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material into which so many complex elements enter as into that of history. This order enables the reader to grasp his theme easily, and gives special pedagogic value to the book. Of course in its raison d'etre, as a sum. mary, such a work misses everything like concrete fulness. No one need expect a vivid picture of life, for the conception of life means grasp of detail. The digest involves desiccated treatment. But within its scope, and a very useful scope such a work must always have, as making an easy lodgment within the memory of the student and furnishing nuclei for the classification of the wider detail acquired by other historical reading, the book before us is one of notable excellence. In a busy age, too, when nine tenths of those who read care only for salient facts, the outline and skeleton of knowledge, and have neither time nor inclination for the fruits of scholarship, such a work helps to fill a great function. It need only be said further of the History of Modern Civilizaton," that, like its predecessor, it is edited with scholarly skill. In illustration, care has been taken to enliven and expand the value of the text, and the publishers have made its mechanical execution worthy of its purpose and of the reputation of their great house.

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ONE REASON WHY. By Beatrice Whitby, author of The Awakening of Mary Fenwick," Part of the Property," etc. (Appleton's Town and Country Library, No. 81.) New York: D. Appleton & Co.

RECALLED TO LIFE. By Grant Allen. (Leisure Moment Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

A second book by Miss Seawell, who wrote that charming and inspiring story of youthful heroism, "Little Jarvis," written, too, in a similar vein, will naturally excite interest in a wide circle of youthful readers. The story of adventure, which inevitably appeals to the first place in the boy's affection, only needs the fine spirit of noble ambition and devotion

to duty to lift it up to an educational place. The book before us, if it does not quite reach the artistic level of "Little Jarvis," which was in its way quite a masterpiece, travels in the same direction. As the name indicates, it is based on an incident in the life of the late Commodore Paulding, who died not many years ago in the fulness of years and of reputation, though his advanced years precluded him from taking any active part in the splendid naval feats of our late civil war. Hiram Paulding was a son of one of the captors of Major André, and was fully worthy of his patriotic antecedents. He became a midshipman at the age of fourteen, and shortly after his appointment, when merely what we should now regard as a schoolboy, took part in the battle of Lake Champlain in the War of 1812, where Commodore MacDonough won a notable victory with a rudely and hastily built flotilla which he and his men had constructed out of the forest. These clumsy floating batteries, hardly fit to withstand even the gales of a small inland lake, were made the agencies of a naval skill and courage that compare favorably with like qualities which have emblazoned some of the most splendid pages of modern history. The marvellous evolution of naval warfare, with its steel-armored ships and bighpower guns, tends to belittle the exploits of an earlier age in the thoughts of careless minds. But it is surely true that with the achievement of science in perfecting the instruments of war, much of the romance of battle has fled alike on land and sea. No modern naval commander, whatever be his oppor. tunities, will ever be able to stir the imagination as do the exploits of Nelson, Rodney, Cochrane, and Porter (not the late Admiral Porter, but his father).

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Commander MacDonough's exploit on Lake Champlain played an important part in determining the War of 1812, and it was the good luck of young Midshipman Paulding to perform an important minor part in the battle. in command of the boats which repelled the enemy's cutters sent to capture one of our stranded gunboats, and his gallantry saved the vessel. For this the brave lad received a sword of honor from Congress. The narrative under our notice of course includes much which is fictitious with its woof of fact. The story is simply and vividly told, with a bright play of humor mingled with its more heroic elements. Old bo'sons mate, Danny Dixon, with his sailor's yarns of Captain Paul Jones and other naval heroes, is a clever piece of

portraiture, and is an amusing picture of the old man o' war's man, a type of character which has contributed to the attractiveness of so many novels from the time of Smollett to that of Clark Russell. Young people will find a chunk of solid satisfaction in reading such a book as Miss Seawell has again given us. It is a pleasant promise that it belongs to a series" Young Heroes of Our Navy"-full of potentiality, if the hereafter is justified by what is already accomplished.

