yet exhibiting a wealth of imagination and idyllic fancy not always found in conjunction with such restraint. Consuelo, like her creator, has in her veins the blood of the people; she has no dowry but a wonderful voice, and a noble natural purity that is her defense in all trials and temptations. Her childhood is spent in the Venice of the eighteenth century; a golden childhood of love and music, and a poverty which means freedom. After a bitter experience of deception, she leaves Venice to live in the Castle of Rudolstadt in Bohemia, as companion to the Baroness Amelia. One of the household is Count Albert, a melancholy half-distraught man of noble character, over whom Consuelo establishes a mysterious influence of calmness and benignity.

The interest of the story is now held by certain psychic experiments and experiences, and it closes as the reader hopes to have it. Consuelo abounds in picturesque and dramatic scenes and incidents, in glowing romance, in the poetry of music and the musical life. It retains its place as one of the most fascinating novels of the century.

Haunted Pool, The, by George Sand.

In

The Haunted Pool' (La Mare au Diable) was the first in a series of rustic novels begun by George Sand at Nohant in 1846, of which 'Les Maîtres Sonneurs' was the last. These simple stories, which have been called the "Georgics of France, are quite unlike the earliest works of their author, 'Indiana,' 'Valentine,' and 'Lelia,' both in style and in matter; and mark a distinct epoch in French literature. explaining her purpose in writing them, George Sand disclaimed any pretense of accomplishing a revolution in letters: "I have wished neither to make a new tongue, nor to try a new manner." She had grown tired of the city, and her glimpses of rural life had led her to an exalted view of the peasant character. The poetry which she believed to exist in their lives, she succeeded in infusing into the romances which she wove around them.

"The Haunted Pool' has for its central figure Germain, a widower of twentyeight, handsome, honorable, and living and working on the farm of his fatherin-law, Maurice by name. The latter urges his son-in-law to marry again, both for his own good and for that of

his three children. Germain demurs, largely because he cherishes so fondly the memory of his wife. But at last he consents to go to the neighboring village of Fourche, to see the widow Catherine Guérin, daughter of Farmer Leonard, who is well off, and according to Maurice, of suitable age to marry Germain. Before he starts on his journey, a neighbor of Germain, the poor widow Guillette, asks him to take in his care her sixteen-year-old daughter Mary, who has engaged to go as a shepherdess to a farmer at Fourche. On the way, Pierre, the young son of Germain, insists that his father shall take him as well as little Mary to Fourche on his horse, La Grise. The trio lose their way, the horse runs off, and they are obliged to spend the night on the borders of the "haunted pool." The tact of little Mary, and her kindness to his child, so work on Germain that he falls in love with her. He goes on, however, to see the widow; but her coquetry, and the insincerity of her father, disgust him, and he does not make his offer of marriage. On the way home he overtakes little Mary, who has been insulted by her employer at The Elms. At first she refuses to marry Germain, calling him too old. But in the course of a year she changes her mind, and makes him perfectly happy.

It is one of George Sand's short studies of peasant life, considered by many critics her finest work, in which she embodied loving reminiscences of her childish days in the province of Berry. It is a poetic idyl, recounted with a simple precision which places the reader vividly in the midst of the homely incidents and daily interests of country life.

To Père and Mère Barbeau, living thriftily upon their little farm, arrive twin boys whom they name Landry and Sylvain. As the boys grow up, they show an excessive fondness for each other, which their father fears may cause them sorrow. So he decides to separate them by placing one at service with his neighbor, Père Cailland. Landry, the sturdier and more independent, chooses the harder lot of leaving home. adapts himself to the change and is happy; while Sylvain, idle, and petted

He

by his mother, suffers from the separation and is jealous of his brother's new friends. Later the two brothers both love the same woman, little Fadette.

toilers; a woman of the convent and of bohemia; a genius in literature striving for the welfare of her kind.

this situation.

Histoire de Ma Vie, L', by George

Sand. This work was begun in 1847, and completed in 1855. It was published in Paris at the latter date, and republished, essentially unchanged, in 1876.

The four volumes of autobography, comprising over 1,800 pages, deal with the first forty years of the author's life, and close twenty-one years before her death. The first and second may be styled the introduction to the story; being devoted mainly to the antecedents of the writer, her lineage, her father's letters, and to a running commentary on the times. The autobiography proper begins in the third volume. Here the extremely sensitive nature, and vivid, often wild, imagination of a girl, may be seen unfolding itself in continuous romance, sufficient in quantity and quality to foreshadow, if not to reveal, one of the most prolific novelists in French lit

erature.

In these pages, the writer portrays a genius in embryo fretting over its ideals, —in the passion for study and observation; in the convent experience of transition from realism to mysticism; in domestic hopes and their rapid disillusioning. In the last volume appear the beginnings of the George Sand of our literature, the mystic transforming into the humanitarian and the reformer; the dreamer subdued by many sorrows; the new novelist happy or defiant amidst her friends and foes.

