MAGAZINES. Contents noted in "Magazine Leaders," "New Serials" and "With the Pocts.” THE MENORAH. A Monthly Magazine of Hebrew Literature, Art and Science. the official organ of the Independent Order Bene Berith, edited by Benjamin F. Peixotto, circulates among the most cultured element of the Jewish communities of the United States and Europe and offers rare opportunities to advertisers. Subscription in advance, postage prepaid) $2.00 per year for U. S. and Canada. $2.50 for Europe and all countries of the Postal Union THE MENORAH PUBLISHING COMPANY, THE CHURCH REVIEW. Edited by Rev. HENRY M. BALLOU. A monthly magazine discussing all important questions relating to the Protes.ant Episcopal Church, and devoting special attention to literature. $4.00 a year, single copies 35 "THE BROOKLYN MAGAZINE caters to every taste. Its articles are brief and to the point, bright and popular, and are always abreast of the times." It employs the foremost American writers. Besides the magazine proper, each number contains two supplements with the only authorized and personally revised reports of the sermons of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher and Rev. T. De Witt Talmage. See BOOK CHAT for its features. Only $2.00 per Year; Sample Copies, 10 Cents. The Brooklyn Magazine, 7 Murray St., N. Y THE CHAUTAUQUAN Official Organ of the Chautauqua Literary& Scientific Circle VOLUME VI., 1885-'86.-Ten numbers in a volume. CIRCULATION OVER 50,000. "THE CHAUTAUQUAN Covers a wide field and, contains a large amount of instructive and helpful writing."-The Boston Herald. SUBSCRIPTION PRICE: THE CHAUTAUQUAN, $1.50. In clubs of Five or more, each, $1.25. Address, Dr. T. L. FLOOD, Meadville, Pa. BOOK CHAT Vol. 2-No 1 EDITORIAL NOTES. JANUARY, 1887. THE pleasure expressed by Emile Zola at being attacked by Tennyson in Locksley Hall, furnishes a new example of the difficulty of fighting immorality in fiction. Too often the very means intended by social reformers to crush an evil, gives it new vitality and a stronger and longer lease of life. The knowledge of this fact ever hampers the rightminded critic in protesting against what, to his eyes, is evil in literature. He knows that the scathing words of condemnation, with which he longs to review some new work of the dirt-hunting naturalist school, and the daring analysis of the subtle poison in phase and suggestion, with which he would show its seamy side to the world, would defeat his own ends. It would make the book, talked off and debated upon, general interest and curiosity would be aroused, and the work would be in demand. Man has not yet conquered his perverse nature, that wants whatever he is told he should not have, and whose desire for it increases when it is withheld. It is a form of advertising that the shrewd author readily appreciates. The first step in making anything popular is to have it constantly spoken of and discussed, whether favorable or otherwise. It is doubtful whether King Solomon's Mines clever and well-written though it were, would have made any success, had the author not been fortunate enough to be made the subject of some bitter charges of plagiarism, which, with the correspondence of his friends and enemies, served to keep the book well before the public mind. A certain burlesque on one of Shakespeare's plays, published within the past few years made no success until a noted Shakespearian scholar deemed his allegiance to the immortal bard required his condemnation of this parodic version. He accordingly showered his most caustic phrases on it, made it talked of, aud its success was assured. It is this that makes actresses lose their diamonds, public characters affect strange habit and odd dress, authors recommend Pear's soap, singers appear wicked when they are not, all for advertising. The writer of any work in poetry or prose, that the critic boldly attacks on the ground of immorality, speedily assumes an attitude of persecuted WM. GEO. JORDAN, Editor. innocence and gathers round his or her banner, a force of fanatical defenders of "free speech and liberality of view," who protest against "the squeamishness of critics who are afraid of seeing life shown up as it is." That Tennyson deemed Zola's novels worthy even of his condemnation, will among a certain class give them a solidity and substance they never before have had. Thus is the work of the reformer made doubly difficult. It can best be fought by the development of a healthy tone of feeling, by careful reading and training with the individual, that public sentiment will kill such books and they will cease to be because no one would purchase them. This would be indeed a great stride toward human perfection. THAT deep sympathetic knowledge of human nature possessed by the world's greatest dramatists and novelists is the clew to much of their power and genius. It is a recognition of the multiplex springs of action in the human heart and their dependence on outward circumstances. Character, to