410

almost unquestioningly. The book is a prose poem, and carries its reader into a new world of dreams and ideal beauty.

a

The first chapters tell the hero's life as a child in the country near Paris, where he lives happily with his parents and his delicate little friend Mimsey Seraskier, until his father and mother die, and he is taken away by his uncle. The next years are spent at school in England; then Peter quarrels with his hod, ill-bred uncle, and becomes lonely, hard-working architect. He falls in love at first sight with Mary, the Duchess of Towers: "It was the quick, sharp, cruel blow, the coup de poignard, that beauty of the most obvious, yet subtle, consummate, and highly organized order, can deal to a thoroughly prepared victim.» Afterwards he has a strange, sweet dream of his boyhood, where Mary is the only living reality:

and she tells him how to "dream true," and thus live over again his happy life as a child in France. Finally Peter meets Mary face to face; they discover, he that she is Mimsey Seraskier, and both that they have dreamed the same dream together. After this interview they part forever. Peter hears that his uncle has told infamous lies about his mother, and in justified rage kills him, more by accident than design. On the night that he is sentenced to be hanged, Mary comes into his dream again and tells him that the sentence will be commuted, and that after she is separated from her wretched husband she will make his life happy. Then comes an ideal dream-life of twenty-five years, that must be read to be understood and appreciated, during which Mary's outward life is spent in philanthropy and Peter's is spent in jail. When she dies, and their mutual dream-life ends, Peter becomes wildly insane. She visits him once after her death, and gives him strength to recover and write this singular autobiography. He dies in a criminal lunatic asylum, we are told, and whether he was mad, or the story is true, is left to the imagination.

The hero is a splendid type of manhood, and the Duchess of Towers is one of the sweetest, kindliest women modern fiction.

in

Van Bibber and Others, by Richard Harding Davis (1890), is a collection of short stories that appeared originally in the magazines. The central figure in the majority of them is Van Bibber, a young New Yorker of the mythical «Four Hundred,» a charming fellow, combining the exquisiteness of the aristocrat with the sterling virtues of the great American people. His tact is consummate, his ideals of good form unimpeachable, his snobbery entirely well-bred. Having plenty of money, and nothing to do but to be "about town," he is in the way of adventures. Some of these are funny; one or two are pathetic. They all serve to throw high light upon Van Bibber in his character of a swell. The stories are well written, and show the author's equal acquaintance with Fifth Avenue and with the East Side.

Shirley, Charlotte Bronté's third novel,

was published in 1849. The scene is laid in the Yorkshire country with which she had been acquainted from childhood. The heroine, Shirley, was drawn from her own sister Emily. The other characters include three raw curates, - Mr. Malone, Mr. Sweeting, and Mr. Donne, through whom Charlotte Bronté probably satirized the curates of her own acquaintance; Robert Moore, a mill-owner; his distant cousin, Caroline Helstone, whom he eventually marries; his brother, Louis Moore, who marries Shirley Keeldar, the heroine, and a number of others, including workingmen and the neighboring gentry. The story, while concerned mainly with no one character, follows, to some extent, the fortunes of Robert Moore, who, in his effort to introduce new machinery into his cloth mill, has to encounter much opposition from his employés. In her childhood, while at school at Roe Head, Charlotte Bronté had heard much of the Luddite Riots which were taking place in the neighborhood, and which furnished her later for the descriptions of the riots in Shirley.

The book faithfully reproduces the lives of country gentlefolk, and is richer in portrayal of character than in striking incident. Wholesome and genial in tone, it remains one of Charlotte Bronté's most attractive novels.

1891, and was the first novel of the famous English artist.

Nacht zum Licht'), by Friedrich Spielhagen (3 vols., 1861), a conclusion

of the romance 'Problematische Naturen (Problematic Characters).

The promise of the title is not fulfilled by the course of this story or its conclusion. Oswald Stein, the hero of the preceding narrative, is to be brought "through night to light» in this work, but he does not accomplish this tran

sition. The same inconstancy, the same facile impressibility, and the same transitoriness of impression, are brought out by similar sentimental experiences to those narrated in Problematic Characters.> Indeed, the hero is even less admirable than in his hot youth, since his experiments are no longer entirely innocent. The solution offered to the puzzle

of his life is Oswald's heroic death on the barricades of Paris; but this suggestion of "light" is inadequate in view of the darkness of the preceding "night."

The story is usually regarded as an attempt to effect a compromise between the realistic tendencies of the late nineteenth century, and the idealism of an earlier school. It is rich in single episodes of interest or beauty; and its various heroines, Melitta, Hélène, Cécile, are well drawn. As a whole, however, and looked at from the point of view of

spirited and graceful, and the humor is refined. It is a typical old-style English novel, in which virtue overcomes vice and triumphs in the end. Dramatized as 'Rosedale,' it has been a favorite play for more than a generation.

| My

son.

