tronomers of the highest skill. These observations unconfirmed cannot have weight, pertaining as they do to a single presentation; such measures cannot be accepted on the dictum of even the most eminent living astronomer. Those whose opinions would be worth quoting must have knowledge of the original observations, the methods of reduction, and the application of the corrections, and must satisfy themselves of the quality of the work. This is the inevitable course through which every important investigation must pass; there is no royal road to astronomical favor. All these measures will be published, all these data will be furnished in the promised first volume of the Annals of the Lowell Observatory; but until this volume has secured the consideration of astronomers, the present one must remain without scientific standing.

seen.

To a

Selections from Newman. By Lewis E. Gates, '84. (Holt: New York.) Mr. Gates has prefixed to his little volume of excellent selections an essay on Cardinal Newman which is, in many respects, the best we have We should not agree with all of Mr. Gates's opinions, nor should we set Newman on so high a pedestal as is here erected for him; but we believe in hearing the best that can be said for any man or cause. person conversant with religious history, the pother still made over the Oxford movement seems ludicrously great. In the perspective of centuries, that movement will probably dwindle to the proportions of the Anabaptist aberration in the 16th century, or of Whitefield's revivals in the 18th. Perhaps it would have been well for Mr. Gates to indicate a little more clearly the comparatively narrow field in which Newman worked. We

do not foresee permanence for Newman's books. Whilst a man lives, or those who knew him live, his apologies and explanations may excite great interest, especially if, as in Newman's case, he stands as the leader of a party; but in the long run we drop the men who are constantly assuring us that they are honest. Veracity has its ring, as gold has; and we do not doubt that Newman was veracious in so far as his temperament permitted; but neither his life nor his note has that clear, unmistakable ring of simple veracity which you get, for example, from Marcus Aurelius. You feel that, as the mesmerist must make his passes and strokes before he can influence you, so Newman has always prepared some syllogistic legerdemain to put your mind in that condition where he can operate successfully. In most of his writings, no matter what the subject nor what its apparent desultoriness of treatment, you suspect that, sooner or later, it will lead you to Rome; although he is too shrewd to take an Anglo-Saxon thither by way of Lourdes and Loreto. And it is not because this is his goal, but because he does not frankly announce it as his goal, that you distrust his sincerity. We may well question whether a large part of Newman's power does not spring from his having, we may almost say, introduced into English literature an art familiar enough to French and Italian controversialists and carried to high perfection by them, but, for obvious reasons, lacking to Protestant England and America we mean the art of casuistry. Certainly, for one reader whom Newman persuades, twenty readers enjoy his exercise of this art, as a crowd that had never seen a foil might gaze with delight and astonish

ment at the dexterity of a fencingmaster. But after all, controversialists, be they religious, political, or scientific, pass rapidly away, and posterity, if it remember them, remembers them because they have imbedded in their polemics matter of a quite different kind. So we say that a collection of specimens like this which Mr. Gates has made, by giving Newman's best, is likely to extend that part of Newman's influence worthiest of perpetuation. It has long been the fashion to extol Newman's style, and we do not intend to be out of fashion; but we will point out, as an illustration that extremes meet, how fond he is, like Walt Whitman, of what we may call the catalogue or inventory. A slight change in the order of words and a difference of punctuation would bring some of Newman's most famous pas sages - his description of Attica, for instance (pp. 1-6), or of the evils which beset mankind (p. 161) — within the methods of the author of Leaves of Grass.

Sketches from Concord and Appledore. By Frank Preston Stearns, '67. (Putnam New York.) Mr. Stearns has gathered into an attractive volume much pleasant gossip about several of the eminent figures in American literature of the generation just closing. Hawthorne, Miss Alcott, Emerson, Wasson, Phillips, Mrs. Thaxter and Whittier he describes as he knew or saw them, and he mingles his description with anecdotes and criticism of which the former are better than the latter. To say of David A. Wasson, for instance, that he wrote poetry of the very highest order; that he is the first and most original of American thinkers; that "he knew English literature as well as Macaulay, French

and German as well as Carlyle ;" that as a critic "he was the equal of Lessing and almost of Goethe ;" and that, “if he lives at all, it is likely he will outlive every other writer of his time," is to expose one's self to the charge of exaggeration, which is the enemy of criticism. Mr. Stearns does not always distinguish with sufficient clearness between his personal impression and what he could know only by hearsay. Thus, Margaret Fuller quitted America when he must have been a mere child, so that what he writes about her must have come to him second hand. Perhaps, too, it might be objected that he is too discursive, and too fond of dragging in theories and opinions which do not bear on his subject; but if he had attended more strictly to business he might have given his sketches a more formal character than comports with works of this kind. The most satisfactory sketch is that of Wendell Phillips; but there are entertaining passages in all, and many readers will get here a more intimate view of our chief men of letters than they could get elsewhere in the same space. Some of Mr. Stearns's epigrammatic phrases stick in the memory. He describes Margaret Fuller as a woman "who lived in everybody's house except her own, who went everywhere and did everything on nothing a year." "Wherever he [Hawthorne] went he seemed to carry twilight with him." "Long continued wakefulness is a kind of nervous cremation." Altogether, the book will take its place on the shelf with the most interesting which give us a personal view of the leaders in the Golden Age of American Literature. Many portraits and views add to its value.

