IN LIGHTER VEIN.

No less than four different translations, issued by as many publishing houses, appeared almost simultaneously of " Gyp's" Le Mariage de Chiffon, which in itself is surely a token that there is

GYP.

COMTESSE DE MARTEL.

something worth reading here. Under the title Chiffon's Marriage, the Messrs. Stokes; Hurst and Company; and Lovell, Coryell and Company have pub-. lished this latest romance of French society at a uniform rate of fifty cents, bound in cloth; the Brentanos bringing it out in their Modern Life Library, under the editorial supervision of M. Henri Pène du Bois as A Gallic Girl (price, $1.25), with artistic cover design by Scotson-Clark. Messrs. Lovell, Coryell and Company's edition contains a frontispiece portrait herewith reproduced. A significant fact is that the Messrs. Stokes's is the only edition which claims to be authorised as well as copyrighted, the translation, it is said, having received the enthusiastic approval

As

of the Comtesse de Martel (Gyp). the work of French authors is recognised by the International Copyright, we are curious as to the reflection which this throws on the enterprise of the others. Chiffon's Marriage makes the second volume of the Messrs. Stokes's Bijou Series, of which F. C. Philips's A Question of Colour was the first. They are daintily bound in buckram, printed in clear, readable type, and contain illustrations. The series is an imitation of the Messrs. Holt's Buckram Series-we prefer the latter-but the difference in price will be a consideration.

Corona of the Nantahalas, by Louis Pendleton, is a romantic little drama played by a solitary American girl with only an unlettered couple and a deaf mute for company, and a dangerous young journalist, among the wilds of a Southern State. It presents the inevitable clash of cultured simplicity with the conventions of nineteenth-century civilisation-the conflict between Hellenic ideals and the complex ways of modern life. The story is told effectively, and there is an idyllic flavour in it which sometimes almost makes us fall out with the author for preferring the form which he has made the story take.-Industrious Lydia Hoyt Farmer has made the Merriam Company responsible for another new book, which is a medley of satire, humour, and preachment, marked by shrewd wit, keen observation, and broad characterisation. Certain New York periodicals have already made us acquainted with the bulk of Aunt Belindy's Points of View and A Modern Mrs. Malaprop. The latter lady," though no connoisseur in morals," prides herself " on being a bon vivant in devotion," thinks Paris "the most godly city in unrighteousness, "makes Plato responsible for the well-known French remark," Après nous le déluge!" and Socrates for the words, "I ought to have died at Waterloo!" while she proposes a toast in the immortal words of Napoleon: "Antiquity will do us justice." Mrs. Malaprop is just a trifle far-fetched sometimes, but the reader will get a good deal of fun out of her bumptious mistakes and crass ignorance dressed in seeming knowledge.-Two Women; or, Over the Hills and Far Away, by Lida Ostrom Vanamee, with a portrait of one of them (is it the author?) is also published by the Merriam Company, and

is designed to float the idle moments of an idle hour lightly down the summer tide. The writer will be known to some readers as the author of a previous story, An Adirondack Idyll. These three booklets of light fiction, published by the same firm, are bound in cloth, illustrated, and are issued at the uniform price of seventy-five cents per volume.

Messrs. Lovell, Coryell and Company have attempted, in reissuing their edition of Mr. Zangwill's Old Maids' Club, to profit by the interest of the hour in that writer's latest novel, The Master. It is liberally illustrated with comic sketches by F. H. Townsend, and to those who like this sort of pleasantry and artificial fun, it will no doubt be a welcome contribution in light literature. (Cloth, $1.25; paper, 50 cents.) The same firm have brought out new editions of Dearest, by Mrs. Forrester; John Ford and His Helpmate, by Frank Barrett; and Oriole's Daughter, by Jessie Fothergill, in cloth at $1.00, and in paper covers, price, 50 cents. In their

Lakewood Series (price, 50 cents) the new issues include Margery of Quether, by S. Baring-Gould; Morial the Mahatma, by Mabel Collins, the author of the recently published novel, Suggestion; and The Island of Fantasy, by Fergus Hume. Betty; a Last Century Love Story, by Anna Vernon Dorsey, has been added to their Windermere Series of copyright fiction; and a fifty-cent paper edition of Mr. Bailey-Martin, by Percy White, one of the cleverest single-volume novels of the year 1893, has been issued in the Belmore Series. No one should fail to read Mr. White's amusing satire of Surbiton and of the social struggles of the BaileyMartins; we can assure the reader that he will be highly entertained in a fashion, alas! too rare nowadays.

