ary apprenticeship appear in these pages, which may account for the influence of Stevenson and Barrie being more than usually apparent. The book will inevitably be compared to The Stickit Minister; and though, as a whole, it must take the second place, it contains some character sketches quite worthy of the excellent company to be found in the earlier volume. Under Friendly Eaves, by Olive E. Dana. (The Author, Augusta, Maine.) A score or more of New England sketches depicting village and country life. It is a field well worked by others, and Miss Dana comes rather as a gleaner than a reaper; but her sheaves, though not abundant, have some good grain in them. A kindly spirit pervades her book; there is fidelity to the familiar aspects of New England life, and a gentle piety touches the scenes. If there is not much invention or very noticeable characterization, neither are there forced situations or monstrosities of humanity.

Travel and Nature. Chinese Central Asia, A Ride to Little Tibet, by Henry Lansdell, D. D. (Imported by Scribners.) In two octavo volumes, with three maps and eighty illustrations, mostly from photographs by the author, Dr. Lansdell describes his journey to and through Chinese Turkistan and home to England again in the years 188890. His object was to make a preliminary survey of the region as a missionary field. He found a country where few white men had been before, and where the Christian religion was unknown. He fell in with people of many different nations and tribes, having strange customs and costumes, but was fortunate enough to meet with no very thrilling adventures, good fortune which is surely a misfortune for his readers; for a traveler in strange countries must have hairbreadth 'scapes to tell about, to make his tale interesting, unless, indeed, he has a real gift for description and narrative. Dr. Lansdell made good use of his time by collecting birds, fishes, insects, and so forth, along his route. A catalogue of the collection, given as an appendix, shows it to be particularly rich in lepidoptera. He discovered one new species of fish. Corea, or Cho-sen, the Land of the Morning Calm, by A. Henry Savage-Landor. (Macmillan.) Mr. Landor gives us an account of his experiences and observations during a few months' stay in the Hermit Nation in 1890-91, and illus

trates his book from drawings of his own. He disclaims any pretense to literary style, but we confess to experiencing a slight shock on encountering such expressions as "takes the cake," and when we are informed that "the Japanese women

...

are not a patch on the Venuses of Cho-sen." Nevertheless, though Mr. Landor is neither a polished writer nor a great artist, he is a good observer, and what he has to tell us has, in the present case, a good deal of interest. The accounts of his own experiences are often quite entertaining. He seems to stop at nothing. After seeing the execution of seven traitors on a barren plain outside the city, he goes there the next day to make sketches, which gives him an opportunity to assist the father of one of the victims in stealing his son's body and head. Returning, he reaches the city after the gates are closed, but succeeds in scaling the wall after setting fire to himself with his paper lantern in the process. The Mountains of California, by John Muir (Century Co.), is a thoroughly delightful book. Mr. Muir has done for the Sierra Nevada what Mr. Burroughs has done for the Catskills, and Mr. Bolles for the White Mountains; but, naturally, this collection of studies has a spice of adventure which the works of our Eastern authors lack, while some readers will doubtless miss that appeal to personal experience which is wont to move them in descriptions of more familiar sights and sounds. Mr. Muir tells of mountains that fly pennants of snow, of glaciers with beautiful ice caves, of gigantic pine-trees which yield sugar; but it is not all grandeur and wildness and strangeness, and the author's touch is light when his subject requires it. As a piece of bright, playful, and sympathetic description, what can be more charming than the chapter on the Douglas squirrel? When one is agreeably surprised, there is always a tendency to exaggerate, and perhaps our praise of this book may appear extravagant. If so, we can only say, as Mr. Muir says in speaking of his beloved forests, "Come and see." -Our Native Birds of Song and Beauty, by H. Nehrling. (Geo. Brumder, Milwaukee.) This admirable account of popular ornithology, of which the first three parts of the second and concluding volume have now been issued, does not offer to the reader the dry bones of science. On the contrary, these bones are well cov

