and "also" their proper variety of meaning. This defect often interferes more with the reader's comfort than some serious misinterpretation might. Where Miss Lord has made a mistake is in trying to soften a few of the more obvious inelegancies or improprieties of diction. The duty of the translator is to interpret the author as exactly as differences of idiom permit--not to apply one's own powers of discrimination in matters of taste. But we do not wish to end by speaking adversely of a work which has been done carefully throughout, and with good results usually. Miss Lord has prefixed to her translation an account of Ibsen's life and work which is of more value for the information conveyed than for the judgments expressed; and she has gone somewhat elaborately into the philosophy of this particular play. With her conclusions we do not at all agree; her contention that Nora's sermon in the last act is in harmony with her previous utterances is manifestly a case of special pleading. (Appleton.)-Boston Post. THE POETRY OF TENNYSON. DR. VAN DYKE presents with much force the advent in the middle of the nineteenth century of three great artists who set themselves at work to embody their conceptions of human life and destiny in the forms of art. Victor Hugo was the first; Richard Wagner was the second; the third was Alfred Tennyson's putting forth the latest great picture of man's conflict with sin in "The Idylls of the King." The magnitude of Tennyson's purpose is shown by the curious history of the" Idylls." That a great poet should be engaged with his largest theme for more than half a century is indeed novel. That he should touch this theme first with a lyric; then with an epical fragment and three more lyrics; then with a poem which is suppressed as soon as it is written; then with four romantic idylls, followed, ten years later, by four others, and two years later by two others, and thirteen years later by yet another idyll, which is to be placed, not before or after the rest, but in the very centre of the cycle; that he should begin with the end, and continue with the beginning, and end with the middle of the story, and produce at last so complete, so symmetrical, so imposing a poem, set down as the greatest poetic effort since the death of Milton, is, indeed, as Dr. Van Dyke says, so marvellous a thing that "no man would credit it save at the sword's point of fact." The author gives a large division of the book to the comments on the " Idylls." 1 After a chronology of the poet is a new and valuable list of Biblical quotations and allusions found in the works of Tennyson. (Scribner. $1.50.) The Brooklyn Times. LOUISA M. ALCOTT. IN MEMORIAM. As the wind at play with a spark On its upward, wonderful way, Thou art not with the frozen dead And the mourners kneel and pray; GIRLS IN THE LOWELL FACTORIES. PERHAPS the difficulties of modern housekeepers did begin with the opening of the Lowell factories. Country girls were naturally independent, and the feeling that at this new work the few hours they had of every-day leisure were entirely their own was a satisfaction to them. They preferred it to going out as "hired help." It was like a young man's pleasure in entering upon business for himself. Girls had never tried that experiment before, and they liked it. It brought out in them a dormant strength of character which the world did not previously see, but now fully acknowledges. Of course they had a right to continue at that freer kind of work as long as they chose, although their doing so increased the perplexities of the housekeeping problem for themselves even, since many of them were to become, and did become, American house-mistresses. It would be a step towards this vexed and vexing question if girls would decline to classify each other by their occupations, which among us are usually only temporary, and are continually shifting from one pair of hands to another. Changes of fortune come so abruptly that the millionaire's daughter of to-day may be glad to earn her living by sewing or sweeping to-morrow. It is the first duty of every woman to recognize the mutual bond of universal womanhood. Let her ask herself whether she would like to hear herself or her sister spoken of as a shop-girl, or a factorygirl, or a servant-girl, if necessity had compelled her for a time to be employed in either of the ways indicated. If she would shrink from it a little, then she is a little inhuman when she puts her unknown human sisters who are so occupied into a class by themselves, feeling herself to be somewhat their superior. She is really the superior person who has accepted her work and is doing it faithfully, whatever it is. This designating others by their casual employments prevents one from making real distinctions, from knowing persons as perA false standard is set up in the minds of those who classify and of those who are classi sons. fied. Perhaps it is chiefly the fault of ladies themselves that the word "lady" has nearly lost its original meaning (a noble one) indicating sympathy and service; bread giver to those who are in need. The idea that it means something external in dress or circumstances has been too generally adopted by rich and poor; and this, coupled with the sweeping notion that in our country one person is just as good as another, has led to ridicu lous results, as that of saleswomen calling themselves "salesladies." I have even heard a chambermaid at a hotel introduce herself to guests as "the chamberlady." I do not believe that any Lowell mill-girl was ever absurd enough to wish to be known as a “factory-lady," although most of them knew that "factory-girl" did not represent a high type of womanhood in the Old World. But they themselves belonged to the New World, not to the Old; and they were making their own traditions, to hand down to their Republican descendantsone of which was and is, that honest work has no need to assert itself or to humble itself in a nation like