common people, and his relations with the officials were necessarily confined to a more or less formal interchange of courtesies. The story of Townsend Harris's life before and after his treaty-winning mission is told by Dr. Griffis, who has also supplied many illuminating footnotes to the journal.

Literature. The Entail, or The Lairds of Grippy, has appeared in the new edition of Galt's (selected) works, edited by D. Storrar Meldrum. (Roberts.) This record of the fortunes, and still more of the humors of three generations of the Walkinshaw family is almost in its author's best vein throughout. Its homely realism is seldom marred by the introduction of those romantic and sensational episodes that show Galt at his worst, though perhaps his limitations, even in his own range, are more evident here than in any other of his novels of equal importance. Though the old laird and his half-witted son are hardly less noteworthy character-studies, most readers, we imagine, will agree with Mr. Crockett in finding the altogether excellent presentment of the Leddy Grippy the crowning merit of the book, and will understand why Lord Byron should have read the history of her household three times over for her sake. — Marryat's Peter Simple, illustrated by J. Ayton Symington, has been added to Macmillan's Standard Novels. Mr. David Hannay, in his admirable introduction, agrees, we think justly, with the popular estimate of this tale, as on the whole its writer's best, and aptly sums up the matter in this sound bit of criticism: "Marryat wrote Peter Simple because he was full of the subject, while in later times he was compelled to get up the subject because he wanted to write a book." -Sybil, or The Two Nations, illustrated by F. Pegram, has also been brought out in this series. Disraeli was the inventor as well as the greatest artificer of the political novel, and of his works of this class Sybil is perhaps the best ; certainly it is the sincerest in feeling. The essay in which Mr. H. D. Traill introduces this romance, now half a century old, to its new readers is an excellent commentary on the novel, and also, in part, on its author's position as a novelist. The Standard Novels continues the republication of Peacock's tales in a volume containing Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey; the first being the writer's earliest essay in story-telling after that new

fashion at least in English - which wa to prove in many ways peculiar to himself, though undoubtedly, as Mr. Saintsbury points out, Marmontel's Contes Morar served as his models. Nightmare Abbey, his third book in point of time, shows the great advance made by the author in the interval, and his emancipation from his French master. Indeed, in comparison, Headlong Hall seems but 'prentice work. (Macmil

lan.) - Two new numbers of the Temple Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida, and Coriolanus, have been issued. (Dent, London; Macmillan, New York.) Frequent use of these volumes confirms our opinion that they are edited with singularly good taste and reticence. - The Arden Shakespeare is the general title of a group of books included in Heath's English Classics (D. C. Heath & Co., Boston), and, so far as we have received them, limited to As You Like It, Hamlet, Julius Cæsar, Twelfth Night, Macbeth, and Richard II. They are edited by different English scholars upon a conservative plan which looks especially toward what may be called a literary apprehension of the dramas. The several editors plainly regard the student as wishing to know his Shakespeare as Shakespeare, and not as a curious Elizabethan writer who forgot his grammar and remembered his dictionary.

- The neat People's Edition of Tennyson (Macmillan) has advanced two more numbers, one occupied with Will Waterproof and Other Poems, the other with a portion of The Princess. The latest volume in Macmillan's edition of Dickens contains A Tale of Two Cities and The Mystery of Edwin Drood. The introductions, by Dickens's son, are interesting, especially as regards the latter tale. For one thing, he disposes authoritatively of the notion that Wilkie Collins had anything to do with a continuation of Edwin Drood.

Poetry and the Drama. The New Poems, by Christina Rossetti, which her brother William has collected, arranged, and anno tated (Macmillan), make one very eager to have a full and well-ordered collection of all her poems. A taste for her verse is partly acquired, partly inborn, to certain na tures. It can scarcely be expected that her work will ever be largely popular, yet it contains just that bouquet of religion which is so rare in Protestant poetry, and so grateful to those who have otherwise to content

themselves with the few really beautiful hymns. King Arthur, a Drama in a Prologue and Four Acts, by J. Comyns Carr. (Macmillan.) In the old-fashioned phrase, this is a drama rather for the stage than the closet; which is not to affirm that it cannot be read with pleasure by others than those to whom it recalls a very agreeable theatrical experience. For, aside from its dramatic virtues, it is always poetic in feeling, if sometimes halting in expression; and, in view of the character and aims of most contemporary stage literature, it excites gratitude that there is still a dramatist who will write a play like this, and a manager who will worthily produce it. A New Library of Poetry and Song, edited by William Cullen Bryant. With his Review of Poets and Poetry from the Time of Chaucer. Revised and enlarged with Recent Authors, and containing a Dictionary of Poetical Quotations. (Fords, Howard & Hulbert.) The new poets and their accompanying illustrations are a distinct addition to the book, both in practical value and in appearance. The Year Book of The Pe