vard University. Price, without postage, $1.75.) The making of this book, for the literary part and the musical arrangement of which the Plummer Professor and the Organist of the University are respectively responsible, has been manifestly a labor of love. Every page makes it evident that no pains have been spared to render the book worthy of the institution whose name and seal it bears, to bring it into close accord with the spirit of the peculiar religious movement at Harvard, and indeed, to turn it into a visible and striking expression of that spirit. The two great characteristics of the religious administration of the University must be recalled, in order to enter into the merit of this Hymn Book. The first of these is movement among the essentials, recognition of the abiding forces, devotion to the universal in Christianity. The purpose is, from many and different startingpoints, to enter into the sublime commonplaces of the Christian consciousness, and mine for life and its uses the inexhaustible wealth there. The second feature in the religious teaching of the University is the emphasis put upon the significance of Christianity for youth. It is borne in mind that the Founder of Christianity, even when he ended his career, was still young, and one great feature of his teaching lies in the grandeur of its appeal to youth. From one point of view, everything in the Gospel is in the morning hours; the world rolls forward in the dawn of a new day, and the shaping of the prophetic message to the youth of the University is necessarily in the powers and fires of an infinite hope. These two features the emphasis put upon the essentials and the prominence given to the martial and hopeful in Christianity, constitute

the distinctive character of the work under review. Here is its great and manifest excellence. Upon this basis the selection of hymns has been made. Although differences of taste are inevitable, in the matter both of hymns and tunes, and while here and there, one might wish to furnish a substitute, or to make an addition, still the University is under great obligations to the authors, literary and musical, for the manner in which they have embodied in this book the high ends which they set themselves. The work may be commended, in the heartiest way, and with the fullest confidence to other schools and colleges whose religious aims are, in any marked degree, in sympathy with those of Harvard. Tested by its own worthy purpose, and in the service for which it was made, The University Hymn Book has no rival. — Geo. A. Gordon, '81.

Modern German Literature. By Benjamin W. Wells, '77. (Roberts Bros.: Boston.) Professor Wells's purpose is to provide a brief manual "not for the learned specialist, nor for him who aspires to become one, but rather for those to whom, as to the great majority of our college students, German literature is a pleasant avocation, a secondary means of culture." We believe that he has fairly fulfilled his aim. His book will give that large class of readers just the guidance they need. It is descriptive rather than critical, and biographical rather than analytical. By pursuing this method, Professor Wells has been able to summarize the opinions of the more formal historians of German literature-conspicuously, Schererwithout being burdened by responsibility for criticism of his own; but in an introduction like this a reader seeks general information and not origi

nal views. The account of Goethe is as good as any beginner needs, although Professor Wells hardly succeeds in giving a vivid portrait. In general, we believe that it would have been better to attempt to place the chief German authors whom he discusses in the perspective of worldliterature rather than to treat them as the Germans themselves do-as if there had never been any other literature besides the German. Thus, when we reflect that Klopstock on any cosmopolitan scale would not measure taller than Young, - whom nobody would rank among the first twenty British and American poets, we realize that a literary historian may accord the author of the Messias more space than his talents warrant. So, too, the time must be near when foreign critics will not imitate the German idolaters of Goethe in assuming that there never was such a genius before. Professor Wells, we ought to say, does not directly join in indiscriminate laudation. It is almost superfluous in so brief a review as this to point out small errors, but we cannot refrain from expressing surprise that Jókai, the most eminent of Magyar novelists, should be classed as a German (p. 386), and that Dumas (père) and Eugène Sue should be cited as French examples of novelists who treated contemporary themes (p. 368). We regret also to find a professor of literature using the expression "phenomenal success."

BOOKS RECEIVED.

Tennyson's In Memoriam. Edited by W. J. Rolfe, h '59. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.)

Three German Tales. (Goethe's Die neue Melusine, Zschokke's Der tote Gast), Kleist's Die Verlobung in St. Domingo.

Edited by A. B. Nichols. (Holt: New York.)

Virgil's Aeneid, I-VI. Edited by J. B. Greenough, '56, and G. L. Kittredge, '82. (Ginn: Boston.)

The Mississippi Basin. The Struggle in America between England and France, 1697-1763, with full cartological Illustrations from contemporary Sources. By Justin Winsor, '53. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.)

The Principles of Rhetoric. Revised and enlarged. By Adams Sherman Hill, '53. (Harper: New York.)

Handbook of the New Public Library in Boston. Compiled by Herbert Small. (Curtis & Co.: 6 Beacon St., Boston.)

Education in the South. By Julius A. Dreber, President of Roanoke College, Salem, Va.

Modern German Literature. By Benjamin W. Wells, '77. (Roberts Bros.: Boston.)

Scott's Woodstock. Edited by Bliss Perry. (Longmans, Green & Co.: New York.)

