cisely the sort of art exemplified by Gautier that Mr. Horton would do well to study. Of the "Songs of the Lowly," the piece called "The Outs and Ins offers an excellent example. It ends in this fashion: "The Ins are born of finest clay, แ The gods bend down to hear them pray; To the jolly tune of the Outs and Ins. "Of coarsest clay the Outs are born A heritage of toil and scorn; But still the dark earth shrieks and spins "Ah me! And so, in life and death, To the dreary tune of the Outs and Ins." Mr Horton writes sometimes in gravely philosophic The other while we range the realm of dreams, "Wild songs, low sobs, faint echoings, often drift From that life into this, And sometimes greet us, peeping through a rift, "But who our unremembered dreams can guess? What poppied meads with eager feet we press, "Nay this our madness, that we think is life, And then we leave its folly and its strife, Much of Mr. Horton's verse is of the "society" sort, and often catches something very like the grace of Praed or Dobson. "Out in Tokio" is a pretty trifle apropos of Sir Edwin Arnold, the susceptible. This is the last stanza: "Love, the wide world over, Catches small and great; Maidens' eyes are fatal, Whether slant or straight. Hearts are made to open, Just as buds to blow. Luck to bold Sir Edwin Out in Tokio! Out in Tokio, out in Tokio, Luck to gallant Edwin Out it in Tokio!" The new volume of poems by Mr. Arlo Bates gives us a series of Arabian tales, as "Told in the Gate" of Ispahan by a professional story-teller. They are seven in number, written in blank verse, and interspersed with songs. In these Arabian Days' Entertainments, Mr. Bates has done better work than his other volumes would have led us to expect. The narratives have oriental coloring, dramatic interest, and a distinctive style. Even the lyrics are pleasing, although subjective verse has not hitherto seemed to be the author's affair. Here is a brief but pretty example: "Oh, can night doubt its star, the dawn its sun? Doubt is the night, and love the day; It can hardly be said that Mr. Bates has realized the oriental type of the lover's passion in these tales. It is really the sentimental and romantic passion of the West that is here disguised but not concealed beneath the glowing imagery of the East. But the stories are charmingly conceived and told, and their variety of incident makes us forget to scrutinize their essential truthfulness too closely. Lyrics that do not sing, dramatic narratives that do not stir, and respectable sonnets and memorial odes that impart no thrill, are about the sum of what may be found in Mr. George Parsons Lathrop's volume of "Dreams and Days." One need not even be the "mephitic angry critic" of "O Jay!" to fail to recognize poetry in lines of which these are a fair example, "O jay Blue jay! What are you trying to say? I remember, in the spring You pretended you could sing; We regret to say that Mr. Lathrop has nowhere come much "nearer to a song" than in this instance. Mrs. Moulton has a high and assured place in the ranks of our minor poets, and the new edition of her volume of 1877 does not need to create an audience. A few new poems are added, and the title "Swallow Flights" is given to the entire collection. Mrs. Moulton's song is simple and spontaneous in utterance, and sincerity marks it through"Fiat Justitia" is an excellent example of the workmanship. out. "Yes, all is ended now, for I have weighed thee,- "Holding these scales, I marvel at the anguish For thing so slight that long my heart hath torn,— For God's great sun the prisoner's eyes might languish, Not for a torch by some chance passer borne. "I do not blame thee for thy heedless playing On the strong chords whose answer was so full,Do children care, through daisied meadows straying, What hap befalls the blossoms that they pull? "Go on, gay trifler! Take thy childish pleasure: On thee, for thee, may summer always shine: Too stern were Justice, should she seek to measure Thy fitful love by the strong pain of mine." Mrs. Moulton's poems are largely contemplative and retrospective. They have the grace of autumn woods or of sunset skies. The few sonnets make us wish that there were more of them. Their gentle melancholy is very suggestive of the blind poet, the author's friend, to whom she has paid frequent loving tribute. No better text for a commentary upon "The Wings of Icarus" could be found than the quatrain at the close of the volume: "Scorn not the small song-blossoms of the hour, Whose fragile petals strew the winds of time. Some distant age may joy to see them flower Upon our crumbling Parthenons of rhyme." The poems to which Miss Spalding has given the title above quoted are indeed slight and fragilepetalled blossoms of song, but they are both fragrant and fair. There is perhaps too much modesty in the title, and in the confession and prophesy that with it: goes "Like Icarus, I deemed my pinions strong Like him, from skies too glowing, I am hurled. The winds of fate shall blow about the world." Certainly there is both deep feeling and strangely imaginative power in such a sonnet as "Death's First Lesson," and we should be loth to believe that the winds of fate will blow it straight to oblivion : "Three sad, strange things already death hath shown This one would glad have died that I might live; Miss Spalding's verse has fervor