credit to American workmanship. One a new volume of poems this winter, but a pro- The city of Boston, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the science of economics, the cause of civic reform, the field of the fine arts, and the world of letters, to say nothing of patriotism, the veterans of the late war, educa tion, society, and the whole country, have met with a sudden, startling, serious, and sorrowful loss in the death of Gen. Francis A. Walker, soldier, educator, thinker, author, gentleman, administrator, and public leader, who fell at the post of duty, at the front, in the thick of the conflict, as surely and literally as if he had been shot in battle, or had died on the heights of the Himalayas or in the jungles of Africa, though in the seclusion and quiet of his Boston home, and in the repose of sleep, at some hour unknown during the night of the fourth and fifth of January; the first shining mark for death this New Year. No man living gathered into his intellectual life and personal character better elements of the true New England stock, or more admirably illustrated the culture and the progress to which for a quarter of a century his life had been devoted. He was a splendid specimen, physically, mentally, and morally, of the citizen-soldier, created and developed by the terrible con flict of the sixties, and turning the strength and perfection of his matured manhood to the service of society and the world along high lines. He vacates a station which it will be hard to fill, and lays down a pen which few will have the strength to grasp. We are all sensibly poorer for his departure. The famous New York author, who once One thing which many American visitors to Westminster Abbey must have noticed, and noticed with wonder, is the absence from that wonderful national mausoleum of any memorial of Sir Walter Scott. To him then belongs that proud distinction coveted by the Athenian hero, who said that he would rather the world should ask, after he was gone, why a monument was not erected to him than why one was. The latter question is certainly in order as respects many of the alleged celebrities whose names and effigies adorn the walls and spaces of England's greatest Abbey. A movement is now on foot to place within the Abbey some suitable memorial of the Wizard of the North; and the association of such personages as the Duke of Argyll, David Masson, the Country Parson, Sir Theodore Martin, George Macdonald, Principal Caird, Mr. Ruskin, and Dean Bradley gives assurance that the movement is in good hands and will be worthily carried forward. The form proposed is a copy of Chantrey's bust of Sir Walter. The total expense is estimated at about £700, of which nearly one half will go to the Abbey for the maintenance of fabric; individual subscriptions are limited to $25 as the maximum, and contributions in this country may be sent to Mr. Fiske Warren, 220 Devonshire Street, Boston. and the late Henry L. Pierce, one of Boston's merchant princes, has culminated, on the death of Mr. Pierce which occurred a few days ago, as might have been expected, in Mr. Aldrich's endowment for life. A country home all furnished, and an ample capital upon the income of which to enjoy it, are left to the poet as substantial memorials of his generous friend. No one will begrudge him his good fortune; many will rejoice with him and for him. For him the production of "pot-boilers" will happily cease, and his muse may henceforth sing her sweetest, unvexed and unconstrained by carking cares. So may it be for many others. En We give our cordial welcome and hearty congratulation to our esteemed London contemporary, the Academy, on the new appearance under which it enters on its new career. larged space, improved make-up, added departments, the disappearance of signed reviews before the superior weight of an impersonal but none the less individual editorial responsibility, and an enlivened and strengthened tone of critical utterance, unite distinctly to enhance the interest and value of this always good and now excellent weekly journal. We salute it with our best respects and warmest wishes for increased influence and prosperity. When one opens and weighs a magazine like the January Atlantic it does not require much calculation to realize the force which such a publication must have in shaping pub. lic opinion; and what a solemn responsibility, what a vast opportunity, what a tremendous influence are his who controls its pages and has the selection of the topics and the writers whom it is to present to the reading public month by month! It is indeed a mighty engine, and when intelligently directed under the stress of high convictions and a definite policy, means great things, and will effect them. "Marian Douglas" is a familiar name to magazine readers; but comparatively few of those who enjoy