and come through a varied world of marriage relations to the monogamous form of the modern world of Christian faith, in which love as a basis has not set aside the older basis of contract, but has reached beneath it and rooted it in the holiest sentiment of the race.

J. J. HALSEY.

RECENT FICTION.*

Since no writer of English fiction at the present day can, except by the very midsummer madness of myopic criticism, be for a moment considered as ranking with the great masters of the last generation, it is evident that whatever interest there lies for us in contemporary novels must be sought for, not in their portrayal of character or situation upon the absolute terms of art, but in their points of incidental excellence, whether of style, theme, or tendency. This is a fact which is coming to be generally recognized; and most careful readers of the modern product frankly admit that what attracts them is either some quaintness or suggestiveness of language, the exposition of some social or intellectual problem, or the selection of some special field in which the writer is prepared to present interesting information, more or less obviously disguised in fictive garb. No one, for example, could seriously maintain the ingenious Mr. Howells, or the picturesque Mr. Crawford, or the solemn Mrs. Ward, to be a writer of great fiction in the sense in which Charles Dickens, or Sir Walter Scott, or George Eliot was such. But we are none the less attracted by the humor of the one, the novelty, or the earnest purpose, of the others.

And to our mind the most prom

*THE STORY OF TONTY. By Mary Hartwell Catherwood. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

STANDISH OF STANDISH. A Story of the Pilgrims. By Jane G. Austin. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE GREAT WAR SYNDICATE. By Frank R. Stockton. New York: Dodd, Mead & Co.

EXPIATION. By Octave Thanet. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

ALBRECHT. By Arlo Bates. Boston: Roberts Brothers. JACK HORNER. A Novel. By Mary Spear Tiernan. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

PRINCE FORTUNATUS. A Novel. By William Black. New York: Harper & Brothers.

KIT AND KITTY. A Novel. By R. D. Blackmore. New York: Harper & Brothers.

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ising field for the clever but mediocre novelist of the present uncreative age is that which we have taken Mr. Crawford to illustrate-the field of special and unfamiliar information. It was really the glimpse of Indian life, and not the vagaries of Ram Lal and his astral body, that set us all to reading “ Mr. Isaacs "; it was the treatment of German life (in the students' "corps" and the ancestral legend-haunted castle) that made "Greifenstein" attractive to us, and it is interest in the social and political condition of new Italy that makes us anxiously await another volume about the doings of the Saracinesca family. The substitution of mere knowledge for creative ability doubtless marks for us a decadent epoch in literature; but we may console ourselves by the reflection that there are, after all, enough really good novels left us from the past to fill up as large a share of the average existence as should reasonably be devoted to that sort of entertainment.

These remarks are not, however, designed to introduce any new novel by Mr. Crawford, for, strange to say, although it is at least six months since that familiar name has greeted us from the title-page of a volume just from the press, we have seen no reason to expect that its owner is about to bestow upon the public any fresh product of his industry. But they are suggested to us by the perusal of two recently published stories which deal with certain important phases of American history, and which illuminate, with singular clearness, the periods. and the scenes which they represent. We refer to Mrs. Catherwood's "The Story of Tonty and Mrs. Austin's "Standish of Standish," two of the most conscientious and sympathetic studies in historical fiction that have come to us for examination in late years.

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In The Story of Tonty" Mrs. Catherwood has emphasized the success made by her "Romance of Dollard." The story of La Salle and his lieutenant, beginning in Montreal, and ending, tragically enough, by the Mississippi shore, is one which offers many elements of romantic interest, and the author has told it in a strong and fascinating way. La Salle, quite as much as Tonty, is the historical hero of her work, and both figures stand out in very human distinctness. There is a great wealth of material for the novelist in these annals of New France and of the western territory, which was an un

MARIA: A South American Romance. By Jorge Isaacs. The Translation by Rollo Ogden. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Catherwood has exhibited a remarkable talent for making use of it for purposes of fiction.

