of historical examples brought together in illustration of the kind of relationship in question. It is a summing up of concrete instances of friendship.

The book had great vogue in its day. Its readableness and interest have not been diminished by time.

Woman in the Nineteenth Century,

as as

by Margaret Fuller Ossoli. (1844.) A book of special interest from the remarkable character and intellectual ability of its author, and from the representative position which it holds as an early prophecy of the now broadly developed recognition of women pirants for culture, and as applicants equally with men for positions and privileges in the various fields of human activity. After actively participating in the celebrated Brook Farm experiment of idealist socialism, where she thoroughly wrought out for herself new-departure convictions in religion, and having served a literary apprenticeship of note as a translator from the German, and as editor for two years of The Dial, a quarterly organ of New England Transcendentalism, she brought out in 1844 her (Summer on the Lakes,' and the next year the Woman in the Nineteenth Century,'-a considerably

enlarged reproduction of an essay by her in The Dial of October 1843, where she had used the title, The Great Lawsuit; or,' Man as Men, Woman as Women.' By adding a good deal to the article during a seven weeks' stay at Fishkill on the Hudson (to November 17, 1844), she made what was in effect a large pamphlet rather than a book adequately dealing with her subject, or at all representing her remarkable powers as they were shown in her Papers on Literature and Art.' To do her justice, the book, which was her prophecy of a movement which the century is fulfilling, should be taken as a text, and her later thoughts brought together under it, to have as nearly as possible a full indication of what, under more favorable circumstances, her genius would have given to the world.

Matrimony, by W. E. Norris. (1881.)

Mr. Norris's third novel is the story of the fortunes of a county family named Gervis, the scene being laid partly in Beachborough, an English county-town, and partly among an aristocratic half-bohemian set in Paris. Mr.

Gervis, a brilliant diplomat, marries an Italian woman, by whom he has two children, Claud and Geneviève. His second wife is a Russian, Princess Omanoff, who has already been twice married, and has her own cynical views as to the blessings of matrimony. Mr. Gervis and the Princess maintain separate establishments, but are on friendly terms. When the story opens, Mr. Gervis, with his son Claud, after a long residence abroad, has just returned to England to take possession of a family estate, lately inherited. From this point the true story begins. Its complications arise from the love-affairs of Claud and his beautiful sister, from certain outlived episodes in the life of the Princess, and from the serious effects that spring from the frivolous cause of the Beachborough Club's reading-room gossip. Nothing is out of the common, yet the elements of disaster and of tragedy are seen to be potential in the every-day lives of the every-day characters. The book abounds in types of character done to the life. Even the callow clubhouse smokers have an individuality of their own; and French dandies, men of letters, gamblers, scoundrels, Russian adventurers, and back-biting ladies of quality, rowdies, and philosophic speculators on the cosmos in general, are each and all as real as the crowd in the street.

Lady Beauty; OR, CHARMING TO HER

LATEST DAY, by Alan Muir. “It always is darker," whispered an old gentleman at my side, "when Lady Beauty leaves the room-always." This eulogistic remark is made at a dinner-table, when the ladies have departed; and the explanation of it is found in the story which the

old gentleman afterwards tells, the story of Lady Beauty's life; a life so charming, so pure and sweet, that at fifty-three Lady Beauty's neverfading loveliness is thus described by a rejected but faithful lover. Lady Beauty, or Sophia Campbell, is the one unworldly member of a worldly family dwelling in the little English town of Kettlewell. The teachings of her mother, Lady Barbara, and the example of her two older sisters are of no avail. For seven years she remains faithful to her absent lover, Percival Brent, and at the end of that time her loyalty is rewarded by a happy marriage,-a marriage as strongly in contrast with the

alliances formed by her sisters as her amiability and gentleness are opposed to their ambition and cynicism.

The story is written, so the author says to encourage women to be charming to their latest day; and the charm he describes and urges is that of lowtoned voices, of fitting raiment, of gentle manners, of lofty aims, of unobtrusive piety, and the charity which forgets and forgives, all personified in the ideal woman, Lady Beauty. Few more delightful tales of society stand on the library shelf.