the dainty verses written The objectionable statue which has disunder that signature know that it is the nom graced the court of the Boston Public Library de plume of Mrs. Annie Douglas Robinson of has been retired for the season, at least; it is Bristol, N. H. Indeed, she has used the name to be hoped permanently. It cannot be that so long that it seems hers by right, and very the sober second sense of the gentlemen who many of her letters reach her under that ad- control the movements of this undesirable visdress. Mrs. Robinson began to write when a itor should ever again allow her to take up so mere child for amusement, and, although she prominent a position before the community. says that she had no musical aptitude, she Let her forever hereafter be conspicuous for took delight in the jingling of the rhymes her absence. which she was constantly saying over "in a child's fanciful play." She saw herself first in print when she was fifteen, encouraged by the kindness of Mr. John R. Thompson, the gifted poet of Virginia, who published some of her earlier verses in the Southern Literary Mes- NEW YORK LETTER. TOW that the Christmas season is over there Now that in the publishing trade, and few books will be brought out till the reaction sets in and preparations are made for the Easter sales. Several books by popular authors are promised for the next few months, the most interesting being Anthony Hope's Phroso, which will surely sell largely, and may have a success equal to that of The Prisoner of Zenda. affirmed that what made the pig squeal made the poet sing, probably had reason enough for his assertion, for too often poetry is born in a garret; but that affluence is frequently the acSince that time the fate of verse-writers has been upon companiment of the poetic gift has ample me. Some little poem is always intruding itself upon my proof in the case of Mrs. Florence Earle thoughts, and allowing me no rest until I give it expression Coates. Mrs. Coates is the wife of Edward in words. But I have never made literature, in any way, H. Coates, who is president of the Pennsyl- my profession; and my life, although a retired one, has in vania Academy of the Fine Arts, and one of it so many other cares and interests that I attempt very discussing the difficulties of their calling the little of what can be called literary work, my writings being many of them brief poems which have been scat- Philadelphia's most honored citizens. In her I heard two "readers" for a publishing house other day and it gave me a new light on their Occupation. "The trouble is," said one, “that we have to have two standards: We have to judge a book by the standard of literature and the standard of popular taste, and we seldom find books by untried writers that can bear both tests." An innocent person who was present suggested that, of course, literature was in every case the final standard, and the remark was re ceived with pitying smiles. "Have you ever heard what happened to the MS. of Lorna Doone, when it was first offered to a publisher here?" asked the second of the "readers." "It was given to one of the best critics in the city, a 'reader' of experience. He saw at once that it was a great thing, and he recommended it with so much enthusiasm that the head of his house, a very shrewd man, shook his head and said: 'If you, with your literary tastes liked that book so well, it would certainly never be a success with the public.' So the book was sent to another firm." and for the reproduction of the Southern dia- Pole. Nansen's is a huge and shaggy person- The Harpers have secured the American rights to Dr. Fridtiof Nansen's much-discussed work, for which an enormous sum is said to have been paid by an English house, and will bring it out in February. It promises to become one of the great books of the year. A great deal is expected of Mrs. Steele's new | The anecdote and pleasantry which characterize novel, On the Face of the Waters, which is the narrative relieve it in great measure of the shortly to appear here through Macmillan. Mrs. somber and the awful, and make an expedition Dunning Steele, the past few years, has made a into these jaws of death, into this world of the reputation for her admirable stories of life in In- frozen and the forlorn, seem more like a pleasdia, at the very time, too, when the world was ure jaunt on a summer day. [Longmans, Green ringing with praise of Rudyard Kipling's stories. & Co. $4.00.] The new book is thought by a few people who have seen it to be finer than anything Kipling has done, so it is particularly interesting to note that Kipling himself has seen it and declared it to be the best story of the Indian mutiny yet written. There is nothing small about the author of Indian Tales and The Seven Seas. Madame Blanc, known to literature as "Th. Bentzon," who made many