Studio Neighbors, a volume of sketches, by William Hamilton GibIllustrated by the author. (1898.) The titles of these sketches are: A Familiar Guest, The Cuckoos and the Outwitted Cow-bird,' 'Door-Step Neighbors, A Queer Little Family on the Bittersweet, "The Welcomes of the Flowers, A Honey-Dew Picnic,› (A Few Native Orchids and their Insect

Sponsors, The Milkweed. Nobody since Thoreau has brought a more exact and clear observation to the study of familiar animal and plant life than the author of these sketches, and even Thoreau did not always see objects with the revealing eye of the artist. Mr. Gibson has the "sharp eye" and "fine ear of the prince in the fairy-tale; and his word pictures are as vivid as the beautiful work of his pencil. To read him is to meet the creatures he de scribes, on terms of friendship.

is not a powerful or convincing statement of the problem which the novelist has propounded.

Lady Lee's Widowhood, by Edward

Bruce Hamley. (1854.) On its publication, this novel was called the most promising work of fiction since Bulwer's (Pelham. Sir Joseph Lee, a rich but weak-minded baronet, dies bequeathing all his property to his young widow, under the condition that she does not marry again without the consent of Col. Lee, Joseph's dissolute old uncle. In case of her marriage, the estate is to be divided between the baronet's young son and Col. Lee. The interest depends on the contrivances of Col. Lee to secure control of his niece's fortune, and the counter-contrivances of Lady Lee and her friends to keep it. The remaining chief characters of the tale are Captain Lane, a young soldier, Ostend, and two charming young girls, all of whom are provided with plenty of incident, and opportunity to shine. Gipsies, fortunehunters, and members of the swell mob fill up the scene. The story is told with ease and vivacity, the composition is

OF THE HEART, by "Ik Marvel,» pseudonym of Donald Grant Mitchell. The Bachelor's first Reverie was published in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1849, and was reprinted the following year in Harper's New Monthly Magazine. It represents the sentimental Bachelor before a fire of oak and hickory in a country farmhouse. He broods through an evening of "sober and thoughtful quietude.» His thoughts are of matrimony, suggested by the smoke -signifying doubt; blaze-signifying cheer; ashes signifying desolation. Why should he let himself love, with the chance of losing? The second Rev. erie is by a city grate, where the toss ing sea-coal flame is like a flirt,-"sc lively yet uncertain, so bright yet flickering," and its corruscations like the leapings of his own youthful heart; and just here the maid comes in and throws upon the fire a pan of anthracite, and its character soon changes to a pleasant glow, the similitude of a true woman's love, which the bachelor enlarges much upon in his dream-thoughts. The third Reverie is over his cigar, as lighted by a coal, a wisp of paper, or a match,

412

each bearing its suggestion of some heart-experience. The fourth is divided into three parts, also: morning, which is the past, a dreaming retrospect of younger days; noon, which is the bachelor's unsatisfied present; evening, which is the future, with its vision of Caroline, the road of love which runs not smooth at first, and then their marriage, foreign travel, full of warm and lively European scenes, and the return home with an ideal family conclusion. These papers, full of sentiment, enjoyed a wide popularity.

of tendency is so vividly indicated, that the analysis of the movement of the last century might almost be a statement of certain phases of thought and morals of to-day. If the terms of the problems discussed are obsolete, their discussion has a constant reference to the most modern theories.

Mr. Stephen is never the detached observer. These questions mean a great deal to him; and therefore the reader also, whether he approve or disapprove the bias of his guide, is compelled to find them important. In studying such books as this, and the admirable discus

Century, History of, in two volumes, by Leslie Stephen. (1876.) The scope of this important book is hardly so broad as the title would indicate, for the subject treated with the greatest fullness is theology. The first volume, indeed, is given almost entirely to the famous deist controversy with which the names of Hume, Warburton, Chubb, Sherlock, Johnson, and the rest of the great disputants of the time-names only to the modern reader-are associated. The ground covered extends from the milestones planted by Descartes by means of his doctrine of innate ideas, to the removal of the boundaries of the fathers by the "constructive infidelity of Thomas Paine. This review weighs with care the philosophical significance of the gradual change of thought, a knowledge of which is conveyed through an examination of the representative books upon theology and metaphysics. The historian's criticism upon these is fair-minded, illuminative, and always interesting, by means of its wide knowledge and wealth of illustration. So broad is it that it seems to bring up for judgment all the pressing social, moral, and religious questions of the present time. Mr. Stephen points out that the deist controversy was only one form of that appeal from tradition and authority to reason, which was the special characteristic of the eighteenth century. In his method of dealing with the "body of divinity," which he explains to the worldly modern reader, he shows himself both the phil

and Rationalism in Europe, it is difficult to escape from a certain sense of the inevitableness of the opinions held by mankind at every stage of their development; so that the question of the importance of the truth of these opinions is apt to seem secondary. But Mr. Stephen does not belittle the duty of arriving at true opinions, nor does he assume that his side-and he takes sides-is the right side, and the question closed.

