appeals also to the imagination. We are struck by the actuality of the characters; they live and breathe, for their creator has lived with them and has, so to speak, been able to draw from life. The book might have been called Marcella II.," for in some respects "Sir George Tressady" is a sequel to "Marcella." In the new story the central figure is certainly Marcella, who is now the wife of Lord Maxwell. The hero, George Tressady, is but a satellite compared with the beautiful Lady Maxwell, and the reader is more concerned with the doings and the emotions of the woman than with the politics and parliamentary life of the man. Politics, social questions, speculative philanthrophy--all these are introduced, but not so noticeably as in the novelist's earlier works, and they are artistically introduced, for they influence the lives of the dramatis persona. Another feature is that there is more femininity and less humanitarianism in this book than in any one of its predecessors. Again we meet our old friend Betty who is now the wife of Sir Francis Leven. We have Letty, Letty, with the curious, hard little face, under the outer softness of line and hue," a shallow little conventional woman, who gets herself married to Tressady, much to the 66 surprise of his friends. Sir George Tressady is London Publishers' Circular. Constitutional History of the United States. George Ticknor Curtis described the origin, Mrs. Humphry Ward comes from the brilliant Arnold family of which Matthew Arnold was a member. She is forty-five years of age, and is the granddaughter of Dr. Arnold, of Rugby, dear to the hearts of all readers of "Tom Brown." Mrs. Ward spent her early years in Oxford and grew up under the influences of that city's intellectual life. . She was known to her friends as a scholar and a writer of learned essays long before she developed into a novSo he stepped forward with quiet matter-of-fact ease to greet her. elist. She is not only a student of books, J B. Lippincott Company. From Philippa." but of men, and her time is divided almost equally between her University Extension work and writing. She has just succeeded in raising funds for a "Passamore Edwards House" after the manner of "Toynbee Hall," that is to be erected in the Bloomsbury quarter of London. N. Y. World. In December "The Typewriter Almanac, Diary and Directory for 1897" will be issued by the Warwick Publishing Company. London Publishers' Circular. the United States. This work, which was originally published in two volumes, was revised in 1889 and reissued in one volume, and it was at the same time announced that the second volume was in preparation, which would carry the history of the Constitution to the close of the civil war, and, indeed, throughout the changes which have followed it. The author did not live to fulfill entirely his intentions, but when he died, in March, 1894, he had completed a first draft of thirteen chapters, the last of which deals with the Presidential election of 1876, and with the Electoral Commission. Up to this point his researches had been finished and the substance of their results had been set forth. It is these thirteen chapters, of great value as regards the conclusions reached, but chargeable with some defects of style, owing to the author's inability to revise them, which have been edited by Mr. Joseph Culbertson Clayton and are now published in a large octavo volume. The importance of the treatise, considered as a contribution to constitutional history, can only be appreciated by one who inspects it carefully from end to end, but we can exemplify its usefulness by referring briefly to some of its most interesting features. In a preliminary chapter on the "history of opinion concerning the nature of the Constitution," Mr. Curtis points out that the right of secession, considered as a right implied in the Constitution, was not asserted in the time of nullification, although the theoretical principles of both doctrines were much alike. In the Southern States, however, at the end of thirty years thereafter the belief in a on constitutional right of secession from the Union had become so prevalent that the first apprehension of danger, whether well or ill-founded, it could be acted upon in a time of great excitement. Now that such tendencies can be calmly analyzed, Mr. Curtis deems it of consequence to record that the doctrine of secession had no advocates when nullification was attempted in South Carolina, and especially that Mr. Calhoun himself did not uphold or propound it. The first fact to which attention is directed is that, when Mr. Hayne, in the debate of 1830, set up the right of nullification, he declared that the process of its exercise by a State was simply to arrest the execution, within her own limits, of an obnoxious act of Congress upon the ground of its being a violation of the Constitution, and to hold it in an inoperative condition until a convention of the States should have decided, by a two-thirds vote of the States, that it was constitutionally valid, or until, if the act was pronounced unconstitutional, the convention should have proposed to amend the Constitution as the exigencies required. This was the doctrine of Mr. Calhoun, and it was certainly The Interview with the Pacha. Charles Scribner's Sons. From "The Edge of the Orient." consistent with an adherence