The Cassell Publishing Company send us the following paper-covered novels at 50 cents: Should She Have Left Him, by William C. Hudson; Jean Berny, Sailor, by Pierre Loti; and Utterly Mistaken, by Annie Thomas; also a new novel by A. W. Marchmont, B.A., entitled Parson Thring's Secret. (Cloth, $1.00.) From Robert Bonner's Sons we have received The Meredith Marriage, by Harold Payne, and At a Great Cost, by Effie A. Rowlands, both illustrated. (Paper, 50 cents.) The J. B. Lippincott Company have brought out two more volumes by Captain Charles King; one, entitled Captain Close and Sergeant Cræsus, is his

own; but Captain Dreams and Other Stories is a collection of stories simply edited by the indefatigable Captain. (Price, $1.00.) Too Late Repented, by Mrs. Forrester, is the latest accession to the same firm's series of Select Novels. A new novel, The Mistress of Quest, by Adeline Sergeant, a favourite " serial" with popular British periodicals, has been added to the Messrs. Appleton's Town and Country Library (price, 50 cents), also George Gissing's masterly piece of realism, In the Year of Jubilee, which was reviewed by us (Vol. I., p. 122) from the English edition a few months ago.

The Arena Publishing Company send us The Mystery of Evelin Delorme, by Albert Bigelow Paine, which purports to be a hypnotic story. It is well printed, and is included in their handy SidePocket Series; but the whitewashed cover looks cheap, and spoils the attractiveness of the neat design. They also send us Mr. Everett Howe's Chronicles of Break o' Day, which is by no means a new book, but which we take pleasure in recommending to our readers, who will find much wisdom in it, and a close observation of certain local types of men and manners, which will afford considerable amusement as well as cause for more serious reflection.

THACKERAY. A STUDY. By Adolphus A. Jack. New York: Macmillan & Co. $1.50. This painstaking appreciation of Thackeray is vitiated by one capital defect. Wide human sympathy is absolutely essential to good literary criticism. Mr. Jack sympathises with and understands the more elevated moods of mankind, but there are certain human phases and tempers that he would obliterate entirely. So should we all, if we had any decisive voice in the matter; but, unless we are professional moralists, we think that so long as they are part of life they have their legitimate place in literature, provided, of course, decencies and proportions be adhered to. Mr. Jack is now a good moralist. When he is older he may be a good critic.

66

Of Thackeray's' more serious claims to be regarded as a classic, he speaks well, and therefore not superfluously, though on his vivid presentation of character perhaps due stress is not laid; and though the remarks on style are intelligent, they are very far from being the last word. He has an irritating habit of hitting on a truth, or quoting an accepted theory, and then drawing far too strong inferences from it. Of Thackeray's formlessness, for instance, it was right to complain; but he does not speak for many besides himself when he says of Vanity Fair, Pendennis, and The Newcomes that, published as a whole, they are only readable with difficulty. We all know the theory that a work of art should be drawn to scale, constructed with the regularity and proportion of an architect's plan. The few books that adhere to the theory are very pretty; they may or may not be delightful to the imagination and the soul. And this method, this rhythm, this perfect proportion, are their existence to be tested only by external plan and arrangement? Can the ideal not be satisfied by harmony of tone and temper and spirit? It must, or we throw overboard as inartistic, and as Mr. Jack would piously say, "only readable with difficulty," a good many of the world's masterpieces Don Quixote, for example.