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gasus. (J. B. Lippincott Co.) The first publication of the Pegasus Club of Philadelphia, with poems by twenty-one members. - Wayside Poems, by Wallace Bruce. (Harpers.) — Fact and Fancy, Humorous Poems, by Cupid Jones. (Putnams.) — The New World, with Other Verse, by Louis James Block. (Putnams.) — The Legend of Aulus, by Flora Macdonald Shearer. (William Doxey, San Francisco.) - Leaves of the Lotos, by David Banks Sickels. (J. Selwin Tait & Sons, New York.) — Volunteer Grain, by Francis F. Browne. (Way & Williams, Chicago.)- Acrisius, King of Argos, and Other Poems, by Horace Eaton Walker. (George I. Putnam Co., Claremont, N. H.) — Washington, or The Revolution, a Drama, by Ethan Allen. In Two Parts. Part Second. (F. Tennyson Neely, Chicago).

Fiction. My Lady Nobody, by Maarten Maartens. (Harpers.) The Dutch gentleman who, under the pen name of Maarten Maartens, has in the last few years won an honorable position among English novelists, gives us in this story another of his realistic studies of life in Holland, in this case primarily that of a noble family of cultivated and, to their sorrow, costly tastes, as it is affected by the existence of the pretty, selfreliant daughter of the Dominé of the vil

lage near the manor-house. It is a book for a leisurely reader, for it is very long, and its effects are produced by careful elaboration and numberless minute touches. But, large as is the stage, it is overcrowded with characters, and there are certain persons, and episodes in which they play their parts, mainly humorous after very conventional patterns, that could easily have been spared, as the few puppets incommode the living actors in the drama. - Kitwyk Stories, by Anna Eichberg King. (Century Co.) There is little kinship, even by descent, between Mr. Maartens's men and women and the denizens of Mrs. King's eighteenth-century Dutch village. Vivid descriptive touches here and there depict such a little town and the surrounding country faithfully enough, but the place is used for its picturesque effect, and the people find their prototypes in the world of Diedrich Knickerbocker. The book is well illustrated, and its blue-and-white cover attractively simulates old Delft ware. — The Chronicles of Count Antonio, by Anthony Hope. (Appletons.) Notwithstanding the ingenuity and inventive power shown in devising the numerous thrilling adventures which befall Count Antonio, a gentleman whose character displays a curious blending of fourteenth and nineteenth century qualities, his history, except perhaps to boy readers, is on the whole rather dull, a new word to use in connection with Anthony Hope. This is partly because of the manner of the supposed narrator, a prolix old monk, who proves himself a bore very speedily. In brief, the medievalism of the tale is of an extremely artificial kind ; and as to its adventurous element, there are certain writers, dear to youth, who can do that sort of thing nearly as well. - Corruption, by Percy White. (Appletons.) Certain episodes in the history of Paul Carew, M. P., the well-born and brilliant leader of one of the subdivisions of the Radical party, who ruins his career for the love of a friend's wife. The story of this passion, with its political underplot, is told with a good deal of cleverness, the cleverness of a well-equipped journalist. But neither the portrait of the distinguished and corrupt hero, nor the still more carefully elaborated one of the woman who is at once his victim and his enslaver, has any real vitality. The devoted and rather commonplace wife of

the one and the honest, simple-minded husband of the other, two merely subsidiary characters, are much more living and veracious. A Hard Woman, a Story in Scenes, by Violet Hunt. (Appletons.) Miss Hunt is as yet but a far-off follower of Gyp, but she has the gift of writing bright, vivacious, pointed dialogue, a certain skill in characterization, and sometimes a touch of genuine dramatic power, together with several grains of that cynical, worldly-wise smartness which is one of the literary fashions of the day. Lydia Munday, with her easy success, superficial cleverness, and very real shallowness, egotism, and folly, is an extremely disagreeable, but a sufficiently lifelike personage, and the history of her downward career is steadily interesting. The good man who is so unfortunate as to be her husband is by no means drawn with so sure and strong a hand. - A Man and his Womankind, by Nora Vynné. (Holt.) The story of a young man who is petted and spoiled by his mother and sister, and later by his wife, the first two sacrificing themselves for years to keep family troubles from his knowledge; their reward being, of course, his anger and contempt when he discovers that he has been treated as a child. We said it was his story, but in fact it is only a fragment of it, for long before it is finished the book ends. This is the more unpardonable because we feel perfectly confident that the author could have brought it successfully to its natural conclusion. It is in truth a clever and entertaining, if incomplete sketch. But why should so sensible a writer indulge in the petty affectation of transforming her hero's and heroine's not very unusual names into Cedic and Cicily? College Girls, by Abbe Carter Goodloe. (Scribners.) Fourteen stories of the chipping shell order. The reader who wishes to get an insight into the actual life of college girls will be disappointed, for the writer is more eager to get her girls out of college into the world than to make careful studies of the interior. Her attempt at reproducing the young collegian's brother is equally futile. There is a disagreeable air of knowingness about the book, her young women are of the world, and not in it; the fiction seems to be built on other fiction, and that the clever, not the great fiction; in short, it is a book to make the judicious grieve, and to raise doubts as to the con

