sometimes to their own serious undoing. There are those on whom the mention of his first volume on California has an immediately infuriating effect, like that of a red rag on a bull; persons, for example, who, in the unsuspecting glow of enthusiasm, kindled by his fluent narration, sought on the Pacific coast, during the last winter, "the most perfect climate in the world." To such persons arriving, after the uninteresting and uncomfortable seven days journey across the continent, and covered with the dust of a dozen States and Territories,-on the shores of the bay of San Francisco, and prepared to find at every step some confirmation of their roseate anticipations, it was a little disheartening to hear the whispered interlocutory comments of the hospitable residents, when Mr. Nordhoff and his book were mentioned. Instead of an unhesitating endorsement of that author, such as might naturally have been expected from them, it was sad to see them nudge each other with the furtive elbow and deprecate the too sudden disclosure of realities to the newly arrived traveler. "Let him find out for himself," they said, significantly-and indeed he did, too soon. And when, under the ceaseless, melancholy floods of rain that poured down from the leaden sky, heart and flesh began to fail, and the natural consequence of coughs, colds and bronchitis had begun to be apparent, till the resident physician was called in, it was interesting to discover that he also, from his professional standpoint, had his own views of Mr. Nordhoff and of his "book for travelers and settlers."

And yet, when one came to examine more specifically, it was hard to find distinct grounds for accusation against the accuracy of Mr. Nordhoff's statements. It was only that there was a glamour, somehow, unintentionally, but no less fatally, produced upon his readers by the very readable and apparently accurate and even statistical recital which he gave them. It is not that the climate of the Pacific coast, for example, is to be dreaded,-when one is properly acclimated,-(unless in such exceptional winters as the last one ;) but only that it needs to be understood, and that, somehow, Mr. Nordhoff does not lead us to understand it. And so with the inducements to settlers-it is not that there are not very great inducements to settlers, but it is that they are to be weighed over against certain other considerations to which the emphasis given in Mr. Nordhoff's book is of a different sort from that. given by actual experience. The average man who follows in the steps of this affable guide is, all the while, goaded by his experience to consider what a thing it is to be a guide and to be known to be a guide, and so to find rough places made smooth and crooked places straight before one, in the compilations of one's guide book.

In the present volume Mr. Nordhoff conducts his readers first to the Hawaiian Islands, and afterwards for a hurried run through northern California and Oregon, and, in one chapter, to the strange little

group of rocky islets which one sees on clear days from the Golden Gate, thirty or forty miles distant. It is to be commended as being very easy and entertaining reading, and seldom inaccurate in its positive statements, though sometimes false by defect, and sometimes erroneous in inference. It is strange, for example, that a man of Mr. Nordhoff's attainments and experience as a traveler should content himself with such a meager reference to the wonderful Wailuku valley, as that to be found on pages 77-8. The reader would scarcely imagine that the scenery dismissed with such a prosaic notice has beauty which ought to make it famous even beside the vallies of the Sierra. Indeed the wonderful perfection of the Sandwich Island climate and the charming picturesqueness and even magnificence of much of the Island scenery, seem not to have been appreciated by him as they deserve. One feels that his two books would both be better, if we could strike an average between the somewhat overstrained enthusiasm of the book on California, and the somewhat understated estimate of the attractiveness of the Hawaiian Kingdom. When it is generally known how perfect a sanitarium there is available, at only fifteen days from New York, in a little world detached from the great, busy tiresome world in which men grow sick and weary; in a community intelligent cultivated, Christian and generously hospitable; amid scenery of extraordinary beauty and interest; and in a country to which our own country is to be bound by ties of increasing intimacy, we may expect to see a part of the stream of travel which now crosses the Atlantic or skirts the Gulf, turned westward over the smooth Pacific. Meantime such books as this of Mr. Nordhoff, with its readable narrative and its attractive illustrations, are welcome as serving to keep up our interest in and our acqaintance with a country of which we shall presently know more.

Arthur Helps's "Ivan de Biron." *

As English novels are written, now-a-days, one that chooses a foreign country for its scene, and a remote time for its period, is hardly a fair test of an author's powers. He gains the advantage of garnishing his story with unfamiliar bits of history, or with passages of travel and geography that lend it a false air of novelty. At the same time, traits of manners look like copies, and the reader is suspicious of interiors painted by an artist who has never lived in them. Only he can do good work with such a plan who has the power to fix interest on the elements of romance common to all mankind, and to depict the genuine strength and sweetness of human hearts as they find in climates or in customs only variations for their expression. It is so that Quentin Durward glows with life, while Hypatia is coldly accurate.

Ivan de Biron. By the author of " Friends in Council." Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1874.

