MAGAZINES The Century has much of interest concerning two topics apropos of the Queen's Jubilee and the dedication of the Shaw Memorial in Boston. Material relating to the Jubilee consists of a tribute to Queen Victoria by Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, and an article by Florence Hayward on "Queen Victoria's Coronation Roll." A group of papers by Edward Atkinson, W. A. Coffin and T. W. Higginson, relate to the monument, the sculptor, Augustus St. Gaudens, and the colored troops in war. The articles are rich in illustrations. Professor Barrett Wendell's play, "Ralegh in Guiana," is published in current issue of Scribner's. Montgomery Schuyler writes of "The New Library of Congress," and James W. Alexander of "Undergraduate Life at Princeton." Stephen Crane weaves into a story, entitled the Korosko, The Open Boat," his ex periences on the occasion of the wreck of the Commodore" off the coast of Florida. Octave Thanet contributes the first of a series of papers on the problem of Labor and Capital, entitled "The Non-Combatant." Harper's introduces a new novel by Frank R. Stockton in the first instalment of "The Great Stone of Sardis." There is the first of two papers on the "Celebrities of the House of Commons," by T. P. O'Connor. "A New Switzerland," by Edwin Lord Weeks, and "Meteorological Progress of the Century," by Henry Smith Williams, are profusely illustrated. Among the notable features of current Godey's might be mentioned-an illustrated article entitled "The Streets in Cairo," by Francis E. Clark; "Pottery in America," by George Ethelbert Walsh; "French Opera in New Orleans," by J. W. Dodge. Contributors of fiction include Gilbert Cranmer, Lizzie Hyer Neff, V. D. Hyde, and Maud Howard Peterson. An article of general interest, telling about the Flying Machine," contributed by its promoter, Professor S. P. Langley, leads in McClure's. Illustrations of the machine and portrait of Professor Langley accompany the article. Twenty-five portraits of Queen Victoria is a very attractive feature of the number. William Allen White writes about “ A Recent Confederate Victory" and Captain Musgrove Davis "Some Personal Experiences in the War." "Picturesque Places in Romance and History," by Beatrice Sturges, leads in Peterson's. Arother article of interest is "The True Story of Mother Goose," which gives an ENGLISH. The Strand for June introduces a new serial by A. Conan Doyle, entitled "The Tragedy of which is followed by an interesting illustrated article on "The American Art Colony at Paris," by Arthur Tierney. Elephants at Work," with its numerous illustrations, is another important feature. J. Holt Schooling contributes a scientific article on "The Weight of the Earth.” Clark Russell continues the account of Nelson in The New Illustrated Magazine. John Foster Fraser describes "The Spanish Embassy in London," and James Milne "St. George's, Hanover Square." Morley Roberts, Thomas Cobb, F. W. Haselfoot, A. J. Dawson and others are contributors of fiction. The London letter by the editor is spicy, as usual. EDUCATIONAL. Noteworthy articles in The Month are: "Our Correspondents in the East," a parody on the work of Rudyard Kipling, Richard Harding Davis and Stephen Crane, by Charles Battell Loomis; "Harriet Beecher Stowe," a paper on her work and the Beecher family, by Gerald Stanley Lee; "Grant Entombed," with pictures of the tomb and the memorial medal, and a criticism of the mausoleum from an architectural point of view. The frontispiece of The Chautauquan is a portrait of Mayor William L. Strong of New York City. Andrew C. Wheeler contributes a sketch of the Mayor, which embodies some of the reforms brought about during his term of office. H. H. Ragan produces the second paper on "Paris the Magnificent " and James Albert Woodburn writes about "France in the American Revolution." Clinton Scollard's serial "The Son of a Tory" is concluded. Important features in the Educational Review are: "The New Gifts of the Kindergarten," illustrated, by Minnie M. Glidden; "What Victoria Has Seen," by William George Jordan, is the leading article in the Ladies' Home Journal and reviews the progress made by the world at large in science, education, legislation, religious tolerance and inventions during her sixty years' reign. Portraits of the Queen at different times in her life and pictures of her residences accompany the article. "When John Wesley Preached in Georgia," by Rev. W. J. Scott, comes under theGreat Personal Events" series. There are two articles giving suggestions for the arrangement of the garden of both country and city home, by W. L. Price and Eben E. Rexford. 