keen insight into the characters of men, finally selected the German naturalist to be Governor of the Equatorial Provinces, which included all the region claimed by Egypt between the Albert and Victoria Nyanzas, and south of the former lake. Here Emin, far away from the fierce religious war waged by the Mahdi in the Upper Soudan, busied himself in cultivating the arts of peace and administering jus. tice in the large domain of which he was practically absolute ruler, so far as he could enforce his rule in a region of barbarians with the two Egyptian regiments which constituted his military force. When Gordon was killed and the Soudan was lost to Egypt, the interest in this part of Africa died out, and it was only within the last three years that the civilized world began to be conscious of the extraordinary stand made by Emin in the cause of civilization in the very heart of Equatorial Africa, and of the pressing danger which threatened him as the Mahdist forces gradually pressed closer to his position from the north.

At last England, feeling her responsibility as the remote cause of Emin's peril, through the Royal Geographical Society organized a relief expedition, of which Stanley was selected to be the chief. But of all this the ECLECTIC had something to say in its last issue, which reviewed " Stanley's Letters," and it is not necessary to pursue it further. The author incidentally in his book presents a bird's-eye view of all the recent attempts at African exploration within a few years, specially in Eastern Equatorial Africa, and gives us an interesting synopsis of the history and present condition of the Congo Free State. Indeed the preliminary narrative, which prepares the way for the history of the Stanley expedition, is a highly succinct and graphic picture of the present status of civilization in Africa and the causes which have led to it, and is perhaps of even more value to the general reader than the story of Stanley's last work. At any rate, it is indispensable to a perfectly clear understanding of the conditions which attached such profound interest to the enterprise. The adventures of the great explorer himself are well told, and it is much that the author's geographical knowledge enables him to present the subject so simply and intelligibly. As a compact and brilliant digest of recent exploration and adventure in Africa, as well as of Stanley's own remarkable exploit, we do not see how this entertaining book could well be bettered.

SIFTED GOLD.

ROBERT BROWNING'S PRINCIPAL SHORTER POEMS. (Appleton's Town and Country Library.) New York: D. Appleton & Company.

The death of Browning has added a fresh interest to the magnificent contribution to English poetry, in which his life among recent bards has only been equalled by that made by the still living Poet Laureate, who cannot be expected long to survive his friend and rival. Rivals they certainly were in the affection and admiration of lovers of poetry. Tennyson, perhaps with a larger clientage, has not that intensely devoted following which, in its attitude to Browning, has sometimes appeared almost amusing to the saner public. The numerous Browning societies organized in England and America for a study of the more obscure utterings of the bard, and the discovery of the esoteric meanings supposed to be concealed under the harsh jangle and involved construction of much of his more recent work, have almost presented themselves as monuments of misguided enthusiasm. Admiration for Browning's rare and splendid genius, indeed, can readily be understood even by the Philistine-minded, but that the special mark of sympathy with the Browning cult should be adoration of the mysteries of "Red Cotton Nightcap Country," et id genus omne, seems a strange piece of human eccentricity, akin to that Teutonic craze which has sought to find in Shakespeare a complete cyclus of everything worth knowing in history, religion, science, metaphysics, and politios. The Browning craze is all the stranger in view of the fact that among his voluminous productions may be found a great body of poetry which, for subtile music, dramatic fire, and splendor of imaginative power are almost unequalled in our literature. These need no labored dissection, no ponderous labor with the dictionary, no search after remote meanings; they strike mind and soul with the vividness of the electric flash, and take possession as a conqueror storms a city. To select these highest fruits of the poet's creative genius and present them to the world in a compact volume has been the purpose of the editor of the volume before us, and it has been competently executed. Of course, all lovers of Browning have their favorite poems, and it is possible that some one might be omitted from the present selection; but we fancy that a general consensus of opinion would approve the present choice. Certainly about such poems as His Lost Duchess,"

66

"In a Gondola,' ""A Lover's Quarrel,' "A Woman's Last Word," "A Toccata of Galuppi's,"" Fra Lippo Lippi,' ‚""How they Brought the Good News," etc., "Pictor Ignotus," Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," "The Glove," "Hervé Riel," "Two in the Campagna,' A Grammarian's Funeral," "The Last Ride Together,' "The Statue and the Bust," and twenty others which strike the eye in the table of contents, there can be no doubt these are the purest gold of English song. Such a volume as this is eminently seasonable, and it would be a boon to many a reader if this most serviceable collection were offered in a

handsome library binding for a permanent place on the book-shelves. Books with paper covers or even bound in cloth do not quite match the dignity of such noble material.