tribution to literature to be expected from women's colleges. -Cherryfield Hall, an Episode in the Career of an Adventuress, by Frederic Henry Balfour. (Putnams.) A partly sensational, and partly, in intention, humorous tale, of very ordinary quality both in plot and in characterization. That the preposterous heroine should, without visible qualifications, and apparently with perfect ease, obtain an exceptionally desirable position as governess in a county family, will put to a severe strain the credulity of even the uncritical novel-devourer. -Uncle Remus, his Songs and his Sayings, by Joel Chandler Harris. New and Revised Edition, with One Hundred and Twelve Illustrations by A. B. Frost. (Appletons.) One likes to have pictures of his old friends, and the reader is convinced that these portraits of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, Brer Tarrypin, Brer Bar, and the rest are as authentic as they are amusing. But where are Miss Meadows en de gals? Possibly Mr. Frost is as much in the dark about them as Uncle Remus left the little boy.

Nature and Travel. Constantinople, by Edwin A. Grosvenor, with an Introduction by General Lew Wallace. In two volumes. Illustrated. (Roberts.) By the time one has reached the seven hundred and eightysixth page of these two octavo volumes, — by no means an arduous task, — and indeed long before that, he is ready to agree with Professor Grosvenor that Constantinople is one of the most interesting cities in the world; and this in spite of the fact that the author's interest in the city is restricted almost entirely to its architecture and antiquities, and to the historical associations which are connected with nearly every rod of its territory. If the reader wishes to learn about modern life in Constantinople, he had better turn elsewhere; but even if he takes up this book under a misapprehension, he will have no regrets, nor will he be likely to put it away before he has read it through. After chapters on the three epochs of Byzantian history, Greek, Roman, and Turkish, — on the rise of the Ottomans, and on the present Sultan, comes the main body of the work, a description of the city from the archæologist's and historian's point of view. Professor Grosvenor illuminates his text with an abundance of tradition and myth. He is possessed by a fine enthusiasm which removes his book

as far as possible from a mere repository of facts and legends; and if it leads him occasionally into extravagances of statement, as where he assures us that the view from the tower of Galata is unsurpassed on this globe, yet it never degenerates into gush. There are many interesting illustrations, chiefly from photographs, and a few useful maps and plans. — Missouri Botanical Garden, Sixth Annual Report. (Published by the Board of Trustees, St. Louis.) Besides the formal reports of officers and director, this volume contains five valuable scientific papers. An interesting instance of the interdependence of plants and animals is shown by Mr. Herbert J. Webber in

his Studies on the Dissemination and Leaf Reflexion of Yucca aloifolia. This species of Florida yucca has adapted its fruit to meet the wants of the mocking-bird, who fulfills his part of the bargain by sowing the seed. The larva of a moth also assists in the dissemination, taking its pay in the shape of food and lodging. The Evolution of Horticulture in New England, by Daniel Denison Slade. (Putnams.) A dainty little book, which gives a history of the practice of gardening from the earliest times in the colonies, rather than an account of the growth and development of methods of cultivation and arrangement. The author quotes liberally from the old writers.

Above the

My gardener is stirring his fire World. of dry leaves and twigs, while I venture these observations. There are two ways of departure from this world. One is to soar above it so high that the landscape looks to us as it does to the eagle, while all cares and details of life are so far removed that it is as though they were not. Those who have adventured into the upper air, above the clouds, tell us that the spectacle is most enchanting; that, though the noises of pasture and farmyard, of lowing herds and bleating flocks, are distinctly audible, yet these sounds are so softened by distance that their harshness seems translated into melody, and even that measure of civilization which finds expression in the steam whistle or the factory bell becomes, by some sublimating process, if not mute to our senses, at least no longer a disturbing element.

Now, the other way of ascending from earth, when we have no wings for flight, is so to ignore the world and its belongings that they fade from beneath us, leaving us alone, and less conscious of that life we would not live than even when our physical selves are sailing in the aeronaut's car above the clouds. In effect, the solid earth is melted away from around us.

