Travel and Description. Lotos-Time in Japan, by Henry T. Finck (Scribners), is an interesting record of the author's experiences and observations in Japan during the months of July and August. Mr. Finck took a pair of keen but friendly eyes with him and kept them wide open, and he tells his story in a racy and entertaining style, though his pages are marred by at least one particularly bad pun. We should expect the author of Romantic Love and Personal Beauty to have something worth saying about Japanese women, and it is interesting to know that he found them remarkably pretty and charming, and, except while walking, graceful. In summing up, Mr. Finck considers the civilization superior to ours in the most essential points. "Japanese civilization is based on altruism, ours on egotism." The book has sixteen fullpage illustrations from photographs. But what becomes of the Japanese smile, when these people are being photographed? Can it be that they are never told to look pleasant? - Attractive and inexpensive summer books are Macmillan's Miniature Series in paper covers. The first volumes reissued in this form are Winter's Shakespeare's England, and The Friendship of Nature, by Mabel Osgood Wright. - The Boston Picture Book. (Irving P. Fox, 8 Oliver St., Boston.) An oblong paper-covered book, containing over one hundred views of buildings, monuments, portraits, and bits of scenery in and about Boston, from photographs. The points are well chosen, and the general effect is good.

Letters of a

Music and the Drama. Baritone, by Francis Walker. (Scribners.) From letters written during his student days in Florence Mr. Walker has made an exceedingly readable and interesting volume. Heartily believing in Italy as the land to which students of singing should continue to resort, he also owns that "the unscrupulous, plausible wrecker of voices is to be found everywhere," and it is with the hope a hope that should be largely justified of saving other aspirants from some of the difficulties he encountered that he publishes this record of his experiences. Not only are his technical hints and suggestions eminently wise and sound, but he gives information as to ways and means which must prove helpful and encouraging to the rather numerous company of impecu

nious American students. His good sense, and enthusiastic and at the same time intelligent devotion to his art command the respect of the reader, whom, as we have before intimated, he never fails to interest, even when he writes of life in Italy other than in its musical aspects. - Mr. William Winter, who writes criticisms of the modern stage as if he loved to, and not as if he had to, publishes a third series of his Shadows of the Stage (Macmillan), a collection, well ordered, of his occasional comment. In one or two instances, as in the final chapters, he gives broad generalizations which are interesting, but start more questions than they answer. It is refreshing to meet with such honest, old-fashioned views as those which run amuck of Ibsen. The universal stage includes this gentleman, but the orthodox stage reads him out of meeting with a delightful serenity of faith.

Nature and Science. Introduction to Elementary Practical Biology, a Laboratory Guide for High-School and College Students, by Charles Wright Dodge. (Harpers.) The object of this book is to promote original investigation in the study of biology. To this end, the directions for dissecting each organism are followed by a series of questions which are to be answered from the student's own observations. It will easily be seen that this is entirely different from the old-fashioned plan of question and answer in the text. The design is, of course, to make the student more independent of "the book," and at the same time more thorough in his examination of specimens. Unicellular organisms, animals (from sponges to frogs), and plants (from the lowest to the highest) are taken up in order. The volume is intended to be used with the assistance of an instructor. Insects and Insecticides, a Practical Manual concerning Noxious Insects and the Methods of Preventing their Injuries, by Clarence M. Weed. Revised Edition. (Orange Judd.) Almost every useful plant herb, shrub, or tree has one or more insect enemies against which eternal warfare must be waged, and this excellent handbook in its enlarged and improved form, with nearly two hundred illustrations, can hardly fail to be of the greatest value to farmers and horticulturists. While the author's name is a sufficient guarantee of scientific accuracy and thoroughness, the book is emi

nently practical in method, and insects affecting fruits, shade - trees, ornamental plants, vegetables, etc., are treated of in turn, without reference to technical classification. By way of criticism, it seems to us that sufficient stress is not laid on the value of birds as destroyers of insects, and the great importance of protecting them. The good work of the cuckoos among tent caterpillars and of the rose-breasted grosbeak with the potato beetles, for instance, should not have been ignored. Lectures on the Darwinian Theory, delivered by the late Arthur Milnes Marshall. Edited by C. F. Marshall. (Macmillan.) This is a remarkably lucid exposition of Darwinism, given in eight interesting lectures, aided by many illustrations, both verbal and pictorial. The first lecture is on the history of the theory of evolution, and the volume closes with a chapter on Darwin's life and work. The author seems to share Wallace's opinion as to sexual selection, and dismisses it with very few words, but otherwise he is in entire sympathy with his subject.