Mammon; OR, THE HARDSHIPS OF AN

HEIRESS, by Mrs. Catharine Grace Gore. (1842.) Mrs. Gore was the writer of some seventy novels descriptive of the English aristocracy, books dear to the hearts of a former generation, but forgotten to-day. Mammon was published in 1855, and deals with the fortunes of one John Woolston and his family. He marries to displease his father, is for a time very poor, then inherits a fortune, and becomes a "millionary," as Mrs. Gore invariably calls it. Her daughter Janetta is the heiress to whom the book Owes its title. Her hardships are those of the princess who feels the crumpled roseleaf under her many mattresses; and the sympathetic tear is slow to fall over her artificial woes. Yet, like all Mrs. Gore's books, this had a great vogue, and was well received even by the critics. Her figures move more or less like automata; and her dialogue keeps the same pace whether the interlocutors are comfortably dining, or are finding their moral world slipping out from under their feet. But that her books faithfully reflect the dull, material, and unideaed life of fashionable London in the second quarter of the century, there is no doubt, and it is this fidelity that makes them of consequence to the student of manners even of morals.

Patty, by Katherine

or

S. Macquoid

(1871), is a story of English middleclass contemporary life. Patty Westropp, the pretty and ambitious daughter of a gardener, inherits a fortune, changes her name, attends a fashionable French school, and presently emerges from her chrysalis state a fine lady. Her beauty and her money enable her to marry an English gentleman of good family; and the chief interest of the story lies in the

complications which spring from the contact of a nature ruled by crass selfishness and vulgar ambition, with nobler and more sensitive spirits. The character study is always good, and the novel entertaining.

Mutable Many, The, by Robert Barr, published in 1896. This is one of

the many accounts of the struggle between labor and capital. The scene is London, at the present day. The men in Monkton and Hope's factory strike. Sartwell, their manager, refuses to compromise with them, but discusses the situation with Marsten, one of their number, who clings to his own order, at the same time that he avows his love for Sartwell's daughter Edna. Sartwell forbids him to speak to her. The strike is crushed, Marsten is dismissed, and becomes secretary to the Labor Union. He sees Edna several times, she becomes interested in him, and her father sends her away to school. Marsten visits her in the guise of a gardener, offers her his love, and is refused. Barney Hope, son of her father's employer, a dilettante artist of lavishly generous impulses, also offers himself to her and is refused. Later, he founds a new school of art, becomes famous, and marries Lady Mary Fanshawe. Marsten brings about another strike, which is on the eve of success, and Sartwell about to resign his post. Edna, seeing her father's despair, visits Marsten at the Union and proposes to marry him if he will end the strike and allow her father to triumph. He declines to sell his honor even at such a price. The members of the Union, seeing her, accuse Marsten of treachery, depose him from office, and so maltreat him that he is taken to the hospital. His successor in office is no match for Sartwell, who wins the day. Edna goes to Marsten, and owns at last that she loves him.

Lovel, the Widower, by W. M. Thackeray. (1860.) One of the great master's later books, written after his first visit to America, this simple story touches, perhaps, a narrower range of emotion than some of his more famous novels; but within its own limits, it shows the same power of characterization, the same insight into motive, the same intolerance of sham and pharisaism, the same tenderness towards the simple and the weak, that mark Thackeray's more elaborate work. Frederic Lovel

532

has married Cecilia Baker, who dies eight years later, leaving two children, the little prig Cecilia, and Popham. Their governess, Elizabeth Prior, wins the affection of the doctor, the butler, and the bachelor friend who visits Mr. Lovel and tells the story. Lady Baker's son Clarence, a drunken reprobate, reveals the fact that Miss Prior was once a ballet-dancer (forced to this toil in order to support her family). Lady Baker orders her out of the house; Lovell comes home in the midst of the uproar, and chivalrously offers her his heart and hand, which she accepts, and he ceases to be Lovel the Widower. Lady Baker, his tyrannical mother-inlaw, has become immortal.

Paul Clifford, by Bulwer-Lytton. Lord

Lytton's object in Paul Clifford' was to appeal for an amelioration of the British penal legislation, by illustrating to what criminal extremes the ungraded severity of the laws was driving men who by nature were upright and honest. To quote from Clifford's well-known defense when before the judges: "Your laws are of but two classes: the one makes criminals, the other punishes them. I have suffered by the one-I am about to perish by the other. Your legislation made me what I am! and it now destroys me, as it has destroyed thousands, for being what it made me." The scene of the story is laid in London and the adjoining country, at a period shortly preceding the French Revolution. Paul, a child of unknown parentage, is brought up by an old innkeeper among companions of very doubtful character. Arrested for a theft of which he is innocent, he is sentenced to confinement among all sorts of hardened criminals. He escapes, and quickly becomes the chief of a band of highwaymen. In the midst of a career of lawlessness, he takes residence at Bath under the name of Captain Clifford and falls desperately in love with a young heiress, Lucy Brandon, who returns his affection; but realizing the gulf which lies between them, he resolutely takes leave of her after confessing vaguely who and what he is. Shortly after this he robs, partly through revenge, Lord Mauleverer, a suitor for the hand of Lucy, and intimate friend of her uncle and guardian, Sir William Brandon, a lawyer of great note, re