friends during her visit in this country a few years ago and many more by the kindly articles she has since written about her visit, intends to return next spring for the purpose, it is said, of making a study of the Catholic Church in America. She was made much of during her stay in New York, and she charmed every one by her delightful manner and her wide information. Few French writers have done so much as Madame Blanc to dispel the ignorance with regard to America that has existed in their country. Mr. Richard Hovey read his new poetic play "Gandolfo" to a few of his friends, at his apartment in Carnegie Music Hall the other night, and the work proved to be one of his finest achievements. It is just the kind of play that lovers of the drama would like to see in our theaters, but nowadays, when farce-comedy is the most successful form of entertainment, rarely do see. The new volume which Mr. Hovey recently brought out in collaboration with Mr. Bliss Carman, More Songs from Vaga bondia, is, I hear, one of the great successes of the season, the first edition being exhausted in a week. The admirable “Barney McGee," which deserves to be placed among the best poems of its kind printed in many a year, and is known to be Mr. Hovey's, has been favorably compared with Kipling's work, and has drawn out a delicious bit of verse in its praise from James Whitcomb Riley. Readers of the book are doing a good deal of guessing with regard to the authorship of the various poems. I was amused a short time ago to see the critic of a New York paper after referring disparagingly to one of the collaborators, proceed to quote one of his poems, a particularly fine contribution to the volume. Mr. Albert Bigelow Paine, co-author with Mrs. Ruth McEnery Stuart of Gobolinks, one of the most original of the recent Christmas books for children, has just begun the simultaneous serial publication in Truth of this city and in the London Sketch, of a series of ballads about the "Dumpies," a strange little folk discovered in the world of fancy. They are to run in each number for six months and will make their appearance between covers, both in this country and in England, in the autumn. Mr. Paine's excellent work, both in verse and prose, has of late made him one of the best-known of the younger writers. He came from Kansas City to New York about a year ago, and he has decided to establish himself here permenantly. Another writer who has just made New York his home is Mr. James Lane Allen, whose Kentucky stories have been popular for several Here we have the portrait of a rugged charyears and are now widely discussed. Mr. Allen acter and the story of rough enterprise in northhas been paying visits to the city for several ern latitudes. The steely cold cover of the book winters, but it is only of late that he has decided makes one shiver, and the picturings within of to cast his fortune here. His present appearance Arctic wastes and snows and storms send the as lecturer and reader before Mrs. Field's Liter-reader to his fireside, to hover over the radiant ary Club of Brooklyn, brought out a very large audience and was a decided success. Mr. John Lane, who came to this country last autumn to establish his American "Bodley Head" here in New York, is to pay us another visit early next month. The English publishers are now giving more attention to this country than they have done before, and several of them, like Mr. Lane, have recently established offices is this city. Signor Arditi's Reminiscences. Signor Luigi Arditi is a famous opera manager, one of the world's great impressarios, who, having reached the seventies, has been persuaded, and happily so, to set down his recollections of his life in order, and has made out of them a book of three hundred octavo pages, which, for number and distinction of the celebrities whom it presents, variety of incident, liveliness of personality, and historical interest to the musical world, makes a place of its own, and fills it notably. There is not an opera singer of note in the last fifty years whose name does not appear in these pages, and the echoes of every opera that has been sung on the American stage within the same period may be heard here. The Old World stands side by side with the New, and experiences in New York vie in interest with those of Dublin and Venice. Music is cosmopolitan; so is an opera artist or conductor; so is this book, with its reminiscences of Turk and Italian, Windsor Castle and Crystal Palace, Madrid and Vienna, Havana and San Francisco. A brilliant procession passes: Alboni and Madame La Grange, the famous Grisi and Mario, Piccolomini and Patti, Verdi and Rossini, Titiens and Giuglini, Miss Nilsson and Miss Kellogg, Mapleson and Abbey. The enthusiastic lovers of Mascagni's "Cavalleria Rusticana" may read here of the production of that sparkling piece