ered - sometimes even to corpulence, it must be confessed by a living and breathing flesh, and the spirit which animates the whole is an enthusiastic love of nature. Mr. Nehrling presents his birds in their natural surroundings, and manages to give us a good idea of the flora of his territory as well as of its ornithological fauna. Though describing more or less fully all the song-birds of North America (north of Mexico), his text has special reference to Wisconsin and Illinois. Aside from all local considerations, however, this book will go far towards filling a place which has been empty since the works of Wilson and Audubon became out of print and out of date. The matter is largely original, but there are also quotations from reliable modern writers. The author is an ornithologist of standing, and his book is apparently free from inaccuracies. The work is also published in German, and a few verbal infelicities in the English edition are doubtless due to the author's nationality. It is written brightly and entertainingly, and glows with enthusiasm. It is distinctly popular in its treatment. The colored plates are of irregular merit, but are probably as good as can be expected in a comparatively inexpensive work. They are from water-colors by Professor Robert Ridgway of the Smithsonian Institution, Professor A. Goering of Leipzig, and Gustav Muetzel of Berlin. The typography is excellent. - The Land-Birds and Game-Birds of New England, by H. D. Minot; Second Edition, edited by William Brewster. (Houghton.) Both beginners and more advanced students in ornithology will welcome this volume: the former from its interest and usefulness as a whole, the latter chiefly on account of the valuable notes which Mr. Brewster presents. Mr. Minot's book has been familiar to New England bird-lovers since its original publication in 1876, and we need not now do more than call attention to its many excellent qualities, its systematic arrangement, its originality, and its scientific thoroughness and accuracy, though we can hardly help expressing our renewed surprise that this was the work of a sixteen-year-old boy, and was completed before its author entered college. But of the editor's work something should be said. Most important of all is the series of footnotes giving in succinct form the geographical distribution of the various species

throughout New England. Mr. Brewster has made a special study of this branch of his science, and these notes are, therefore, as authoritative as anything of the kind can well be. Indeed, as to the editor's fitness for his entire task, there can be but one opinion. He also gives us an appendix, with additions to Mr. Minot's list of birds, including a page and a half devoted to Bicknell's Thrush, besides notes on certain other birds, mostly rare or accidental visitors to England. Footnotes are also given here and there, correcting errors or supplying obvious deficiencies. By the way, those persons who habitually skip footnotes will do well to reform their ways in reading this book. Mr. Brewster has taken great pains to preserve his author's text intact, and has evidently preferred to err on this side, if err he must. Else why has he let the description of the kingbird stand as it is, without anything to indicate the color of the under parts? And Mr. Minot was surely perpetuating an error in saying, on Mr. Maynard's authority, that the Hudsonian chickadee's song - note is "more quickly given" than that of our common chickadee. This new edition of Land-Birds and Game-Birds has for a frontispiece a portrait of the author from a photograph taken in 1887, three years before his untimely death. There are also twenty-two outline figures of birds, as in the earlier edition.

History and Biography. Life and Letters of Erasmus, Lectures delivered at Oxford, 1893–94, by J. A. Froude. (Scribners.) "My object has been rather to lead historical readers to a study of Erasmus's own writings than to provide a substitute for them," said Mr. Froude in the introductory note to the latest volume which he should himself prepare for the press, and we think this states briefly what will prove the peculiar and lasting merit of the work. It cannot be said to add to the student's knowledge of Erasmus; and though composed of academic lectures, it is in tone and manner an address to the intelligent general reader rather than to the scholar. Indeed, the latter will probably sometimes criticise more or less adversely the delightfully readable paraphrases of the immortal letters, finding that, in the necessary process of abridging, compressing, and epitomizing, misinterpretations of the writer's meaning are not infrequent, while the author's atti

tude throughout is that of the eloquent advocate, rather than of the broad-minded philosophic and judicial observer. Allow ing for this, there yet remains a study of one of the most fascinating personalities in all literature by a great master of English, whose unsurpassed gifts as a narrator and powers of vivid portraiture are as brilliantly displayed as ever in these pages, where, of course, the writer himself often appears in his own proper person, commenting with much wit and pungency on things present as well as past. It is a book which will gain and hold the attention even of the unhistorical reader, a thing to be grateful for, if, as we believe, the picture it gives of one of the most extraordinary men of a memorable epoch is not only full of vitality, but essentially truthful. As Mr. Froude finally reflects, the story of that time is still disfigured by passion and prejudice, and others beside him have felt that it can best be seen as it really was if it is looked at through the eyes of Erasmus. Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, by C. Raymond Beazley. Heroes of the Nations Series. (Putnams.) Of the personal history of the central figure of Portugal's heroic age, the most famous of the five brilliant, half-English Infants, sons of John of Aviz and Philippa of Lancaster, such scanty memorials remain that not much more than half this volume is needed in which to tell with sufficient detail the story of his life and work. An appropriate enough introduction to this is the scholarly account given in the earlier chapters of the progress of geographical knowledge and enterprise in Christendom throughout the Middle Ages. The series of maps which illustrate the narrative would always serve that purpose admirably, if the rather startling reduction in size necessary in adapting some of the great medieval charts to the dimensions of an ordinary page, single or double, did not occasionally result in a somewhat trying indistinctness. Full justice is done by the writer to the achievements of his subject, whose career he treats as the turning-point in the history that he has been tracing through many centuries, and he also connects him with the more momentous discoveries which should soon follow. "The whole outward and onward movement of the great exploring age," he affirms, "was

set in motion by one man.