Concerning Thackeray's defects, perhaps he has not said a word that is not

true; and I like his sturdily unapologetic attitude. But he is terribly solemn in his judgments. Such rigid severity would be becoming if Thackeray had written one book every five years, and nothing else between, and two of these had been, say, The Shabby Genteel Story and The Book of Snobs. But Thackeray was writing continually, in every mood, in every mental condition, and if some readers invariably take him seriously, he himself did not, and would have laughed at them for their pains. We all have our own way of spending the unguarded moments of our lives; most of us are dreadfully dull, and some of us ill-tempered. Thackeray chronicled his on paper-like all good fellows of high vitality, caring not a rap for his reputation and they were generally amusing. But then they were certainly spent in vulgar or commonplace company, and his satire was often merely frivolous and shallow. This is all very true; and the man who wrote Henry Esmond and The Newcomes knew it best of all. To weep over the frivolities of genius that has had high manifestations is a woeful waste of tears. Decent regret is permissible; but depend on it, the defects regretted have been used in the very stuff that has roused our admiration; for genius is not wasteful in this sense; it transforms its weaknesses into painful wisdom; it uses somehow and somewhere effectively the whole of itself. In a morbidly serious frame of mind it might seem fitting to pipe the eye because Shakespeare made atrocious puns and invented scenes which are downright silly. Let us be thankful when our humour bids our conscience stop short of that. And though Thackeray treated royal personages and peers of the realm, and those misunderstood worthies the snobs, in a way that has called for serious explanation and remonstrance from Mr. Jack, and though in the Irish Sketch Book "there are none of those wide disquisitions upon society and government which the investigation of a particular country suggests to writers of the class of De Tocqueville and M. Taine," and though The Shabby Genteel Story is hopelessly vulgar, the conclusion of the whole is that it really

doesn't much matter. The main question is whether Thackeray's greater qualities will stand the test of time. The lesser fruits of his exuberant energy have their due significance; but to grieve over them with such solemnity is not more sensible than solemnly denying to Goldsmith's compilations a place in serious historical research.

MY EARLY TRAVELS AND ADVENTURES IN AMERICA AND ASIA. By Henry M. Stanley. 2 vols. Charles Scribner's Sons. $3.00.

Henry M. Stanley, in his last work, shows the self-confidence and self-approbation which have ever marked his public actions. The first volume, telling of Mr. Stanley's experience during two Indian campaigns, might have been published alone, and in itself have proven worthy of notice, not because Mr. Stanley is the author, but because it is a fairly concise record of the masterly way in which General Hancock in 1867 prevented protracted Indian wars by "a series of tactical marches through the red man's domains." This was the crucial time in the colonisation of the great States of Nebraska and Kansas. The savages were holding a carnival of bloodshed when Hancock made the Indians come to a full stop in their course, under penalty of effective retaliation. Stanley was sent to the scene as a special correspondent for the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. The meetings with the great chiefs, the speeches of the latter, and the incidents of early military life on the great plains are of historical interest and value.

In his preface Mr. Stanley justifies the white race in its course against the savages since the discovery of the continent, saying that "they [white men] had as much right to the plains as the Indians.' He also speaks of "the semi-civilised millions" who once lived in the Mississippi Valley, Central America, and Arizona, and proceeds to find justification for the civilised man's course in overwhelming the red man by the hypothesis that the latter exterminated the mound-builders. It would have been better had Stanley read the investigations of Fiske, and thus have spared the reader an exhibition of ignorance, and also if he had paid some attention to the work of Parkman before indulging in deductions.

Mr.

Of

Stanley's reputation must rest upon his explorations, and not upon conclusions based on his own observations. course there are few who will justify the Indians in their, frightful cruelties, and Parkman, in his exhaustive treatment of early Jesuit and English colonisation in Canada and the present United States, shows from the Jesuit records and letters from French governors and others, that the savages were from the earliest times cruel, not only to the whites, but also to their own kind, as witness the bitter enmity of the Iroquois tribes to the Algonquin nation, resulting in the practical extermination of the latter as a nation. But the early settlers were not backward in repaying cruelty with cruelty. It was only with the advent of the American republic that a serious and effective effort was made to temporise and to live in peace with the savParkman said that the Indian might be tamed, but not civilised, and the truth of that has largely been demonstrated.

age.

46

The interesting feature of the second volume is the account of the building and opening of the Suez Canal, written when Stanley was the correspondent of the New York Herald. The letters also cover the history of the Abyssinian expedition in 1868, and then, as a sort of apprenticeship to the Livingstone expedition, the author was sent to write a kind of guide to the Nile, to visit Captain (now Sir Charles) Warren, and give an account of his explorations underneath Jerusalem, and finally I was to proceed through Persia to India." is all a beaten track now, and the letters, as anything but descriptive of the places traversed, are of slight interest, and not in any way remarkable.