RECENT NOVELS.

A MARCH IN THE RANKS. (Leisure Moment Series) By Jessie Fothergill. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

ROTHERMEL, A Story of Lost Identity. By Louis Reeves Harrison, New York: American News Company.

COUNTESS IRENE. A Novel. (Town and Country Series.) By J. Fogerty. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

THE DOMINANT SEVENTH. A Musical Story. By Kate Elizabeth Clark. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Miss Fothergill's bright and readable novel will not disappoint those who have had an experience of her work in the past. She has a very neat trick of characterization, and knows how to take hold of the sympathies of her readers by something more sterling and subtile than the telling of an animated story. Yet in the latter respect there are not many of her contemporaries who possess more skill. The charm of her plots is that they are not manufactured, but grow out of the characteristics of her people. In the present case the power of the story, though gathered mainly about the love which grows up between two people, Dr. Godfrey Noble and Alizon Blundell, gathers into its absorbing web many minor threads which add largely to its fascination. The heroine, Alizon, is an original and vigorous portraiture, entirely different from most young women of fiction in type, and with a quality of genuineness quite unusual. Her brother, the pleasure-loving invalid, Hilda Noble, Mrs. Van Bibber, the American widow, and

half a dozen more personages might be singled out as strikingly well-drawn people. The story, though with just a taste of unpleasantness in some of its features, is not likely to let the reader go till he has finished it. Somehow one thinks of it as not distinctively a novel for women, though there is plenty of love-making in it.

"Rothermel''

seems to be a book by a prentice-hand, but it has power in spite of its crudity. The wild extravagance of many of its scenes and the utter improbability, indeed, of the initial incident on which the possibility of the story is based do not prevent the strength of the story evolved from taking a strong hold on the reader. One's taste is often offended, but with so much go and power of narrative the reader takes it and enjoys the rest. Two sisters, scions of a French family, are confused with each other. One of them has married an American, from whom she has been separated by the machinations of her mother. The sisters are supposed to have been at a French château, near one of the battle-fields of the Franco-German War. A shell falling in the house kills one daughter and the mother, and causes a dreadful shock to the brain of the other. When the survivor recovers from a long illness she has forgotten so much of her past as to be uncertain of her own identity; and when the American husband, who has tracked the whereabouts of the family, claims her as his wife, there is confusion double confounded. Other lovers contend that she is the unmarried sister, which in the end she turns out to be, but in the meanwhile there is a reign of cross-purposes and riot of fierce passions involving manifold violence, which will delight all those who love

highly-flavored fiction. Some of the characters are very well depicted, but, on the whole, it is a story of incident rather than of subtle motive or of people true to human nature. The reader can easily fancy several tests which would have settled the question of identity, but the author's story, of course, compels him to ignore such searching facts as applied to the unfolding of his story.

Mr. Fogerty's "Countess Irene' is a clever and interesting, though by no means great piece of work. Life in Austria is admirably painted, and the charmingly unconscious coquetries of the brilliant Countess Irene in her dealings with her cousin's love are as well conceived and described as possible. This heroine is not only spirited and haughty, but

thoroughly lovable, and the piece of Quixotism which ultimately furnishes the motive for the complications of the story is wrought into the warp of the narrative in the most simple and natural way. Mr. Fogerty has not gone out of his way to hunt for the unusual and fantastic, and even the motive for the duel at the end of the book does not seem an exaggeration, when fitted with its conditions. A quasi madman is capable of anything. The people are all interesting, and the narrative moves to its conclusion by a series of wellplanned incidents, which carry the reader satisfactorily forward with no shock to his sense of internal coherence. Here and there the writer rises to something genuinely like pathos. The scene where Countess Irene recalls her father, supposed to be dying, back to life by her wonderful singing of an old song, tenderly associated with his own loverdays, is very powerfully and touchingly told. Though we are only vaguely familiar with Mr. Fogerty's name, this novel shows practised skill in story-telling and cultivated literary quality.