It might have come to pass without him, but the fact is simply that through him it did result. And let him that did more than this go before him.'"-Letters of Emily Dickinson, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd. (Roberts.) The two volumes of Emily Dickinson's poems have made many readers familiar with her strange mind. These two volumes of letters disclose more of what is

unmistakably the same mind. The fantastic humor, the frank egotism, the defiance of all usual manners of expression, are no less evident here than there. With equal clearness, Miss Dickinson's insight into deep truths, the pervading strength of her affections, and her absolute independence of thought are revealed. Yet one cannot feel complete satisfaction in the books as they stand, or repress some wonder as to what the writer herself would have said to the publicity thrust upon the many intimacies of her offhand notes. Self-conscious as many of them seem, their very nature is of the meum and tuum sort of letter-writing; and some of the notes are without sufficient interest to print. We may well be thankful, however, for the best of them, and wish for more of the spontaneous correspondence with her brother and cousins. Quite remarkable are the letters after the loss of some of those nearest to her. In one vein she is perhaps at her very best, in writing of the death of Frazer Stearns, in the war. It is worth passing remark

that the strained mannerisms reached their height in the letters asking for literary advice. — The Making of the Nation, 1783– 1817, by Francis A. Walker (Scribners), is the third issue in the American History Series. Though somewhat briefer than the volumes by Professors Fisher and Sloane, it is no less satisfactory. The threatening weakness of the original Confederation is clearly described, and the evolution of our national life is carefully traced. General Walker dwells especially on the increase of population and territory, the development of political ideas, and the growth of national sentiment. He says some suggestive things about money, taxation, and tariff, and supplements the body of his book. by maps showing the distribution of population in 1790 and 1820, and a tabular appendix about censuses, public debt, electoral votes, etc. Before the book is re

printed, a "not" should be inserted in the contradictory statement about Mr. Adams on page 135, and the error in addition on page 174 should not stand to the discredit of so eminent a statistician.

Literature and Criticism. The fourth volume in the new edition of De Foe, edited by George A. Aitken, is The History of the Life and Adventures of Mr. Duncan Campbell, who was deaf and dumb, and was credited with the gift of second sight. This attracted De Foe's notice, and besides his narrative, in which is inwoven much curious lore of the supernatural, there are two short ghostly speculations. The book has some good photogravures by Mr. Yeats. The fifth volume has also been published, containing Memoirs of a Cavalier. Mr. Aitken is clearly of the opinion that De Foe constructed the book out of materials accessible to all readers, but he holds to the view that it is, as historical romance of the verisimilitude sort, a graphic and truthful picture in it's main lines. (J. M. Dent & Co., London; Macmillan, New York.) — Tom Cringle's Log, by Michael Scott, a book which for more than sixty years has bravely held its place among the best sea-stories in the language, is the latest addition to Macmillan & Co.'s series of standard novels. The volume is illustrated by J. Ayton Symington, and Mowbray Morris has furnished an admirable introduction, -a more than usually needed prefix in this case, for perhaps no successful writer of this century is so unknown a personality as Michael Scott, a man apparently quite careless as to literary reputation. And indeed, after diligent search, Mr. Morris has been able to add little to the few facts which make up Scott's brief and colorless biography. Early Venetian Printing Illustrated. (Imported by Scribners.) Here is a volume in folio of 228 pages, of which 200 are given up to facsimiles and copies of ornaments, printed pages, initials, colophons, devices, and designs for binding, all taken from examples of the printing and binding art of Venice in the days of the great masters. How paltry and thin do most of the specimen books of the present day look beside it! It is a treasure-house for the lover of the typographic art, and we doubt if it will be prized anywhere more highly than in America. The introductory pages of text contain some interesting historical notes on printers'

