" HE GIVETH HIS BELOVED SLEEP." By Elizabeth Barrett Browning. With designs by Miss L. B. Humphrey, engraved by Andrew. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 1882. Small 8vo.

In this time of decoration, so-called, when the grocer vies with the silversmith in the variety and gorgeousness of his pictorial advertisements, and the crying need of the age seems to be more pictures, no matter whether they be good or bad, it is hardly a matter of wonder that Mrs. Browning should have been seized as a peg on which to hang a few illustrations, and be turned into one of the many Christmas gift books which are as inevitable and generally as unpalatable as New Year's bills.

The poem, although essentially Elizabeth Barrett Browning, is singularly free from mannerisms and is one of the most beautiful and simple of her literary legacies. Many a sad and weary sufferer, and many an agonized and powerless watcher of another's suffering, must have felt and known the truth which the poem so exquisitely teaches. The author draws most fitly the contrast between the ignorance of man and the omniscience of the Father in the giving of gifts. How often, were our wishes or prayers granted literally, would the result be

"bitter memories to make

The whole earth blasted for our sake."

Let us be thankful that

"God strikes a silence through you all,
And giveth His beloved sleep."

The illustrations are commonplace, and lack originality and force. One or two of the flower designs are fair, but suggest the study of the ubiquitous Christmas card. They are unworthy of the poem, and make the reader long for simplicity in books, where luxury should be shown in type and paper, and rarely in binding.

The poem will undoubtedly shine through this disguise; but it is a pity that time and energy should be so wasted.

YOUNG AMERICANS IN JAPAN; OR, THE ADVENTURES OF THE JEWETT FAMILY AND THEIR YOUNG FRIEND, OTTO NAMBO. By Edward Greey. Boards. 8 vo. Pp. 372. Boston: Lee & Shepard.

This will prove a very interesting book for such youngsters as may chance to read it. The story opens with the dramatis personae of two boys and a little girl who were earnestly engaged in the walled garden at the rear of their home, putting the finishing touches to a strange-looking instrument that the elder of the lads had constructed out of an old pump-stock." The instrument proved to be a sort of minature balista, and was put in position to

hurl cucumbers at the back gate as a sort of welcome to any visiting tramp who might come that way. The first discharge, however, took effect upon a young Japanese who was looking for Professor Jewett's residence, and had been directed to the back gate by a woman who took him for a Chinese laundryman. He spoke English with facility, and was the bearer of a letter of introduction from the Professor's brother at Tokio, having come to "the states " to prosecute his studies.

The acquaintance thus begun ripened into a friendship; and the Professor, with his family, accompanied by Otto, in time set out for a tour through Japan. The book tells where they went and what they saw, and in this mode describes the manners and customs of the Japanese in a way pleasant to young people; adding to the descriptions a vast number of illustrations.

Mr. Darwin's theory of the monkey as the progenitor of man receives incidentally a bit of proof in the descriptions of how monkeys are caught in Japan, viz., by cautiously exposing in a perfectly innocent way the intoxicating bowl, which Jocko, descending from his safe vantage-ground, quaffs pleasantly and is thereby made a captive "as he goes rolling home."

HANNAH JANE. By David Ross Locke (Petroleum V. Nasby). Lee & Shepard, Boston.

This is a very handsome volume, well printed, well illustrated, many of the pictures being of decided merit. The poem itself is very enjoyable, the versification generally smooth, the style simple and easy. The story is of a career scarcely possible anywhere but in our own country. It is the story of a young, poor and uneducated man who, having marked ability and industry, rises in politics and at the bar to distinction, and, acquiring knowledge and culture by his own endeavors and through contact with the world, attains, while still in his prime, a position of social eminence, and then finds that his wife, who, when he married her, was his equal, has been left by him far behind in intellectual progress, can no longer even sympathize with or understand her husband's ideas, tastes or pleasures, and, time and the early struggles of poverty having used her hardly, has lost even the physical charms which she once possessed, and which might, in a measure, atone for the want of intellectual attractiveness. Of course, the man feels the difference bitterly, and involuntarily compares and contrasts his wife with the brilliant ladies whom he meets in society:

66

I know there is a difference; at reception and levee

The brightest, wittiest and most famed of women smile on me;

And everywhere I hold my place among the greatest men,

And sometimes sigh, with Whittier's Judge, Alas! it might have been,'

"When they all crowd around me, stately dames and brilliant belles,
And yield to me the homage that all great success compels,
Discussing art and statecraft, and literature as well,

66

From Homer down to Thackeray, and Swedenborg on Hell,'

'I can't forget that from these streams my wife has ne'er quaffed,
Has never with Ophelia wept, nor with Jack Falstaff laughed;
Of authors, actors, artists-,why, she hardly knows the names.
She slept while I was speaking on the Alabama claims !"

But, then, while he remembers all this, his better nature asserts itself, and he can't forget that it was only owing to his wife's rigorous self-denial for his sake, in the early part of their married life, that he was enabled to make a respectable appearance, hold up his head amongst men, and so achieve ultimate success:

"I was her altar, and her love the sacrificial flame;

Ah! with what pure devotion she to that altar came,

And tearful flung thereon-alas! I did not know it then

All that she was and, more than that, all that she might have been."

And so comes this conclusion:

"I blush to think what she has been :

The most unselfish of all wives to the selfishest of men.

Yes, plain and homely now she is; she's ignorant, 'tis true.

