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were worth while to have issued this volume of Mr. Page's, if only we could have had in enduring form the wild, strange story of "Marse Chan," a story that will live long after the mere dialect tales" of the time have been forgotten. An etched vignette by W. L. Sheppard adds value to the volume of Virginian tales, and one by Percy Moran, as delicate as the touch of Cable, adorns the other book.

A unique chintz binding clothes Mrs. Mary B. Claflin's New England book, "Brampton Sketches" (T. Y. Crowell & Co.). These are quaint and characteristic sketches of rural life in New England, the life that was sometimes narrow and often hard, but a life from which has issued much of the richness of the nation, far and widely scattered. From the same publishers, and very different in tone, is Julius Wolff's romantic tale, "The Robber Count." The title suggests an oldfashioned Ann Radcliffe flavor that will not be found in the book. The scene of the story is laid in the Hartz Mountains, and the time passes during the reign of Philip IV., of France, when Pope John XXII. was held" in Babylonian captivity" at Avignon. It is a thrilling and very dramatic romance, filled with adventures of high emprise, priestly and war-like intrigues, and much love-making. It may be called a German Waverley novel, and in its native land it has had great vogue.

This year we have much French literature

tic of these six books-" Marie Antoinette and the End of the Old Régime," Citizeness Bonaparte," "The Wife of the First Consul," "The Court of the Empress Josephine," "The Happy Days of the Empress Marie Louise," and "Marie Louise and the Decadence of the Empire”— published by Charles Scribner's Sons. These are named in their chronological order, not in the order in which they have appeared from time to time during the year. The publication of the series is a distinctly noteworthy event in literature. Mankind never does grow weary of reading the fascinating details of the lives of the great ones of the earth; and about these three women, Marie Antoinette, Josephine, and Marie Louise, there is a certain air of romance that suggests fiction, rather than the hard, dry

of the best sort. Beginning with the admirable histories of the first and second wives of Napoleon and the last days of Marie Antoinette, by M. Imbert de Saint-Amand, we open a delightful chapter of real and romantic life in France. It is not easy to speak in terms too enthusias

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facts of history. M. de Saint-Amand has availed himself with great skill of the materials, new and old, that have come to his hand, and the graphic power and facile grace with which he has sketched the careers of these three famed and unhappy women invest his work with

an irresistible charm. These six volumes are as fresh, even to the jaded reader of history, as if the scenes therein depicted were novel and for the first time revealed to a world of readers.

Not far from these should come the famous Marie Antoinette romances of the elder Dumas, published in English by Little, Brown & Co., of Boston. These standard novels are issued in a style uniform with that of the Valois and the D'Artagnan Romances published by this firm last year. It should be said that this is the first English edition of them, complete and unabridged, that has ever been prepared. The series includes "The Memoirs of a Physician," "The Queen's Necklace," "Ange Pitou," "La Comtesse de Charny," and "Le Chevalier de

pages. But the student of French history will find fresh delight in perusing these romances of one of the most stirring epochs in modern annals.

In its way, "The Narrative of Captain Coignet, Soldier of the Empire," is a unique book. Jean-Roch Coignet was a member of Napoleon's bodyguard, born in the Department of the Yonne, in 1776. In childhood a drudge, in boyhood an adventurer and a runaway, and in manhood a soldier, and something of a swashbuckler, the story of his life, as told by himself, is diverting and even fascinating. As a private soldier he fought in many great campaigns. He learned to read and write after he had come to man's estate, and so became the instructor of others, and set down from day to

Maison-Rouge," twelve volumes in all, and enriched with twelve historical portraits after Lebrun and other famous painters of the time. It is too late to say anything of the wonderful genius, the almost sublime audacity, with which historical personages are introduced in these

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day the adventures and the shrewd observations of a French soldier who bade farewell to the Grand Army only when Napoleon, at the end of the One Hundred Days, quitted forever the soil of France. It is an absorbing story, reviving again the glories of the Empire, and turning a strange and lurid light upon the private's view of the grim side of "the pomp and circumstance of glorious war." The book is profusely illustrated, and is edited by Lorédan Larchey from the original manuscript, translated by Mrs. M. Carey, and published by T. Y. Crowell & Co.

The last two volumes of the four in which Mr. Henry Adams has told the story of Jefferson's administration (Charles Scribner's Sons) are now published, and the first two of the five in which the history of James Madison's administration is to be recounted have followed closely upon them. The story of the second administra

and sixth volumes; and the second epoch, reaching to 1817, will be treated in the three concluding volumes of this master-work. The historic era embraced in this section of Mr. Adams's narrative is one of very great interest to students of American development, political and material. It covers the period of the embargo, the War of 1812, and the new distribution of industries incidental to these two highly important events.