66 "Quo Vadis," by Henryk Sienkiewicz, $1.50. Miss Archer Archer," by Clara Louise Burnham, 90 cents. "The Descendant," 90 cents. "The Story-teller's Pack," by Frank Stockton, $1.10. "On the Face of the Waters," by Flora Annie Steel, $1.10. "Cuba in War Time," by Richard Harding Davis," 90 cents. "Phroso," by Anthony Hope, $1.35. "American Lands and Letters,' by Donald G. Mitchell, $1.90. "Lads' Love," by S. R. Crockett, $1.IO. "How to Know the Wild Flowers," by Mrs. William Starr Dana, $1.58. At Wanamaker's, New York: "The Story-teller's Pack," by Frank Stockton, $1.10. 'Hilda Strafford," by Beatrice Harraden, 90 cents. "Quo Vadis," by Henryk Sienkiewicz, $1.50. "A Transatlantic Chatelaine," by Helen Choate Prince, 90 cents. The Falcon of Langéac," by Isabel Whiteley, $1.10. Lads' Love," by S R. Crockett, $1.10. "The Third Violet." by Stephen Crane, 75 cents. Life of Nelson," by Captain A. T. Mahan, $6.00. June is the pearl of our New England year, Then.. The blue-bird, shifting his light load of song But now, O rapture! sunshine winged and voiced, Save June! Dear June! Now God be praised for June. Chosen and arranged by Rose Porter. REVIEWS Ancient Greek Literature. A History of Ancient Greek Literature. By Gilbert Murray, M. A. Short Histories of the Literatures of the World. Vol. I. Edited by Edmund Gosse. 420 pp. Indexed. 12m0, $1.10; by mail, $1.24. Vigor and freshness, great learning and independence of judgment, are the salient characteristics of Mr. Murray's history of Greek literature. Mr. Gosse's introduction, the list of his collaborators, his own wide knowledge and delicate taste, and, finally, the manner in which his first volume is executed, all assure us that whatever high hopes he may raise we need have no fear of their ample fulfilment. The editor himself undertakes English literature; Dr Dowden, French; Dr. Brandes, Scandinavian; Dr. Verrall, Latin; Dr. Herford, German; Spanish, Sanskrit, Hungarian, and even Japanese are provided for, and we venture to predict that several obvious gaps, such as Russian, Polish, Arabic and Persian, will have to be filled before the editor can be allowed to relinquish his task. Mr. Murray confesses the difficulty he has found in striking a balance between the scientific and literary sides of his subject. In the case of Homer the scientific scale dip: heavily. There is a striking reference to the living force of certain words in Epic Greek that "call up not precisely the look or sound, but the exact emotional impression of morning and wind and sea;" but this is almost a solitary literary criticism. On the other hand, we have an admirable historical account of the process by which the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" probably became separated from other poems equally regarded as 46 Homeric" in early times. Mr. Murray finds the central explanation in the Panathenaic recitations, which fixed the canonical statements of fact and the order of the incidents; afterwards "the wording of the text line by line was gradually stereotyped by continued processes of school repetition and private reading and literary study, culminating in the minute professional criticism of Zenodotus and his successors at the Alexandrian Library." When we pass from Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and their descendants to later Greek poetry, the literary criticism, though never lengthy, gains a little on the scientific. On the personal lyric, as compared with the choric song, we have this truly pregnant remark: "It is significant of our difficulty in really appreciating Greek poetry that we are usually so much more charmed by the style which all antiquity counted as easier and lower."' The account of Euripides, who "broke himself against the bars both of life and of poetry," is one of the best things in the book -far more convincing than Mr. Verrall's "Euripides the Rationalist." Just at this moment, when so many of us are reading of Dr. Jowett's and Mr. Swinburne's contempt for the most variously estimated of Greek tragedians, Mr. Murray's sympathetic criticism has an enhanced value. When we turn from the poets to the historians, Mr. Murray is even better. The chapters on Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon are all delightful. The picture of Thucydides returning to Athens in 403, "like a ghost from the tomb, a remnant of the old circle of Pericles," is a fine