The character of Miles Standish has already

been given a place in the gallery of historical figures made familiar to all of us by the art of the poet and the novelist; and yet Mrs. Austin, in her re-delineation of the famous Pilgrim, seems to have given him a clearer outline and a warmer coloring than he has had before in the imagination. But "Standish of Standish" is not the only historical figure in Mrs. Austin's romance. Bradford and Carver and Winslow are there as well, and many others of whom those curious in New England history have read in "Mourt's Relation" and other precious records of the past. Indeed, all of the figures in this story are historical in some degree, and what is more, they are not mere images with but the semblance of animation, not puppets worked by wires only too evident to the observer, but living men and women, our own ancestors again clothed in flesh and blood, and affording a very human contrast to the rather inhuman picture of the early colonists of Massachusetts Bay which has been so often thrust forward by well-meaning writers. In other words, out of comparatively meagre materials, the author has made a very vital narrative, and one which must appeal strongly to every man with New England blood in his veins. To those "dear ones whose memory we cherish so lovingly, and in the sober reality of whose lives lies a charm no romance can ever reach," this book is a worthy tribute, and, we trust, a lasting monument.

Mr. Stockton's story of "The Great War Syndicate" is a variation upon a well-worn theme. War is declared between Great Britain and the United States, and our government does not know how to meet the enemy, being entirely unprepared for anything of the sort. At this point a syndicate of capitalists comes forward, offers to carry on the war for the government, and makes a contract to that effect. Victory is speedily assured us, for the syndicate controls a secret force more suggestive of the Keely motor than of anything else, and quite as deadly as the "vril" of "The Coming Race." Armed with this mysterious power, the war-ships of the syndicate sail forth, and speedily reduce England to subjection. The warfare described by Mr. Stockton is unparalleled by anything in recorded history, for the reason that it is waged from beginning to end without loss of life. At least, there is only one life lost, and that is by accident. But if Mr. Stockton has no tale of murder grim and great to tell us, he blows up a few vessels and fortified places by means of his new force, and

contrives to make his story generally exciting.

The reputation made by Miss French (we believe that the personality of the lady who signs herself "Octave Thanet" is now an open secret) as a writer of realistic sketches of life in the Southwest is more than confirmed by her story of "Expiation," her first full-fledged novel. The work is sustained in interest, strong and virile enough to warrant the use of a masculine nom de guerre. We should no more suspect it, from internal evidence, to be the work of a woman than we suspected that to be the case with the author of "Where the Battle was Fought." Expiation" is a story of Arkansas in the days of the guerrillas and the closing months of the late war. There is a little more of the element of dialect than we can accept with unalloyed pleasure, but this deepens the general impression of faithfulness to fact which is the net result of the perusal of this remarkable story. It is in something more than the hackneyed sense of the terms that we may speak of the characters in this story as well drawn and vital, of the situations as interesting, and of the scenes as graphically described. And the reflective or contemplative passages of the book have the charm of a poetic instinct and the grace of a finished style.

It is undoubtedly true, as Mr. Arlo Bates confesses, that without the Freiherr de la Motte Fouqué's "Undine" for a precedent, the story of Albrecht" would never have been conceived. But it is equally true that the story is a charming and graceful piece of imaginative work, showing us, among other things, that realism does not yet have everything its own way with our novelists. In Mr. Bates's story the soulless mortal is a man, not a woman, a kobold, not an undine, and his marriage, with the maiden of his choice, in furnishing him with a soul, endangers that of his wife. in the end the powers of darkness are subdued. The scene of the romance is fittingly placed in the Black Forest, at the time of Karl the Great.

But

The city of Richmond, at the time of our own civil war, is chosen for the scene of "Jack Horner." "Human blood at that time," says the writer, "was of a splendid red color, as a hundred fields could testify. It had not yet become the languid lukewarm tide which evolves the pale emotions of a modern American novel." No great amount of blood is made to flow by the author of this story, although she has chosen to deal with the war period, but we are left in little doubt as to the nature of the fluid that

courses through the arteries of the principal characters. They are all very genuine men and women, with the exception of the hero par excellence, and he is a very genuine baby. In fact, this modern edition of the famous nursery hero is about as adorable a bit of infant humanity as is often found in a novel, to say nothing of the cold actual world. But he could not have the story all to himself, and so he is surrounded by a number of pleasant people, whose lives, during those trying years of siege, come to be strangely interesting to us, so gracefully is their story told. The novel is one whose perusal will leave no feeling of regret for a wasted hour.