to the Union by the State of South Carolina, which might have made this appeal to the body, a convention of the States, that he regarded as the tribunal paramount, in our system, to every other. The advocates of secession, in 1860-61, went beyond Mr. Calhoun, although they supposed themselves to be justified by his authority, because he had so strenuously upheld State rights thirty years before. Their deductions were drawn from some of his principles, but he himself would not have drawn those deductions. He left on record a full exposition of his own distinctions between nullification and secession. This exposition is quoted in full in the book. In the same chapter Mr. Curtis examines the vexed question whether the famous Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798 did or did not mean to assert a reserved right of the States to withdraw, in whole or in part, temporarily or finally, the powers granted by the Constitution to the Federal Government. It has been supposed by some that they did mean to assert such rights, and hence arose, in former times, a want of discrimination as to the meaning of the word "delegated" when applied to the powers granted by the Constitution, it being maintained in certain quarters that the word itself implied a right of revocation or withdrawal, as a principle may revoke or withdraw the powers of an agent. This interpretation of the word was repudiated by Madison himself, the author of the Virginia Resolutions of '98. Charles Scribner's Sons. Cairo and the Nile. He brings to the study and portrayal of the scenes and types of these Eastern localities a fresh eye, a contagious enthusiasm, and a graphic and picturesque style. The illustrations are a valuable and entertaining accompaniment to the text. Shadoof Workers on the Banks of the Nile. From "The Edge of the Orient." Among the other important topics discussed in the book are the revenue laws of the United States, the legislation relating to a national bank, the acquisition of Louisiana, Florida and parts of Mexico, the admission of Texas, the Missouri Compromise and its repeal, the Dred Scott case, and the reconstruction legislation. The author also intended to examine, in subsequent chapters, had he lived, the constitutional warrant for the suspension of habeas corpus during the civil war and for the Proclamation of Emancipation. He purposed also to review the impeachment of President Johnson and the judicial construction of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments. The volume, therefore, as we have it, falls materially short of what Mr. Curtis meant to make it: but however curtailed, it will be found of permanent and exceptional, we might even say of unique, value. M. W. H. in the N. Y. Sun. A Great Educationalist. The Great Didactic of John Amos Comenius. Now for the first time Englished. With introductions, biographical and historical. By M. W. Keatinge, B. A. With a portrait. 468 pp.. With an appendix. 12mo, $1.50; by mail, $1.65. John Amos Comenius is a name almost unknown in this nineteenth century; and yet no name in the scholastic world during the early part of the seventeenth century was more widely known or more highly prized in the schools and universities of Europe. This volume does more than present "the Great Didactic" of Comenius for the first time in English. It supplies several important "Introductions, biographical and historical," bearing upon the state of education in Comenius's time, and the works, character, and career of the greatest educationalist of that remarkable century. These introductions are based on original research, and on the best German authorities. They embody a fuller account of the great educationalist's life and works than has been hitherto accessible to the English reader, while "a part of the contents," writes Mr. Keatinge, is, we believe, a fresh contribution to the biography and the the name of "Sedulitas." Here he came under his guardian of the small fortune left him by wards," writes his biographer: His academical education was begun at the 66 London Speaker. Stories by H. C. Bunner. Love in Old Cloathes, and Other Stories. It was a pretty conceit of Bunner's to describe an episode in the quaint language of the past as he has worked it out in his "Love in Old Cloathes." It looks easy, but it was a difficult thing to do to make it graceful and not awkward or jejune. Mistress Ffrench-and pray bear in mind the worth of the double fwhen he saw her "to Fyre Island," he thus describes: "She swimms lyke to a Fishe. butt everie Stroke of Her white Arms (of a lovelie Roundness) cleft as it were my Hearte, rather y'n ye Water. She bow'd to me, in goinge into ye Water, so muche Dignitie, & agayn in Cominge out, but yis Tyme w. lesse Dignitie, by reason of ye Water in Her Cloathes & her Haire in Her Eyes." There are altogether seven sketches in this volume, and not one of them without conspicuous merit. Bunner was possessed of spicuous merit. Bunner great natural talent, and had all the culture needed. It was his delight, perhaps his recreation, to be antithetical, so he would bring purposely into opposition what might have been in less skilful hands jarring elements, but the supreme talent he had was in adjusting these seemingly incongruous elements. We have not had in this country a better story teller than was Bunner, nor one |