at Windsor. How Grand Dukes take music, how prima donnas fare at the hands of royalty, what débuts cost and mean, how a critical manager looks on at a first performance, all, in short, that goes on behind the operatic scenes, is described in these entertaining recollections with the zest and nervous force coals with a new sense of gratitude. This and striking way of putting things that belong portly octavo of four hundred pages is a com- to the true musician. There is anecdote and I don't believe that Mr. Will N. Harben, the posite by several hands, intended to cover ex- incident enough in this book to fill many a numSouthern story-writer, calls himself a New haustively and authoritatively the whole of the ber of the LITERARY WORLD, portraits enough Yorker; yet he comes up from the South early explorer's career to date. The picturesque story for a gallery, facsimiles enough for a scrapbook, each winter and stays till the spring. Mr. Harben of his childhood under the Northern Lights is and stories of the distinguished sufficient to has recently finished several short stories, and told with spirit and occasionally with humor. occupy the time after dinner for many an evennow has two new books under way. He is a His expedition across Greenland is related with ing. It is a gay world, the peratic, a world careful and steady worker, and his stories are full scientific detail. Side lights are thrown on where money is easily made and quickly spent, finding wide acceptance and giving him an en- the whole field of Arctic exploration and discov- where the fever in the blood runs high and the viable reputation for skill in character drawing | ery. Search lights are cast toward the North | pace tells, where friendships are fast and jeal JOHN D. BARRY. Fridtiof Nansen. ousies bitter, where everybody is in a tumble — higher now than in the time of the Emperor member wishing for when I began to paint on [Dodd, Mead & Co. $3.50.] Authors and Friends. Mrs. Fields in this volume have seen the light before in different periodicals, but are well worth As Stainer lived sixteen years afterward, the violin must have cost the count no less than 20,000 florins! Fancy Lord Rosebery or the Marquis of Salisbury purchasing a violin with the proviso of a "good dinner" for the vendor every day for sixteen years! [Chatto & Windus. bringing together in a collective form. No one Winning Whist. on The Colour of Life. Mrs. Meynell, both as an essayist and a poet, is a writer of unusual merit. If England had Of manuals on whist there would seem to be given her the Laureateship, as was suggested, no end. Mr. Emery Boardman's contribution to it might have had good reason to be proud of their number, with the above title, seems full of its choice. As it is, Mrs. Meynell, though not good sense as well as good form, and we corwidely known, is one of the few who, writing dially agree with him in his hint, that to waste to the few, can be understood and loved by signals and leads on a partner who does not the many. There is no affectation of form in understand them, while the adversaries her style. Her pure, simple English has, it is either side do, is likely to prove a losing true, the grace of refinement in every linegame. In his code of leads, etc., he does not the innate gentlewoman cannot write otherdiffer materially from other recognized author-wise-but there is no phrase-making, no artiities, but here and there we are surprised by ficiality in it. The present essays are lamentnuggets of pure wisdom, such as the follow- ably short, more impressions than essays, and ing, which of themselves give the book a suffi- cover a range of observation from "Elenora Duse" to 66 cient raison d'etre: 'Monastery Gates," from "Grass and "Cloud" to "The Illusion of Historic When your partner cannot play up to your Time," touching each with keen senses and level you must play down to his, making as much as you can out of your own hand, and poetic comprehension. Only a woman, and a remembering with resignation, that while the clever one, could bring together with felicity It is impossible for even the most sympathetic extended chain is no stronger than its weakest such incongruous material. That Mrs. Meynell and able critic to record triumphs of the histri-link, it is frequently possible, by looping and has done this proves both her daring and her fiddling to keep the strain from that link." If your partner is a superior player, follow; if inferior, lead; if equal, average it up with him. [Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.00.] American Actors of Today. onic art in such a way as adequately to perpetuate their characteristic significance and power; but such essays and biographical sketches as American Actors of Today, carefully edited by Frederic Edward McKay and Charles E. L. Wingate, have the advantage of appealing