ours, but simply to take its place as one of the foundation-stones of the Republic. The young women who worked at Lowell had the advantage of living in a community where character alone commanded respect. They never, at their work or away from it, heard themselves contemptuously spoken of on account of their occupation, except by the ignorant or weak-minded, whose comments they were of course too sensible to heed. We may as well acknowledge that one of the unworthy tendencies of womankind is towards petty estimates of other women. This classifying habit illustrates the fact. If we must classify our sisters, let us broaden ourselves by making large classifications. We might all place ourselves in one of two ranks—the women who do something and the women who do nothing; the first being of course the only creditable place to occupy. And if we would escape from our pettinesses, as we all may and should, the way to do it is to find the key to other lives, and live in their largeness, by sharing their outlook upon life. Even poorer people's windows will give us a new horizon, and often a far broader one than our own. (Houghton, M. 75 c.)—From Larcom's "A New England Girlhood." THE RIVERSIDE LIBRARY FOR Six volumes have now taken their places in this series of books designed specially for boys and girls who are laying the foundation of private libraries. The idea of the series is an excellent one, and the books thus far included are exactly what they should be. History, biography, and natural history are the subjects thus far covered. The plan includes mechanics, travel, adventure, and an occasional work of fiction of special excellence. The first volume was Mr. John Fiske's account of "The War of Independence,” charmingly written in simple, fluent English by this acknowledged master of style. Mr. Fiske sets before his young readers the conditions in England and America that led to the war, why it was that King George was so bitter against the Americans, why it was that Continental Congress was so weak, why it was that the Constitution was so long in shaping. The Boston Advertiser pronounces this the best history of the War of Indeence ever written for young people. This initial volume appeared in June, 1889, and was closely followed by George Washington: an historical biography," by Horace E. Scudder, also a model of judicious and interesting treatment. In the leafy month of June two appropriate books were added by the publishers. "Birds Through an Opera-Glass," by Florence A. Merriam, gives delightful details of the appearance and habits of over seventy American birds, gathered by the author when in college, in the society of nearly forty other young observers. Equipped with operaglasses, they worked together in the woods and fields, rarely consulting books. Besides much charming information, the book is full of hints for the use of young people in learning the common birds they see about them. The notes were gathered either at Northampton, Mass., or at Locust Grove, N. Y. Many of the articles were published in the Audubon Magazine, in 1886. The pretty book also contains a good short list of books on birds. "Up and Down the Brooks," by Mary E. Bamford, consists of studies of insects found by the author by hunting in several brooks in Alameda Co., California. The same families of insects may be found in or beside almost any brook, east or west, hence the author's point of observation makes little difference to her readers. Even the various types of boys she introduces, and with whom she has some quite amusing conversations, exist in all sections of the country. There are thirteen chapters on as many kinds of "bugs," the information being cleverly sandwiched with the author's adventures in the pursuit of her studies. When November weather brought the need of fuel, there appeared volume 5, "Coal and the Coal Mines," by Homer Greene, illustrated by the author. The information offered in this little book has been gathered for the most part through the author's personal experience in the mines. It is quite reliable and free from minute details and technicalities. He describes the different varieties of mineral coals, tells where they are found, and then gives a clear and very satisfactory description of the modes and processes of mining. "The Blind Brother" and "Burnham Breaker," both stories of the Pennsylvania coal mines, are by Mr. Greene. The latest addition is among the gems of this ideal series, "A New England Girlhood Outlined from Memory," the autobiography of Lucy Larcom, one of the sweet singers of New England. It would be hard to find a volume that if properly read would do the girls of to-day more real and lasting good than this record of the private life and hopes and aims of a Puritan maiden fifty years ago. We give elsewhere an extract describing the life of the operatives in the Lowell mills, which is one of the most helpful and inspiring chapters in the book. The Providence Sunday Journal says: "The way Miss Larcom struggled with untoward conditions for an education and power to develop the gifts of imagination with which she was endowed, are an example and an encouragement to all who are travelling on the thorny path that leads to literary renown. It is a wholesome book for older as well as younger readers, for honesty and integrity of life are its foundation, hope and faith are its pillars, while unswerving determination and persevering industry give stability to the structure. Miss Larcom's life, as well as Miss Alcott's, shows the persistent labor that was required to make them famous, though their experience was greatly contrasted." The print, paper and binding, and neat size of these books make them tempting at first sight. We earnestly hope that such a needed and wellplanned undertaking will meet the encouragement it deserves from fathers, mothers, and teachers, who are so largely responsible for the reading tastes and habits of the growing and developing generation. (Houghton, M. ea. 