolstoi's Gospel Stories comprises a number of the tracts which he has written for distribution among the Russian peasantry. Some of them contain enter

taining and suggestive glimpses of life among the people, and the simple moral lessons that they teach of love to one's neighbor and of with much art. The stories are translated returning good for evil, are often enforced from the Russian by Nathan Haskell Dole. [Crowell, 12m0, $1.25.]

The eleventh volume of the new and enlarged edition of The Collected Writings of Thomas De Quincey, edited by David Masson. continues and concludes the series of De Quincey's papers that are classified in this edition as his essays in Literary Theory and Criticism. The value and the interest of the volume are apparent from the fact that the essays relate to Swift, Addison, Pope, Junius, Lessing, Goethe, etc. [Macmillan, 12m0, $1.25.] Richter, Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Landor,

The thirty-first edition-a sufficient indication of its popularity-thoroughly revised and partly rewritten by C. Stoffel, of William James's Dictionary of the English and Gerprint bearing the name of the Frederick A. man Languages, is issued, the American reStokes Company. The work combines in one convenient volume a German English and an English German dictionary, and so is a handy and trustworthy volume for the student or for the reference library. [8vo, $2.50.]

Under the title of Famous European Artists, Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton has grouped a series of entertaining biographical sketches of Michael Angelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, Murillo, Rubens, Rembrandt, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Sir Edwin Landseer and Turner, each being accompanied by a full-page portrait. There is much that is inspiring to young readers in the narratives of the lives of these great painters; and the sketches are sufficiently full to make them useful to older readers as well. [Crowell, 12m0, $1.50.]

A fully annotated edition of Shakespeare's Poems is supplied by William J. Rolfe, the text being given without omission or expurgation. There are included in the volume "Venus and Adonis,' "The Rape of Lucrece," "A Lover's Complaint," "The Passionate Pilgrim," "The Phoenix and the Turtle" and the Sonnets. The introductions cover the history and sources of the poems and sonnets, with liberal critical comments upon them, taken from the works of various editors, and the editor's notes clear up all the obscure reference and unfamiliar words. It is an edition embodying the results of the latest critical researches, and will be found very useful by the general reader or student of Shakespeare. It is illustrated. [Harper, 12mo, $1.50.]

A new edition is issued of Thomas Hughes's

Life of Alfred the Great, with the introduction which was written twenty years and more ago, and which discussed the general phases of a political crisis that then confronted Europe. The book was offered as the author's contribution to the solution of the great political and social problem which France then presented, and which has since then been solved by the establishment of the Republic. The earnestness with which the English phase of the same subject is discussed seems rather odd to-day. But aside from the political motive for the book, the story of the great English King's life, as narrated by Mr. Hughes, will be found entertaining and instructive. [Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 12m0, $1.00.]

READINGS FROM NEW BOOKS.

CHAUCER'S CHARACTER AND WRITINGS.

The genius of Geoffrey Chaucer is not to be likened to a lone-star glittering down on us through a rift in surrounding darkness, or to a spring day in the midst of winter, that blossoms and fades, leaving us to wait long for its next fellow. He had in his own time for brother writers Wyclif, Langland, Gower, some of the worthiest men of our race, and the light of the English mind was not quenched when he died. Nor is it natural in any way whatever to think of Chaucer as an isolated man. No English poet equal to him had preceded him, or lived in his own day. Only one writer since his time has risen to his level, and he rose yet higher. But much of Chaucer's strength came of a genial spirit of companionship. It was his good will to humanity, and his true sense of his own part in it, that gave him his clear insight into life. In him the simple sturdiness of the dutiful Godseeking Anglo-Saxon is blended intimately with the social joyousness of wit.