It would be unfair to ask that this story should convince us, like Tourgenieff's, that spring from the soil, of its truth to Russian character. But it is not unjust to wish, since the author chooses to carry us to regions so inhospitable, among customs so barbarous, that those alien modes of life should be brought into sympathy with our own by some touch of tenderness, such as in “The Exiles of Siberia" teaches us that the whole world is kin. Unfortunately it is upon circumstance, and not upon feeling, that the story most depends for its interest. Out of a bygone time, and with the masks that tradition has framed for them, the actors pose in shadowy rehearsal, instead of living and moving. The little love story that holds the plot together is pretty, but slight, and our just expectations are wronged when the author does not distinctly lead it to a close in that certain domestic beatitude which is the usual transfiguration of such commonplace emotion. Still, though there are points in it,— such as the gypsy girl's sacrifice to her rival, and the force of a common misery in effacing difference of rank,-which might have been more effectively accented by a more subtle reader of the heart, this love story, by its quiet tone, is more real and pleasing than anything else in the book. Enough is shown us of well-known personages to give it the pretension of a historical romance, but not enough to prove that it borrows vigor or dignity from the greatness of actual past lives. The Empress Elizabeth is a jovial, masculine, capricious nature, with contradictions of wit and polish, not the sensual, voluptuous princess history tells us she was. This or that soldier or statesman is vaguely sketched as cruel or arbitrary, without the special instances to make his image vivid, of which the annals of the time supply an abundance that might have been wrought into the story. To label a general a savage, and allude in a foot-note to some contemporary account of his excesses, is a very inartistic way of working. A cloudy atmos·phere of conspiracy envelops the personages, but no great deeds flash out of it. We hold our breath, awaiting tragedy and horrors, and all evaporates in a panorama of processions, and a posting of going and returning exiles to and from Siberia. If the novel had decided to be one thing or the other,either a stormy romance of history or a simple idyl of Russian love-making,-it would have gained in clearness and interest. It is entertaining enough, with an occasional point of nice observation, or curious glimpse of strange, real incident; but it wants the coherence and fusion of finished work, such as this accomplished author has given us the fair right to expect, by writing of a different order.

Clarissa.

WHEN everybody was talking about the comet, a few weeks ago, some one ventured the statement that the whole amount of matter of which the tail of this strange fish was composed could be squeezed

up-sponge fashion-into a ball a man might close in his fist! A good many things were said about the comet that we dare say the sayers now wish they had never said. Still, they were interesting enough at the time, and some of them scared a good many women and timid men, and thus fulfilled what was no doubt the intention of their authors. The particular remark we have mentioned came back to us just now when Mr. Holt's pocket edition of Clarissa Harlowe was put into our hands. Here is a comet's tail squeezed into a fist-ball, with a vengeance! The little book lies on our table as we write, a pretty pocket volume of 515 pages, and alongside it is a copy in eight volumes containing 3,632 pages.* The original edition (1748) was in eight volumes, and the type was smaller than the one we happen to be the owner of, but the amount of matter is of course the same, and think what a sum in reduction Mr. Holt's compiler set himself to solve!

We question very much whether the sum has been solved; we do not believe in fact that it can be solved. As there is no royal road to learning, so there is no royal recipe by which certain authors can be crammed into a pill, and swallowed. When, in the fairy tale, the Genius was sealed up in the earthen jar, he was, in fact, no genius at all. He was only known for what he was, when the too curious fisherman violated the seal of Solomon and let the spirit out to spread into a cloud that darkened half the heaven.

Suppose we had the comet of that Italian Coggia squeezed into our wife's smelling-bottle? Would it be the comet? No, it would only be what the scientific people call, "comet-stuff." That is, the comet divested of its poetry, of its power to rouse the imagination, to excite curiosity, terror, awe; to feed afresh the love of Celestial Beauty; to write anew the name of God upon the Heavens. From great things to small. There are certain books into whose very plan and method the element of lengthinesss,—of tedious and damnable iteration, if the reader will,-enters as an essential ingredient. We cannot conceive of a condensed "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," of a condensed "Arcadia," of a condensed Paradise Lost." Nor can we conceive of a condensed "Clarissa Harlowe," Neither do we care to make apologies for its length: to say that our grandmothers had few books to read, and that they had plenty of leisure; to say that Richardson had little sense of art; to say this, that, or the other gracious thing to help him make his peace with a steamboaty, rail-roadish, telegraphic age. The beauty of him is that he is long, that he dawdles, that he repeats himself, that he won't whip up his horses, no matter how testy the inside passengers may be;

