pieces by giving under each subject references and suggestions for a high order of practical work. The plan is excellent, and well carried out in details. The pamphlets present another evidence that literature is to be taught in simpler but more reasonable and efficient ways than the old-time didactic treatises. The Syllabus prepared by Mr. George is, in the main, lists of names in parallel columns indicating the connection of English literature and history. To this is added a list of American writers under divisious relating to the character of their writings, and separated into two periods, the Colonial and the Constitutional. The list of English writers is also divided into periods, the names of which, however, are not always definite. The Syllabus is intended for schools, and will be found useful when properly supplemented by the work of the teacher. OLIVER FARRAR EMERSON. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS. IN Ireland's "William Hazlitt" (F. Warne & Co.), the selections from Hazlitt's own writings number 510 pages, the introductory memoir of biographical and critical matter occupying but 65 pages. This is as it should be: the incidents of Hazlitt's life are neither numerous nor inspiring, but Hazlitt's writing is not known as it deserves to be known by readers of to-day. Partly because of the hostility which he aroused during his lifetime by his strenuous opposition to governmental measures at home and abroad, and which has not yet ceased to act unfavorably upon his reputation, and partly because of the very voluminousness of his productionthirty-five volumes of very unequal value,―modern readers are not in general greatly attracted to one who was nevertheless a genuine master, both as to thought and expression. Mr. Ireland has wisely drawn but slightly from the pages that reveal the somewhat sour politician, and shows us Hazlitt in his worthier aspects,- as sympathetic critic of our greatest poets, dramatists, novelists, and essayists, and as an observer of men, society, and books,together with some passages which reveal the individual experiences, hopes, aspirations, and disappointments, that made up his very peculiar charac ter. Lamb said of Hazlitt that he tried old authors "on his palate as epicures taste olives "; but, to our mind at least, he seems even happier in dealing with his own contemporaries. What, for example, could be more charming than the picture of the youthful Coleridge in "My First Acquaintance with Poets"? After rising before daylight and walking ten miles in the mud to hear Coleridge preach, he describes how the voice of the preacher, in giving out the text, "rose like a stream of rich distilled "like perfumes "; how he launched into his subject, an eagle dallying with the wind "; and how himself seemed to be listening to the music of the spheres, and to see the union of poetry and philosophy, to see truth and genius embracing under the eye of religion. Likewise his descriptions of Godwin, Cobbett, and Mrs. Siddons, are masterpieces in their way; and we are glad to meet again these old favorites in the new volume. To read Hazlitt through would be tiresome, doubtless; but to dip into him at intervals, as this volume enables us to do, is a great delight, and persuades us that Lamb, Jeffrey, De Quincey, and the rest, were right in ranking him among the foremost and most original of critics. SELDOM indeed is it that the life-story of a man or woman of letters adds to the glory of the name, instead of detracting from it. Such is the case, however, with Mrs. Cheney's "Life of Louisa May Alcott" (Roberts), for we close the book feeling that greater than anything Miss Alcott ever said or wrote was Miss Alcott herself. Here we see one who, from out of the most adverse circumstances, wrested a three-fold success-material accumulation, fame, personal character. Denial, difficulty, and defeat, were the portion of her early years, as aspiration and fulfilment were of her later ones; and this story the editor has widely arranged that Miss Alcott shall tell for herself, through letters, sketches, and copious extracts from the journal which her father caused her to begin when a very small child and in which she continued to record her experiences in later life. When the "transcendental wild oats" yielded too little harvest for the practical support of the family, the bravery with which the young girl took upon herself these burdens amounted to heroism, and the high "call" to serve others was one which always found in her a quick response. once remarked that it had seemed to be her destiny to fill the gaps in life; that she had been a wife to her father, a husband to her widowed sister, a mother to the orphaned daughter of her sister May, while still daughter and sister and friend as well. And withal there seems never to have been in her heart any sense of martyrdom to duty, but always a nature large enough to meet every fresh demand upon it with the same sympathy and sunny courage. Thus it is that, whatever the fastidious literary critic may have to say concerning Miss Alcott as artist, whatever flaws he may find in the most popular children's stories of this generation, he would be captious indeed who should fail to see how much of inspiration and stimulus to high and beautiful living there is in this record of her nobly-spent fifty years. She ONLY a man whose own domestic happiness was beyond question could venture to put forth such a book as Alphonse Daudet's