these masters, is a delicate harp susceptible to the slightest vibration in the surrounding ether, every chord giving forth a different sound at each point of touching. To many of the lesser authors man is but a music-box, set to one key and made to play one tune under all circumstances. They paint their characters from head to foot in one solid color. If he be a villain, every act, thought or word must be villainous, and no kindness or touch of human goodness must destroy the even tenor of his wickedness. The noble characters of these minor writers are too noble, their excess of goodness is given them at the expense of their humanity. They never do wrong. never bend the least before terrible trials, never for a moment relax their statuesque coldness and provoking superiority. The most awful temptations bound off harmless from these superlatively good creatures like bullets aimed at spirits in the old English ghost tories. It is so easy for them to do right, so much a matter of habit, that we do not give them any credit for it, but feel if they would only favor us by doing something a little wrong we could readily sympathize with them and like them ever so much better. How different would a character in the same position be treated by an author who understands human nature. The temptation would be overcome, not because it would have no force, but because its power would be crushed by a manhood that, keenly knowing its real meaning, has strength to fight it down. We watch his struggle, sympathize with him, and joy with him in his triumph. The highest virtue and honor is not that which is never tempted, but that by which every temptation is vanquished. Such characters are strongly human in being susceptible to trial, but more than human in overcoming it. These are the ideals that make us stronger, and nobler and better for our reading. The picturesque desolation of the awful examples and the radiance of the shining models of some authors alike fail, because they are not natural and life-like. MANY novels that have been great successes as far as mere popularity is concerned, have been read because of the fascinating glamour of wealth and sensation they throw over their characters. They say they are taken from life; yes, so far from life as to have all likeliness to life destroyed. The author gives to her hero, a gay heartless scamp. a most magnificent home; she furnishes it throughout in an exquisite style and regardless of price as if she had carte blanche from the Bank of England, and an occasional French word in her description gives it a piquant tone. "The tasselated floor of Hubert's room is partly covered by a magnificent Turkish rug that would pay the ransom of a king. In careless confusion around the chambre were thrown articles of vertu whose costly bizarrerie befitted more properly the boudoir of some Indian princess. The recherché taste of the owner was shown in the oval omulu tables, buhl chairs, exquisite cabinets inlaid with real gems, rosewood bookcases lined with crimson velvet bearing a weight of priceless Elzivirs, ebony stands, Byzantine pictures. Bohemian vases, Persian bijouterie, and the other tributes of a faultless selection, From the cathedral-like dome swung a golden censer from some Hindu Temple, its eternal perfume pervading the room with a celestial fragrance." The gay hero enters the room with a step that reveals a lifetime of refinement and shows at a glance his collegiate education. He is cold and cynical, handsome and unscrupulous. He has seen the world and found it a bore. Nothing to live for but pleasure, and his pleasure must be satisfied at any cost. This common, selfish, worthless man is placed so that the calcium-light effects from his surroundings, will fall upon his character, idealize its vulgar outlines and transform him into a gilded hero to suit the furniture. Through this unhealthy tinted atmosphere. the author perverts the reason of a hasty reader and transmutes every evil quality into a noble one, safishness becomes a sign of aristocracy, impertinence, wit; infidelity, liberality of thought; dissipation, gentlemanly good-fellowship and so every sin is gracefully erased and a mild virtue written in its place. So his career runs on till a moral ending requires his awakening to the knowl. edge that he has done some rather impolite things in life and that he should repent. This he does in the usual melo-dramatic way, feeling very sorry for the effect of all his misdeeds, An honest man who may have done wrong regrets the act, a cowardly man the result of the act. This difference between contrition and attrition is a section of theology these novelists have not studied. Let us have more genuine novels and less of these tinsel affairs false to every principle of literature and art. They lead only to distorted ideas of human life that prove stumbling blocks to the very class that can least afford to read them. THE most charming biographies are those that picture to us the