Lesser's Daughter.

WE certainly do not ask of the fiction of today that its personages shall live happy ever after. however exacting we may have been in the past. Yet, even at this end of the century,

a reader resents an outcome that is unnecessarily dreary and that leaves him listless.

This little volume of the Incognito Series is open, we fear, to the accusation of leaving the most responsive reader listless. The situations are singularly free from verisimilitude, in spite of the author's rather minute style, and in all but one of the characters the element of charm is disregarded. The poor little Jew has it in spite of his money-bags and cowardice and familiarity. But his insufferable wife fails even to suggest it, though her hair is golden and her eyes almond-shaped and blue, with dark eyebrows, and her mouth and nose are faultless. These are, on second thought, conditions that almost invariably eliminate charm, yet something ought to account for her influence over a stream of brilliant followers. The common, reckless little daugher is also a graceless sort of creation, the lover is a stick, and Count Surien, for even a traditional bogus nobleman, overdoes his defects. It is quite remarkable that out of these materials a very fair relish should have been concocted. (Putnam. 50 c.)-N. Y. Times.

Peak and Prairie.

THE reader who has permitted a taste for analysis of motives and mental conditions to get the better of him will find little to feed his appetite in these bright and tender studies of human nature. Beside their crisp cleverness, their dainty humor, and the sunshiny atmosphere of the bracing, clear-cut West, the language of criticism is flat, stale and unprofitable. If it is the Colorado air that is responsible for the peculiar life-giving property of the author's sincere style, we should certainly advise a general emigration toward the place, known in the book as Springtown of the lame and the halt, the fevered and anæmic, among the multitudinous writers of modern fiction.

The most charming and convincing tribute to the attractiveness of the region is paid by the author through her best heroine, Mrs. Nancy Tarbell. She has come from New England to Colorado for the sake of her dying son, and, after his death, is lingering until the railroad in which her money is invested "begins to pay." Meanwhile a blithe young Westerner, with a sweetheart "back East," opens her eyes to the increasing value of the land she owns, thus opening the way for her return. But at the same time he makes her a proposition to rent half her land of her and bring his bride to

The

live upon it during the "off seasons." prospect allures her, in spite of a letter from home, in which her sister-in-law expresses her pleasure in the hope of having Mrs. Nancy back to be on hand to close her eyes for her.

And as Mrs. Nancy captivates us with her pluck and gentleness, and her overflowing friendliness toward man and beast, particularly toward that engaging little beast David, whom she delivers out of the hands of the Philistines, so most of the other characters in the book lay claim to our liking, by virtue of a certain substratum of sturdy generosity and genuineness. The young men are frankly and obstinately in love, the young women speak the English language and omit from their conversation the discussion of their relative importance in society to man, and the horses and dogs play an honest part in an outdoor world. The author's humor is sensitive and abundant, and it insinuates nothing but the pure fun of a pure nature, while her pathos is at once deep-reaching and healthy. If her art sometimes falters, it is The spirit always on the non-essential side. and substance of her work are so sound, that she has nothing to fear and all to gain from strict and continuous literary training-a process that has its dangers for writers of a weaker fibre. (Putnam. $1.)-N. Y. Times.

The Little Lady of the Horse.

A LITTLE girl of ten, who has grown up a lovely product of perfect freedom in the open air of beautiful Southern California, surrounded by the love of all who came in contact with her, from her father to the cowboys and ranchmen, and the horses and other animals of San Felisa, is "the little lady of the horse." Her father has been for twelve years manager of a large estate for an absent English landowner. He has sent for him when the pretty story opens, to hand over his trust, as a malady of long duration has threatened him with blindness, and he must go to his Eastern home to consult good specialists. It breaks Steenie's heart to leave her Western home, but she adores her father and accompanies him to a stiff, correct

From "The Little Lady of the Horse."

New Jersey suburban town, where her grandmother is aghast at her utter lack of conventionality. The child is quick, good-natured and very loving, and her austere grandmother melts before the child's perfect faith in her great intelligence and her enthusiastic praise of grandma's beauty. Troubles come, and when the father is blind, and the grandmother has lost her fortune, Steenie's great love for horses saves the family from utter poverty, and makes her an authority on the training of horses and the riding teacher of all the best girls in the community. Very prettily gotten up. (Roberts Brothers. $1.50.)