latest-"Artists' Wives" (Routledge). It is a collection of twelve stories, all with the same moral: that artists of whatever kind-painters, poets, sculptors, musicians—all are, in Mother Carlyle's phrase, "gey ill to live with." The perfect sympathy and stimulating companionship of Daudet's own married life probably makes him only the more sensitive to the ill-assorted unions which are, alas! so much more common than his own happier experiences. Doubtless it is his own feeling speaking through the mouth of the painter in the prologue: "Marriage for me has been a harbor of calm and safe waters, not one in which you make fast to a ring on the shore, at the risk of rusting there forever, but one of those blue creeks where sails and mast are repaired for fresh excursions into unknown countries "; and also his own feeling when he adds that he looks upon his own happiness as a kind of miracle, something abnormal and exceptional, because "to that nervous, exacting, impressionable being, that child-man that we call an artist, a special type of woman, almost impossible to find, is needful, and the safest thing to do is not to look for her." The stories have the dainty and delicate touch without which Daudet would not be Daudet, and the illustrations of Bieler and Myrbach and Rossi lend additional piquancy and variety to this really beautiful volume. As for the themewe confess to a lurking suspicion that the situation is not always so pathetic as it seems, and that the apparent incompatibilities of an artist's household are often not so incompatible as the outsider judges. On the whole, Hawthorne's explanation is probably nearer the truth: " Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend and be a stranger." MISS HELEN ZIMMERN'S "Hansa Towns," in "The Story of the Nations" series (Putnam), takes a place beside Captain Burrows's "Cinque Ports." One of the most remarkable growths of the Middle Ages was this association, first of merchants and then of cities, which wielded a power that defied kings and yet was content to be from first to last a trading organization. Holding for a long period the empire of the northern seas, these burghers might well have added to it the empire of the northern lands. But history has again and again shown how little ambitious of political power are the votaries of trade, and the career of "John Company" curiously illustrates their reluctance to assume such power even when thrust upon them. Miss Zimmern has traced for us the growth of the Hansa League, has introduced us to the town life of one of its incorporate members, has carried us along the routes of its commerce, has made us familiar with the workings of its common Diet, and through it all weaves a thread of pleasing incident. We wish there were more of geographical detail: more attention given to the individual cities. We gather from the work that the League was very extensive; we do not learn there what its cities were, even in a brief list. Miss Zimmern is not at home upon the sea, or she would not write of "the bold mariners who ventured forth in ships of small size, devoid of compass, load-line, chart, and chronometer.” We do not, therefore, find in her pages any information on the growth of methods and means of navigation, to which the League must have contributed largely. The causes of the decline and fall of the League, as the changing conditions of life made its longer existence impossible, are well stated in the closing chapters; and an admirable summing up of its whole value to the age in which it existed, and to the civilization that followed, fitly closes the book. In To ask, as Rabbi David Philipson does in his "Jew in English Fiction" (R. Clarke & Co.), that literary artists should only represent "the teachings of the Jewish religion as interpreted by its best and most competent minds," is to demand something more than justice. It is not, and should not be, the object of every artist to give us an exposition of a religious system. Some of them wish to portray for us the characters of imperfect men and women, such as we meet with in our every-day life. Others, like Kit Marlowe, merely introduce Jews as picturesque figures for the stage, and represent them according to the popular conception, just as they would represent Irishmen or Dutchmen. stead of complaining of ill-treatment at the hands of English literary artists, the Jews should be grateful that they have had so many illustrious defenders. The villainous Jews portrayed by Marlowe and others are more than offset by the ideal characters portrayed by Scott, Cumberland, Disraeli, George Eliot. It may be true, as Rabbi Philipson contends, that there are no Jewish national traits; but it seems to admit of no dispute that the Jews have preserved with wonderful tenacity the purity of their blood and the distinctive peculiarities of their race. Even if we consider them as merely a distinct religious denomination, the Jews can claim no special exemption. All sects are liable to have their worst as well as their best representatives described. It would have been fully as justifiable for George Eliot to represent a wicked Jew as it was to represent a wicked Methodist. Dickens was fully as justifiable in portraying Fagin as he was in portraying Stiggins or Chadband. Rabbi Philipson's work does not show that he is himself the most favorable exponent of Judaism. Many of his expressions are colloquial, vulgar, or ungrammatical. Some of his sentences would