life and character of their subject, through his thoughts and feelings, his impressions, his views on vital subjects, his standards of judging, his tastes and his ideas. Those letters in our intimate correspondence that we most enjoy and treasure are not those that tell us what happens to our friend, what he does and sees, but what he thinks of it, that have a lasting value, because a perusal of them brings his characteristics ever before us. He writes us he has read this book, seen that play, or heard a certain opera. This is a mere incident that fell to his lot among a thousand others. What he thinks of that book, play, or opera represents him and becomes to us a part of his nature and character. It is the aggregate of these qualities of heart and mind that make the man, and it is the knowledge of them that enables us to properly enliven the dry dust of fact and incident of biography, and bring him before us as an individual. This is of course secondary to the account of his doings his fortunes and his contact with those around him. It is in this union of the internal and external life of man that makes biography perfect. Rarely is it possible to obtain this two-fold view, but the value of biographies increases as they approach it. The world's greatest heroes have been wronged and misjudged, exalted and abused by their biographers, merely because the latter judged by results alone. Fair judgment requires that the acts of a man be compared with his motives, we must view them from his honest idea of right and wrong in order to see if he were consistent with himself. Was Cromwell prompted by personal ambition, in assuming the protectorate of Eng land? His biographers differ widely on this point for the varied interpretations placed on his acts, each present them in a different light. It is often a difficult and hazardous task to attempt to judge the motive from the act. Opposite causes in physical science often produce like results. The sensation caused by placing the hand on a frosted iron bar is very similar to that caused by a red-hot one. So it is in mental science, as man is at one time silent because he has nothing to say, and at another because he has so much. Man, too, is sometimes better than his speech and sometimes worse. He may preach and honestly feel a high morality he has not strength enough to carry out ; or he may live a life of nobleness and truth veiled and disguised under an appearance of cynicism. The best biographies teach us sympathetic, kindly judgment of the doings of our fellow-man. In the words of Amiel, "In all chief matters of life we are alone, and our true history is scarcely ever deciphered by others. The chief part of the drama is a monologue or rather an intimate debate between God, our conscience, and ourselves. What is most precious in us never shows itself, never finds an issue even in the closest intimacy." LITERARY criticism to be true, must judge a book as a whole and not by any one part. The strength of a bridge is estimated by its weakest point, of a chain by its lightest link, of a physique by its vulnerable point, as the heel of Achillies represented the maximum of his exemption from danger. Not so in literary criticism; here the decision rests with the average quality, the medium between the passages of highest merit and those of most trivial worth, or rather it is the preponderating quality that gives character to the book. Much injustice is done to authors by taking certain words or phrases and isolating them from the context as if they were representative of it and then coldly analyzing these sequestered sentences. Such a course of piecemeal criticism would make the work of the grandest masters of speech the world has ever known seem poor and meaningless. It would be like analyzing the beauty of the fairy combinations in a kaleidoscope by an examination of each seperate piece of colored glass, or the power of some great painting by cutting it into inch-square sections. But literary work is not of an even texture and cannot be submitted to the analysis its beauty if it have any is its variableness, the turning and changing of the thought as it follows the writer's moods and fancies. Every detail in a novel should be considered as a part of the complete work; and the value of the whole judged from the aggregate, the relation of the seperate parts to each other never from single scenes or incidents. COMIC BOOKS "The printed part, tho' far to large is less FROM THE SPANISH. Grant Allen's new collection of strange stories will be called "The Becokening Hand." A volume on Musical Analysis" by Prof. H. C. Banister will be published at an early date. T. Wentworth Higginson's new book will be "Hints on Writing and Speech-Making." The next volume in the Famous Women series will be "Mrs. Siddons" by Mrs. A. Kennard. Paul Heyse has a new and quite extended work of fiction in press, "The Romance of the Shiftodarne." "Molock: A Story of Sacrifice" by Mrs. Campbell Praed is now