In Old New York. CERTAIN persons, who

claim to be advanced thinkers, tell us that patriotism is a delusion and a snare, that cosmopolitanism has now taken its place in all well-regulated minds and communities, and that instead of the old adage, "Dulce est pro patria mori," all souls that are above the level of brutes and idiots are now hymning the doctrines of the new creed of universal brotherhood. According to these teachers, no man should have any special love for his native country, but should regard the whole earth and the denizens thereof as equally entitled to his love and devotion, their argument being that racial and geographical boundaries may have been necessary in feudal and semi-civilized times, but are certainly unnecessary in our present advanced state of civilization. Thus they would have Germans love France as well as they love Germany, and they would have Frenchmen love Ger

many as well as they love France-that is to say, they would fain obliterate all the old cherished feelings of patriotism, of love for the fatherland, and implant in its stead, not a love of any one country or of all countries, but a love of humanity at large.

What will be their measure of success ultimately it is difficult to predict, but we think it safe to assume that many a year, possibly many a decade, will pass before civilized men cease to be patriots. While the world was still an infant patriotism was a living force, and now in this nineteenth century its influence, to the cursory observer at least, seems as strong and pervasive as ever. True, we hear everywhere of anarchists and other revolutionists, who scoff at the notion that one spot of God's earth should be dearer to a man than any other spot, and we hear occasionally of certain radical reformers who preach the creed of universal brotherhood, and denounce all patriots as narrow-minded, selfish bigots. Still, the great mass of mankind, the men and women who form the world of our day, refuses to abjure patriotism and gives abundant evidence of its faith by old-time jubilations, vociferations, huzzaings, and other tokens of joy, whenever a national festival takes place or the native country is honored in any way. We Americans have our Fourth of July. In like manner our European cousins have their own days of national rejoicing. We are all good friends, but are we any worse patriots than our greatgrandfathers were? Hardly!

Thomas A. Janvier is evidently of the same opinion as we are, otherwise he would hardly have taken the trouble to write his interesting book, entitled "In Old New York." A goodly volume this is, and one which no lover of Manhattan Island, certainly no native New Yorker, and hardly any patriotic American, can afford to leave unread. There will be found a graphic and truthful history of our great city from its very first days, together with many characteristic little sketches and pen-pictures of some famous old worthies, whose chief glory is that they helped to make New York the greatest city of the New World. Accompanying the text, and aptly illustrating it, are some excellent pictures, such as those of the old canal, the surrender of Fort Amsterdam, the conflagration in 1776, the State Prison, the Warren Monument in Westminster Abbey, the Warren house in Greenwich, the Moore house, Lispenard's meadows, Richmond Hill, and the Battery in 1822.

We have reviewed this book somewhat at length, because we hold that a book of this kind is of exceptional value. Even the minutest fact in regard to the history of New York should be of moment to us. Many of these interesting facts are too often only to be found in large tomes, but Mr. Janvier has given us, within a small compass, a picturesque history of New York from its birth, and has thus done yeoman's work toward fostering that pride which all Americans should feel in their great city. (Harper. $1.75.)-N. Y. Herald.

A LITTLE waif was found one morning in a little seaport town of Nova Scotia, by James

of

Payzant, the tanner of the town, and one nature's noblemen. The little boy had escaped from a Yankee fishing sloop, where he had been brutally treated, and had lain down despairing in the woods, after being refused shelter on account of his rags and generally trampish appearance. Old Mr. Paysant and his dear old wife took the boy in and put him in the place of the lad drowned at sea, and in the course of years never regretted the kindness shown the child of their adoption. The publishers have made a pretty book, full of good pictures, and with lots of bright talk and interesting events, Boys and girls alike will enjoy the story of "Tan Pile Jim." (Laird & Lee. $1.)

David's Loom.

A STORY of the days when the century was young and the Lancashire weavers vainly strove against the introduction of power looms, battling with a fierce unreason against everything which threatened to supersede manual labor in any degree-when they were ruled with a rod of iron-when a man was hanged for stealing a shirt, and England was in the throes that preceded the birth of organized Chartism.

The events are supposed to be chronicled by a cripple, not born to the purple, but raised in thought and action above his surroundings by intellect and education. A pair of clear-brained weavers-father and son-invent a loom which is destroyed by a mob of their wrathful neighbors, and thence, in inexorable sequence flows the stream of events marked by bloodshed and retribution.

The action is vigorous and full of incident, with a broad vein of genuine English provicial humor breaking out occasionally. There is much dialect, but an occasional footnote wherever necessary makes it intelligible. Such books serve a wider purpose than mere entertainment; they throw a light on minor features of social history which are passed lightly over in records of political events. (Longmans, Green & Co. $1.)-Public Opinion.

Rudin.