Chaucer worked to the same end as Langland and Gower; not less religiously, though with much less despair over the evils that he saw. He does not see far who despairs of any part of God's creation. Having the sympathetic insight that is inseparable from genius at its best, and entering more deeply than his neighbor poets into characters of men, Chaucer could deal with them all good-humoredly; for he had the tolerance that must needs come of a large view of life, exact in its simplicity. Of Chaucer's there is not a thought colored by prejudice or passion. He paints, in his chief work, character in all its variety, without once giving us, under some other name, a covert reproduction of himself. When he attacks hypocrisy that trades upon religion, and in so doing strips vice of its cloak, the sharpest note of his scorn has in it a rich quality of human kindliness. In perception of the ridiculous he is beforehand with the most fastidious of his countrymen, and with his own native instinct he knows where an Englishman would turn with laughter or displeasure from

words or thoughts that might seem good to any other people. Earnest as he was-disposed at times even to direct religious teaching--Chaucer was quick to see the brighter side of life, and ready to enjoy it in the flesh. When he was rich he seems to have delighted freely and naturally in and when stripped of substance he set up no mean whatever good things wealth would bring him ; wailing of distress, but quietly consoling himself with a keener relish of the wealth that was within him, he dined worse and wrote his Canterbury Tales."- From "English Writers," Vol. V., by Henry Morley.

BROWNING'S STRENGTH AND WEAKNESS.

To come to the question which cannot be honestly set aside, although it is no longer profitable to discuss it, Browning has not cared for that poetic form which bestows perennial charm, or else he was incapable of it. He fails in beauty, in concentration of interest, in economy of language, in selection of the best from the common treasure of experience. In those works where he has been most indifferent, as in the " Red Cotton Night-Cap Country," he has been merely whimsical and dull; in those works where the genius he possessed is most felt, as in Saul," A Toccata of Galuppi's," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," The Flight of the Duchess," "The Bishop Orders his Tomb in St. Praxed's Church," Hervé Riel," O Cavalier Tunes," "Time's Revenges," and many more, he achieves beauty or nobility or fitness of phrase such as only a poet is capable of.

It is in these last pieces and their like that his fame lies for the future. It was his lot to be strong as the thinker, the moralist with "the accomplishment of verse," the scholar interested to rebuild the past of experience, the teacher with an explicit dogma to enforce in an intellectual form with examples from life, the anatomist of human passions, instincts, and impulses in all their gamut, the commentator on his own age; he was weak as the artist, and indulged, often unnecessarily and by choice, in the repulsive form-in the awkward, the obscure, the ugly. He belongs with Jonson, with Dryden, with the heirs of the masculine intellect, the men of power not unvisited by grace, but in whom mind is predominant. Upon the work of such poets time hesitates, conscious of their mental greatness, but also of their imperfect art, their heterogeneous matter; at last the good is sifted from that whence worth has departed.-From "Studies in Letters and Life," by George Edward Woodberry.

taken, numbered 89, a total of 180 for two tenements! Or when a midnight inspection in Mulberry Street unearths 150 "lodgers" sleeping on filthy floors in two buildings. Spite of brownstone trimmings, plate-glass, and mosaic vestibule floors, the water does not rise in summer to the second story, while the beer flows unchecked to the all-night picnics on the roof. The saloon with the side-door and the landlord divide the prosperity of the place between them, and the tenant, in sullen submission, foots the bills.

Where are the tenements of to-day? Say rather, where are they not? In fifty years they have crept up from the Fourth Ward slums and the Five Points the whole length of the island, and have polluted the Annexed District to the Westchester line. Crowding all the lower wards, wherever business leaves a foot of ground unclaimed; strung along both rivers, like ball and chain tied to the foot of every street, and filling up Harlem with their restless, pent-up multitudes, they hold within their clutch the wealth and business of New York, hold them at their mercy in the day of mob-rule and wrath. The bullet proof shutters, the stacks of hand-grenades, and the Gatling guns of the sub-Treasury are tacit admissions of the fact and of the quality of the mercy expected. The tenements to-day are New York, harboring three-fourths of its population. When another generation shall have doubled the census of our city, and to that vast army or workers, held captive by poverty, the very name of home shall be as a bitter mockery, what will the harvest be?—From "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York," by Jacob A. Riis.