mainly to a class who illustrate the words of the writers by vivid memories of their own impressions, and who often yield cordial agreement to these interpretations. For instance, who could describe to one who never saw Mrs. Vincent or Mr. Warren the delight which Bostonians took for thirty years in their impersonations? Even to recall their names brings back for the moment one's vanished youth. There are forty-two of these short essays, most of them descriptive of the best exponents of dramatic art among us and written by competent critics. The book is full of pleasant anecdotes. The photographs are carefully reproduced and add much to the effect of the essays. [T. Y. Crowell & Co. $2.00.] Famous Violinists and Fine Violins. There is a good deal of curious and entertaining matter in these monographs on violins and violin players, by Dr. T. L. Phipson. Beginning with Italy, the classic soil on which the violin entered on its career as the viol de gamba or viol d'amore, the author traces the history of the instrument to our own time, when to collect "Strads" and Amatis is one of the cherished and expensive fads of the day. The value set upon these instruments, however, is scarcely 66 English Studies. skill. [Way & Williams. $1.25.] Talks on Writing English. Mr. Arlo Bates, in the preface to his Talks on Writing English, says "if the book shall James Darmesteter's English Studies, written, prove helpful, I shall have attained the object if we mistake not, for various French periodi- for which it was written." Mr. Bates may rest cals, are translated and reprinted in English assured of that attainment. Accurate, digniby his widow, herself a much admired poetess. fied, and rousing, the work must take a faThey show a delightful insight into English and Irish character, and style and subject matter are alike interesting. There is so much personality in Mr. Darmesteter's style that we feel it even through the medium of another language than that in which he wrote. The two essays on George Eliot are an addition to the mass of literature accumulating about the name of that great genius. To us the most delightful essay in the volume is that on "Irish Political Ballads." As a whole, English Studies is a book which will be welcome to all lovers of good and sympathetic essays. [T. Fisher Unwin.] A Manual for China Painters. The comprehen vored place among the manuals of English Through the Dolomites. Few American travelers in Europe get so far to the east as the Dolomites, the mountainous barrier which divides Italy from Austria, and I claim nothing new in this manual as to fills the background as one looks north from either methods, materials, or manipulation; Venice on a bright clear day with the glory of and, moreover, no superior knowledge on the distant snow white summits, jutting up ragged subject. Its sole merit must rest on its being and tooth-like against the sky. Yet few prethe actual results of many years of observation and experience. In short, I have endeavored cincts of the mountainous heart of the Conto write such a book as I very distinctly re- tinent present stronger attractions for the lover It is a story The Pooles' Millions. of fine scenery, and the very fact that the re- beautiful, restless, full of ambitions for the escape of the confiding young princess from gion lies so far one side the ordinary routes, which her talents are inadequate, rejects the her unsuspected danger, the sudden ripening of and is so inaccessible to those whose time and manly lover who can offer only every-day hap- her forces under the discovery, the double love money are limited, furnishes it with conditions piness to marry a pessimistic philosopher, affair which molds her life, all these features of additional charm. The English have found whose power of affection, like that of Mr. make up a story equally exciting and interestit out, and now and then one, like the late Casaubon, has languished into atrophy. It is ing, and the picturesque environment of first Miss Amelia B. Edwards, for example, brings but a little while that the reflected glory of the ghostly old palace in Naples, and, later, the back a tantalizing account of what is to be being the wife of a "thinker" satisfies An- vast medieval fortress of Muro to which the seen there. But among all our personal friends, dria; her warm young blood and heart rebel youthful heiress retreats in her loneliness and we remember at this moment but one who has against the arid lot she has chosen. Happily disillusion, frame in a picture which is as quaint seen this tract with her own eyes. There are her will and moral sense preserve her from the and forcible as it is full of color and contrast. special reasons therefore for welcoming the Rev. | dangers inevitable to such a position, and hap- [The Macmillan Co. 2 vols. $2.00.] Dr. Alexander Robertson's