This

ALPHABETS. A Handbook of Lettering, with Historical, Critical, and Practical Descriptions. By Edward F. Strange. New York: Macmillớn & Co. $2.75.

It is not difficult to perceive that the mechanical age through which we have been passing is doomed, and that the results of students' toil is destined to turn the tide not only of artistic, but of popular standards. To appreciate and discover true beauty of design, one must look to centuries of the past, when the craftsman was not a copyist, but an originator, freely expressing and repeating the beauty that he felt and observed

around him regarding form, colour, and idea.

This book, entitled Alphabets in the Ex-Libris Series of the Chiswick Press, adds one more link to the great chain of evidence that antiquarians bring forward to prove that the secrets of artistic invention lie in the Middle Ages, the greater inspiration coming from Byzan tine influence. This will be proved by examining the various illustrations in this volume, and noticing how lettering deteriorates after the eighteenth century. Compare, for example, the apparent carelessness of the date 1610, taken from English furniture (p. 159), with the "modern fancy types" (p. 195). Even a superficial glance will reveal the grace and individuality of the early artist opposed to the unsympathetic mechanic of the nineteenth century. Again, compare the Dutch type of 1744 (p. 167) with the Gothic capitals from the tombs of Henry III. and Richard II. in Westminster Abbey (pp. 46, 50), contrasting the thirteenth and fifteenth with the eighteenth century; and compare the same with the lettering on a Spanish seal of the fourteenth century (p. 41). Note also the stiffness of the well-designed capitals by Jan Pas in 1737 (p. 251), as compared with those by Geoffroy in 1529 (p. 89). Every one who enjoys making letters will find his love of writing increased after examining such beautiful specimens as the Lombardic, Irish, and Anglo-Norman manuscripts given on pp. 18–26, and the equally beautiful writing of Walter Crane (p. 214). The book contains chapters on Roman Lettering and its Derivatives, the Middle Ages, Beginning of Printed Letters, etc., and a carefully selected bibliography. Several pages have been given to the criticism of American lettering, which is deservedly and highly praised by the author (p. 196). He also reprints a specimen page from the Kelmscott Press, founded by the famous poet and designer, William Morris, to whom this century owes much for the revival of interest in artistic typography. Several decorative title-pages by Walter Crane are also included, revealing his artistic and successful efforts to harmonise lettering with the principal features of his productions.

To the amateur Mr. Strange's volume will open a vista of novel and interesting

research; the student will find much that he already knows, retold in a delightful manner; and the artist, designer, and engraver, excellent treatment of the technical qualities of many different alphabets and their suitability to various materials and uses. It is to be hoped that the author will supplement this book with one on illuminated manuscripts, for which he seems so thoroughly equipped, besides having to such an unusual degree the sympathy of printer and publisher.

BOOKMAN BREVITIES.

It is only recently that Jonas Lie has gained an audience outside of Norway, inasmuch as the way to general recognition lies through France; and although his first story appeared in 1870, he has quite lately been translated into French, while a couple of his books have just been introduced into England. We have a ready welcome, then, for The Commodore's Daughters ($1.00), which comes from the press of Messrs. Lovell, Coryell and Company. This novel was written in 1889, and while Lie has written much before and since that date, English readers may accept this example as characteristic of a novelist who has much in common with Dickens and Daudet. Jonas Lie is a consummate story-teller, one who is innocent-as Mr. Edmund Gosse tells us in the Introduction to this translation-of any “ism,' and professes to teach no "gospel," but who is the best beloved of the living novelists of his fatherland. But the peculiar genius of Jonas Lie has never been better exemplified than in his two volumes of eventyr, entitled Trold, which appeared in 1891, and which under the title of Weird Tales from Northern Seas were translated into English. Some of these seafaring tales are masterpieces of literature; but it is difficult to preserve in translation the peculiarities of style and substance which give to the infinitely varying art of Jonas Lie its sublime simplicity and exuberant fancy. It is to be hoped that this volume will also find an American publisher, and that more of the author's work may be introduced in translation to American readers, for Jonas Lie has as distinct a place in literature as Björnson and Ibsen, and indeed he ranks at this moment as the