Adventures of Thomas Pellow, of Penryn, Mariner.
Ed. by Dr. Robert Brown. I. Macmillan.
Alexander (Mrs.). Blind Fate. Holt.
Baedeker's Handbook for Great Britain. ne, revised
and augmented. Scribner & W. N.
Bohn's Handbook of Games. New and enlarged
edition. Vol. 1. Table Games. Scribner & W.
Bolton (Mrs. Sarah K.). Famous European Artists.
With portraits. Crowell

Edit

Bulfinch (Thomas). The Age of Fable; or, Beauties of Mythology. New and enlarged edition. ed by E. E. Hale. Lee & Shepard. 8vo. N. Butler (Sir W.). Sir Charles Napier. Macmillan. Carisbrooke Library. Edited by Henry Morley. VIII. London Under Elizabeth, by John Stow; IX.-Masques and Entertainments, by Ben Jonson; X.-Ireland Under Elizabeth and James I. Routledge. 12mo. Each

Church (Col. W. C.). The Life of John Ericsson. II. Scribner. 8vo, 2v.

Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians. Third and final volume. Edited by J. D. Champlin, Jr. Critical editor, W. F. Apthorp. With over 1000 illustrations and 36 etched portraits. Parchment binding. Limited edition. Scribner. 4to, 3v, each, N..

DeQuincey, The Collected Writings of Thomas. Vol. XI. Ed. by David Masson. Macmillan.

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Electricity in Daily Life. A Popular Account, by ten Eminent Authorities, of the Science and Application of Electricity to Every-day Uses. ¡l. Scribner. 8vo.

Finck (Henry T.). The Pacific Coast Scenic Tour. II. Scribner. 8vo.

Frederic (Harold). In the Valley. II. Scribner. Gray (E. C.). Making the Best of Things, and Other Essays. Putnam.

Harrison (Mrs. Burton). Bric-a-Brac Stories. II. Scribner. ne.

Henty (G. A.). Maori and Settler. A Story of the New Zealand War. 11. Scribner & W.

A Chapter of Adventures; or, Through the Bombardment of Alexandria. II. Scribner & W.

By England's Aid; or, The Freeing of the Netherlands. I. Scribner & W. Hoffmann (E. T. W.). Weird Tales. Translated by J. T. Bealby. With 11 etchings. Scribner, ne.

2V.

Hosmer (Prof. J. K.). A Short History of Anglo-
Saxon Freedom. Scribner, cr. 8vo. .
James (Prof. William). The Principles of Psychology.
Holt. 8vo, 2v.

Jesus, the Carpenter of Nazareth. By a Layman.
Scribner & W.

Johnston (Keith). Physical, Historical, Political, and Descriptive Geography. ne, revised. Scribner & W.

James (William). German-English and English-German Dictionaries. ne, revised and partly rewritten by C. Stoffel. F. A. Stokes Co. Litchfield (Grace Denio). Little Venice, and Other

Stories. Putnam.

Mackintosh (John). The Story of Scotland. II.

Putnam.

Martin (B. E.). In the Footprints of Charles Lamb. 11. Scribner.

Martin (Edward S.). A Little Brother of the Rich,

and Other Verses. Scribner.

McAllister (Ward). Society as I Have Found It. With portrait. Cassell, 8vo.

Mead (Theodore H.). Our Mother Tongue. Dodd, Mead & Co.

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Phelps Ward (Mrs. E. S.) and Herbert D. Ward. Come Forth. Houghton, M. & Co. Riis (Jacob A.). How the Other Half Lives. Studies among the Tenements of New York. II. Scribner. 8vo.

Rubinstein (Anton). Autobiography. With portrait. Little, B. & Co. .

Saint-Amand (Imbert de). Marie Louise and the Decadence of the French Empire. With portrait. Trans. by T. S. Perry. Scribner.

The Court of the Empress Josephine. With portrait. Trans. by T. S. Perry. Scribner. Schuyler (Eugene). Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia. I. Scribner. ne. 2V.