"The Dominant Seventh" is a musical story, in which the author seems to have cared less to tell a story than to display her knowledge of the art and history of music, and to glorify Wagner and enjoy him forever. The story is entirely lacking in interest of incident or character, as it moves by puppets and strings which do not even dance to a lively tune. The talk about music is occasionally bright, generally pedantic, and always a little artificial, and the excuse for talk seems to have been the sole artistic impulse for the novel. Tragedy is pumped in at the close by the Nihilistic Pole with his dynamite wedding gift, but even this does not save the story from being as dull as ditch-water. It is & good novel for any one but an enthusiastic devotee of Wagner, who has sympathy with a fellow-worshipper, to drowse over. Miss Clark must learn to conceive a higher purpose than the dribble of musical chatter, if she would write good fiction,

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

THE Academy makes the following significant comments: "The statistics of books published during 1889, as given in the Publishers' Weelcly of New York, show the same decrease when compared with 1888 as the corresponding fig

ures which were quoted in the Academy of January 4th, from the Publishers' Circular. The English total diminished from 6591 to 6057, while the American total diminished in a somewhat larger proportion-from 4631 to 4014. In both cases novels show a large increase; while in both cases, too, there is a marked decrease in theology, educational, and poetry. Unfortunately, the classification adopted varies so greatly that it would be misleading to push the comparison further. But we cannot forbear pointing out that the Americans produced 410 law books in the year, against only 66 in England. A more profitable question would be to inquire why, in a period of considerable prosperity, the production of books should actually diminish. We can only suggest in answer that the wants of the reading public are becoming more and more satisfied with newspapers, reviews, and magazines; and that authors consequently find their own best market in the same field."

MR. GLADSTONE has now all but finished his

articles on the Old Testament for Good Words. The first, on " The Impregnable Rock of Holy Scripture," will appear in the April number, and this will be followed by others on "The Creation Story,' "The Mosaic Legislation,' "The Psalms,' ""The Method of the Old Testament," etc.

"

THE Manuscript Department of the British Museum has recently acquired a large collection of the correspondence and papers of Jeremy Bentham and of other members of the family, including his brother Sir Samuel, who, after attaining the rank of a brigadiergeneral in the Russian service, became civil architect and engineer of the navy of his own country. The collection is contained in about twenty-eight volumes.

THE third volume of Stevens's "Fac-similes of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773-83," which will be issued presently, continues the subject of the secret intelligence which the British Government obtained through its political agents and spies concerning American affairs, and especially with reference to the negotiations at Paris in 1777 and 1778. Directions are given as to one method of carrying on correspondence, by putting a bottle in a hole at the root of a tree in the Tuileries Garden. The volume contains also accounts of the doings of the American Commissioners, of the employment by the British of the American Captain Joseph Hynson, and of the capture of despatches to Con

gress of the American Commissioners. King George had, it seems, a "settled opinion" that the spies were encouraged by Deane and Franklin, and gave intelligence only to de. ceive.

THE four volumes of original State papers of Sir Ralph Sadleir, Ambassador to Scotland in the time of Elizabeth, which formed part of the Burton Constable Library sold last year, have been acquired by the British Museum. As is well known, these valuable historical documents were examined by Sir Walter Scott, and he prefaced the selection that was pub. lished from them in 1809 with a biographical

memoir of Sadleir.

THE American branch of the publishing business of Cassell & Co., Limited, has been acquired by a syndicate of American citizens, trading from and after January 1st, 1890, under the designation of "The Cassell Publishing Company." The new company will be carried on under the management of Mr. O. Dunham, who has been associated for many years with the business, and the American company will continue to act as the specially authorized agents throughout the United States and Canada for the sale of the publications and works of the English company, which, on its part, will act similarly in Great Britain, the colonies, and on the continent of Europe for the American publications of the Cassell Publishing Company.

THE Austro-German admirers of Scheffel, the poet of the "Trompeter von Säckingen," have formed a society under the name of "Scheffel-Bund." In order to commemorate this event they will shortly issue, under the editorship of Herr A. Breitner, a Scheffel- Gedenkbuch, which is to contain contributions from quite a host-the number of one hundred is mentioned-of writers, artists, and composers.

AMONG the papers left by the lately deceased Professor Giesebrecht, of Munich, the last part of the fifth volume of his "Geschichte der Deutschen Kaiserzeit" has been found. This posthumous instalment brings down the history of the first German Empire to the end of the reign of Barbarossa.

SHARES in the Revue des Deux Mondes, which in 1848 brought in 5 per cent, have been steadily increasing in value, and now return 150 per cent on the original outlay.

PROFESSOR HARTENSTEIN, of Leipzig, has died at Jena. He was a copious writer on philoso

phy, but is best known as the editor of the collected editions of the works of Kant and Herbart. The famous Brunswick publisher H. Vieweg is also dead at the age of sixtythree. He was the last of his race, and he is said to have bequeathed his villa and grounds and various other things (for he lived in splendor, as becomes a publisher) to his native city. The death is also announced, near Windischgrätz, of the chief of Slavonic poets, Davorin Trstenjak, a country clergyman who had held several preferments in Lower Styria. Besides writing poetry he was an authority on Croatian history. As a member of the Diet he was a stout opponent of the Illyrian movement.