*Printed at Basle in 1792-3, (the last vol. only, in '93) for J. L. Legrand. We found it in Lucerne while hunting, with out much success, for books from Gibbon's library. There would seem to have been a good many English books re printed in the last century at Basle. Has any book wor ever looked into the matter?

and, as for art, why bless you, dear young reader, read his book while you still are young, read it in the country, where you can have leisure and can be undisturbed; shut out the outer world, and modern life, forego the morning paper, and give yourself up wholly to master this tale of love, of passion, of sin and treachery, and their fatal, harrowing fruit, and as, drop by drop, this patient master of the human heart distils his magic draught, as your heart beats faster, and your cheek glows, and your tears start, and time is forgotten, and Clarissa and her fate become the only things that can interest you-let us hear how you answer, then, the slurs that are thrown upon Richardson's art! Richardson's method appeals to the love of detail that is an element of our human nature, particularly in its unsophisticated state. What need of illustration? Children, old folks, farmers, sailors, love to tell the same story, over and over-love to hear every incident; they don't like "skipping," but praise the story-teller, who, like Dante,

can well devise

From point to point; not one word will he fail."

Of course there will always be catering for those who are in a hurry; and people who want to talk about Clarissa Harlowe, and to get credit with their uncultivated neighbors, will buy Mr. Holt's edition, and will thank him for it. As the crop of such people not only never fails but is always abundant, our plain-speaking can't hurt the publisher's market, so we advise all young people who want to know and not to seem to know, to take Richardson by the horns, and master him. But they must make haste and do it while they still tarry in the sweet Jericho of youth; if they wait till their beards be grown, we fear 'twill be too late.

We won't say much-perhaps we might say nothing, about the nice point of expurgation. But, how to understand all that Richardson's novels are, if all the inunendoed nastiness, the too free descriptions, the dwelling upon lascivious details, be wiped out with an unsparing hand? Who that reads this little book, can appreciate the difference that makes" Tom Jones" clean, while "Pamela and "Clarissa" are unclean? The enthusiasm of the French for "Clarissa Harlowe " is well known and easily understood. For long it stood, with Byron, for all that most cultivated Frenchmen knew of English Literature. Of Shakespeare, of Scott, of Fielding, they knew less than nothing, but Richardson they admired to that extent that they declared he should have been a Frenchman. And, indeed, he is the father of the French novel from the "Nouvelle Héloïse " down to Fanny." Yet, not all of them put together have created two characters so sure of immortality as Clarissa and Lovelace. They are a part of the intellectual possession of the world. Of a man who has exerted such an influence it were well to know something. But who reads this edition of his greatest work, with

that desire, will not only know but little here below, but will know that little wrong.

"Phantasmion." *

COLERIDGE was more fortunate in his children than most English poets, for two of them certainly possessed genius, though not in the same measure as himself. Hartley Coleridge was a poet, and if he had not inherited some of his father's infirmities he might have done noble work; as it is he has left two volumes of fugitive pieces as a memorial of his possibilities. Sara Coleridge had less genius, perhaps, but a greater turn for theology and metaphysics. She wrote but one book which can be considered original. It is the fairy tale before us, which is described by Lord Coleridge as the product of the enforced labor of a sick bed, and which was published in 1837. It was not successful, partly, as he would have us believe, because it was brought out by Pickering in an expensive form, and without the writer's name; but more, we are inclined to think, because it shot over the heads of its readers. It is neither a book for the young, nor the old, but one of those works of genius run riot which fails to interest either. It is too long, and it means too little, if, indeed, it have any meaning at all. The laws by which the creation of the Fantastic and the Grotesque are governed are vague, perhaps, and difficult of detection; but they are laws, nevertheless, and they cannot be violated with impunity. The elder fairy-writers obeyed them unconsciously, and Hans Christian Andersen, the Shakespeare of Fairy Land, never by any possibility misses them-his instinct is so sure, and his workmanship so perfect. It is otherwise with Sara Coleridge, who invents, and invents to no purpose. Her work when finished has scarcely the coherence of a child's dream. Her supernatural beings, as Lord Coleridge informs us, have no English originals, though he fancies that he perceives a German character in them. Legends of Number Nip, he says, and the exquisite fancy of Undine are their nearest prototypes. He also perceives, what we cannot, the influence of Greek and Latin imagination in them. Of this, however, the reader of "Phantasmion," learned and unlearned, must judge for themselves. Many have long since done so, for the book was reprinted in this country upwards of thirty years ago—a fact of which Lord Coleridge does not appear to be aware.

"Scottish Chap Books."+

The

WE wish we could praise Mr. Fraser's subjects as highly as his workmanship. The historian who seeks for the traces of a people's every-day-life and manners in their street-ballads, as Macaulay did, will than himk for his industry. If his own countrymen are diverted, as they seem to be, with this very

Phantasmion. A Fairy Tale. By Sara Coleridge. With an Introductory Preface by Lord Coleridge. Roberts Brothers, Boston.