I 50

2 50

Stearns (Prof. L. F.). The Evidence of Christian Experience. Scribner, 12mo.

2 CO

Stephens (F. G.). Memorials of William Mulready. 11. (Artist Biographies.) Scribner & W. Stoddard (R. H.). The Lion's Cub, and Other Verse. Scribner.

I 25

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Swan (H.). Colloquial French for Travellers. Bren

tano..

Tiffany (Francis). The Life of Dorothea Lynde
Dix. Houghton, M. & Co.
Tolstoi (Count). Gospel Stories. Trans. by N. H.
Dole. Crowell.

Webster's International Dictionary. The Authentic Unabridged Revised and Enlarged. With more than 3000 illustrations. G. & C. Merriam & Co. 4to. N.

I 50

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Whitney (Mrs. A. D. T.). Ascutney Street. A Neighborhood Story. Houghton, M. & Co. Wilson (Edward L.). In Scripture Lands. New Views of Sacred Places. 11. Scribner. Large 8vo.

Woodberry (G. E.) Studies in Letters and Life. Houghton, M. & Co.

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MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM, iii.-1.

274.—(1) Who was Marian Douglas, the poet? Is she still living? Has any collection of her poems been published? (2) Who is generally considered to have been the greater writer, Irving or Hawthorne? Which one is the more popular? (3) What rank does Bryant take among American poets, so far as popularity is concerned? J. J. W.

(1) Her maiden name was Annie D. Green; her married name is Robinson, and she lives in New Hampshire. Her "Picture Poems" was published in Boston in 1871. (2) We do not remember that any such comparison has ever been instituted. (3) Most critics rank Bryant high, but his volume of original poems does not now sell largely; it is surpassed in popularity by his translation of Homer.

275.-(1) Why do travellers, no matter from what part of England they set out, always say "going up to London"? (2) Was the rose used as a national emblem in England before the time of the Wars of the Roses? (3) Who is the author of the scenes introduced by Keene (and perhaps Booth) in his rendition of Richard Third-viz.: the opening one, where Henry Sixth hears of the death of his son, and that between the young princes and their mother and grandmother, in the Tower?

G. W. S.

(1) The expression probably came from the old Greek idiom, in which going to the capital of a country was always spoken of as going up. Thus Xenophon's famous history is called the Anabasis ("the going up"), because it is an account of a march toward the capital. (2) Probably not. (3) That is Colley Cibber's version of the play, which was brought out in London in 1700, and is now always presented on the stage in preference to Shakespeare's.

276.-(1) Where can I get a cheap set of Shakespeare's works? (2) Where can I get

(1) From any dealer. We cannot specify, because we do not know whether you want it in one volume or in several, in large type or in small, annotated or not, expurgated or not. The editions are very numerous. (2) Any dealer will get it for you. It is published by C. Desilver & Co., Philadelphia. $2.25. (3) Look at the latest, entitled " Open Sesame" (3 vols., graduated), published by Ginn & Co., Boston.

is that it is a little fugitive poem and can be found in some miscellaneous collections. M. T.

287.-I am searching for a poem that contains these lines:

"The caterpillar in drowsy rings

Dreams purple pictures of his future wings," and also for a poem which contains the following:

"In the hush of the night, in the breeze on the hill,

Or alone on the waste of the sea,

I have ever a presence that whispers of thee, And my spirit lies down and is still."

E. S. M.

288.-(1) Can you tell me who is the author of a poem entitled "Waiting," which begins: "Serene I fold my hands and wait,

Nor care for wind, nor tide, nor sea,
I rave no more 'gainst time or fate,

For, lo! my own shall come to me"? (2) Is the quotation given in Matthew Arnold's lecture on "Emerson," near the beginning, After the fever of life," etc., to be found in any of Cardinal Newman's published writings? (3) Where in Goldsmith's works does the quotation occur, "Our greatest glory consists not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall"?

S. S.

E. L. G.