German and French Poems for Memorizing. Prescribed by the Examinations Department of the State of New York,

with Music to some of the German Poems. (Holt: New York. 20 cents.)

Certain Sand Mounds of Duval County, Florida. By Clarence B. Moore, '73. (Printed by the Author: 1321 Locust St., Phila., Pa.)

Mars. By Percival Lowell, '76. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston.)

Red Men and White. By Owen Wister, '82. Illustrated by Frederic Remington. (Harper: New York.)

Stops of Various Quills. By W. D. Howells, h '67. Illustrated by Howard Pyle. (Harper: New York.)

Milton's L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Comus, and Lycidas. Edited by Prof. W. P. Trent. (Longmans: New York.)

Behind the Arras: A Book of the Unseen. By Bliss Carman, Sp., '86. With designs by T. B. Meteyard, Sp., '86. (Lamson, Wolffe & Co.: Boston.)

Folia Dispersa. Poems of Wm. Cranston Lawton, '74. (Corell Press: New York.)

Daniel Webster's First Bunker Hill Oration. Together with Other Addresses

Relating to the Revolution. Edited by Fred Newton Scott. (Longmans, Green & Co.: New York.)

Edited

Macaulay's Essay on Milton. by James G. Croswell, '73. (Longmans, Green & Co.: New York.)

The Old-Fashioned Garden, and Other Verses. By John Russell Hayes, '89. (J. C. Winston & Co.: Phila.)

An Introduction to General Biology. (2d edit.) By Wm. T. Sedgwick and Edmund B. Wilson. (Holt: New York. Price, $1.75.)

Cornell Studies in Classical Philology. V. Index Antiphonteus. By F. L. Van Cleef, '85. (Ginn: Boston.)

Words for Music. By William Wells Newell, '59. (C. W. Sever: Cambridge. Price, $1.00.)

Harvard Oriental Studies. The Samkyha-Pravacana-Bhāṣya, or Commentary on the Exposition of the Sankhya Philosophy. By Vijñānabhikṣu. Edited by Prof. Richard Garbe, Königsberg University, Prussia. (For sale by Publication Agent, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. Price, $1.50.)

Fables and Essays. By John Bryan, of Ohio. (Arts and Letters Co.: New York.) The Hawthorn Tree and Other Poems. By Nathan Haskell Dole, '74. (Crowell: Boston.)

The Principles of Argumentation. By George Pierce Baker, '87. (Ginn: Boston.) The University Hymn Book, for Use in the Chapel of Harvard University. (Printed for the University: J. B. Williams, Publication Agent, Cambridge. Price $1.75; postage 20 cents.)

Defoe's History of the Great Plague in London. Edited by Byron Satterlee Hurlbut, '87. (Ginn: Boston.)

Anarchy or Government? An Inquiry in Fundamental Politics. By Wm. Mackintire Salter, t '75. (Crowell: Boston.)

Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College. Vol. xxxli, Part I. Investigation in Astronomical Photography. By Wm. H. Pickering. — Vol. xl, Part III. Observations made at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory, Mass., in the year 1893, under the direction of A. Lawrence Rotch, h '91. - Vol. xli, No. 1. Observations of the New England Weather Service in the year 1892. -No. 2. Observations of the New Eng

land Weather Service in the year 1893. J. Warren Smith, Weather Bureau, Direc

tor.

The Bibelot. 11. Villon's "A Lodging for the Night." 12. "The Cenci," Act v. (Thomas B. Mosher: Portland, Me.) A Cumberland Vendetta, and Other Stories. By John Fox, Jr., '83. (Harper: New York.)

The Wind in the Clearing, and Other Poems. By Robert Cameron Rogers, L. S., '85-'86. (Putnam: New York; for sale by the Harvard Coöperative Society: Cambridge.)

Nature Study Record for the Common Schools. By Wilbur S. Jackman, '84. (Werner Co.: Chicago.)

Supplement to the Revised Statutes of the United States. Vol. 2, Nos. 1-5. Legislation of the 52d and 53d Congresses, 1892-1895. Prepared and Edited by William A. Richardson, '43. Assistants: George A. King and Wm. B. King. (Government Printing Office: Washington, D. C.)

Alfonse Daudet's Le Nabab: Mœurs Parisiennes. Edited by Benj. W. Wells, '77. (Ginn: Boston.)

Scheffel's Ekkehard. Edited by W. H. Carruth, p '89. (Holt: New York. Price, $1.25.)

German Historical Prose. Edited by Hermann Schoenfeld. (Holt: New York. Price, $1.00.)

Irving's Sketch Book. Lyon Phelps, A. M., '91. York. Price, $1.00.)

Edited by Wm. (Putnam: New

The Secret of Mankind. With some singular Hints gathered in the Elsewheres or After-Life, from Certain Eminent Personages, as also some brief Account of the Planet Mercury and of its Institutions. (Putnam: New York. Price $2.00.)

COMMUNICATIONS.

AN EXPLANATION.

To the Editor of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine: Sir,- In a statement in regard to the Divinity School, in the December number of the Harvard Graduates' Magazine, I said: “I cannot learn that any educated men are preparing for the Unitarian minis