" is an

Mr. William Black has so pleasant a way of telling a story, and is so beguiling a chronicler of the small-talk of the club and the drawing-room, that we are apt to forget, until we come to reflect upon it after the book is closed, how uninteresting the story is in itself, and how trivial the conversation of which it largely consists. "Prince Fortunatus example of the average novel of Mr. Black's recent years. It makes us acquainted with a lot of clever and generally well-behaved people, having various degrees of interest in one another, and never plays upon our emotions beyond the point of gentle and agreeable stimulation. The hero, in the present case, is a singer of comic opera, and the romance of his life is threefold that is to say, he is in love, more or less simultaneously, with three women. Probably the extremely idiotic game of poker which he is described as playing on one occasion, when in a peculiarly reckless mood, may be accounted for by the distraction incident upon such a state of mind and heart as is implied in an affection thus divided. In the end, he marries one of the three he could not do more, not being a merman-and, as it can make little difference to the reader which of the three it is, the story may be said to end happily.

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The muse of all perversity seems to preside over the naming of Mr. Blackmore's latest stories and of their characters, male and female. "Kit and Kitty" is sufficiently bizarre as a title for a serious novel, and it is peopled by such persons as Tabby Tapscott, Tony Tonks, and Donovan (familiarly known as " Downy") Bulwrag. But Mr. Blackmore always tells a story genially, and the season has brought few as well worth attention as this. Kit is a promising young market-gardener, and Kitty is the maiden whom he loves. Just at the proper time when Kit's love affairs are running a trifle

too smoothly to promise much interest, Kitty is kidnapped by the ingenious Downy Bulwrag, and the story takes a new lease of life. When it has been expanded to a suitable length, she is restored to his arms, and all ends happily. The lore of the gardener forms a substantial element in the narrative, and who, if not Mr. Blackmore, should be capable of expounding it? If we are to have no more "Lorna Doones" and "Alice Lorraines," we should at least not be ungrateful for such gentler idyls as this.

"Gobi or Shamo," further described upon the title-page as "A Story of Three Songs," is such a work of fiction as Mr. Rider Haggard and Mr. Andrew Lang might have written, had they chosen to collaborate in such a task. The story of the isolated Greek city, existing unknown all these years in the highlands of Central Asia, embodies just such an imaginative idea as that of "King Solomon's Mines," and a great deal of the incident and description is just what might have been expected of the ripe classical scholarship of the author of "Letters to Dead Authors.' The gentleman who has successfully combined the diverse gifts of these two writers is Professor G. G. A. Murray, who occupies the chair of Greek in the University of Glasgow. The story which he has produced may be described as faulty in construction, but amazingly clever in detailed execution. We have not been able to discover what is meant by the mention of "three songs" in the title: as for the "Gobi or Shamo" part of it, that is cleared up by a quotation from Cornwell's Geography "the great desert of Gobi or Shamo." The Greek city of which there is question in the work is represented as a relic of the invasion of the Greeks under Alexander the Great, and the story of its re-discovery by two or three modern Englishmen is one of the most fascinating narratives that recent fiction has provided.

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The literature of Spanish America, as Mr. Thomas A. Janvier points out in his brief but admirable introduction to Mr. Rollo Ogden's translation of María: A South American Romance," is both rich and ancient. A catalogue raisonné of the books published in Mexico alone, and before the year 1600, includes one hundred and sixteen titles, and the literary production of Mexico and the other SpanishAmerican countries has certainly kept pace since then with that of the English-speaking half of the continent. Señor Jorge Isaacs, the author of the story now translated, is a Columbian, and his fame among Spanish-Americans

is probably as great as that of Mr. Howells among Americans who speak English; so that the story was well worth translating, and Mr. Ogden appears to have done the work conscientiously. As a story, it can make little appeal to our Anglo-Saxon and somewhat jaded appetites. It is suggestive of such French romantic idyls as "Atala" and "Paul et Virginie," and neither of these stories ever excited more than a languid literary interest in English readers. But it is pretty, pathetic, and graceful, and it gives a faithful picture of refined country life in a South American republic, so that it adds materially to our vital knowledge of the world and its peoples.

WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS. PROFESSOR Francis A. Walker has twice recast his admirable text-book of political economy, published in 1883. In 1886 he reduced it to a " Briefer Course," better adapted by its size to collegiate work. He now gives us his "Elementary Course (Holt), in something over three hundred pages, for high schools. The author says: "It is no primer of political economy which is here offered, but a substantial course of study in this vitally important subject." He might have added that it is no mere digest of the larger books, but a fresh presentation of the subject, and anyone who has had experience with the larger works will readily concede that this is the best. The whole subject is admirably handled. The separate applications of economic principles of the larger works have here been incorporated into the general treatment with good results. A trait that much commends Professor Walker as a thinker to thinking men is his fearlessness in modifying his opinions as he grows in knowledge, and he has not been afraid to confess to it so recently as the April issue of the "Quarterly Journal of Economics." So, in the volume under consideration, there are modifications, both by addition and omission, which in our judgment improve its quality as an educational text-book. Of course, Professor Walker's large recognition of the entrepreneur is found here, as well as in his earlier works, and here also "substitution of commodities" as affecting supply, and the failure of substitution as affecting labor supply, get due recognition. The chapter on "Protection and Free Trade" handles that living question carefully and without prejudice, although we think the writer is at his very best on that subject in the article on "Protection and Protectionists" in the "Quarterly Journal of Economics" for April, 1890, where the judicial attitude of mind is admirable. We do not intend to disparage the two earlier books when we say we believe this volume will become the college text-book, at least until the day when someone shall

take Professor Folwell's suggestion and begin the economic text-book with consumption, because "the best place to begin anything is at the beginning, and it is a mere truism that the wants and desires of men are the spring and motive of industrial activity."

vases.

LAFCADIO HEARN is an alert and sympathetic observer, and possesses in a marked degree the faculty of giving to his impressions their exact word values. To read his "Two Years in the French West Indies" (Harper) is to see the French West Indies pretty much as he himself saw them through a pleasing, poetical, couleur-de-rose haze, yet truthfully enough as to general features. We incline to the belief that a visit to Martinique, for example, after reading Mr. Hearn's Martinique studies, would be almost as disenchanting as a visit to Venice after contemplating Turner's glowing canStill, we freely forgive author and painter for glorifying the truth; and few of us would care to exchange Turner for Canaletto, or Mr. Hearn for a writer with a more statistical bent. The tropic luxuriance of the regions described by our author is happily reflected in his style, though at times his pen sheds colors and superlatives a thought too freely. There is a smack of the garish splendor of the pantomine in this, for instance: "High carmine cliffs and rocks outlying in a green sea, which lashes their bases with a foam of gold." But Mr. Hearn expresses himself, in general, in a very delightful way, and his style is not one to be adjusted to the Procrustean bed of strict academic propriety. The book abounds in charming bits of word-painting and characterization; and the whole is tinged with a sentiment and poetic charm that will appeal to lovers of good literature. The value of the work is enhanced by its profuse illustrations, which speak well for both artist and artisan. Some of the cuts are really admirable for precision of line and delicate gradation of tone.

TO THOSE impatiently waiting for Mr. Stanley's book now announced by the publishers as soon to appear,Mr. Scott Keltie's "Story of Emin's Rescue as told in Stanley's Letters" (Harper) is a welcome foretaste. These letters have been thus edited in response to a demand for a cheap publication to satisfy the public craving for news about the land and the man now sharing the largest portion of the world's curiosity. Those who did not read these letters as they originally appeared in the daily papers will here meet afresh that tremendous rush of personal energy which always carries men off their feet when Stanley appears, and will also find much interesting addition to their previous information about the lake region of central Africa. brief sketch of Emin, and of the events which led up to the rescue expedition, is prefixed to the letters. The unhappy controversy which has sprung up over the later conduct of Emin is here foreshadowed, although there is due recognition of the heroism

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which can never be obscured by later errors of judgment growing out of a large heart and a noble devotion to humanity. When the truth is all told, Emin Bey will be gratefully remembered by mankind as one who, if perchance he shared some of the quixotic tendencies of his old captain, Gordon, has with it also that which will enroll both of these soldiers of fortune high among the benefactors of the race. The book would have gained by the inclusion of Stanley's latest letters.