Volume ii. discusses moral philosophy, political theories, social economics, and literary developments. It gives with great fullness and fairness the position of the intuitional school of morals, and of the latest utilitarians, who now declare that society must be regulated not by the welfare of the individual, but by the well-being of that organism which is called the human race. "To understand the laws of growth and equilibrium, both of the individual and the race, we must therefore acquire a conception of society as a complex organism, instead of a mere aggregate of individuals." To Mr. Stephen history witnesses that the world can be improved, and that it cannot be improved suddenly. Of the value of the theory that society is an organism, this book is a conspicuous illustration. Its candor, its learning, its honest partisanship, its impartiality, with its excellent art of stating things, and its brilliant criticism, make it a most stimulating as well as a most informing book, while it is always entertaining.

OR,

GERMANY AND PRUSSIA IN THE NAPOLEONIC AGE, by J. R. Seeley, regius professor of modern history in the University of Cambridge. (3 vols., octavo,

1378.) Professor Seeley's object in writing this valuable if rather lengthy biography was primarily, as he states in his preface, to describe and explain the extraordinary transition period of Germany and Prussia, which occupied the age of Napoleon (1806-22),—and which has usually been regarded as dependent upon the development of the Napoleonic policy, and to give it its true place in German history. Looking for some one person who might be regarded as the central figure around whom the ideas of the age concentrated themselves, he settled on Stein. Biographies of other prominent persons-as Hardenberg, Scharnhorst, etc.-are interwoven with that of Stein. The work is divided into nine parts: (1) Before the Catastrophe (ie., the Prussian subjugation by Napoleon); (2) The Catastrophe; (3) Ministry of Stein, First Period; (4) Ministry of Stein, Transition; (5) Ministry of Stein, Conclusion; (6) Stein in Exile; (7) Return from Exile; (8) At the Congress; (9) Old Age. It is clearly and picturesquely written, and springs from a statesmanlike and philosophical grasp of its material. Stein's great services to Prussia, and indeed to the world (the emancipating edict of 1807, his influence in Russia, at the Congress of Vienna, 1814, etc.), have never elsewhere been so convincingly stated. The author indeed confesses, that while at starting he had no true conception of the greatness of the man, Stein's importance grew on him, and he ended by considering the part which the chancellor played an indispensable one in the development of modern Germany. Many extracts are given from Stein's letters and official documents, which make his personality distinct and impressive. The politics and social conditions of Russia, Austria, and France, and the effect which these produced in Germany, are made both clear and interesting. A multitude of anecdotes and personal reminiscences adds the element of entertainment which so serious a biography demands. But its great merit is that nowhere else exists a more judicial and philosophic estimate of Napoleon's character and policy than in the chapters devoted to his meteoric career.

Egyptians, Ancient Religion of the,

by Alfred Wiedemann. (1897.) A work designed to set before the reader

the principal deities, myths, religious ideas and doctrines, as they are found in Egyptian writings, and with special reference to such facts as have important bearings on the history of religion. It is based throughout on original texts, of which the most significant parts are given in a rendering as literal as possible, in order that the reader may judge for himself of their meaning. Dr. Wiedemann expresses the opinion that the essays of Maspero, in his Études de Mythologie et de Religion' (Paris, 1893), are far weightier for knowledge of the subject than any previous writings devoted to it. Maspero especially condemns the point of view of Brugsch, who attempts to prove that Egyptian religion was a coherent system of belief, corresponding somewhat to that imagined by Plutarch in his interesting work on Isis and Osiris.

We may speak of the religious ideas of the Egyptians, he says, but not of an Egyptian religion: there never came into existence any consistent system. Ot various religious ideas, found more or less clearly represented, it cannot be proved historically which are the earlier and which are the later. They are all extant side by side in the oldest of the longer religious texts which have come down to us, the Pyramid inscriptions of the Fifth and Sixth dynasties. Research has determined nothing indisputable as to the origins of the national religion of the Egyptians, their form of government, their writing, or their racial descent. The more thoroughly the accessible material, constantly increasing in amount, is studied, the more obscure do the questions of origin become.