Switzerland is treated in the latest number in the Story of the Nations Series of G. P. Putnam's Sons, the joint authors of the book being Mrs. Lina Hug and Mr. Richard Stead. The history of this little republic, which has so long preserved its autonomy in the midst of the storms and disasters that have swept over Europe, is one of strange interest. Americans probably know less of the internal political machinery of Switzerland than they do of any other State on the continent of Europe. In this volume will be found not only a succinct narrative of the early history and development of Helvetia, from the time of the Lakemen to the present, but an intelligible account of Swiss Government as it exists to-day in its somewhat complicated form. The story is told with commendable directness, without any loss of that picturesque element which we

From the press of A. S. Barnes & Co. come two portly volumes, of six hundred and fifty pages each, "The Three Germanys," by Theodore Sedgwick Fay. Mr. Fay went to Germany in 1833 in a diplomatic capacity; subsequently he occupied a similar place in Switzerland, and, with only occasional absences from German-speaking peoples, he has had an almost continuous residence among them through this period. During a diplomatic career that lasted over twenty-five years, Mr. Fay enjoyed great opportunities to observe the changes that have taken place in Europe; and to an attentive study of this surprising panorama of surprising political and social changes he has brought a mind enriched by scholarly culture and mellowed by years of studious thought. The work is logically constructed, and although the author modestly protests that his is only an outline sketch of the evolution of Germany, it should be said that this is the first comprehensive arrangement of the events that embrace all of German history that has ever been attempted. Roughly speaking, Mr. Fay divides his work into three great epochs : that of the Holy Roman German Empire, the Germanic Confederation, and the German Empire under the Hohenzollerns. Prefixed to these is an introduction in which the author sketches with a firm hand

the great events that marked the history of the world before Charlemagne. The book ends with the death of Frederick the Good and the accession of William II., June 25, 1888. It is a procession of Titantic proportions that passes before us in these picturesque volumes. In them is compressed with great art all that is necessary to a large knowledge of a large subject. Mr. Fay's style is elevated and dignified, but vivid withal, and his pages are never, by any chance, dull. A copious index and a synchronistic chart (from 1500 to the present time) lend value to the work.

Mr. Henry G. Lockwood's "Constitutional History of France" (Rand, McNally & Co.) has the positive value of being the first attempt to trace the growth of the constitutional government of France from the time of the tiers étût of 1302 to the present time, and to give in detail the changes that have taken place in the instrument of 1853, under which the republic is now governed. All these constitutions are

printed in the appendix of the volume, together with the constitutional laws of 1875, thus enabling the reader to see without confusion of mental vision just what has been accomplished in this direction in France. It should not be taken for granted that this work is one of dry details, interesting only to the student of constitutional history. It abounds in pictures of contemporaneous history, and the author's recital of the events which marked the birth of the constitution, in the throes of the revolution of '89, is clear and satisfactory reading. The book is not bulky-about four hundred pages-and is adorned with good portraits of many of the celebrated men who figure in its story.

After Stanley's "Darkest Africa," the most important book on that fascinating country is undoubtedly Mr. Jephson's "Emin Pasha and the Rebellion at the Equator." It is important as supplying a gap that necessarily exists in the narrative of the rescue of Emin, and

also because it has been written with the cooperation of Stanley and has been revised and warmly approved by the great explorer. It will be recollected that Stanley sent Mr. Jephson up Lake Albert to Emin to assist that officer in organizing his people for the retreat to the coast. Mr. Jephson remained with Emin Pasha from April, 1888, until the end of January of the following year, when he rejoined Stanley. During that time arose the rebellion of Emin's forces; Emin and Jephson were imprisoned, and for a time chaos reigned in the Equatorial Province. Emin's account of these events has not yet appeared, and until it does the narrative of Stanley's faithful lieutenant must remain unique. Mr. Jephson, during his long sojourn in the Province, had many opportunities to study the manners and customs of the natives, and the results of his observations are not the least entertaining portion of this exceedingly entertaining volume. Mr. Stanley has written for the book a cordial prefatory letter. The volume is profusely and handsomely illustrated, two of the drawings being from the pencil of Mrs. H. M. Stanley. It is published by Charles Scribner's Sons, and is sold only by subscription.

A century and a half has passed since Dean Swift, satirizing the map-makers of his time, wrote:

So, geographers, in
Afric maps,
With savage pict-
ures fill their gaps,
And o'er unhabit-
able downs

Place elephants for
want of towns."

The towns are not now so very numerous on the maps of Africa, but the last two or three genera

ley is a great step, and the summary of African travel that is compacted in "Great African Travellers," by William H. G. Kingston and Charles Rathbone Low, is one that is replete with human and absorbing interest. With a few introductory notes of Africa as it was known to Herodotus, Pliny, and Ptolemy, the authors sketch for us rapidly the adventures and the explorations of Bruce, Park, Denham and Clapperton, the Landers, Barth, Burton and Speke, Grant, Livingstone, Baker, Cameron and Stanley. This is an interesting chapter in the world's history. It is worthy of a great epic by some master hand. But so far as a condensed narrative of the exploration of the Dark Continent is desired, this book answers its purpose admirably. It is well arranged and handsomely printed and illustrated, and is published by George Routledge & Sons. Mr. Joseph Thomson's book, Mungo Park and the Niger" (Dodd, Mead & Co.), is an excellent companion for the preceding volumes named. It is a sympathetic and kindly biography of Park and his ill-starred son, Thomas, who lost his life in an attempt to follow up his father's discoveries and explorations. This is a moving story; and it is well told.

tions of African travellers have so clearly charted the Dark Continent that the schoolboy of to-day may wel! ask, with the Congressman's son who beheld the newest map of Europe with amazement, "Has Africa been gerrymandered?" From Mungo Park to Stan

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Among the recent reprints of standard French novels, Dodd, Mead & Co.'s new edition of George Sand's "The Gallant Lords of Bois Doré" will have a warm welcome from readers. The work is in two volumes, choicely bound and attractive in typography. Two other good