and helpful conception. Only, after Mr. Murray scoffs at the traditional Lives-according to which Thucydides "was murdered in three places and died by disease in another "-and at the modest "historical puzzled so many readers; "Plato has based From "In Joyful Russia." and unscrupulousness, his simplicity and unwholesomeness are vastly refreshing. Jeff Durgin is the son of a poor farmer in the mountains, who alone of his brothers and sisters inherits the rigorous physique of the mother. On the father's death the pinch of poverty induces them to take in boarders, and by slow degrees the farmhouse becomes a prosperous and fashionable hotel, and Jeff is sent to Harvard. The painter whose patronage and help started the Durgins on the road to fortune finds himself installed as the unofficial adviser of the family, a rôle which he is too good-natured to reject, and by the irony of fate is condemned-there is no other word-to be perpetually acting as the friend of a man whom he can neither like nor yet cast off. Jeff's gradual rise in the world, his social aspirations after culture, his relations with his grim but ambitious mother, his flirtations London Speaker. with the "Summer folk" and others, his Many readers will not like Mr. Murray the less for his touches of light-hearted humor. The mention of the old oligarch "whose priceless study of the Athenian constitution is preserved to us by the happy accident of the publisher taking it for Xenophon's;" the reference to the "patriotic organizers who could not bear to leave the Trojan dogs with the best of it," and so excluded the death of Achilles from the orthodox "Iliad ;" the description of Sophocles (after the scholiast) as "quite helpless in representing blasphemy"these are samples of the good things scattered about the volume. engagement to his old playfellow, Cynthia Whitwell-a really beautiful character-form a series of episodes which are treated by Mr. Howells with all his wonted subtlety of analysis. The minor characters are all excellently drawn, and the book is rich in quiet surprises and delicate humor. Mr. Howells gives us glimpses of the "whirlpool," but it is the sanity and the wholesome rusticity rather than the excess and extravagance of American life that are most happily illustrated in his pages. London Spectator. In Joyful Russia. By John A. Logan, Jr. With many illustrations in colors and black-and-white. 275 pp. 12mo, $2.60; by mail, $2.78. This is a delightful book of travel and sightseeing, describing the splendid ceremonies at the coronation of the Czar, and also picturing Russian social life in Moscow and in the country. Mr. Logan's credentials gave him special facilities for seeing everything best worth seeing, and his introductions enabled him to acquaint himself with various phases of life which the average traveler does not see. The son of a soldier, and something of a soldier himself, Mr. Logan could not but be interested in all things that pertain to soldiers. Even that branch of the Russian army detailed for railway station service he described as being made up of "a splendid looking lot of men,' averaging well over six feet. He noticed that although they wore coarse, thick, heavy blanket-like overcoats, they were well cut and well put on. They all wear the regulation sabre, from the private soldier to the Grand Duke, and they wear it with the edge up. D. Appleton and Company. Mr. Logan went to Russia to enjoy himself, and he succeeded. He was there for the coronation, and he enjoyed every advantage either by design or by chance. He traveled as the guest of the Czar, notwithstanding his protests that the honor was not intended for him, and he was let into the throne room just before the coronation by the merest accident There is nothing that Mr. Logan did not see, nothing that he did not try. He pronounces emphatically against vodka and enthusiastically for the Russian bath, which latter he describes as the height of luxury. As might be expected, Mr. Logan has much to say of Russian horses. He is an accomplished horseman himself and knows whereof he writes. On the subject of Russian literature Mr. Logan is eloquent. Before he visited that country he had merely a bowing acquaintance with its great writers, but he has become inti Royal pavilion, Kadynski Plain. From "In Joyful Russia." mate with them since, from Tolstoi to Gogol. Altogether this is a pleasant book, written in a spirit of amiability and enthusiasm. N. Y. World. "The Scholar and the State," by Bishop Potter, is announced. |