attempt to make

some people take care of others. It is not at all the function of the State to make men happy; to say that those who by their own labor and industry have acquired or augmented a fortune shall support the shiftless and negligent, is to strike at the liberty of the industrious. Evils due to the folly and wickedness of mankind bear their own bitter fruit; State interference in such cases means simply making the sober, industrious, and prudent pay the penalty which should be borne by the offender. The type and formula of most philanthropic schemes is this: A and B put their heads together to decide what C shall do for D. Poor C, the "forgotten man,” has to pay for the scheme, without having any voice in the matter. "Class distinctions simply result from the different degrees of success with which men have availed themselves of the chances which were presented to them. In the prosecution of these chances, we all owe to each other good-will, mutual respect, and mutual guarantees of liberty and security. Beyond this nothing can be affirmed as a duty of one group to another in a free State."

Professor Sumner's book is a useful antidote to many of the futile and dreamy socialistic schemes now afloat. A process warranted to regenerate the

Europe for so many ages. There is nothing in these tales of the heroic doings of Odin and Thor, of Volsungs and Vikings, that we associate with Norse stories. The only supernatural beings are the Trolls, a dark, ugly race, ill-disposed to mankind. The favorite story seems to be the adventures of some poor youth, who starts out to seek his fortune, and meets with many strange happenings, but usually ends by winning a princess and half a kingdom. There are many old friends under different names: Cinderella, (The Sleeping Beauty, (Tom Thumb'; and one story, East o' the Sun and West o' the Moon,' is a combination of the old tale of Cupid and Psyche' and 'Beauty and the Beast. The old pagan customs and legends show through the veneer of Christianity, as in The Master-Smith,' where the blacksmith, who has angered the Devil, goes to make his peace with Satan after he has lost his chance of heaven, because he does not want to be houseless after death: he would prefer to go to heaven; but as he cannot, he would prefer hell to a homeless fate.

The stories are prefaced by an essay written by Mr. Dasent, in which he traces many of them from their Sanskrit originals through Greek to German mythology.

not

tions. Professor Sumner, however, is a more thorough-going supporter of the "laissez faire" doctrine than most economists of the present day. Besides, he disregards the very dishonest means by which wealth is often attained. His defense of the capitalist class is quite reasonable: not all capitalists, we know, are the despicable villains described by the extreme socialists; but neither could all of them be regarded as men who have simply made legitimate use of "the chances presented to them.» However, Professor Sumner's protest against the insidious attacks on the liberty of the majority, under the specious guise of legislative aid for the weak, is straightforward and convincing.

Popular Tales from the Norse.

(1858.) This is a collection of Norse folk-tales, translated by George Webbe Dasent. The stories in this compilation are the Norse versions of the stories which have been floating all over

der. To attempt a critical review, it is not only necessary to have a knowledge of a man's work, the mere details of what he has done, and the manner of its performance, but to put oneself en rapport with his mental attitude, in sympathy with his moral aims, and in harmony with his intellectual perceptions; in order that he may be presented in the best light to those who either fail to grasp the full meaning or comprehensiveness of his words or to those who wait on the threshold for an invitation to enter and enjoy. All this Mr. Scudder has accomplished. The carping note is absent; the faint praise that damns, superseded by a quiet force of convincing eloquence, which is inspired by a thorough knowledge of the subjects he reviews. Whether he is describing 'Emerson's Self'; The Art of Longfellow'; 'Landor as a Classic'; or the faith in works of Elisha Mulford, Annie Gilchrist, or Dr. Muhlenberg,- a trio less well known to the general reader,

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cries, "farewell, great heart, my only friend; you may depart in peace. I shall never marry,- never, I assure you!» The sharp report of the needle-guns follows, and the rural idyl is over.

Fate of Mansfield Humphreys, The, by

Richard Grant White. A few chapters of this work appeared in the Atlantic Monthly Magazine, and the first three were published in Edinburgh with the title, Mr. Washington Adams in England.' There is the thread of a lovestory involving Mansfield Humphreys, a young and successful American, and Margaret Duffield, a beautiful English girl with small expectations and large accumulations of titled relatives. It terminates in an international marriage, a residence in Boston, unfortunate business speculations, and the triumphant withdrawal of Margaret-who achieves greatness of income by the timely removal of an eccentric relative- with her husband in train, to reside in her beloved England, where, according to Mr. White, even the most cultured drop their final "g's." The story is one, if not with a moral, at least with a purpose, and certainly with a grievance. The lingual difficulties of our trans-oceanic cousins are exploited at length, as well as our own shortcomings in the matter of speech. The popular impression in England of the characteristic American traits is accentuated in a humorous scene, where Humphreys, masquerading as "Washington Adams," a "gee-hawking » American with "chin whiskers," "linen duster," "watch-chain which would have held a yacht to its moorings," and other equally attractive personal accessories, appears at the garden party of Lord Toppingham's, and by his absurdities of speech and action presents an exaggerated caricature of a resident of "the States," which is placidly accepted by the English guests as the realization of their preconceived ideas. The book aroused so much diverse comment, public and private, that an explanation of its occasion and original purpose was given in a lengthy apology of some seventy pages, concerning which the author says: "Some apologies aggravate offense; always those which show the unjust their injustice, for they will be unjust still. This apology is one of that kind." The Strange Adventures of Phra the