and sincerity; it is the voice of the heart to the heart, and the lyrical quality is not lacking, although often subdued to philosophic strain. The publication of the "Paradise" completes Professor Norton's prose translation of "The Divine Comedy," and thus places in the hands of readers not familiar with the original a version at once accurate and elegant, provided with as many notes as an intelligent reader ought to have, and divided into volumes of convenient size and satisfactory typography. In the matter of notes, although the difficult theology of the third Cantica calls for more than were needed in the earlier volumes, the reader has been treated about as he was treated by Richard Grant White in his edition of Shakespeare. He who knows something of Italian (if ever so little) will find Butler more useful than Norton, but others will have no hesitation in declaring for the latter version. WILLIAM MORTON PAYNE. BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS. A good-tempered views of America. THE "Land of the Almighty Dollar" (F. Warne & Co.), a volume with an obtrusively star-spangled cover, sets forth the hasty American impressions of F. Panmure Gordon. Mr. Gordon is an Englishman who has, he says, "scanned the world from China to Peru"; and one is gratified to find that opinions formed of us by so extensive a traveller are, on the whole, very favorable. Mr. Gordon is clearly a good-tempered man. He discourses with amiable garrulity of American hotels, clubs, railways, newspapers, politics, etc., and gives his views as to New York, Chicago, and the World's Fair. He finds our hotel service "perfectly execrable," our paper money a concrete exemplification of "filthy lucre," our carriages, like our women (though here with certain reservations as to accent), "hors ligne," our theatres "generally very attractive," and the city of Chicago-to the contemptuous amusement of his New York friends66 one of the wonders of modern times." We are pained to find Mr. Gordon alluding, in a lively chapter on New York society, to the great Mr. McAllister as "a certain rather fatuous person, who has been more or less prominent, according to the point of view taken in social matters," etc. This is irreverent enough; but when the infatuated man goes on to say (touching the position of the word "van" in a man's name), " Thus, Van Courtland, for example, is aristocratic, Sullivan is plebian; but when you deprive Van Courtland of his money and hand it over to Sullivan, the position of the van' is not so important," one really begins to think of Ajax and the lightning. In view of his chapter on American women, however, much may be forgiven Mr. Gordon. "There is no doubt," he thinks, "that the mixture of race, or atmosphere, or whatever makes beauty that subtle but most desirable alchemy is floating like thistle-down in the air of the United States of America." Of American women abroad: "No women are more courted, admired, and praised. If they choose to respond by being bouncing and loud, it is a fault easily corrected. Remembering they come from a country where they are always first, they are always found running against cobweb lines of etiquette. Like persons who come out of a glare of light into a dark room where they do not see, what wonder if they make some mistakes?" The volume contains a portrait of the author, and is prettily illustrated with vignettes in the French style. 66 and the "Essays" are, moreover, worth reading, like all Professor Huxley's books, for their literary quality alone. Every page illustrates the advantages over the man of science pure and simple, of the man of science who, like Professor Huxley, has relieved his dusty labors by occasional sallies into philosophy and polite literature. The papers (sixteen in all) are reprints, mostly from the "Nineteenth Century," and include the author's replies to Mr. Gladstone and to Dr. Wace of King's College in the debates on the "Interpretation of Genesis," etc., and on 66 Agnosticism,' The Evolution of Theology," "Science and Morals," etc. As a master of fence, the doughty Professor is easily chief; but in awarding him the palm it is only fair to note that his rivals were heavily handicapped at the start by the antecedent improbability of much they argued for. In the paper on "Agnosticism," after an interesting bit of intellectual autobiography too long for quotation, the author thus sums up his philosophical attainments: "Philosophy and history having laid hold of me in this eccentric fashion, have never loosened their grip. I have no pretension to be considered an expert on either subject; but the turn for philosophical and historical reading, which rendered Hamilton and Guizot attractive to me, has not only filled many lawful leisure hours, and still more sleepless ones, with the repose of changed mental occupation, but has not unfrequently disputed my proper work-time with my liege lady, Natural Science. In this way I have found it possible to cover a good deal of ground in the territory of philosophy; and all the more easily that I have never cared much about A's or B's opinions, but have rather sought to know what answer he had to give to the questions I had to put to him - that of the limitation of possible knowledge being the chief. The ordinary examiner, with his State the views of So-and-So," would have floored