handbook, or guide-piness comes in the end, when the mistake of book, Through the Dolomites, a well-prepared her life has been put behind her. 16mo of about 250 pages, with a good but not not so unusual as it is sorrowful. large map, an index, many pages of advertise- Richmond & Co. $1.50.] ments furnishing some valuable suggestions to travelers, and a series of forty full-page woodcuts, which are the feature of the book, especially those that are made by the half-tone process from photographs. These are of exceptional beauty, and give an impressive idea of the peculiar characteristics and charms of this region. "Scotland of Italy," the author calls this land of his love, and Scotsman as he is he knows how to study it and to describe it and to commend it. The volume is more than a guide-book to the traveler by rail or diligence, or to the pedestrian; it is a history and an exposition as well, and is readable as well as helpful in a practical way. [Imported by Charles Scribner's Sons. $2.50.] CURRENT FICTION. Sir Mark. There is distinct charm in Sir Mark, a We Ten. Julia McNair Wright has written a story with a purpose in The Pooles' Millions. Two young girls brought up-if such an expression is applicable in the case-by a foolish This "Story of the Roses" would seem at stepmother, make unfortunate marriages, the the first glance to refer to the early times of one to an extravagant bank clerk, the other English history, when York and Lancaster to an utterly unprincipled prospective millionwaged war against each other under the cog-aire who is dependent upon his mother for his nizance of the rival roses; but, on the con- allowance. The matches are almost forced trary, Miss Yechton's tale is of our own times, upon the daughters from the point of view of and "we ten" are the boys and girls of a worldly advantage. In each case it is "a quiet recluse, Mr. Rose, who is engaged in the house of cards." There is no happiness to preparation of a "History of Some Ancient Warrine, wife of the dissolute rich son. The Peoples," which work his children christen other, La Rue, loves her husband and is be"The Fetich." It is a bright and breezy little loved; but they are shamefully in debt and live story, with plenty of human nature in it, and in terror of a crash. An end comes to the no lessons that are not praiseworthy and use-seeming prosperity, and both families go down ful, only the reader hates to leave the gallant in the wreck; but here comes in the tact and little Felix, still helpless in his chair, with no principle of the author; both the young wives distinct prospect of recovery. [Dodd, Mead & have practical sense and a pervasive regard for Co. $1.50.] the things that are high and pure and true and of good report. They stand the fierce trial, and come out of the fire sweet, strong, noble ble discipline. It is a fine, well-sustained story, women, better and more helpful for their terriwith much variety in the characters, who are strongly individualized. Aunt Hester has a striking personality; so has Jacqueline; while Ned, Ralph, and Richard are carefully drawn and true to life. An important lesson is taught in a fascinating way. [Cong. S. S. & Pub. Society. $1.50.] Daphne. We suppose the judges for the National Conpretty tale of the times immediately follow-servatory of Music knew what they were about, ing the American Revolution, by Anna Robe son Brown. Her motto, An ill turn in the Old World is justified by the progress of the story, for Sir Mark Lyonesse, its hero, a roysterer, gambler, and duelist in his own country, is changed by example, experience, a true love and a reverent admiration, compelled by circumstances, for the great Washington, into a trustworthy citizen and a good patriot. The little narrative has both freshness and interest about it. [D. Appleton & Co. 75c.] For Freedom's Sake. Mr. Arthur Paterson must be degenerating, for he does not write nearly as well in For Freedom's Sake as he has in former works. The days of "bleeding Kansas" and the FreeSoil Party are highly interesting, and by no means familiar to the younger generation, therefore Mr. Paterson's wish to describe those times is worthy of praise. But the performance is hardly satisfactory, for the broad subject he chooses cannot be successfully treated within the limits of the scheme of his book, and the characters with which he illustrates it are most of them perfunctory and three years ago, when they awarded $500 to Miss Taquisara. Marion Crawford seems always more at home on Italian soil than any other, and this is a novel A Tragic Idyl. Mr. Paul Bourget is never so much or so happily at home as when he sits surrounded by the wreck of morals and the tattered remnants of the Ten Commandments. The scene of this, his last and most distasteful story, is the Riviera - Cannes, Genoa, Monte Carlo- and its hero of