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Mrs. Needell's realistic study of life in Stephen Ellicott's Daughter" must be dis. tinctly classed as superior workmanship. The motive which determines the story is the absorbing passion for wealth and what wealth brings, and its power over a weak but not radically wicked man to debase, and finally destroy everything in him which works for honor and uprightness. In another novel lying on our study table for review occurs this aphorism: "For a deadener of feeling, for a blunter of sensibility, for a destroyer of the higher and more delicate emotions, the want of money is an unparalleled agent." For the phrase "want of money" in this sentence might be substituted with no less truth "the determination to make and keep money at any hazard." Lancelot Henderson, in Mrs. Needell's novel, falls heir to an estate dishon. estly represented by his father, who had from his father received a will leaving the property to an elder brother, previously fallen in disfavor. Lancelot's father transmits to his son the injunction, disregarded by himself, to restore a wrongfully held property, and the son disregards the trust as the father had done. The rightful heir, Lancelot's cousin, who, under another name, becomes known to his relations, is suspicious of the true fact, but proof is concealed in the document held by the usurper. This paper is finally discovered by Lancelot's wife, who has been won from the worthier cousin by a cunning trick, and the husband's knowledge of his wife's acquaintance with his baseness is followed by her getting possession of the will and concealing it from him, with the demand that he shall make restitution within a given period, under penalty of exposure. Lancelot is driven by his own mad passion and base in stincts from one subterfuge to another, to the final commission of suicide. The author shows us a picture, composed with great psychological skill, of the swift decadence of the unhappy man, spurred alike by losses on the

turf, hatred of his cousin, and fear of detection, till he plunges headlong into the abyss that awaits him. A contrast of character, well devised, is that of Dr. Anthony Glynne, alias Anthony Henderson, Lancelot's cousin, who refuses to accept his own name, strong, resolute of purpose, austere in honor, and inspired by high ideals, who is master of circumstance and not its slave. The antithesis is worked out with great art and effect. Dr. Glynne saves his cousin's life by his skill and selfdevotion in operating on him for diphtheria, and when he becomes master of the secret which restores him to his rights, and brands Lancelot as a scoundrel, acts with habitual nobility. Mrs. Henderson, the daughter of the sturdy Stephen Ellicott, half gentleman, half yeoman, is almost too perfect for frail humanity and to our notion there is far more lifelikeness in the figure of Winifred, the sister of the wretched hero, whose charm of character is not less alluring because she is very human and defective-all true woman and not the least an angel. Another capitally drawn character is that of the Hon, and Rev. Maurice Acland, the rector of Thorpe-Bredy, a scholarly, somewhat narrow man, proud, high-minded, shy, and full of the finest instincts of the English gentleman, who never can get away from his university instincts, and preaches over the heads of his rural parishioners. The story is very genuine and sincere, and is a bowshot beyond the mark of the average English novel alike in strength of conception and art of narrative.

ers.

Miss Whitby has shown conscience and talent in her art, and " One Reason Why" is very readable, though we scarcely think equal to either of its predecessors in those qualities which appeal to the better class of novel readThe novel is not distinguished by any element of freshness or originality in its plot, nor does it touch any of the deeper reaches of feeling or emotion. It shows, nevertheless, good sound workmanship, and suffices to attract the reader agreeably, if he does not expect too much. A charming young woman, who, driven by family stress, becomes a governess in a wealthy and aristocratic family, and draws the heir of the title and estates to fall desperately in love with her, is always an interesting personage, if the author does her half justice. There is no shortcoming in Miss Whitby in this case, as she endows her heroine with even more pride and hauteur than suffice to justify her self-respect and dignity in the most

piquant fashion, and under the most tempting provocations. Ursula Nugent makes her lover work hard to conquer her obdurate attitude, nobly inspired by her belief that a lover of hers should not be conscious of stooping in asking her hand. When she is induced to feel that she is sought as an equal, and has sufficiently tested the suitor's devotion, she succumbs. There is nothing otherwise worthy of notice in the people that move in the story -they are conventionally conceived, conventionally treated; but the current of motive flows naturally and simply, and there is a happy absence of exaggeration in the incidents of the story, which does not prevent them being pleasantly and effectively narrated. We think, however, that Miss Whitby can do and has done better work. Neque semper arcum tendit Apollo.