Phoenician, by Edwin Lester Arnold (1890), is a fantastic story that

recounts the adventures of Phra through recurring existences extending from the earliest Phoenician period to the times of Queen Elizabeth. Through all these lives Phra retains his individuality, though adapted to varying times and places. The story opens with an expedi tion of Phra as a Phoenician merchant to the "ten islands," or "Cassiterides. » He reappears in the early British days, the slave consort of his Druid wife, and changes into a centurion in the house of a noble Roman lady. At his next appearance Phra is again a Briton, and serves under King Harold at Hastings; he is successively a Saxon thane, and an English knight under King Edward III., before his final incarnation during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, when he writes of his various adventures. From act to act of his existence Phra is followed by Crecy, a damsel who renews her life as he does, and constantly seeks his love. She dies to save one of his numerous lives on a French battle-field where Phra is serving under Edward III.

The

The Surgeon's Stories, by Zakarias Topelius. Topelius was a Finn; and his wonderful series of historical tales, although written originally in Swedish, exploit the fortunes of a Finnish family for six generations, from 1631 to the latter part of the last century. The stories are ostensibly related by Andreas Bäck, a quack doctor, whose career is humorously set forth in the introduction, and whose characteristics are portrayed in the prelude to each cycle of tales. He was born on the same day as Napoleon. According to his own account he had saved the Swedish fleet, and the lives of Gustavus III. and Arnfelt (or he would have done so had they listened to him), he had been granted an audience with Bonaparte, and had pulled a tooth for Suvorof; and he liked to relate his experiences with just a tinge of boastfulness, but when he was once started on his narrations he quite forgot himself, and was carried away by the exciting events of the past. It was his pleasure to gather around him in his dusty attic a little band of listeners;- we see them all, the postmaster and the old grandmother and the schoolmaster and the rest. "His memory," says his chronicler, "was inexhaustible; and as the old proverb says that even the wild stream

does not let its waves flow by all at once, so had the surgeon also a continually new stock of stories, partly from his own time, and still more from periods that had long since passed. He had not a wide historical knowledge; his tales were desultory character-sketches rather than coherent description: what he had was fidelity, warm feeling, and above all, a power of vivid delineation.» The connection between the fifteen stories that make up the six volumes is maintained by a copper ring with runic inscriptions, which is first seen on the finger of Gustavus Adolphus, and is popularly supposed to protect him so long as he wears it, from iron and lead, fire and water. This ring he had received from a Finnish maiden; and it is his son by this Finnish maiden who founds the family of Bertelskjöld, in whose possession the amulet descends with many adventures through generation after generation. The titles of the six cycles hint at the chronological development: Times of Gustavus Adolphus; Times of Battle and Rest (1656-97); Times of Charles XII.; Times of Frederick I.; Times of Linnæus; Times of Alchemy. These stories, with their vivid descripions, their wonderful pictures of battle and intrigue, their rose-colored touches of romance, take rank among the ablest works of historical fiction. In English ranslation they hold their own in comarison even with Sir Walter Scott's Tales of a Grandfather.

Zury; The Meanest Man in Spring

County: A Novel of Western Life, by Joseph Kirkland. (Zury) is a tale of the life and society, of the struggles, reverses, and disappointments, of those who, it the period immediately preceding our Civil War, journeyed in prairie schooners to the settlement of the great West.

The story is almost entirely in the form of dialogue- the peculiar patois of the backwoods-and of such a construction that it must be followed word for vord for the successful unraveling of the plot. There are no tiresome descriptions, and but little narrative, where one so tsually finds a 1ésumé of what has passed and a brief prospectus of what he may expect; so that the careless reader who glances at the beginning, takes a peep or two at the middle, and then carefully studies the last two chapters, will certainly find himself quite nonplussed.

Zury (an abbreviation for Usury) Prowder arrives, while still a child, in the wild forests of Illinois, there to grow up with the country. One by one, his little sister, his father, and mother give up and die; but still the boy continues to live on, and in the end carves riches out of poverty. To do this he has suffered extreme privations, and reduced the science of economy to such a degree that he has earned the distinction of being the meanest man in the county. At the juncture when Zury owns half the town, and holds mortgages on the other half; when he is the whole municipal government and most of the board of public education, a young woman from Boston, Miss Ann Sparrow, appears upon the scene to take charge of the "deestrict» school. Henceforth the interest in the two is paramount, and through the now humorous, now pathetic struggles of the girl, at first for recognition, then for success, we see of what delightfully superficial nature Zury's meanness was after all; and once more find an illustration of the wonders that a little of the sweetness and light which accompany education may accomplish, even in the wilderness.