75 c.) MOTHERS IN FICTION. A SICK youth was lying in bed, watching with quiet eyes his mother's form moving gently about the room where for weeks she had been ministering to him with tenderest heart and hands. There had been a stillness there for a little while, when the boy spoke: "I wonder why there are no mothers in fiction." "Why, there are, dear; there must be," the mother answered quickly; but when she tried to name one, she found that none came at the call. When she related to me the little incident, I too immediately said that our memory must be strangely at fault that it did not furnish us with examples in plenty. So obvious and so pregnant a theme had surely not been neglected by novelists. Maternal love! Why, art was filled with illustrations of it, and so was literature. And yet, on making search, I too have failed to find the typical mother where it seems she would so easily be found. I have no large acquaintance with the imaginative literature of any language but our own, and the fiction of other countries may afford examples in this kind of which I know nothing. But recalling the work of our own finest and best known writers, their treatment of the subject appears both scant and slight. Calling the roll of them from Fielding and Scott to Hawthorne and Hardy, it strikes one as singular that they have one and all omit ted to delineate with any peculiar force and beauty a human type which suggests itself so naturally as full of opportunity for artistic representation. ness. There are many figures in fiction movingly illustrative of paternal, filial, fraternal, and sisterly affection. Clive Newcome's love for his old father is outdone by the Colonel's devotion to his son; Romola's dutiful affection for her father is beautiful, and so is the mutual love of Mollie Gibson and her father in "Wives and Daughters;" Harry and George Warrington, Seth and Adam Bede, are delightful portraitures of mutual brotherly love; Scott, in Jeanie Deans, has immortalized a sister's devotion, and in Florence Dombey Dickens has given it a pathetic loveliWe find mothers sketched in as subordinate characters here and there in novels. Mrs. Garth in "Middlemarch" is a good specimen of motherhood, and so is Bell Robson in Mrs. Gaskell's " Sylvia's Lovers;" both of these, however, are not depicted as mothers only or chiefly, but also as wives, true and faithful. The Robson family is one of the most finely drawn groups in fiction; the passionate mutual devotion of the father and the daughter, whose ardent, undisciplined nature was derived from his, and the deep and steadfast love of Bell's finely balanced character, are portrayed with an admirable force. Rufus Lyon and Esther are another pair that cannot be overlooked. Dolly Winthrop-dear soul!-contains all the sweet essence of motherhood in her ample person, although it is not in relation to any child of hers that this deep instinct displays itself. Dolly is a type of the genuine womanhood which includes motherhood, and with what wonderful simplicity she is set before us! Mrs. Yoebright, in Thomas Hardy's "Return of the Native," is a sketch, firmly and strongly drawn, as all that able writer's are, and the filial sentiment in the unfortunate Clym responds to the maternal feeling in his mother's intense soul. I know of no author who has shown a finer appreciation of maternal character than Miss Yonge, who has written too much for her own reputation, and whose work has been so self-restricted within a certain rather narrow sphere of observation that it has not appealed to a wide audience. Yet her earlier and best novels contain much fine and admirably true portraiture of character, and the influence of the mother in family life has never been better depicted. In the "Heir of Redclyffe" the most natural and charm ing figure is that of Mrs. Edmondston, who so gently manages for his good her kind-hearted, hasty-tempered husband, and lends to each member of the household in turn the counsels of her mild wisdom. In the " Daisy Chain," though Mrs. May dies and departs from the scene after the first chapter or two, she remains vividly present as a memory and an influence throughout the whole of the two volumes. Dr. May, always his wife's lover, is as real and charming a man and as good a father of a much too numerous family as can be found anywhere.-From the Atlantic Monthly. DONNA FAUSTINA AND OTHER WOMEN. MEANWHILE Donna Faustina Montevarchi was alone in the streets. In desperate emergencies young and nervously-organized people most commonly act in accordance with the dictates of the predominant passion by which they are influenced. Very generally that passion is terror, but when it is not, it is almost impossible to calculate the consequences which may follow. When the whole being is dominated by love and by the greatest anxiety for the safety of the person loved, the weakest woman will do deeds that might make a brave man blush for his courage. This was precisely Faustina's case. If any man says that he understands women he is convicted of folly by his own speech, seeing that they are altogether incomprehensible. Of men, it may be sufficient, for general purposes to say with David that they are all liars, even though we allow that they may be all curable of the vice of falsehood. Of women, however, there is no general statement which is true. The one is brave to heroism, the next cowardly in a degree fantastically comic. The one is honest, the other faithless; the one contemptible in her narrowness of soul, the next supremely noble in broad truth as the angels in heaven; the one trustful, the other suspicious, this one gentle as a dove, that one grasping and venomous as a strong serpent. The hearts of women are as the streets of a great town-some broad and straight and clean; some dim and narrow and winding; or as the edifices and buildings of that same city, wherein there are holy temples, at which men worship in calm and peace, and dens where men gamble away the souls given them by God against the living death they call pleasure, which is doled out to them by the devil; in which there are quiet dwellings, and noisy places of public gathering, fair palaces and loathsome charnelhouses, where the dead are heaped together, even as our dead sins lie ghastly and unburied in that dark chamber of the soul, whose gates open of their own selves and shall not be sealed while there is life in us to suffer. Dost thou boast that thou knowest the heart of woman? Go to, thou more than fool! The heart of woman containeth all things, good and evil; and knowest thou then all that is? (Macmillan. $1.50.)