As a work of art and as an autobiography, L'Histoire de Ma Vie is defective in the lack of proportion involved by overcrowding the story at the beginning with extraneous matter and childhood experiences, to the exclusion of important episodes of maturer years, and the abrupt ending of the narrative where the author has just entered upon her literary career.

But taken as a whole, the autobiography is an invaluable contribution to the French literature of the first half of the nineteenth century. Outside of contemporary interests, we have, with a few reservations, the frank, vivid portraiture of a child both of kings and

A novel based on the author's relations twenty-five years before, in 1834. with Alfred de Musset, whose death occurred in 1857. As the story was one to which there could be no reply by the person most concerned, an indignant brother, Paul de Musset, wrote Lui et Elle to alter the lights on the picture. At the entrance of the woman known in literature as George Sand upon the bohemian freedom in Paris, she shared her life with Jules Sandeau, and first used the pen-name Jules Sand, when he and she worked together and brought out a novel entitled Rose et Blanche.' Enabled shortly after to get a publisher for 'Indiana, which was wholly her own work, she changed her pen-name to George Sand. But Sandeau and she did not continue together. Alfred de Musset and she entered upon a relationship of life and literary labor which took them to Italy at the end of 1833, gave them a short experience of harmony in 1834, but came to an end by estrangement between them in 1835. Her side of this estrangement is reflected in 'Elle et Lui,' and his in Paul de Musset's 'Lui et Elle.'

Delphine, by Madame de Staël, was her

first romance; it was published in 1802. The heroine is an ideal creation. Madame d'Albemar (Delphine), a young widow, devotedly attached to her husband's memory, falls promptly in love with Léonce as soon as she meets him. The feeling is reciprocated, and Léonce bitterly repents his engagement to Delphine's cousin Mathilde. But Delphine's mother, Madame de Vernon, a treacherous, intriguing woman, determines to separate the lovers; and the story relates the progress of her machinations.

Its bold imagery, keenness of observation, and power of impassioned description, perhaps justify Delphine's' position among the masterpieces of French literature. But neither situations nor characters are true to nature. The only real person in the book is Madame de Vernon, a mixture of pride, duplicity, ostentation, avarice, polished wickedness, and false good-nature. But the romance had a special interest for Madame de Staël's contemporaries, for several of the

great men and women of the time appear in it under the thinnest of disguises. M. de Lebensée, the noble Protestant, is Benjamin Constant; the virtuous and accomplished Madame de Cerlèbe is Madame de Staël's mother; Delphine is of course Madame de Staël herself; and Madame de Vernon is Talleyrand: "So we are both," said he to her, "in your last book, I hear; I disguised as an old woman, and you as a young one." As in the case of 'Corinne, the liberal ideas scattered through the story drew down on the au

besides its romantic and sentimental interest, in its treatment of literature and art it has always been considered authoritative. It served indeed for many years as a guide-book for travelers in Italy, though modern discoveries have somewhat impugned its sufficiency. When it first appeared in 1807, its success was instantaneous; and Napoleon, who detested the author, was so much chagrined that he himself wrote an unfavorable criticism which appeared in the Moniteur.

her to leave France.

Corinne; or, Italy, by Madame de

Staël. Corinne's story is quite secondary, in the author's intention, to her characterization of Italy, but it runs thus: Oswald, Lord Nelvil, an Englishman, while traveling in Italy, meets Corinne, artist, poet, and musician, with a mysterious past. Their friendship ripens into love; but Oswald tells Corinne that his dying father desired him to marry Lucile, the daughter of Lord Edgermond. Corinne then discloses that her mother, an Italian, was the first wife of Lord Edgermond; and that after her mother's death and her father's second marriage, her life had been made so unhappy by her stepmother that she had returned to Italy, where she had been for eight years when Oswald arrived. He goes back to England, with the intention of restoring to Corinne her fortune and title; and there meets Lucile, and learns that his father had really wished him to marry Lord Edgermond's elder daughter, but had distrusted Corinne because of her religion and Italian training. And now the too facile Oswald falls in love with Lucile. Corinne, who has secretly followed him, sends him his ring and his release. Believing that Corinne knows nothing of his change of feelings, but has set him free of her own desire, he marries Lucile. Five years later, Oswald and Lucile visit Florence, where Corinne is still living, but in the last stages of a decline which began when Oswald broke her heart by marrying. The sisters are reconciled, but Oswald sees Corinne only as she is dying.