Neapolitan society a good many years back, ine is the beautiful Baroness Ely de Carlsberg, when Pietro Ghislére was a young man, in love wife of the Archduke Henry Francis, who is in with the beautiful Princess Corleone, who ap- the uncomfortable position of possessing, beside pears in the novels of later date merely as a her husband, two lovers, who are not only rivals retrospective memory, the ghost of a burned- but intimate friends as well. It is an extremely out and regretted passion, supplanted in the fetid record, and it is but small consolation for affections of her lover by at least two "fresher the pain of reading it that the only members of faces," to quote Browning's melancholy phrase. the dramatis persone who are not absolutely The heroine of Taquisara is Veronica, the foolish or utterly depraved are Americans - -a youthful Princess of Acireale. She is a great millionaire, self-made, and his niece, not selfheiress, and her property has been stolen and made. The self-made millionaire is bumptious his squandered by the husband of her aunt, under and boastful, but he has moral standards, and all of them amateurish. John Brown and sons, however, are strong exceptions. We think there was undue haste in the writing of the story. [J. B. Lippincott Co. $1.25.] whose care she lives and who is one of her trus-is capable of sentiment; the niece, though tees. To avert discovery this precious pair de- rather hard, is straightforward, brave, and incide to marry Veronica to a relative in their telligent. In contrast with the prevailing maconfidence, or failing this, to put her out of the way before her majority, when the accounts Mr. Percy White's heroine repeats in her will be demanded by the co-trustee. They have career very much the experience of Doro- induced the girl to make a will in her aunt's thea in Middlemarch. Andria Vincent, young, | favor. The subtlety of this merciless intrigue, Andria. laria of the story these persons stand out as healthy examples of virtue; so as a nation we have reason to congratulate ourselves at our escape from the hands of Mr. Bourget, and to feel sorry for other nations, who do not figure as advantageously, which always are agreeable sensations. [Charles Scribner's Sons. $1.50.] A Rebellious Heroine. John Kendrick Bangs has quite outdone himself in this delectable and whimsical story, A Rebellious Heroine, which it is safe to say nobody else could have written. She is not only a "rebellious" but a "fetching" heroine, elusive, too, as a will-o'-the-wisp, tantalizing to the last moment, and then lending herself to the most delightful surrender of her heart to the man who did not expect yet longed for that way of closing his romance. The whole thing is absurd, but a delicious absurdity, when a writer of the realistic school attempts to make a living woman his heroine, and she, knowing it, baffles him. It is a case of planning and missing, of being wooed by one man and won by another. It reads like real life, and is all imagination; yet it might be both or it might be neither. There is art of a choice kind in the making of the story, and the style is as dashing and brilliant as the idea is unique. [Harper & Brothers. $1.25] James. posed to be recorded by an eye-witness, a young The Mist on the Moors. part of the girl, can teach nothing that is not good. The reader rages over the boy, but for her has only tender admiration combined with pity. We are glad to welcome the re-appearance of the stories in a new edition; they are quite old enough to seem new to the present generation of juvenile readers. [Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.25.] Jerry the Blunderer. A book all small children will enjoy is this, the story of an Irish terrier, the family he lives with, and the animals who share his home. Lily F. Wessel hoeft has a real knack for pleasing little children, and if her books are not of an order to encourage a budding taste for literature, neither are they of the order to produce that taste for thrills and excitements which is the bane of American life, and which, we beA real story with love and a plot, a villain lieve, is largely fostered by the abominably senand a dénouement, is not so usual a thing now-sational trash which the publishing houses pour adays that we should be unthankful for it. forth for juvenile reading. [Roberts Brothers. Joseph Hockings's little romance is of the $1.25.] old-fashioned sort and keeps the reader doubtful and interested to the close. It is a tale of North Cornwall, where the mists are thick enough to veil a little mystery and furnish exOne of the most entertaining little parodies cuse for some uncertainty, without which two on the old-fashioned goody-goody book is an ingredients no tale can be said to be quite anonymous novel called James; or, Virtue Re-complete; and all ends happily with the