-From Crawford's "Sant' Ilario." DAUDET'S "JACK." WE confess it is a pleasure in the series of exquisite translations which Laura Ensor is making of the works of M. Alphonse Daudet after the trifles she has lately given us, and especially after the rather insubstantial collection, "Artists' Wives," to meet with a solid and successful work of art like the poignantly pathetic novel "Jack." Readers of reviews have probably heard until they are tired of it, that Daudet has imitated Dickens, but it seems worth while to say that the influence of the English novelist is particularly apparent in "Jack." The Gymnase Moranval-where poor Jack suffered so muchwhat is it but a French counterpart of Dotheboys Hall? And all the pages in which Dr. Hirsch and his daughter appear are entirely in the spirit of Dickens. But the main theme is French enough; the wrongs of an illegitimate son of a disreputable mother whose fitful affection is not strong enough to save him from the mean jealousy of a cruel lover. This theme is powerfully treated, and Jack becomes to the reader a memorable figure. But the tragedy is by no means unrelieved. The satire on the wonderful collection of meanly unsuccessful men of letters gathered about their chief, D'Argenton, if rather savage, is also most entertaining, and the picture of the Moranval school cannot be contemplated without amusement. "Jack" is not M. Daudet's masterpiece-" Numa Roumestan" is that-but it is one of the best of his novels, realistic as regards its main theme through and through, and told with that fine literary art of which Daudet is so completely the master. The fashion in which the story is issued is the familiar one which reviewers everywhere appear to have united to name the " Tartarin," but of the three artists who have usually illustrated M. Daudet's volumes, De Myrbach is here the only one represented. (Routledge. $1.50.)-Boston Advertiser. THE MORGESONS. THIS romance, cherished by the few, will be lost on the majority of readers, and yet it is among one of the most remarkable of the works of American fiction. We have never thought that, though the scenes and incidents were placed in Massachusetts, it was an American story. The spiritual essence in "The Morgesons" would be as proper to Old as to New England. The author delights in human beings who have mental eccentricities. Their actions, never exactly violent, are less conspicuous than their psychological aberrations, and it is for this reason that "The Morgesons" will always be difficult of comprehension. The book, too, has a decided flavor of the past, and does not assort with the mental fashion of to-day. Written nearly twenty-seven years ago (we think its date was about 1862), it shows a Bronté coloring and the morbid influence of what Mr. Lang designates as the "headachy school." Veronica could not be happy because she was not in sound health and was studying Cassandra. We think that if tennis courts had only been in vogue, she would not have gone through so much suffering. "The Morgesons" is a book requiring delicacy of handling in its criticism, for it is very perfect in an art sense. Judged, however, by a vulgar standard, it would be called unpalatable. It requires study to discover what kind of a woman Cassandra's mother was, or to appreciate Ben, who married vaporing Veronica. Though the matter of fact is occasionally to be found in this fiction, it is its general vagueness which will forever preclude its being popular, and romances which only three in five readers can understand will never be successful "The Morbooks. For all these pros and cons, gesons" takes a conspicuous place in American fiction and will be read by the few a century from now when even the names of those of to-day who provide the public with their high-flavored or over-spiced dishes will be utterly forgotten. There are reminiscences of Belem (Salem), which as the author gave them thirty odd years ago, seem as remote to us as are the incidents in the dead cities of Holland at the time of Alva. It is with a feeling of sadness that this reprint is read, because it tells of literary ambitions deserving high rewards. The world, however, wants literary potatoes and can dispense with delicately flavored fruits. (Cassell. $1; pap., 50 c.)-N. Y. Times. PASSION IN LITERATURE. WE are sometimes told that, in our day, poetry which does not affect the sensational" must not hope to be popular. The "sensational" includes several schools, the worst of which is that one which is sensual as well as sensational. The fanatics of this school declaim about passion; but they mean by the word little more than appetite intellectualized. Far other was the meaning of Milton, when he described poetry as a thing "simple, sensuous, and impassioned; "for it was he who characterized specially the stately and severe Greek tragedy as high actions and high passions best describing." Let not the sensationalist of the sensual school imagine that passion is their characteristic. It belongs to their narrow domain neither exclusively nor inclusively. True passion finds its sustenance everywhere-in every joy and woe of humanity-in the faith and patience of oppressed nations, and no less in the cry from the lonely hearth. False passion, in its ultimate development sensuality, loathes all food but carrion, and de |