For me she rubbed herself quite out; I represent the two.

"There's another world beyond this, and on the final day
Will intellect and learning against such devotion weigh?
And when the one made of us two is tore apart again,

I'll kick the beam; for God is just, and He knows Hannah Jane."

Now, this is all very true, but still one can't help thinking that during the rest of their joint lives on earth there can be but little true happiness enjoyed by either husband or wife, when there is so little in common between them and the husband has to continually remind himself of what his wife has done for him to avoid treating her with coldness and neglect. The story, at least in its final stage, as presented in the poem, is no mere fancy one, for many of us have met just such couples,-husbands who have acquired distinction and culture, with wives, once congenial when their husbands, starting in life, were as ignorant as they, but now utterly unfit intellectually for the companionship of their lords; and a certain thought is suggested, probably not the one intended by Mr. Locke, to be born in our minds. A certain distinguished New England statesman is said to have drawn from "Othello" this sage instruction: "It don't do for a black man to marry a white woman;" and we hope we shall not be justly deemed equally unappreciative if we draw from "Hannah Jane" the moral: "It don't do for a young man who desires and expects to rise in life above that condition in which he is born, to marry too early."

BOOKS RECEIVED..

Thomas Corwin, By A. P. Russell. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 128. $1.00. Cincinnati : Robert Clarke & Co.

Book of the Black Bass. By James A. Henshall, M. D. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 463. $3.00. Cincinnati: Robert Clarke & Co.

$2.00. Boston: George H. Ellis.

Man's Origin and Destiny Sketched from the Platform of the Physical Sciences. By J. P. Lesley. Cloth. I 2mo. Pp. 442. (J. B. Lippincott & Co.)

The Duties of Women. 16m0. Pp. 193. $0.25.

By Frances Power Cobbe. Swd.
(J. B. Lippincott & Co.)
Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 367. $1.50.

A Course of Lectures.
Boston: George H. Ellis.
By George C. Lorimer.
(J. B. Lippincott & Co.)

Isms: Old and New. Chicago: S. C. Griggs & Co.

Tutti-Frutti. A Book of Child-Songs. By Laura Leonard and W. P. Peters. Designs by D. Clinton Peters. Boards. 8vo. Pp. 34. New York: George W. Harlan.

The Protagoras of Plato.

With an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By

E. G. Sihler, Ph. D. Cloth. I2mo. Pp. 140. New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Portrait of a Lady. By Henry James, Jr. Cloth. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (Claxton & Co.)

I 2mo.

Pp. 520. $2.00.

The Double-Runner Club; or, The Lively Boys of Riverton. By B. P. Shillaber. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 314. $1.25. Boston: Lee & Shepard. (Porter & Coates.)

Boards. 8vo. $1.00. Boston:

The Four-Footed Lovers. By Frank Albertson.
Lee & Shepard. (Presbyterian Board of Publication.)

Young Folks' Robinson Crusoe. Boards. 8vo. Pp. 266. $1.25. Boston: Lee & Shepard. (Presbyterian Board of Publication.)

Raleigh His Exploits and Voyages. By George Makepeace Towle. Cloth. 12mo. $1.25. Boston: Lee & Shepard. (Presbyterian Board of Publication.)

The History of Fernando de Soto and Florida. A Record of Events of Fifty-Six Years, from 1512 to 1568. By Barnard Shepp. 8vo. Pp. xiii, 689. Maps. $6.00. Philadelphia: Robert M. Lindsay. 1881.

The Artist and His Mission: A Study in Esthetics. By William M. Reily, Ph.D. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 165. Philadelphia: John E. Porter & Co.

The Vicar's People. By George Manville Fenn. Swd. 16m0. Pp. 451. 60 cts. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.)

Sir Richard Whittington, Lord Mayor of London. By Walter Besant and James Rice. Cloth. 16mo. Pp. 217. $1.00. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.)

Cuban Sketches. By James W. Steele. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 221. $1.50. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.)

The Golden Tress. 16mo. Pp. 422. $0.60.

Translated from the French of Fortune du Boisgobey. Swd. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.) Swd. Itmo. Pp. 287. $0.60. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.)

John Barlow's Ward.

The New Infidelity. By Augustus Radcliffe Grote. Cloth. I 2mo. Pp. 101. $1.25. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. (Porter & Coates.)

The Life of Richard Cobden. By John Morley. Cloth. 8vo. Pp. 640. $3.00. Boston: Roberts Brothers. (Porter & Coates.)

My First Holiday; or, Letters Home from Colorado, Utah and California. By Caroline H. Dall. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 430. $1.50. Boston: Roberts Brothers. (Porter & Coates.)

Country Pleasures; the Chronicle of a Year, Chiefly in a Garden. By George Milner. Cloth. I 2mo. Pp. 345. $1.50. Boston: Roberts Brothers. (Porter & Coates.)

Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement. By Harriet H. Robinson. Cloth. 12mo. Pp. 265. $1.25. Boston: Roberts Brothers. (Porter & Coates.) Swd. 12mo.

Usury Laws: Their Nature, Expediency and Influence. New York: Society for Political Education.

The Book Hunter, etc. By John Hill Burton. I 2mo.

delphia: Robert A. Tripple. 1881.

Pp. 68.

Pp. 396. $3.00. Phila

Field and Closet Notes on the Flood of Washington and Vicinity. By Lester F. Ward. Washington, D. C.