disfigure a schoolboy's essay. Yet the book shows wide reading, and much vigor and activity of mind. PARKER'S "Familiar Talks About Astronomy (A. C. McClurg & Co.) is a very successful attempt to popularize a difficult and little understood branch of science. Astronomy being, from its nature, the most abstract of the sciences, the attempt to treat its themes in a familiar and conversational style would seem to be a task of such difficulty as to be almost, if not quite, impossible. That Professor Parker has succeeded is probably owing to the fact that he wrote from memory, out of a full mind, on a theme which had furnished the material for many years of class-room lectures. Thus it happens that he speaks of such vast and bewildering themes as the forms, dimensions, distances, motions, etc., of the earth, sun, moon, planets, and stars, and of the methods by which their orbits and size are calculated, all in language so clear and simple that they present few difficulties even to that very superficial person known as the " general reader." He does not aim to present a complete treatise on astronomy. Therefore, all questions that, for the present at least, are merely speculative-as, for example, how the stars and planets were first formed, the physical constitution of these bodies, the source of the sun's heat, etc. are left for the debates of the great astronomers of the world, while this little book aims to deal only with matters susceptible of observation and calculation. The concluding chapter is devoted to the subject of navigation and the theory by which is determined a ship's position at sea. This theory, although within the comprehension of every schoolboy, is strangely omitted from every college curriculum, so that, for the officer of a merchant vessel, or one unconnected with the naval service, there is no place of training where he can learn both the theory and the practice of navigation, on which depends his own livelihood and the lives of those thousands of human beings entrusted to his care. in In his recent "Life of George Washington the "American Statesmen series (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), Mr. Henry Cabot Lodge has adopted an admirable method. Seventeen chapters of narrative, which, owing to its somewhat unusual point of view, draws on with renewed interest to the details of so well known a career, are followed by a closing chapter which in its portrayal of the life as a whole is one of the finest pieces of characterpainting that we know. Mr. Lodge's point of view is not original. To Edward Everett Hale belongs the honor of beginning to render no longer true the words of Mr. McMaster, George Washington is an unknown man." But where Mr. Hale outlined a sketch, Mr. Lodge has filled out in detail, so that we now possess for the first time a true biography of Washington. Here we see the man, beneath the soldier, the statesman, the impossible abstraction which a century of myth-makers have produced. The impulsiveness, the bluntness, the intolerance of the earlier years, stand forth conspicuously, grandly emphasizing the masterly self-control and patience of the maturer man. Mr. Lodge deserves our thanks for thus laying stress on Washington's humanity; while not less important, although not so novel, is his emphasis of the fact that Washington "rose to a breadth and height of Americanism and of national feeling which no other man of that day touched at all." Many men try their hand at a task with more or less of failure, until the right man steps forth and the thing is done for a finality. It would be idle to say that no more biographies of Washington will be written, but it is safe to say that this most admirable book, while not entirely free from error in a few minor details, will be the biography of the future for no brief period, because it is not only the first adequate life of the subject, but it is an exhaustive and critical one. THE task of Mr. John T. Morse in writing a life of Franklin for the "American Statesmen series (Houghton) was none of the easiest. "No poor genie of oriental magic was ever squeezed into more disproportionately narrow quarters than is Franklin in these four hundred pages," laments the author; and we cannot help sympathizing with his opinion. He is disposed to think also, with Mr. John Bigelow, that Mr. Parton's biography has left small place for any other life of Franklin. With this unfortunate frame of mind, Mr. Morse has nevertheless presented the important facts of Franklin's political life in a concise and readable form. It can hardly be called an entirely independent study of the subject, nevertheless; and it is disappointing to find that the author follows Mr. John Jay in his estimate of Franklin's services in the peace negotiations of 1782-83, whereby Jay's part in that diplomatic contest is unduly emphasized. That Franklin was in error as to Vergennes' attitude, is true; but that Jay's discovery of this error entitles him to the main credit of the treaty, is quite a different thing. Mr. Morse seems not to be entirely free from this confusion of ideas. On the whole, however, he has made good use of the new material which the last few years have so richly brought forth; this is particularly the case with the chapters on " Financiering" and "Habits of Life and of Business." Ir the great men of early English literature have ever been introduced to posterity in happier fashion, if they have ever been shown more picturesquely