Ancient Egypt was formed by the union of small States, or districts, which the Greeks called Nomes: twenty-two in Upper Egypt, and twenty in Lower Egypt. Each nome consisted of (1) The capital with its ruler and its god; (2) the regularly tilled arable land; (3) the marshes, mostly used as pasture, and for the cultivation of water plants; and (4) the canals with their special officials. Not only did each nome have its god and its own religion regardless of neighboring faiths, but the god of a nome was within it held to be Ruler of the gods, Creator of the world, Giver of all good things, irrespective of the fact that adjacent nomes similarly made each its own god the One and Only Supreme.

There were thus many varieties and endless rivalries and conflicts of faiths, and even distinct characters attached to the same name; as Horus at Edfu, a keen-sighted god of the bright sun, and Horus at Letopolis, a blind god of the sun in eclipse. If a ruler rose to royal supremacy, he carried up the worship of his god. From the Hyksos period of about six hundred years, the origin of all forms of religion was sought in sun worship. Dr. Wiedemann devotes chapters to (Sun Worship,' Worship, (Solar Myths,' and 'The Passage of the Sun through the Underworld,' tracing the general development of sun worship and the hope of immortality connected with it. Then he sketches The Chief Deities'; The Foreign Deities'; and The Worship of Animals, which was due to the thoroughly Egyptian idea of an animal incarnation of deity. He then reviews the story of 'Osiris and his Cycle,' and the development of The Osirian Doctrine of Immortality, "a doctrine of immortality which in precision and extent surpasses almost any other that has been devised.» This doctrine, Dr. Wiedemann says, is of scientific importance first from its extreme antiquity, and also from its many points of affinity to Jewish and Christian dogma. The whole cult or worship of Osiris, of Isis, and of Horus, with some other related names, forms a study of great interest. Dr. Wiedemann concludes his work with chapters on Magic and Sorcery,' and 'Amulets,' features in all ancient religion of the practical faith of the masses.

Books of the East.

The Sacred Books of

TRANSLATION BY VARIOUS ORIENTAL SCHOLARS, AND EDITED BY MAX MÜLLER. (First Series, 24 vols. Second Series, 25 vols.)

An attempt to provide, by means of a ibrary of selected works, a complete, rustworthy, and readable English translation of the principal Sacred Books of the Eastern Religions,-the two religions of India, Brahmanism and Buddhism; the religion of Persia, the Parsee or Zoroastrianism; the two religions of China, Confucianism and Taoism; and the religion of Arabia, Mohammedanism. Of these six Oriental book-religions, Brahmanism was started by Brahman or priestly use of a body of Sanskrit poetry. The other five started from the

work of personal founders: Buddha, Zoroaster, Confucius, Lao-tze, and Mohammed. In Buddha's case, the book of his religion came from his disciples. Zoroaster produced a small part only of the Parsee books. Confucius produced the sacred books of his religion; but mainly by compiling, to get the best of the existing literature. Lao-tze produced one very small book. The Koran or Qur'an was wholly spoken by Mohammed, not written,-in the manner of trance-speaking; and preserved as his disciples either remembered his words, or wrote them down.

The oldest writings brought into use as scriptures of religion were the Babylonian, dating from about 4000 B. C. The Egyptians also had sacred writings, such as the Book of the Dead,' which may have had nearly as early an origin. India comes next to Egypt and Babylonia in the antiquity (perhaps 2000-1500 B. C.) of the poems or hymns made into sacred books and called the Veda. Persia follows in order of time, perhaps 1400 B. C. To the Greeks, from about 900 B. C., the Homeric poems were sacred scriptures for many centuries, very much as in India Sanskrit poems became sacred. The Chinese scriptures date not far from 600 B. C., and the Buddhist about a hundred years later. The Hebrews first got the idea at the last end of their history, when in exile in Babylon; and they not only borrowed the idea, but borrowed stories and beliefs and religious feelings. Under the direction of Ezra, a governor sent from Babylon, they publicly recognized writings got together by the priestly scribes as their sacred scriptures. The exact date was 444 B. C. The idea of scriptures of religion is a universal ancient idea, similar to the idea of literature in modern times. It in some cases grew very largely out of belief that the trance inspiration, which was very common, was of divine origin. The Koran, or Qur'an, which came very late, 622 A. D. was wholly the product of the trance experiences of Mohammed; and such it was thought to be direct from God. The trances in which Mohammed spoke its chapters were believed to be miraculous. He did not know how to write; and while he made no other divine claim, he pointed to the tranceuttered suras or chapters of the Koran as manifestly miraculous.

as