Tartarin of Tarascon, by Alphonse Daudet. (1872.) Daudet's exquisite portrayal of mock adventures of the boastful Tartarin is a delightfully entertaining specimen of the finest quality of French humorous writing. Tartarin of Tarascon, to whom the adulation of his fellow-townsmen is as necessary as the breath of life, is animated by the spirit of a big-game hunter and a love of adventure. On Sundays, accompanied by his fellow-sportsmen of Tarascon, he goes just outside the town, and in lieu of other game, long since fled, tosses his cap into the air and riddles it with shot. At this noble pastime Tartarin is without a peer. His study walls are thickly hung with such trophies of his skill. He has long been the absolute king of Tarascon sportsmen. To assure this position among his townsmen, who are beginning to doubt his prowess, he starts for Algiers on a real lion hunt.

With innumerable trunks filled with arms, ammunition, medicine, and condensed aliments, arrayed in the historic garb of a Turk, Tartarin arrives at Algiers. An object of much curiosity and speculation, he at once sets out for lions.

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but returns daily, disheartened by his fruitless quest. He is himself bagged by a pretty woman, Baya, in Moorish dress. One day he meets Barbasson, a native

freedom, and has succeeded in imparting to his work their antique air and flavor.

ing from Marseilles to Algiers.

Barbas

son tells him of the anxiety and eagerness for news of him at Tarascon.

At this, Tartarin deserts Baya, and starts south for lions. After many adventures in the desert, he finally kills the only lion he has seen,- -a poor, blind, tame old lion, for which he has to settle to the amount of all his paraphernalia and money. The lion's skin is forwarded to Tarascon, and Tartarin tramps to Algiers, accepts passage from Barbasson, and at last reaches home, where he is greeted with frenzied applause. His position has been made secure by the arrival of the lion's skin, and he again assumes his place in Tarascon. Evenings, at his club, amid a breathless throng, Tartarin begins: "Once upon an evening, you are to imagine that, out in the depths of the Sahara - »

Telemachus (or Télémaque), Advent

ures of, by Fénelon, is a French prose epic in twenty-four books, which appeared in 1699. Having been shipwrecked upon the island of the goddess Calypso, Telemachus relates to her his varied and stirring adventures while seeking his father Ulysses, who, going to the Trojan war, has been absent from home for twenty years. In his search the youth has been guarded and guided by the goddess Minerva, disguised as the sage Mentor. This recital occupies the first six books, the remaining eighteen containing the hero's further remarkable experiences, until at last he returns to Ithaca, where he finds Ulysses already arrived. On the way thither occur his escape from the island of Calypso, whose love for Telemachus prompts her to detain him on her fair domain, and his visit to the infernal regions, in search of his father, whom he believes to be dead. This romance of education, "designed at once to charm the imagination and to inculcate truths of morals, politics, and religion," has always been regarded as a French classic. It is still much used in English-speaking schools, as a model of French composition. The author has borrowed from, and imitated, the Greek and Latin heroics with undisguised

ventures in a Desert Island, by J. R. Wyss. This book was originally written in German, was translated into French, and afterwards into English. It is an entertaining tale written for young people, after the style of "Robinson Crusoe, from which the author is supposed to have derived many of his ideas. It deals with the experiences of a shipwrecked family, a Swiss clergyman, his wife and four sons, who, deserted by the captain and the crew of the vessel on which they are passengers, finally reach land in safety. They exhibit wonderful ingenuity in the use they make of everything which comes to hand, and manage to subsist on what articles of food they find on the island, combined with the edibles which they are able to rescue from the ship. They have various experiences with wild beasts and reptiles, but emerge from all encounters in safety. They build a very remarkable habitation in a large tree, which is reached by means of a hidden staircase in the trunk; and in this retreat they are secure from the attacks of ferocious animals. They continue to thrive and prosper for several years, until finally a ship touches at the island, and they are once again enabled to communicate with the mainland. By this time, however, they are so well pleased with their primitive life that they refuse to leave the island home. The story was left in an unfinished condition by the author, but several sequels to it have been written, all of which vary ir their accounts of the doings of this interesting family. The book has long enjoyed a well-deserved popularity, and in spite of various anachronisms is en joyable and entertaining reading.

Story of Bessie Costrell, The, by Mrs

Humphry Ward. (1895.) In this story Mrs. Ward has depicted life among the working classes under mos painful and trying conditions. Bessie Costrell is the niece of John Bolderfield an old man who, by dint of scrimping and saving for many years, has ac cumulated by hard labor enough money to support himself for the remainder of his life. This wealth, the acquiremen of which had been the one ambition of