SOME two years ago, the octogenarian novelist and littérateur, Mr. Thomas Adolphus Trollope, and the veteran academician, Mr. W. P. Frith, each published a volume of personal reminiscences. Both volumes were received with generous applause by the public, and in both cases there was a hearty call for more. Mr. Frith responded to this call, not long ago, with a second volume no less interesting than the first, and Mr. Trollope has now likewise responded with an equally charming sequel to his earlier volume. The second installment of "What I Remember" (Harper) is mostly devoted to recollections of the past quarter of a century, although the writer does not hesitate to put in matters of earlier date when they occur to him. For the past twenty-five years he has lived almost continuously in Italy, for a while in the neighborhood of Florence, and afterwards at Rome. He has been steadily occupied with literary work during this period, and has been thrown into contact with a great many charming people. The new volume, like the other, is a storehouse of anecdote and pleasantly-related incident, all genial in the highest degree. As a running commentary upon the great events of modern Italian history, and as a picture of the refined society of the Italian capitals, the new volume is of the most interesting description.

DR. RICHARD GARNETT certainly exhibited a self-confidence worthy of his subject in venturing to write a short Life of John Milton" (London : Walter Scott) so soon after Mark Pattison's deeply conceived and masterly book on the same subject. Yet the admirer of Pattison must admit that Dr. Garnett has justified himself. His book was worth writing, for it is worth reading. Less deeply meditated, less terse, less precise than its predecessor, the present volume is nevertheless an elegant bit of work. It contains a good deal of material not to be found in Pattison; notably an excellent bibliography covering thirty-nine pages, and representing the cream of the Miltoniana in the British museum. Touching one mooted point, Dr. Garnett takes issue successfully with Pattison, who thinks it a pity that Milton should have given up to party what was meant for mankind." On the other hand, the present biographer shows, we think conclusively, that Milton would have been false, not only to his country and to his God, but to himself, had he not embarked upon that "troubled sea of noises and hoarse disputes." Dr. Garnett contends, moreover, very

convincingly, that the composition of the prose works was in several ways no bad course of training for the future author of "Paradise Lost."

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IN reviewing Mr. Stanley Lane-Poole's "Story of Turkey," we criticized the book as failing to make anything more than a mere string of adventures of Turkish history. This writer has now found a more congenial field in his "Story of the Barbary Corsairs (Putnam), which is necessarily limited to a tale of adventure. In this restricted sphere, Mr. Lane-Poole has done admirably, and has produced the most entertaining volume of the Story of the Nations" series. There is a flavor of the sea about the narrative, and the style of the writer has in it the dash and verve of the rovers it represents. Old Barbarossa here lives again in all his large-minded rascality; the Knights of St. John again win deathless laurels; and the Mediterranean again whitens with innumerable sails, and glitters with the armor of contending heroes. The darker side, too, is here, and the terrible life of the galley-slave is pictured in a most valuable chapter. Proper credit is given to the United States for the initial step toward suppressing the mere handful of impudent pirates who for two centuries had bullied all Europe. In this portion, the writer has had the assistance of Lieutenant J. D. J. Kelley, of the United States navy. The last chapter, on the French acquisition of Algeria, is written with a somewhat too caustic pen, as the facts would speak for themselves, without added denunciation.

WHATEVER may be Mr. A. P. Russell's other gifts, his latest work, "In a Club Corner" (Houghton), shows that he has what Carlyle called "a genius for making excerpts." In this compact little volume of 328 pages, he gives us an agreeable mélange of wit, wisdom, humor, and anecdote, culled during a course of widely-extended and well-selected reading. For the convenience of the reader, he has arranged his material under general heads, with by stitching the whole together with a thread of marginal summary; and "scrappiness" is avoided

personal comment and reflection. The selections are fresher than one usually finds in such compilations, and the book, besides being very readable, will prove an excellent means of reference. Mr. Russell has seen fit to call his work a “monologue