A CORRESPONDENT of the Academy sends the following to that paper: I subjoin the following extract from a letter of Mr. Hallam Tennyson's on a book called "In Tennyson Land:"

The dramatis persona of the two 'Locksley Halls,' of 'The Northern Farmer,' of 'The Northern Cobbler,' and of' The Village Wife' are not portraits drawn from particular indi. viduals, but,

"As imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.""

Lord Tennyson informed a recent visitor to Farringford that Locksley Hall is no particular hall, and the Moated Grange is no particular grange. But the localizing craze is already busy upon them. So profoundly undramatic is the temper of our time that a poet is not considered capable of imagining any dramatic action, or even a scene of any dramatic action. Had "A Midsummer Night's Dream" been written by a contemporary poet, the public would have demanded, and the literary and artistic providers" would have promptly provided, a "photograph from life" of Titania and an "" accurate water-color drawing" of the bank whereon the wild thyme blows.

THE Government Year-Book," the object of which was to combine a record of the forms and methods of political government through

out the world with a survey of the constitutional changes occurring year by year in various countries, will be published henceforth not as an annual, but in successive editions, as may appear desirable from the number and importance of such changes. The third edition of the work, including an estimate of the political tendencies of the more important States, will make its appearance next Easter.

MR. IVOR JAMES, registrar of the University

College of South Wales, has published a little booklet, "The Source of the Ancient Mariner (Cardiff: Owen), which may be commended to the attention of those who collect Coleridgiana. In this he essays to prove that the general idea of the poem, and also many of the details, are derived from " a small quarto of some 140 pages, now extremely rare, entitled 'The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captain Thomas James,' printed in London by John Legatt, for John Partridge, in 1633."

A copy of this book is now on the shelves of the Bristol Library, in which Coleridge is known to have read largely during the years 1794-98. It cannot be proved that the book was there at that time, though some presumption to that effect may be drawn from the fact that Southey reprinted two verses out of it. Granting that Coleridge had read it, we may admit that certain floating reminiscences of its contents took shape in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner;" but Mr. James seems to go much further than the slight evidence warrants when he calls it the " germ" of the poem. Still, we are grateful to him for his elaborate treatment of an interesting literary problem.

A PARAGRAPH which has been going the round of the papers with regard to the recent discovery of a mass of Balzac letters must be taken, we conjecture, “with a grain of salt." Readers of the paragraph-unless, indeed, they know something of Balzac's historywould be apt to suppose that his letters to Madame Zulma Carraud are now heard of for the first time. So far, in reality, is this from being the case that no small part of the longpublished 'Correspondence" of the great novelist consists of the epistles which he was wont, at many periods of his life, to indite to this lady, his friendship with whom is described, in Mr. F. Wedmore's recent book on Balzac, as" wholly sane and beneficent." In this respect it was presumably something of a contrast to his attachment to Madame de Berny.

THE Delegates of the Clarendon Press have arranged for the publication of a series of halfcrown volumes to be entitled "Rulers of India," to be edited by Sir W. W. Hunter, K.C.S.I. Each volume will take a conspicuous epoch in the making of India, and under the name of its principal personage will set forth the problems of government which confronted him, the work which he achieved, and the influences which he left behind. Thus the volume on Asoka will endeavor to present, for the first time, a comprehensive view of the political organization of ancient India. The rise and culmination of the Mughal empire will be briefly sketched under Akbar; its decay under Aurangzeb. The volume on Dupleix will sum up the struggle of the European nations for the possession of India. The volume on Dalhousie exhibits the final developments of the East India Company's rule, and so on. Among the writers will be Professor Seeley, Professor Rhys Davids, Captain Trotter, Colonel Malleson, Sir Lepel Griffin, Sir Owen Burne, Sir H. Cunningham, Mr. Boulger, and the editor.

THE death of Lord Lamington has brought to a sad and premature conclusion the series of articles which has been appearing in Blackwood's Magazine, entitled "In the Days of the Dandies." The proofs of the third instalment, which will appear in the March number of Maga, and will treat of the political personages of the period, were in the author's hands during his fatal illness. They were finally corrected for press by his life-long friend and relative, the Duke of Rutland. A good deal of curiosity has been excited regarding the authorship of those very charming papers, and numerous guesses, more or less happy, were made on the appearance of the first instal. ment. The form in which the articles were cast was, we believe, suggested by the circumstances of their origin, which arose from con-, versations between the editor of Blackwood and the author which occurred during various visits to Lord Lamington's beautiful home on