In Corinne and Lucile, the author has endeavored to represent the ideal woman of two nations; the qualities which make Corinne the idol of Italians, however, repel the unemotional Englishman. But

oman Affairs ('Les Affaires de Rome'), by Félicité Robert de Lam ennais, was written after the rupture of the author with the Papacy. It contains an account of his journey to Rome, with Montalembert and Lacordaire, and their efforts to obtain a decision on the orthodoxy of the doctrines inculcated by their journal L'Avenir (The Future), which held that the Church should put herself at the head of the democratic movement. The book contains also, under the caption Des Maux de l'Eglise et de la Société, what the author considered a faithful picture of the Catholic Church throughout the world, as well as of the state of society. He indicates remedies to cure the evils of both, while affirming that there is a complete antagonism between the Church and the people in every country, an antagonism growing ever more acute. The Church of the future will not be, he maintains, that of Rome, whose day is past, nor will it be that of Protestant. ism - an illegitimate, illogical system that, under the deceptive appearance of liberty, has introduced the brutal despotism of force into the State and is the source of egotism in the individual. What the future Church is to be, however, Lamennais does not make clear.

Orie

riental Religions: INDIA, CHINA, PERSIA, by Samuel Johnson. Mr. Johnson's labors in producing this tril ogy extended over many years. The first volume, India, appeared in 1872; the second, China, in 1877; and the last, Persia, in 1885, after the author's death. The volumes, although separate, really constitute one work, the underlying idea of which is that there is a Universal Religion, "a religion behind all relig ions; that not Buddhism, nor Brahminism, nor Mahometanism, nor even Christianity, is the true religion; but that

Bible Lands, Recent Research in: Its

Progress and Results. Edited by Hermann von Hilprecht. (1897.) A work of definitive and comprehensive excellence, presenting in eight chapters, by as many writers of high authority, the best new knowledge of the fruits of Oriental exploration throwing light on the Bible. It grew out of a series of articles prepared by leading American and European specialists for the Sunday-School Times; and it thus carries an attestation which will commend it to readers who desire a trustworthy account of the recent most remarkable expansion of knowledge concerning Palestine, Babylonia, Egypt, and Arabia, in respect of their history previous to and during the "Mosaic » period. As some of the art objects pictured in the illustrations are of date 4000 B. C., it will be seen that the recovery of a time long before Abraham's opens to view pages of the story of mankind of extreme interest and significance. The new light thus thrown upon the ancient East shows how "Ur of the Chaldees" was, to older cities near the head of the Persian Gulf, a new mart of trade and seat of culture, such as Chicago is to New York; and how Abraham in going to Palestine went to the Far West of that Oriental world, where the east coast of the Mediterranean was to the world of culture what the American Pacific coast is to-day. It was Abraham who thus first acted on the advice, "Young man, Go West.» The date of his defensive expedition related in Genesis xiv. is now definitely fixed by Babylonian inscriptions at about 2250 B. C.; and the invasion he repelled is found to have been in pursuance of aims on which the kings of Babylonia are known to have acted as early as 3800 B. C., or fully 1500 years before Abraham.

Mycenaean Age, fhe. A Study of the

monuments and culture of PreHomeric Greece, by Dr. Chrestos Tsountas and J. Irving Manatt. With an introduction by Dr. Dörpfeld. A most valuable summary of the discoveries of twenty years, from Schliemann's first great "find" at Mycena to 1896. Tsountas was commissioned in 1886, by the Greek government, to continue Schliemann's work; and after seven years of explorations, he brought out a volume on 'Mycenae and the Mycenæan Civilization, in which he undertook a

Dr.

systematic handling of the whole subject of prehistoric Greek culture in the light of the monuments. This was written in Greek and published at Athens. Dr. Manatt, of the Greek chair at Brown University, undertook, on his return from a four-years' residence in Greece, to prepare an English version of Tsountas's work; but later, in view of three years' rapid progress of explorations, and with the aid of new materials furnished by Tsountas, he made a largely new work, bringing the Mycenæan story up to date. This story is "a great chapter of veritable history newly added to the record of the Greek race.» It covers the period approximately from the sixteenth to the twelfth century B. C.» It had been taken for granted that the time of Homer represented the earliest known stage of Greek civilization, the childhood of the race. But Homer lived in Ionia of Asia Minor, as late at least as the ninth century B. C.; and the new discoveries show the Mycenæan civilization widely spread in Attica and central Greece, and Crete even, seven hundred years before Homer. Of the life and culture of this pre-Homeric Greece, the story told by Drs. Tsountas and Manatt gives a full, exact, and richly illustrated view.

Myths of Greece and Rome, by H. A.

Guerber. An entertaining account of Grecian and Roman mythology, with special regard to its great influence upon literature and art. Upwards of seventy-five full-page illustrations of paintings and statuary show how art has taken its subjects from mythology; and poetical quotations represent the subject's literary side. The volume includes a double-page map of the classic regions, a genealogical table, and a glossary.

Clas

lassical Greek Poetry, THE Growth AND INFLUENCE OF, by Professor R. C. Jebb. (1893.) Delivered originally as lectures at Johns Hopkins University, these chapters compose a brilliant sketch of the history and character of Greek poetry, epic, lyric, and dramatic. The introductory analysis of the Greek temperament is followed by an account of the rise of the lyric in Ionia, -as a partial outgrowth of the earlier epic, and of the newer form, the drama, which came to supersede it in popularity. One