Poetry. Ad Sodales, by Frank Taylor (B. H. Blackwell, Oxford), is a little papercovered volume of forty pages of very graceful and finished society verse. The sureness of touch and lightness of fancy betoken a new scholar in the school of Locker and Praed. - The End of Elfintown, by Jane Barlow. Illustrated by Laurence Housman. (Macmillan.) This is a little fairy tale done in a fitting verse form, delicate and easy. It is another tiny straw to show us which way the wind of romance is blowing. So, at least, no doubt, Mr. W. B. Yeats and the younger Celts would have us believe. Mr. Housman's drawings are a delightful addition to the volume. First Poems and Fragments, by P. H. Savage (Copeland & Day), is a modest first book, with the virtues of sincerity and simplicity, of that school of meditative verse whose traditions (and inspirations, indeed) are mainly derived from Emerson or Wordsworth, the school to which Mr. William Watson and Mr. Archibald Lampman belong. Mr. Savage, however, has none of the felicity of phrase of his Canadian contemporary, while he has all of the Londoner's perilous lack of magnetism. One admires the seriousness of such a first volume, but one misses the ruddy drop of human blood.

Studies in Literature, by Margaret S. Mooney (Silver, Burdett & Co.), gives in briefest outline some of the best known classic myths, illustrating each with extensive quotations from modern poetry and half-tone reproductions of famous pictures. "This volume has been prepared for students who are old enough to understand that literature is one of the fine arts.". Selections from Herrick, edited by Edward Everett Hale, Jr. (Ginn), in the Athenæum Press Series, is a careful piece of work. If the editor gives us no new criticism of this master of the lyric, he is at least sane and free from pedantry. There is a glossary, a bibliography, and a good introduction, beside notes in plenty. Endymion, by John Lyly. Edited by George P. Baker. (Holt.) Mr. Baker's introduction to this play is so scholarly and thorough that one is not disposed to quarrel with the fact that it occupies two thirds of the volume. It is really an exhaustive essay on Lyly and his relation to Elizabeth's court, and makes an extremely valuable addition to this series of English Readings. - Specimens of Exposition, selected and edited by Hammond Lamont (Holt), is one of the series of textbooks, English Readings. The authors presented for study include Matthew Arnold, Burke, James Bryce, Professor Huxley, John Richard Green, Mommsen, Frederick Denison Maurice, William Archer, George C. V. Holmes, Adam Smith, and Josiah Royce. -Rhetoric, its Theory and Practice, by Austin Phelps and H. A. Frink. (Scribners.) Another illustration of the educational truth that the letter is deadly, and that a teacher, if he hopes to be present in spirit, must also be present in the flesh, is copiously offered by this new-old textbook of rhetoric. The basis of it is the late Professor Austin Phelps's English Style in Public Discourse; the superstructure, by Professor H. A. Frink, of Amherst College, has been raised upon Phelps's well-known lectures, with the hope of making the whole work serve all the usual purposes of instruction in rhetoric. "The essential elements of literary power and beauty," says Mr. Frink, "are indefinable, illusive, and are not to be communicated by direct instruction." Yet Mr. Frink quotes twice and with approval Professor Earle's remark that "the oral is the source and parent of all that is developed in the literary,"

and we are consequently the more surprised at his constant implication that the art of what he calls oral address can be better taught than skill in writing. As a matter of fact, in the present case, the original element of Phelps is much more valuable than the added element of Frink; and therefore, so far as the joint book is concerned, Mr. Frink's implication is justified. The many examples of good English have been chosen with judgment, but the authors use too often the dangerous expedient of bad English as a warning. Neither author shows a feeling for style in his own manner of writing. Mr. Frink often permits himself the "periodic " inversion dear to rhetoricians; and in one instance of this, at least, he has come perilously near what the natural man will think bad grammar. The distinctions between words are sometimes arbitrary, and in the article of "memory' used for "reminiscence" Mr. Frink has the great example of Landor against him.

Practical Religion. Master and Men, or The Sermon on the Mountain Practiced on

the Plain, by W. B. Wright. (Houghton.) This volume is one of the signs of the times, for it is an earnest translation of the sermon on the mount in the terms of modern life. We say modern life, though among the biographical studies which intercalate the studies of the several texts are St. Paul, Moses, Socrates, King Alfred, and George Fox, along with George Macdonald and General Gordon; for these older worthies are conceived in the spirit of the present day. Mr. Wright looks with almost painful clearness into the direct sun of righteousness. — The Heresy of Cain, by George Hodges. (Thomas Whittaker, New York.) A score of discourses refreshingly direct, candid, and practical. They are the words of a man to men, who is not less a man for being a clergyman, and no less a minister of God for being a sympathetic, almost homely man. The book rings true,

and comes from a nature generously alive to the needs and cries of the struggling human being who is enmeshed in modern industrial society.

Byways of the Bee.

THAT exemplar of industry presented for our childhood's contemplation, the honey-bee, has many little habits not specified in the rhyme setting forth its estimable qualities. One such habit has always filled me with special delight, for its blending of thrift and happy-golucky desultoriness. It is a fact well known to the observer of the ways of the hive that our "busy bee" will often make honey from any sweet substance it comes across, perhaps even neglecting the "opening flower" to do this. An overripe and bursting grape, the pomace of cider, the careful housewife's store of marmalade or of jelly, is sometimes as attractive to the industrious insect as is the nectar secreted by the flower. Whatever our bees do, doubtless also the bees of Hybla and Parnassus did; at any rate, the purveyors of the Muses' honey, to this day, often go hither and thither, sipping a drop here and a soupçon there from sweets already crystallized, but now to be changed into some new ambro