cently elevated to the peerage and soon to be preferred to the ministry. Bran don has had, by a wife now long since lost and dead, a child which was stolen from him in its infancy. His secret lifework has been to find and rehabilitate that child, and so preserve the family name of Brandon. As a result of the robbery, two of Paul's associates are captured. He succeeds in liberating them by means of a daring attack, but is himself wounded and taken prisoner. Judge Brandon presides at the trial. At the moment when he is to pronounce the death sentence, a scrap of paper is passed him revealing the fact that the condemned is his own son. Appalled at the disgrace which will tarnish his brilliant reputation, he pronounces the death sentence, but a few minutes afterward is found dead in his carriage. The paper on his person reveals the story, and Clifford is transported for life. He effects his escape, however, and together with Lucy, flees to America, where his latter days are passed in probity and unceasing philanthropic labors.

Modern Régime, The, by H. A. Taine.

(1891.) This is the third and concluding part of Taine's 'Origins of Contemporary France, of which his Ancient Régime' and 'French Revolution' were the first and second. While based on the fullest and minutest research, and giving a striking picture of the new régime following the Revolution, it is less impartial than the previous parts of the work. The indictment of Napoleon is as bitter as the picture of his almost superhuman power is brilliant; and whatever the Revolution produced is referred to mingled crime and madness. Taken together, the three works show Taine at his best of originality, boldness, and power as a writer.

Morals of Lucius Annæus Seneca,

The, is the general title given to twelve essays on ethical subjects attributed to the great Roman Stoic. They are the most interesting and valuable of his numerous works. Representing the thought of his whole life, the most famous are the essays on Consolation,' addressed to his mother, when he was in exile at Corsica; on Providence, a golden book," as it is called by Lipsius, the German critic; and on The Happy Life. The Stoic doctrines of calmness,

forbearance, and strict virtue and justice, receive here their loftiest statement. The popularity of these Morals with both pagan and Christian readers led to their preservation in almost a perfect condition.

To the student of Christianity in its relations with paganism, no other classic writer yields in interest to this divine pagan," as Lactantius, the early church father and poet, calls him. The most striking parallels to the formularies of the Christian writers, notably St. Paul, are to be found in his later works, especially those on 'The Happy Life' and on The Conferring of Benefits.'

ife, Letters, and Journals of George

Lif

Ticknor. (2 vols., 1876.) The story of the life of a private gentleman is here delightfully told through his journals and letters to and from friends; his daughter, with excellent taste, having joined the history which these documents reveal, by the slightest thread of narrative. The birth of George Ticknor in Boston in 1791, his education in private school and college, his deliberate choice of the life of a man of letters as his vocation, his four years of study and travel abroad, from the age of twentythree to that of twenty-seven, his work at Harvard as professor of French and Spanish, his labor upon his History of Spanish Literature, his delightful home life, a second journey in Europe in his ripe middle age, and still a third, full of profit and delight, when he was

40,000 citizens that he found on his return from Europe, a traveled gentleman; and the Boston of three times as large a population, where still his own house afforded the most delightful hospitality and social life, among many famous for good talk and good manners,- this old town is made to seem worthy of its son. The papers recording Mr. Ticknor's visits abroad are crowded with the names of men and women whom the world honors, and who were delighted to know the agreeable American: Byron, Rogers, Wordsworth, Hunt, Lady Holland, Lady Ashburnham, Lord Lansdowne, Macaulay, Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Lockhart, Châteaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Staël, Goethe, Herder, Thorwaldsen, Manzoni, Sismondi, and in later years. every man of note in Europe. Of all of these, most interesting friendly glimpses are given in letters and journals. Mr. Ticknor's characterizations of these persons are admirable, always judicious and faithful, and often humorous. With his strong liking for foreign men and things, he

was one of the best Americans, seeing the faults of his country, but lov. ing her in spite of them. Happily he lived to see a reunited Union, and to cherish the loftiest hopes for its future. The young American who looks for fine standards of intellectual, moral, and social achievements will find his account in a study of the life of this mod. est, accomplished, genial, hard-working, distinguished private gentleman.

war for the maintenance of the Union, and finally the peaceful closing of his days at the age of seventy-nine,- these are the material of the book. But the reader sees picture after picture of a delightful existence, and is brought into intimate relations with the most cultivated and agreeable people of the century. George Ticknor had the happiness to be well born; that is, his father and mother were well educated, full of ideas and aspirations, and so easy in circumstances that the best advantages awaited the boy. With his inheritance of charming manners, a bright intelligence, a kind heart, and leisure for study, he was certain to establish friendships among the best. The simple, delightful society of the Boston of 18,000 inhabitants, where his boyhood was passed; the not less agreeable but more sophisticated Boston of