me at any time. If he had said, What do you think about any given problem, I might have got on fairly well." of Herbert Spencer's ' Principles of Ethics. A completed section VOLUME I. of Herbert Spencer's Principles of Ethics" (Appleton) is now issued complete. The contents of the book are divided into three parts: The Data of Ethics" (published separately in 1879), "The Inductions of Ethics," and "The Ethics of Individual Life." Part IV. (“The Ethics of Social Life: Justice") of Vol. II. of this last main division of the "Synthetic Philosophy" has recently been issued separately. In the preface to the present volume Mr. Spencer explains his irregular course of publication of the several portions of "The Principles of Ethics" as due to his anxiety to treat at least partially, before failing health should intervene, a division of his system (the Ethical) to which he regards all preceding parts as subsidiary. "Now that moral injunctions," he says, "are losing the authority given by their supposed sacred origin, the secularization of morals is becoming imperative"; and he has therefore been anxious to indicate in outline at least this final section of his philosophical scheme, "because the establishment of rules of right conduct on a scientific basis is a pressing need." The volume, bearing as it does more or less directly on the vital question, "How to live," is an especially popular one; and its practical value will be allowed even by those not willing or not ready to subscribe to the view that conscience is derived. An unsatisfactory biography of Thomas Carlyle. IT is a pity that there should be such inequality among the volumes of the "English Men of Letters series (Harper). A series which includes such nearly perfect works as Symonds's Shelley, Myers's Wordsworth, Pattison's Milton, has a high standard to maintain which ought not to be allowed to suffer depreciation when new books are added. Yet this is done in the latest volume, devoted to Thomas Carlyle and written by Professor John Nichol. The skilful mingling of biography and criticism which one hopes for in a work of this kind is not attained; there is nothing new in the way of facts; the mass of existing material is not picturesquely treated so as to leave a distinct impression, nor is the literary style as good as we should expect from the author of a manual on English composition. However, the book will not be without value for the reader seeking a condensed record of Carlyle's principal writings, doings, and complainings. But the chapters in which an attempt is made to summarize Carlyle's political philosophy, his ethics and influence, are sadly lacking in the strength and force which naturally belong to these subjects, and it is here that the author has missed a great opportunity. Lessons from the Sermons of Theodore Parker, AN old friend in a new dress comes to us in Theodore Parker's "Lessons from the World of Matter and the World of Man" (C. H. Kerr & Co.) The book has been for some time out of print, having been first published in 1865; it consists of extracts from the sermons of Parker's last ten years of ministry (1849-1859). Other compilations from Parker's religious writings will be consulted by those who seek to know Parker's power as a thinker and scholar; but this volume as reprinted will resume its old place as the favorite of those who value Parker's words as helps in formation of character and the conduct of life. His own mind was democratic, and in his highest flights of imagination it has been truly said "he kept both his feet planted on the soil." Two years ago we had occasion to Timely and charming chapters in praise Sir Robert S. Ball's admiraPopular Astronomy. ble and popular treatment of elementary astronomy in a book called "Starland." Now we have another volume from the same author, "In Starry Realms" (Lippincott), supplementary to the earlier work, even more charming, and dealing with matters of special interest relating to the different heavenly bodies. The chapter on "Mars as a World" is especially timely, when all eyes have so lately been turned upon that planet, and our opportunities for gossip about our neighbor's affairs are better than they will be again for thirty-two years. Other interesting chapters are given to "Venus and Mercury," "The Greatest Planet,' ""The Names of the Planets," "A Falling Star," etc. An interesting presentation of "Darwinism and its Relation to Other Branches of Science," previously published in "Longman's Magazine," forms the twenty-third and concluding chapter of this copiously illustrated, beautifully printed and truly valuable volume. Life and manners in the Blue-Grass 66 UNDER the collective title, "The Blue-Grass Region of Kentucky," Region of Kentucky. Harper & Brothers reprint a series of articles descriptive of Kentucky life and manners, by James Lane Allen. The papers appeared originally in " Harper's" and "The Century Magazine," and they merit their present more permanent form. Mr. Allen writes easily and well, has a good eye for local types and color, and is judicious in the use of dialect, giving the reader enough of it to serve as a sample, yet not enough to upset his stomach. To exemplify the speech of the Kentucky mountaineer is one thing, to force a reader to listen to it for hours together is another; and Mr. Allen leans to the side of