+ Scottish Chap Books. By John Fraser. Part 2. New York: Henry L. Hinton.

broad and lively portrait, restored by his touch, of Scotch morality in the lower classes a hundred and fifty years ago, it is much to the credit of their philosophy. Some knowledge or suspicion of such conditions of life may have helped to justify Dr. Johnson's ferocious dislike for his northern fellow-subjects.

Still, facts, whether savory or unsavory, are worth preserving, not for the sake of their own value so much as for that of the inferences they suggest. The graffiti of Pompeian walls and pavements betray in their rude scrawls the very realities that stately literature only hints at. The songs of these chap books are just as real, and far less desperately gross. If it has taken some centuries for human nature to reach that higher plane of sentiment, perhaps a few more may quite eradicate the coarseness and unconscious indelicacy with which the national character, according to our author, is still to some extent imbued. Modern times have, at least, this advantage over ancient ones, that in the characters of most civilized nations there is that rude healthiness which our author attributes to that of the Scotch, preserving it even in its impurity from putrefaction.

Something of that rude healthiness is necessary for the enjoyment of this book, which squeamish persons will certainly not like. But it is heartier in its fun, and safer in its frankness than the mincing pruriencies of the yellow-covered school. The direct narrative of these low life sketches is, of course, commonplace and narrow enough, but they abound in side-lights thrown on political and religious conditions, and their shrewd sense, homely wit, and free, living touch are irresistible. When all originality is fast becoming reduced to a level of commonplace, as modern improvement hurries ever faster with its work of making every people and every custom like every other, we may thank such explorers as our author, whose labors rescue from seldom visited nooks things worth preserving, even if trifles, because they are quaint and genuine relics of a life once real.

"Yale Lectures on Preaching."

THE endowment with which Mr. Sage, of Brooklyn, established the Lyman Beecher Lectureship of Preaching, in the Yale Divinity School, has already given to the world the two most useful volumes of homiletics to be found in any language. The terms of the endowment provided that, for three years in succession, the lectureship should be filled by the Reverend Henry Ward Beecher, and the third series of his lectures has already been given, and will, no doubt, be soon published; meanwhile we have not yet noticed the second series, which has been for some months before the public from the press of J. B. Ford & Co.

These lectures of the second year cover a wide variety of topics, and, indeed, deal less with preaching, properly so called, than with the accessories of preaching in the general conduct of church affairs.

For this very reason they are, if anything, the more valuable. It is in regard to such matters of prac tical detail that young ministers, and some who are not young also,-need wise and helpful counsel, and counsel which is born of large and various experience. No man's experience in such matters has been larger and wider than Mr. Beecher's; and few men are better fitted to give counsel in regard to them in a spirit of generous sympathy, and with a sagacious knowledge of the necessities of his less experienced brethren. So far from showing any signs of weariness or exhaustion, this second series of lectures is as fresh and vivid, and as full of earnest hope and courage as was the series published in the first volume, and already widely circulated in more languages than one.

Lange on Revelation.

THE important work of translating and re-editing the commentary of Lange, now for some years in progress by Scribner, Armstrong & Co., is completed, so far as the New Testament is concerned, by the appearance of the volume on the Apocalypse. To say that this volume is wholly satisfactory is to say far more than has ever yet been said of any commentary on that most difficult and obscure part of the Sacred Scriptures. But, just because it is so difficult and obscure, it is all the more necessary to study it with all the help that one can gain from the learning and skill of other students. Of the learning and skill with which the work has been in this instance conducted, especially by the American Editor, the Rev. Dr. Craven of Newark, N. J., there is abundant evidence. It would be too much to expect from the students of this volume complete agreement with the interpretations to which Dr. Craven's views have led him. But it is not too much to say that there will be a genuine respect for the laborious and conscientious fidelity with which his work has been performed.

A copious and convenient index to the Commentary on the New Testament, is included in this volume.

Stanley's "Coomassie and Magdala.". MR. HENRY M. STANLEY, whose audacious and successful enterprise in the search for Livingstone made him at once and everywhere famous, had been an African traveler before, and has been one since. He accompanied the army of Sir Robert Napier in that Abyssinian Campaign which ended in the capture of the fortress of Magdala and the death of the Emperor Theodore. And, still in the capacity of correspondent for the "New York Herald," he entered the Ashantee capital with the army of Su Garnet Wolesley and described the progress and result of that campaign. Out of his newspaper letters he has compiled this most readable volume, abundantly furnished with maps and illustrations. and forming a valuable record of two military