Of all the enterprises noted on publishers' lists at the present time, we doubt if there is one of more genuine interest and value to literature than this uniform translation of Turgenef. He has not lacked a great reputation here, and yet only a few of his novels have been turned into English, and these indifferently. The German and French translations have been excellent, especially the latter, Turgenef himself being responsible for some of them, and it may in English can, save by the exercise of more than uncommon imagination, have any adequate idea of his artistic power and subtlety. Now all that is to be changed, judging from Mrs. Garnett's translation of the first volume of the new edition. With a keen sense of the general ludicrousness or, at least, superfluity of prefaces, we hasten to make an exception with regard to Mr. Stepniak's, and to look forward to those he means to write for the succeeding volumes. Turgenef needs commentary if we are to completely understand him. Our notions of modern Russian history and politics are of crude views about the Czar and Nihilists and the vaguest, consisting mainly of some strong, dynamite, while in reality the last half century in Russia has been an epoch of the most complicated and contradictory character, and Turgenef was the painter of its finest shades while he lived to watch it. But though he wrote in exile, he did not write specially for outsiders, and Mr. Stepniak's commentary is a most valuable aid to the full appreciation of the novelist's work. Mr. Stepniak shows himself, too, and not for the first time, an admirable critic. The few sentences which he devotes to a comparison between Tolstoi and Turgenef are full of insight. He is awake to the greatness of both, and does

be said that only those who have read him not

not find in their great differences cause for depreciation of the methods of either. The sum of his criticism is that Tolstoi has great power to move large masses. Turgenef's influence is subtler, less evident. Tolstoi is one of the great personalities of the century; among its artists Turgenef has few equals. Later on in the series it will be time to speak at more length of the novels themselves, which are, of course, known to many. To those who do not know "Rudin," a picture of the men of 1840 who had to talk because they could not act, it may be said that it is one of the most vitally interesting, and that the translator has not bungled in her interpretation of it. (Macmillan. $1.25.) -The Bookman.

The Manxman.

THE author of "The Bondman" has taught us to expect force, passion, and originality in each fresh work from his pen, and these anticipations will certainly not be disappointed by his latest venture. The scene is once more laid in the little island he loves so well, but the drama which he unfolds is of grandiose dimensions, whether we regard the lapse of time which it occupies, the actions and passions of the principal characters, or the startling nature of the incidents and episodes in which it abounds. A curious Manx custom furnishes Mr. Hall Caine with an admirable startingpoint for his plot. Philip Christian undertakes, in behalf of his low-born cousin, Peter Quilliam, the duties of the "Dooiney Molla," or lover by proxy, while the latter is overseas at the Cape, and, after performing them for a while with conscientious zeal, ends by discharging them with more zeal than conscientiousness. Philip's first lapse is not without its extenuating circumstances; but it is rather hard to maintain that amount of sympathy for him which the author evidently intends us to feel throughout his subsequent career of duplicity. Philip's rapid rise to eminence as an advocate, again, has rather to be taken for granted, as it would be in a play, instead of being rendered plausible by the art of the novelist. Hampered by the

irregular conditions of his private life, the perpetual fear of detection, and the constant occasions for suspicion and scandal furnished by his own extraordinary demeanor, Philip's material advancement is as unlikely as his longdeferred escape from the consequences of his treachery is miraculous. It is only fair to add that the miracle is largely explained away by the prodigious simplicity of Peter Quilliam. If it were not for his monstrous magnanimity, Pete would be a splendid fellow. Mr. Hall Caine is his own severest critic in this connection when he expresses Philip's sentiments towards the friends whom he had so deeply wronged in the words: "The very sweetness of the man sickened him." Pete's chivalry is at first noble and touching, and there is an element of real pathos in the series of splendid mendacities designed by him to explain the disappearance of his wife.

Kate Cregeen, the erring wife, is for half the book not only a prominent, but a vividly drawn and intensely human character, and her relegation to obscurity for the remainder of the story detracts considerably from its interest. The minor personages of this heroic melodrama are, with hardly an exception, endowed with remarkable individuality. The postman, the constable, Cæsar Cregeen, the sanctimonous innkeeper, and many other typi cal figures are made to live and move before us, and the conversation at "The Manx Fairy are worthy of comparison with the rustic dialogue of Mr. Hardy. The charming pictures of the Manx harvest home and the wedding ceremonials, and the hundred and one delightful evidences of a minute and faithful study of the Manx manners and superstitions, make one realize how keenly Mr. Hall Caine must appreciate the danger alluded to by one of his characters: "With the farming going to the dogs, and the fishing going to the divil, d'ye know what the ould island's coming to? It's coming to an island of lodging-house keepers and hackney-car drivers. Not the Isle of Man at all, but the Isle of Manchester." (Appleton. $1.50.)-The Athenæum.