mercy. The illustrations are usually good. A chatty and gossipy book about Stage-plays. THE high quality of William Winter's work in dramatic criticism fairly entitles it to the fine setting which it receives in the series of volumes to which "Old Shrines and Ivy" (Macmillan) is now added. Ten papers are given to "Shrines of History" and ten others to 66 Shrines of Literature." These latter were mainly written by way of introduction to stage-versions of plays edited and privately printed by Augustine Daly. They are on such subjects as "The Forest of Arden; As You Like It"; Fairy Land; A Mid-Summer Night's Dream"; "Will o' the Wisp; Love's Labour's Lost." They concern themselves less with æsthetic criticism (thank heaven!) than with historical and bibliographical facts, early forms of publication, stage presentations, actors early and late, the introduction of music, and other matters not generally familiar nor easily ascertained. BRIEFER MENTION. THE translation of Bluntschli's "Allgemeine Statslehre," by the coöperative labor of three Oxford fellows, has now appeared in a second edition (Macmillan) which does not, however, differ materially from the first. It is hardly too much to say of this work that it is an attempt, and not an unsuccessful one, "to do for the European State what Aristotle accomplished for the Hellenic." "The Theory of the State," in this very acceptable version, is one of the few books that absolutely must find a place on the political science shelf of every student's library. THE " Dictionary of Political Economy," edited by R. H. Inglis Palgrave, has reached its third part, the contents extending to "Conciliation, Boards of." Chartism, Children's Labor, Christianity, City, Civil Law, Clearing System, Cobbett, Colonies, Combination, Commerce, and Companies are the subjects of the more important articles in this number (Macmillan). THE "Writings and Speeches of Grover Cleveland" have been collected and edited by Mr. George F. Parker (Cassell). The book is an attractive one, and in no sense a specimen of campaign literature. Mr. Parker has classified his material in accordance with the subjects treated, and has even gone so far as to dissect Mr. Cleveland's messages, placing each paragraph under its appropriate head. No violence is done to the author's style by this treatment, for continuity is the last thing that one looks for in a Presidential message. A few letters of a personal nature, together with a sober and sympathetic introduction, add greatly to the interest of the volume. SOME recently published translations of foreign fiction deserve a line of recognition. Theophile Gautier's "Four Destinies" is translated by Lucy Arrington (Worthington), E. Werner's "Enthralled and Released," by Dr. Raphael, Señora Bazán's "The Swan of Vilamorta," and Pedro Antonio de Alarçon's "The Child of the Ball," by Mrs. Mary J. Serrano (Cassell), Potopenko's "The General's Daughter," by W. Gaussen (Cassell), and "Jean de Kerdren," a novel, by Mlle. Jeanne Schultz, author of "La Neuvaine de Colette," is translated anonymously (Appleton). "One Year: A Tale of Wedlock" (Worthington) is said to be from the Swedish, but no name, either of author or translator, appears in connection with it. LITERARY NOTES AND NEWS. The addresses made upon the occasion of Walt Whitman's funeral have been published by Mr. Horace L. Traubel in a tasteful pamphlet. "Harper's Weekly" for September 10 has several articles upon its late editor, George William Curtis, including one by Mr. W. D. Howells. Buyers of rare books are warned against a clever forgery of Mr. Swinburne's " Siena," the original of which was printed privately in 1868. The "Overland Monthly" for September prints an interesting sheaf of poems about California, collected from the work of the last few years. The "Review of Reviews" for September contains an account of a recent performance of the "Electra” of Sophocles, by the students of Iowa College. A very interesting article, describing an expedition to the great falls of Labrador, and written by Henry G. Bryant, is published in the September "Century." D. Appleton & Co. announce a new story by Colonel Richard Malcolm Johnson, to be entitled "Mr. Fortner's Marital Claims." It will appear in the "Summer Series." "Hawbuck Grange" is the latest issue in the new "Jorrocks" edition of the popular "Hanley Cross" sporting novels (Lippincott). This work was first published in 1847. Professor J. V. Sládek, the editor of a Prague newspaper, has translated a large number of the songs and ballads of Burns into Czech, preserving the metrical forms of the original. A second edition of "Calmire" (Macmillan) has just appeared, with some condensation and rearrangement of the text. The authorship of this remarkable fiction still remains a secret. "The Saturday Review" describes Mr. Henry Adams's "History of the United States" as "an example of the intolerable verbosity which is the plague of contemporary historical writing." Last year, according to the London "Daily News," the British and Foreign Blind Association embossed no less than 8,500 copies of books in various languages in the Braille alphabet. "In Old St. Stephens," a novel by Miss Jeanie Drake, a new writer, is announced for immediate publication by D. Appleton & Co. It is a South Carolina story of the early part of the century. Mr. Theodore