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One wishes that Mr. Grant Aller had half the skill and cleverness in fiction which make him delightful as a critic and essayist. Few writers possess the play of wit and humor, or the knack of writing epigrammatic sentences, which render his excursions in the field of popular science so fascinating to the intellectual tastes, if not always satisfactory to one's convictions of their veracity. The stirring of a fantastic imagination is no less eviIdent in his stories, and it naturally moves more unhampered in fiction than in his explications of cold fact; but it is a kind of sheet lightning which plays on the surface; or, to use another simile, it is a gray goose shaft that never strikes deep enough to wet the feathers. Mr. Allen has extreme ingenuity in building an artful and complicated plot, full of surprises and cunningly dovetailed. knows, too, how to work the material of sensation out of interesting scientific subtleties, and to hurry on his readers from one climax to another, without giving them time to think in the breathless hurry and dash of his story. It is his virtue that he is never dull; and it is only the dull writer who is a poor writer. But this author, fertile and brilliant as he is in mere story-telling-in the art of which he might become another Wilkie Collins-utterly fails in the more divine and searching functions of the imagination which create people in the mimic world of the novel by developing them from within outwardly. They seem to be manufactured, not created; but as puppets, they play their parts with a briskness and agility which never fail to keep the attention keenly stretched. In the story before us Mr.

Allen has evidently been inspired by the "Called Back" of Mr. Fargus, a novel which had such an enormous sale some years ago. The heroine loses her memory and becomes almost a child under the agony of witnessing the murder of her father. With the reacquisition of intelligence, however, she entirely fails to recall the circumstances of the murder or any conditions of life which may have led up to the murder. The fascination of the story consists of the subtile and gradual restoration of the impressions which had been blotted from her memory like the restored inscriptions on a palimpsest. These lead her astray, however, as she slowly gathers up the broken threads; and in the series of shocks and surprises by which the most unexpected things come to pass-things probable shown to be illusions, and the apparently impossible made certainty-the mind of the reader is kept in a dizzy whirl of doubt and expectation. The deus ex machine in the plot is a veritable machine, a device for taking instantaneous and continuous photographs by the electric light, created by a battery in the machine-photographs, too, which need no development of the negative. Such an apparatus was in the room where the murder was committed. It is through these photographs that the circumstances of the murder and the identity of the homicide are revealed. The mechanism of this romance-for such it is to be called rather than a novel-is exceedingly creditable to Mr. Allen's scientific ingenuity. does not much further go. absorbingly interesting to the general swarm of novel readers it is safe to predict.

Beyond this one

That it will prove

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

IN her forthcoming novel, "Gerard; or, the World, the Flesh, and the Devil," Miss Braddon has chosen for her theme the agnostic's sense of the shortness of life and the

futility of riches; the same feeling which

breathes through the lament of the Preacher. The story is a sad one, and the machinery, which in an essentially modern manner reproduces the central idea of Balzac's "Peau de Chagrin," touches only the outermost fringe of the supernatural.

DR. FAUST PACHLER, who was for nearly half a century the keeper of the Vienna Hofbibliothek, has died at Graz in his seventy-second year. During the October fights of the revolutionary year 1848, when the roof of the

library was in flames, Dr. Pachler, who had only the two under-librarians to aid him, bravely risked his life to save the treasures in his charge. He was active with his pen, and his novels, poems, and articles in periodicals had considerable popularity.

A BUNSEN-DENKMAL, in the form of a bronze bust of the scholar and diplomatist, has just been unveiled at Korbach, his native place.