in press for early issue by J. B. Lippincott & Co. Charles Ollivant, private secretary to Capt. Mayne Reid, has just completed a biography of this Irish novelist. "The Last Penacook," a tale of provincial times, by Abel B. Berry will shortly be published by D. Lothrop & Co. The next volume in the Book Lover's Library will be "Dedication of Books to Patron and Friend" by H. B. Wheatley. A new translation of Dante's "Convito" is in preparation in London by Miss Kate Hilliard, an enthusiastic student of Dante. Count Buest's Memoirs are to be republished in London with extracts from letters not contained in the original Austrian edition. A volume of reminiscenses of Salem life, by Mrs. Nathaniel Silsbee, Boston, is to be published shortly by the Houghton Mifflin Co. Roberts Bros., will shortly publish "A Week Away From Time, a volume of short stories written by society leaders of Cape Cod. A translation of a political-military study by a Prussian colonel is now in press in London under the title "The Coming Franco German War." Mr. A. A. Hayes's forthcoming novel, The Jesuits' Ring, which the Scribners have nearly ready, delineates society as seen at the present day at Bar Harbor. A new poem, theosophical in spirit and tendency is announced by Cupples, Upham & Co The title is "I Am That I Am" and it reads almost as well backwards as forwards. It is said that Col. Fred. Grant is at work editing a diary kept by his father on his tour of the world and giving in detail his impressions on men and women and of incidents of his travels. Readers of the realist French novels of the day may find useful a French and English slang dictionary giving cant words, quaint expressions and slang terms, used in the high and low life of old and new Paris. In order to remedy the difficulty one has in procuring information on the life and works of noted men of the present time, Messrs. Cassell have in preparation, "Men and Women of the Century” a dictionary of recent biography. A new historical series to be edited by York Powell will give English history as told by contemporary writers, each author treating one epoch, and the whole combined forming a complete narrative. Cassell & Co. have begun the publication in monthly parts of an extensive work entitled, "Our Earth and its Story" by Dr. Robert Brown to be interested with colored plates, maps and numerous wood engravings. A gentleman of Louisville, Ky., is collecting material for a popular biography of colored men of eminence of the present time-politicians, lawyers, doctors, inventors, farmers, mechanics, and ministers. Admiral Mehmed Pasha, of the Turkish Navy, has published in his native language an illustrated work on naval tactics, which is the first work of the kind ever issued in Turkish. He was educated in England. A new collection of "Verses from the Harvard Advocate" is soon to be published, The book will contain about two hundred pages, the productions of about seventy contributors from thirteen classes. The Rev. James Chalmers is now engaged upon a volume on New Guinea, which will form a sequel to his first book on the dark island. It will contain the story of the bold missionary's latest exploration in New Guinea, and will be illustrated with a number of engravings taken from photographs. Mr. Halliwell Phillips proposes to publish for private circulation a monograph on The Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Actors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England." The Bible and Shakespeare are responsible for a great number of exegeti al works, a few of them giving information of value and the remainder devoted to explaining the errors of their competitors. I would that we were only readers now, Then would all future books be small and few, But as it is, Lord help us, in this flood Is it the myriad spawn of vagrant tides, Is it the broadcast sowing of the seeds, And from the stones, the thorns and fertile soil, Only enough to serve the world's great needs Rewards the sower's toil? Is it all needed for the varied winds? Some needful heart to touch? Ah, who can say that even this blade of grass in "Ballads of Books." HIGHER EDUCATION. A university, properly understood, is the home. of the arts and sciences. It exists to teach them, and it equally exists to promote them. In the English universities, the culture and discipline of the student has been the almost exclusive aim. To speak of "culture" as the aim of college and university life is to throw a mere phase at the head of the public. Culture can never be a conscious end to a man without unmanning him. Still more must it emasculate a university where it is achieved, after all, by not more than one in five hundred. And when we do find it in its suprem. est and most precious form, we cannot say we like it. It is always narrow, and must, from the psychological nature of the case, be egotistical. That indeed, is a poor result of the highest educationa man who thinks himself supreme or precious, |