rising warded. James is the son of a village carpenter and the pet of the rectory; he goes into business, and by continued virtue and singing in the choir rises in the social scale and ends by being mayor of his town. His virtue and prosperity lead him to be intrusted with the savings of widows and orphans, which he embezzles and skips to America with his wife's governess. The bare outline of the tale is nothing, but the way in which the illusion of James's virtue is kept up to the last chapter is really funny. The book is full of humor and, though in some ways an exasperating one, gives the reader many a hearty laugh. [Stone & Kimball.] The Demagogue and Lady Phayre. The Demagogue and Lady Phayre is a brilliant yet depressing novel by William J. Locke; the old story of a man of the "working class," with ideals and refinement different from his associates, who stakes all in becoming a leader for reform. Lady Phayre is infatuated with the cause, and fancying that Goddard is in love with her but dares not speak of it, compromises herself, being in ignorance that he has a wife, by virtually offering herself to him. The wife, a wretched creature, comes into possession of the note, and on her deathbed the husband has his first knowledge of it. Disgusted with herself, the lady has married at once; and when Goddard, free from his drunken consort, seeks her, he finds that his world has crashed to ruin. No good comes to anybody; no happiness, no reform, but disappointment and dreariness. [Edward Arnold.] of the mist and we leave the hero and heroine Tommy Anne and the Three Hearts. BOOKS FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. A History of Greece. To write history successfully for children is one of the things, probably, that look much easier than they are; but H. H. Guerber's History of Greece is worthy of high praise. For purity of English, for clearness of style and thought, and for wise and interesting selection of salient points, this reproduction of ancient history should please and instruct all its readers. [American Book Co. 6oc.] The Story of Aaron. A quaint and fascinating picture of Southern child life is The Story of Aaron, by that inimitable story-teller, Joel Chandler Harris. Halfreal, half-fairy tale, the book is full of that unexplainable charm of which Mr. Harris is master. The story tells of Buster John and Sweetest Susan, two children, who lived in a veritable paradise of plantation romance and actualities, who knew the language of animals as well as of men, and had such talking friends as the gray pony, and the black stallion, and the dog Rambler. Nor were those the only friends, for there were the Arab slave, Aaron, son of Ben Ali, and the little negro girl, Drusilla, to say nothing of all the other people and animals on the plantation. If you want your children to get a breath of new air, a fresh, keen breath of child romance, to have their imaginations quickened, their love of animals strengthened and deepened, their sympathies broadened, you can find no better medium than this Story of Aaron. [Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $2.00.] Sir Knight of the Golden Pathway. The title of this book, unpleasantly suggestive of the "Knights of Pythias," refers to a small boy who, apparently, has no Christian name, but is always spoken of and to as "Sir Knight," and who, his mother being dead, is in process of being fitted for the next world by a female guardian known as "My Lady." Sir Knight is nourished on parable and symbolism, and dwells in an altogether ideal world of romance, chivalry, and allegory, in which angels and warriors play important and interchangeable parts. The result of this innutritious diet is that it occurs to him—at, judging from the young Christian. The process, which involves illustration, about the age of five- -to rise bemuch patience and sweet self-abnegation on the times on a frosty Easter morning, and walk Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping. The Gypsy Series, of which Gypsy's Sowing and Reaping is the concluding volume, dates back among the earliest of the productions of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. If we mistake not, it first appeared in 1866. They are good, helpful The King's Revenge. stories, in which, after the fashion of Miss Phelps Claude Bray has chosen for his historical (now Mrs. Ward), a boy is chiefly an irrational story, The King's Revenge, incidents in the and troublesome corpus vile, on which a girl, reign of Edward II of England, which are created for the purpose, plays with winsome romantic and, in their results, important. The and plastic touches, gradually changing the death of Gaveston, the king's favorite, at the youthful barbarian into a regenerated and manly hands of the Lords Ordainers, and the fate which met the barons in after years, are sup |