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sial form. And as bees more frequently do this when their hives are stored for the winter, by way of diversion, perhaps, in the boon and lazy sunshine of autumn, — the poet's gleanings are made in a like season of insouciance. At such times, he indulges himself in translating bits of his favorite old authors, tries his hand at parody, experiments with quaint measures and archaic diction, or turns into verse some tempting suggestion thrown out by a brother writer in prose. By and by, he will have filled, as it were, a whole compartment of his hive with snatches and fragments of song, of which the taster will be at no loss to detect the original source; but at the same time, if a fair and generous taster, he may allow that the bee-poet has added some flavor, some sweetness, referable to his own peculiar process of crystallization; or, if not this, at least shall the frank translucence of the latter's borrowings disarm serious displeasure on the part of the taster. With such and no farther apology is offered the

Surely, a strength as of triple-plate armor

And fibre of oak his heart did inclose,
Who first in frail boat essayed the wroth Ocean,
Nor yet was affrighted when Africus rose
Swift to join battle with northern-bred tempests,
Or the Hyades gloomed, or Notus held sway,-
Mighty sea-despot, unmastered, all-powerful

To raise the wild waters, or smoothly allay!
What onset of Death need he fear, who, intrepid,
Had seen the rough wake of the sea's giant flocks,
The boiling white surge, and the Acroceraunian
Terror of steep-fronted, bolt-riven rocks?

"THE LETTER THOU HAST WRITTEN ME."

(HEINE.)

The letter thou hast written me, It does my hope no wrong! Thou lov'st me not? So let it be. But ah, thy letter 's long!

Twelve pages, yes, and closely penned, A manuscript in small:

Not so one writes when one would send Farewell for good and all!

And her joy was great, as her love was great, When she came, in the dusk, to her own sad gate And him who had sought her early and late.

"Thou hast mourned me truly, both night and day; I have seen thee pass on thy sorrowing way, As hapless I stood in the meadow gay.

"And I lifted my face, and strove to speak, And tell thee, the one whom thine heart did seek Rose in thy pathway, a blossom weak.

"And now, if thine eyes have skill to see And choose thine own from among the three, Pluck me to-morrow, and I'll be free!"

Soon as the day began to dawn,
Back must the lady in haste be gone,
Into her flower-cell close withdrawn.

How shall her lord make choice aright?
Two lilies are drenched with the dew of night,
But the third stands tearless, and straight, and bright!

A moment he pauses, with doubting eye:,
He passes the two so quickly by;
He gathers the third, with a joyful cry.

Up by her hand the lady he drew,
One kiss he caught from her lips so true,
And away through the morning fields they flew.

A FEBRUARY FYRE.

Our fyre is fed with burrs and thornes,
Envies and malice, slightes and scornes, -
Whatever, as we pass along,
Doth cling to us to doe us wrong.

Our friendly fyre doth also drawe
All winnowed chaffe and rubbish strawe,
All dead leaves sodden by the raine;
All ydle griefes and dotings vaine;
Which throwing in the fyre, we start,
And run our waye, with easie heart.
For nowe, the winter being past,
The Yeare's new seed abroad is cast,
And the faire Garden of the minde,
New bourgeoning, shall the Gardener finde.

Awhile fond glances would we dart Ere we thy sweets would wanton spill, O rarest work of plastic art!

Each gazer fond, with all his heart, Would then fall to, and eat his fill. All honor to the Cranberry Tart!

Our adolescent loves depart;

But haply thou canst please us still, O rarest work of plastic art!

Though newer viands, dishes smart,
Invite with Gallic name and skill,
All honor to the Cranberry Tart,
O rarest work of plastic art!

val Giants.

A Tale of Ri- — I have lately read a magazine article on the subject of giants, which attributes to those grotesque monsters great good nature with proportionate small wit. Whether this discrimination be just or otherwise, it recalls a story of two giants, which, in my young days, I received by oral transmission from Gaelic kin of mine beyond the water.

Almost all persons visiting the Giant's Causeway in the north of Ireland, and Fingal's Cave on the west coast of Scotland, have noted the fact that in both places the structures are of the same basaltic rock, apparently carved with exquisite niceness, and so adjusted as to form the greatest natural architectural wonders of the world. The Giant's Causeway projects into the sea, and appears to extend thereunder in the direction of Scotland. Indeed, many physicists regard it as continuous, passing under the water to reappear at Fingal's Cave. Some geologists even maintain that in former days this marvelous stone bridge extended from Scotland to Ireland in unbroken line above the water. It is not thus now, and this is the reason why: —

Once upon a time there lived in the wilds of Galloway a Scottish giant. Like others of his kind, he was bloodthirsty and vainglorious. Modesty dwelt not in him. So when the rumor came to him that across the causeway (which before these unregenerate days did span the sea from Galloway to Antrim) there dwelt an Irish giant of equal proportions, and nowise his inferior in the use of the long-bow, our Cyclops of Galloway was much troubled in his savage mind. The friends of both parties continued to fan the flame of jealousy which burned in the red breast of the Scotsman, to the end that one day he arose in his wrath, performed what was then understood