DOM PEDRO D'ALCANTARA, the ex-Emperor of Brazil, continues his favorite study of Hebrew. He has privately printed at Avignon a monograph under the title of "Poésies Hebraïco-Provençales du Rituel Israélite Comtadin." It contains the Hebrew text, with a transcription and a French translation. The hymns are still used in Provence upon special occasions. They were composed, if we may judge from the acrostics, by a certain Morde. cai, and most probably by Mordecai Ventura, and, if so, Dom Pedro says rightly they are of the sixteenth or the seventeenth century, adding," Avant cette époque on n'en trouve nulle trace." The Athenæum, however, lately mentioned the projected publication of a fragment of a Hebrew Provençal poem on the history of Esther of the fourteenth century. His Maj. esty states at the end of his preface that he has learned too late that M. Ernest Sabatier, of Nîmes, had already published a translation of Mordecai's hymns, without the Hebrew text, at Nîmes in 1874.

COL. TWEEDIE, Her Majesty's Consul General at Baghdad, has for many years been engaged in the collection of materials for a work on the Arabian horse, and now, on the eve of his retirement from the East, has finished his work. It will be highly elaborate, and is intended to give a history of horse-breeding in Arabia, accounts of all the most noted Arab studs and strains in the East, notices of the most famous Arabs that have been imported, and a full comparison of the Arab horse with other varieties. The work, which will be illustrated, is to be published by Messrs. Blackwood & Sons.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN have just published the first part of an illustrated edition of Green's "Short History of the English People," handsomely printed in super royal octavo size. The illustrations, which have been partly selected by Mrs. Green and Mr. George Scharf, are engraved in wood by Mr. J. D. Cooper. They are taken from authentic sources, to exhibit pictorially the arts, industries, costumes,

coins, domestic and ecclesiastical architecture of the various periods, and also include a series of portraits. In addition, there will be colored maps, and chromo-lithograph reproductions from illuminated MSS., etc. It is expected that the whole will be completed in thirty monthly parts.

MR. HALL CAINE's new romance, "The Scapegoat," seems to have touched the feelings of English Jews, during its appearance in the Illustrated London News. Through Dr. Adler, the Chief Rabbi, they have addressed to him an invitation to visit Russia, together with a companion familiar with the country and the language, in order that he may study the Russo Jewish question on the spot. We understand that the first edition of "The Scapegoat" in two-volume form was entirely exhausted on subscription.

MR. GRANT ALLEN will leave England next week. He proposes to travel through the Tyrol and Northern Italy, before settling down

in his winter home at Antibes. In addition to other literary work, he has lately been engaged in preparing for the press a translation of the "Attys" of Catullus which he made some years ago. He will prefix to it a pref ace, dealing generally with the mythology of the subject.

As witnesses of the popularity of “ The Canterbury Tales," fifty-four MSS. still exist, ranging in date from about 1420 to 1476. Of these, all except four are accessible to students either in public libraries or by the courtesy of private owners-Lord Ellesmere, Mr. Wynne of Peniarth, Lords Leconfield, Leicester, Tollemache, Delamere, the Dukes of Devonshire and Northumberland, and Sir Henry Ingilby. Lord Ashburnham will not let his four MSS. be used, and Lady Cardigan locks her one up too. Of other MSS, once known, that seen by William Thynne about 1530, and signed “examinatur Chaucer," is most desired. Then come six mentioned by Urry, belonging to the Duke of Chandos, the Hon. Col. H. Worseley, Mr. E Cambey, Mr. Norton of Suthwic, Hants, the Bishop of Ely, and the Royal So. ciety (No. 38), and Tyrwhitt's Askew I., though any or all of these may be among the fifty-four known MSS. The MS. Cotton, Otho A 18, was burned in the Westminster fire. The MSS. of the "Tales" bequeathed by early Wills we can hardly hope to identify now.

A SMALL but interesting Luther find (this time, it is to be hoped, a genuine one) is re

ported by the Berliner Tageblatt from Nordhausen, where the authorities of the local museum have acquired two printed leaves, with marginal notes attributed to Luther. Thanks to the exertions of Herr Heineck, the town librarian, it has been ascertained that these leaves originally formed part of the well-known Psalter which, dating from 1513 and provided with marginal notes by Luther, is at Wolfenbüttel. The authorities of the latter library are now endeavoring to obtain possession of the two leaves in order to complete the defective volume.