in the very "form and pressure of their time, than in Donald G. Mitchell's " English Lands, Letters, and Kings" (Scribner), we have failed to note it. We say introduced advisedly; for the book lays no claim to any exhaustive treatment of its subjects, its avowed object being "not so much to give definite instruction, as to put the reader into such ways and starts of thought as shall make him eager to instruct himself." Considering the innumerable compendiums of English literature already in the market, this might seem to be an uncalled-for undertaking. But the majority of them are little calculated to tempt one onward, being indeed but a mockery of the real needs of youth, and little more than scrapbooks made up of hundreds of biographical sketches sandwiched between fragments of illustrations too brief and too disconnected to be illustrative of anything. Our old friend Ik Marvel has been too long master of the arts of entertaining to err in such fashion; and so, in what he calls his "bold scurry " over the reach of literary ground from Celt to Tudor, he pauses only at the most commanding view-points, and draws the picture with a few bold strokes which, while ignoring many details, are yet never inaccurate or misleading. The true sign of a master in any art is shown in the skilful handling of few tools, the power to give a strong impression by the use of few and simple materials. COCKER'S "Government of the United States' (Harper) is a useful little manual of the Constitution, for students in high schools and colleges. No effort is made to be original, but numerous constitutional authorities are here digested for the learner. It is a pity that the author still pins his faith to the outworn statement, borrowed by the Declaration of Independence from the declamation of French doctrinaires: "All men are born free and equal." We doubt the interpretation which includes Congressmen under the constitutional prohibition to any person holding any office of trust or profit under the United States to accept of foreign emoluments. But more than once the author confounds the Legislature with Federal officers. We cannot interpret such a sentence as, With the exception, therefore, of the President, Vice-President, Members of Congress, Judges of the Supreme Court, and diplomatic agents and consuls, Congress alone has the power to create offices by law." It seems a strange omission, that, when the statement is made that "the Constitution is silent with respect to the power of removal from office, where the tenure is not fixed, but it is a recognized principle that the power of removal is incident to that of appointment," no reference is anywhere made to the "Tenure-ofoffice" act, or to the recent assertion of the " recognized principle" in the repeal of that act. 66 WE have already noticed a half-dozen volumes of the excellent International Statesmen Series (Lippincott). In the sketch of Grattan, by Robert Dunlop of Owens College, Manchester, we are given not only a well-written biography of one of the highest types of Irish character and patriotism, but a calm and fairly impartial account of political and industrial life in Ireland during all that stormy period which Grattan's public career covered. Here is valuable reading for those who would study the "Irish Question" of to-day in the light of its ancestor of a hundred years ago. The book is a worthy companion-piece to the sketch of O'Connell in the same series. TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS. Anglo-Continental War and American Commerce. Scribner. Bryant, Wm. Cullen. R. H. Stoddard. Lippincott. Chicago and the World's Fair. C. B. Farwell. Cosmopolitan. Colombia. Ricardo Becerra. Harper. English Literature, Books on Study of. O. F. Emerson. Dial. Popular Science. Revolution, Romances of the. E. F. Hayward. Atlantic. Stone Images of San Augustin. H. R. Lemly. Mag. Am. His. Zoology, Methods in. H. de L. Duthiers. Popular Science. BOOKS OF THE MONTH. [The following list includes all books received by THE DIAL. during the month of October, 1889.] ILLUSTRATED HOLIDAY BOOKS. Pierre et Jean: The Two Brothers. By Guy de Maupassant. Translated by Albert Smith. Illustrated by E. Duez and A. Lynch. 4to. pp. 170. J. B. Lippincott Co. $12.50. "The Quiet Life." Certain Verses by Various Hands: The Motives Set Forth in a Prologue and Epilogue by Austin Dobson. Illustrated by Edwin A. Abbey and Alfred Parsons. 4to, pp. 98. Gilt edges. In Box. Harper & Bros. $7.50. The Marble Faun; or, The Romance of Monte Bene. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. In 2 vols. Illustrated with Photogravures. 12mo. Gilt top. In Box. Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $6.00. Florida Days. By Margaret Deland, Author of "John Ward, Preacher." Illustrated by Louis K. Harlow. Svo, pp. 200. Gilt top. In Box. Little, Brown & Co. $4.00. The Low-Back'd Car. By Samuel Lover. With Illustrative Drawings by Win. Magrath. 4to. Gilt top. In Box. J. B. Lippincott Co. $5.00. National Songs of America. Illustrated in Color and Monotint. With Music. Large Svo. Gilt edges. In Box. F. A. Stokes & Bro. $3.50. The Miller's Daughter. By Alfred Tennyson. Illustrated. Small 4to. Gilt edges. In Box. J. B. Lippincott Co. $3,00. "Off the Weather-Bow." By Elizabeth N. Little. Illustrated. Oblong. Boards. White & Allen. $2.50. Legend Laymone. A Poem by M. B. M. Toland, Author of "Iris." Photogravure Illustrations. 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