Child's second paper on "Literary Paris," in "Harper's" for September, discusses Melchior de Vogüé, Guy de Maupassant, H. A. Taine, Jean Richepin, Pierre Loti, and others. In "The Open Court" for September 8, Mr. Charles S. Pierce begins a series of popular articles upon logic. "The Critic of Arguments" is the general title given by Mr. Pierce to these papers. The trustees of Dove Cottage are fitting up the building as a Wordsworth museum for the use of the public. Wordsworth's furniture and other belongings may be seen there placed as in the poet's lifetime. Manchester, it seems, is to have not only the Althorp Library, of which mention was made in our last issue, but also the historical library left by the late Professor Freeman, which has been purchased for Owens College. Henrik Ibsen appears to have put an end to his long term of self-imposed exile, for he has not only lived in Christiana for nearly a year, but has taken and furnished a home there. A new play from his pen may be expected this season. The American-Jewish Historical Society, organized last June, is engaged in collecting data concerning the history of the Jew in America. Among its officers are Professor Seligman, of Columbia, Mr. Max Cohen, of the Maimonides Library, and Mr. Julius Rosenthal, of Chicago. Mr. Kineton Parkes concludes his discussion of "Shelley's Faith" in the double number of "PoetLore just issued. This number also contains an article on "The Religious Teachings of Eschylus," and a curious story, "Newton's Brain," translated from the Bohemian of Jakub Arbes. "Crime and Criminal Law in the United States " is the subject of an article in the July "Edinburgh Review." It is a heavy indictment of the lawlessness prevalent in this country, and finds a resonant echo in the recent Chautauqua address of Mr. Andrew D. White, whom certainly no one will charge with defective patriotism. Miss Lynch's novel, Daughters of Men," has been translated into Greek, and has been favorably reviewed by the Athenian press. The leading papers of Athens consider that the book is the first extensive work on modern Greece that can be said to show an accurate knowledge and faithful observation of the life and manners of the country. The endowment of literature, in one form or another, has often been suggested, and a wealthy Hungarian has recently found at least one practical solution of the problem. This philanthropic gentleman has set aside 150,000 gulden, with a handsome villa in the capital, for the use of "the best living Hungarian author." A jury of eight persons, publishers and members of learned societies, are to make the award, and the person selected is to enjoy the villa and the income of the fund for life. It is generally understood that Jokai will be the first beneficiary under this arrangement. It would perhaps be hypercritical to suggest that there is a little too much of the Maecenas idea in this plan, but the inclusion of publishers in the jury of award appears to be a device fraught with dangerous possibilities. Sir Edwin Arnold has thus written of his new Japanese play, "The Story of Adzuma": "This true, tender, noble, and pathetic story, by all its incidents in the highest degree dramatic and heart-stirring, has never yet been told in English, although for so many years popular in Japan. Those scholars who have given to the western world other famous pieces from Japanese history have either feared to deal with the tragic particulars of the tale or have not found access to good versions of it. The present author has spared no pains to obtain full narratives, and has written his play with the double purpose of composing a literary work in the dramatic form worthy, if it may be, of the beautiful heroine, who is a pure and true type of the highest Japanese womanhood, and also of supplying for the modern English and American stage a tragedy in all respects 'actable,' and illustrating with close fidelity the manners and motives of the Japanese people." COMMUNICATIONS. THE VACANT "EASY CHAIR." (To the Editor of THE DIAL.) "Curtis The prince of short-essay writers is gone. could n't write badly if he tried," was the remark of a friend several years ago, as with a sigh of appreciative content he laid down something from the pen of George William Curtis. Such has been the unuttered thought, doubtless, of hundreds of delighted readers who have come to know Mr. Curtis well in the place he has so long and so brilliantly filled. That is a most charming picture - the illustration in the current number of "Harper's Weekly" (date of September 10), which gives us a glimpse of the lamented editor in his study, the home atmosphere all about him, a ragged little terrier curled up confidingly on a blanket at his feet, those books he so much loved fairly framing the portrait of the essayist and author as he sits at work in that familiar easy chair, now long a favorite retreat in many an intelligent American home. But it is not as eulogy that these paragraphs are written, so much as to call attention to the superlative excellence of one of Mr. Curtis's brief essays which appeared very recently in the department of the "Easy Chair." I refer to the article upon "National Conventions," printed in the August number of the magazine. The essay gathers more significance, perhaps, when we recall the prominent part taken by its author |