In view of the ensuing centenary anniversary of the birth of Theodor Körner, Count August Fries, of Moravia, has presented to the Körner Museum at Dresden the autograph manuscript of "Leier und Schwert," which was generally believed to be lost. The manuscript also contains some hitherto unpublished poems and a brief diary, extending to a few weeks only.

GERMAN papers announce that a portion of the literary remains of the late Baron von Bunsen, which have not yet been published and are presumed to be considerable will shortly be issued under the editorship of the well-known Church historian Prof. F. W. Nip. pold, of Jena.

THE Coming volume of the "Dictionary of National Biography" extends from Howard to Inglethorp. Prof. Laughton writes on Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham, and on Lord Howe; Mr. Russell Barker on the fifth, sixth, and seventh earls of Carlisle of the Howard family and on John Howard, the philanthropist; Mr. Sidney Lee on Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and James Howell of the “Epistolæ Ho-elianæ ;" Mr. Thompson Cooper on Cardinal Philip Howard and Joseph Hunter, the antiquary; the Bishop of Peterborough on Thomas Howard, second, third, and fourth dukes of Norfolk; the Rev. Alexander Gordon on John Howe, the Nonconformist; Prof. Tout on Howel Dda and Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester; Mr. G. C. Boase on Mary and William Howitt; Canon Venables on Dean Howson; Mr. H. R. Tedder on Hoyle, the celebrated writer on whist; Miss Kate Norgate on Archbishop Hubert Walter; Canon Perry on Bishop Hugh of Lincoln; Mr. Fuller Maitland on John Hullah; Mr. Leslie Stephen on David Hume and Francis Hutcheson; Mr. J. A. Hamilton on Henry Hunt, the Radical, and William Huskisson; Mr. Alexander Ire

land on Leigh Hunt; Mr. Cosmo Monkhouse on William Henry Hunt, the water color painter; Mr. G. T. Bettany on John Hunter, the surgeon; Mr. C. H. Firth on Col, Hutchinson and Edward Hyde, first Earl of Clarendon; Dr. A. W. Ward on Henry Hyde, second Earl of Clarendon, and Laurence Hyde, Earl of Rochester; Mr. H. G. Keene on Sir Elijah Impey; and Mr. Joseph Knight on Mrs. Inch. bald.

MESSRS. SAMPSON Low announce a new series by representative men in the Church of England, and in the chief branches of Nonconformity, which will be published under the general title of "Preachers of the Age." The

volumes will each contain some twelve or four

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teen sermons or addresses specially chosen or written for the series, with photogravure portraits reproduced, in most instances, from un. published photographs. It is also proposed to add to each volume a bibliography of all the books published by the author. The following volumes have already been arranged for :-"Living Theology," by the Archbishop of Canterbury; "The Conquering Christ, and other Sermons," by the Rev. Dr. Alexander Maclaren, of Manchester; Verbum Crucis," by the Bishop of Derry; "Ethical Christianity," by the Rev. Hugh Price Hughes; "Sermons," by Canon W. J. Knox-Little, of Worcester; "Light and Peace," and other Sermons, by the Rev. Dr. Henry R. Reynolds, President of Cheshunt College; "Faith and Duty," and other Sermons, by the Rev. Dr. A. M. Fairbairn, Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford; "Plain Words on Great Themes," by the Rev. Dr. J. Oswald Dykes, Principal of the English Presbyterian College, London; 'Sermons," by the Bishop of Ripon ; Sermons," by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, Pastor of the Metropolitan Tabernacle; Agoniae Christi," by the Very Rev. Dr. William Lefroy, Dean of Norwich; and "Sermons," by the Rev. Handley C. G. Moule, Principal of Ridley Hall, Cambridge. The same firm will also be the English publishers of the new Riverside edition of the works of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in fourteen volumes, ten for the prose and four for the poems, illustrated with four portraits. Dr. Holmes has himself annotated the poems and has written new prefaces for several of the prose volumes, each of which will have its own index. There will be a large paper edition.

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