Lodge. This forms Vol. viii. of the American Statesmen' series. Mr. Lodge disclaims all credit for original research among MS. records in preparing this life of Webster; and is content to follow in the footsteps of George Ticknor Curtis, to whose "elaborate, careful, and scholarly biography" of the great statesman he frankly acknowledges his indebtedness for all the material facts of Webster's life and labors. But on these facts he has exercised an independent judgment; and this biographical material he has worked over in his own way, producing an essentially original study of the life of Webster. In considering the crises of Webster's life as lawyer, orator, senator, statesman, he in a few brief chapters brings the man before us with striking vividness. To portray Webster as a lawyer, his part in

the Dartmouth College Case is recounted; for there his legal talents are seen at their best. The chapter on this case is a model of clear and concise statement. Webster as an orator is the subject of another chapter, dealing with his speeches in the Massachusetts Convention of 1820, and his Plymouth oration, and their effects upon the auditors. His part in the tariff debates of 1828 in Congress, his reply to Hayne, and his struggle with Jackson, occupy two chapters, in which Webster's extraordinary powers of reasoning and of oratory are analyzed. Mr. Lodge seems to judge without partisanship Webster's Seventh of March speech, and the dissensions between him and his party. He recognizes in Webster, above all, "the pre-eminent champion and exponent of nationality.»

Problems of Modern Democracy, by

Edwin Lawrence Godkin. (1896.) This collection of eleven political and economic essays, on subjects connected with the evolution of the republic, belongs among the most thoughtful and most interesting books of its class-with Lecky's, Pearson's, Stephen's, Fiske's, and Lowell's. From the first one, Aristocratic Opinions of Democracy, published during the last year of the Civil War, to the last, The Expenditure of Rich Men,' thirty-one years elapse; yet the comment of time simply emphasizes the rightness of Mr. Godkin's thinking. He states the aristocratic objections to democracy with absolute fairness, concedes the weight of many of them, is even ready to admit that to some degree democracy in America is still on trial. But he maintains that the right-hand fallings-off and left-hand defections with which its opponents tax our political theories, are really due to quite other causes, causes inseparable from the conditions of our existence. Thus thoughtfully he considers ethics manners, literature, art, and philosophy, public spirit and private virtue; and his conclusion is that the world's best saints of the last hundred years have come out of the Nazareth of democracy,-issuing from the middle and lower classes in Europe, from the "plain people" in America. 'Popular Government is a review and refutation of much of the doctrine of Sir Henry Maine, in his volume on that subject. (Some Political and Social Aspects of the Tariff deals with the

subject in its industrial and ethical ap plications, and concludes that the "inde pendence of foreigners" which a high tariff is supposed to secure, must be the result simply and solely of native superiority, either in energy, or industry, or inventiveness, or in natural advantages. The papers on Criminal Politics, Idleness and Immorality,' 'The Duty of Educated Men in a Democracy,' (Who Wil Pay the Bills of Socialism?) and (The Real Problem of Democracy,' are lay sermons of so vigorous an application that the most easy-going political sinner who reads them will not be able to escape the pangs of conscience. The final paper on The Expenditure of Rich Men is a disquisition on the difficulty of real sumptuosity in America. Language and the Study of Lan

guage, by William Dwight Whitney, 1867. This work is not only indispensable to students of comparative philology, but delightful and instructive reading. It controverts some of the positions of Max Müller's 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' notably in its answer to the fundamental question. How did language originate? The growth of language is first considered. with the causes which affect the kind and the rate of linguistic change; then the separation of languages into dialects: then the group of dialects and the family of more distantly related languages which include English; then a review of the other great families; the relative value and authority of linguistic and of physical evidence of race, and the bearing of language on the ultimate question of the unity or variety of the human species: the whole closing with an inquiry into the origin of language, its relation to thought, and its value as an element in human progress. Professor Whitney's theory is that acts and qualities were the first things named, and that the roots of language- from which all words have sprung-were originally planted by man in striving to imitate natural sounds (the onomatopoetic theory), and to utter sounds expressive of excited feeling (the interjectional theory); no by means of an innate "creative faculty » for phonetically expressing his thoughts, which is Max Müller's view.

Earth and Man, The, by Arnold Guyot. (1849.) This fascinating book was the first word upon its subject,-com