The

marks, water-marks, the printing of music, and other subjects. The book was made in Venice, and is a worthy monument of that city's preeminence in its great day. - The second in the series of Björnson's Tales, Arne (Macmillan), is much better translated than the previous story. It is by Mr. Walter Low, who has since died, and who receives an appreciative notice in this volume by Mr. Gosse, the editor of the series. Arne is the one story by Björnson which must not be overlooked. The second volume of Mr. H. E. Watts's admirable translation of Don Quixote covers chapters xxv.-lii. of the First Part, with much of the delectable conversation of the Don and Sancho Panza. notes are judicious. (A. & C. Black, London; Macmillan, New York.) - In their new edition of Dickens, Macmillan & Co. now include Bleak House, with an Introduction by the present Charles Dickens, who furnishes an agreeable compilation of the facts attendant on the writing, and the criticisms which accompanied the publication. — The three parts of Henry VI. form the latest volumes in the tidy Temple Shakespeare. (Macmillan.) The etched frontispieces are of the Tower of London, the Abbey at Bury St. Edmunds, and Micklegate Bar, York. The convenient glossary at the end of each part furnishes a body of annotation in very compact form. The part of A New English Dictionary for April 1 comprises FangedFee. We get a little light — not enough to dazzle-on the choice between "farther " and "further." (Macmillan.) — Another six months has come round, and has brought a bound volume of The Century, covering the numbers from November, 1894, to April, 1895. It is not easy to remark any special change in character year by year. Possibly there is an increase in solidity, a disposition to seek for the permanent, and to choose the historic and the serious even in contemporaneous matters.

Education and Textbooks. Chaucer, Spenser, Sidney, English Men of Letters for Boys and Girls, by Gertrude H. Ely. (E. L. Kellogg & Co., New York and Chicago.) Mrs. Ely has attempted a difficult and, we are inclined to think, ill-considered task in proposing to interest young people in early English writers, not only because the work calls for a definite knowledge of the period, and an instinctive sense of what can be selected in personal history capable of holding

the attention of the young, but because an interest in old authors cannot be made to induce an interest in their writings. The book seems another contribution to the great class of books about literature which obstruct rather than aid a love of literature itself. In the English Classics Series (Maynard, Merrill & Co., New York) place

has been found for Hayne's Speech, better known to most as the occasion of Webster's Reply. It is edited, with notes, by James M. Garnett. As a useful historical tract it will serve, but Webster's speech has been kept alive by qualities which are not to be found in this, whatever may be said of its logic.

A Hunter of the GrassTops.

Ar forty minutes past two in the afternoon I am lying in the shade, on "Lotus Island," - the island of us lotus-eaters, who come to this part of the meadows in order to forget everything but the pleasures which the fields supply. Not that it is really an island, -more reason yet for the name we give. True, on one side it is bordered by a veritable river; but that other arc of the watery circle which would make this a real island is no more than the ghost of a stream which we can easily imagine flowing in a now deserted channel. This old bed, higher than the level of the water in the present river, has its sedgy, frog - haunted pools, which were the old stream's eddy-basins; and a row of alders and shrubby trees still impends above the empty bed. Completing the arboreal screen about this retreat, there grows along the present stream's margin, with here an elm and there a maple, the new fringing tangle of willows and alders.

Near my feet, on a spire of grass, is one of those small, dark-colored jumping spiders. He is one fourth of an inch in length. Hop! He is a lively little fellow. With out an effort, and with the directness of a stone from a catapult, he springs nine times his own length, two and a quarter inches, horizontally, to the next spire. Before he goes again I have a good look at his build and marks. His small abdomen is fox-colored, with six or eight dark-brown spots. The head and chest part, which is very large and strong in proportion to the abdomen, is glossy black, beautifully patterned with old gold, while the mouth parts and legs are dappled gray. The legs, designed for leaping, are short and powerful. He walks a few steps up the grass blade,

and, with another of his sudden springs, shoots, or snaps like a snapping seed, to another spire. I now notice a new fact of spider life for an instant, as a breath of air stirs, a thread of light spans the lastcrossed chasm, straight from the spider to his previous resting-place. It is plain that he traces the course of his wanderings by a web, a sort of clue to the grassy labyrinth; though for what purpose I cannot understand.

Now he displays his skill as a tumbler, for in leaping from one grass stem to another he turns a somersault, and alights head downward. That certainly puts to shame your ordinary floor - tumbling gymnasts. Then he travels onward for a minute or two, with little rest, making about two inches at a leap. Once he shows another feat of mid-air gymnastics. He sees, six inches lower and nearly beneath him, the horizontally spreading leaf of a little herb, towards which he leaps. But he alights on the under side of the leaf. Apparently this is impossible, yet I happen to perceive how it is accomplished. He aims to clear the leaf's edge by ever so little; then, at the moment of passing, strikes out all the sharp-hooked feet of one side, catches the leaf, thus arresting his fall, and swings himself to the under side. Imagine the attempt of the best human gymnast to perform the same feat, with proportionally one tenth the downward leap which the spider makes, and you realize something of the structural superiority of this little being over mankind.

Several times I observe the gleaming thread carefully attached before each jump. It serves no manifest purpose, such as that of fly-catching or of a bridge. Before leaping, the little fellow prettily raises his hands,