I need not say, what every dreamer knows, that the time in which this ethereal ascension is best facilitated is the very early spring,

-that interval which one might call the promise of spring, and which is heralded by strange subtle odors belonging to no plant or flower that I know, yet filling the breast with such glad forebodings as may have been borne from the Spice Islands to the first voyagers thither; and when the gardener makes a burnt offering of all stray branches and errant leaves, ah, why does the crackling wood, in the open air, smell sweeter to us than all Araby the blest? The exhaled metaphor is of youth, health, holiday. The dewy freshness of life's morning, with its clouds, tears, sunshine, and wet grass, is brought home to us by a waft of odor which is not perfume save to the soul!

I am also reminded that at no other time of the year is man so superstitious, so blessedly credulous of whatever Fancy offers for his acceptance. This is the season of revival for those dear myths of the senses, the dim frequenters of some immemorial and totally elusive preëxistence, which we would, but cannot clearly recall. Shelley, who seems throughout the revolving year never quite to lose sight of this fascinating period, inquires:

"O Spring, of hope and love and youth and gladness, Wind-winged emblem! brightest, best, and fairest! Whence comest thou, when with dark Winter's sad

ness

The tears that fade in sunny smiles thou sharest ?
Sister of joy! thou art the child who wearest
Thy mother's dying smile, tender and sweet;

Thy mother Autumn, for whose grave thou bearest Fresh flowers, and beams like flowers, with gentle feet,

Disturbing not the leaves which are her windingsheet."

We cannot all be poets, but there are moments when, by a sort of supramundane flitting, we half discover which way the poets have gone; and I am much obliged to my garden fire for lending Fancy a makeshift pair of wings.

A Book-Lov- When a lonely little girl in a er's Paradise. dull London lodging - house, I thought of unknown Mr. Mudie as the happiest man in the big city. The library was only a few steps away, and I used to glue my longing eyes to the show-windows, craving greedily to devour the second-hand volumes displayed in long, tempting rows within. The vans labeled "Mudie's Library," which were constantly being laden and emptied before the entrance, seemed to my hungry child-heart vessels of pure delight, and I used to wonder, as children dumbly do, who Mudie might be, owning all this wealth for which my imagination cried out; feeling somehow that the Great Unknown and I had a bond of sympathy, he with his caravansary of literature, and I with my love for the dear books. So it was with a thrill of vivid recollection that, years after, at a Roman party, I met the Mudies, initiated a friendship since become too dear to be described here, and learned to know something of a man who was a blessing in his generation.

As the stately river, followed back to its source, resolves itself into a tiny brook hiding its head under overhanging elder blossoms, the extensive library on Oxford Street runs its roots back to a little bookshop in Cheyne Walk, where, early in the century, a young man had the grace to recognize that many people without the means to buy them loved the best books. At first he loaned his own standard books to his friends, and then, finding how eagerly they were sought after, he put a notice in his window that other young men might come and borSoon he found it best to charge a penny a volume for repairing the books. So the wee stream grew and broadened. The volumes circulated now number about three and a half millions. Five to six thousand are delivered daily by the great vans which have supplanted the little cart of early days, and the staff employed includes two hun

row.

dred and fifty-four persons, many of them veteran servants who take an intense family pride in everything connected with the library. I was amused at being told that the burly old soldier who acts as usher, and who worships every one of the name of Mudie, had been in their employ only fifteen years. Eight or nine hundred boxes of books are weekly dispatched to the provinces by rail, and about one hundred and twenty by carrier. The "hospital," where at first a man and a boy repaired torn, broken-backed volumes, has developed into a bookbinding department, in which nearly a hundred persons are employed and beautiful work is done. A specialty of the house is a binding called "Mudie calf," and for the preparation of this leather the head man shuts himself up alone, to preserve the secret process.

Though best known as a library, Mudie's is also a large bookselling concern, supplying libraries in Europe, India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Zanzibar, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast; and some of the tin-lined cases in which books are sent to all quarters of the globe have been recovered after shipwrecks, and their contents found quite uninjured. One room in the library is devoted to the Pegasus Club, whose object is to bring together all the members of the staff and promote good-fellowship. Newspapers and magazines are provided for the members, and the whist and chess tournaments, in which the managers award prizes, are prominent features of the symposium.

It may be interesting to Atlantic readers that the only book ever published by Mudie was Lowell's Poems. Lowell could not find an English publisher for them, and Mr. Mudie, who was his friend and believed in them, undertook their publication, which proved a success. The fate of a new book is largely affected by the number of copies subscribed for by Mudie.

It is interesting to visit the "catacombs" of the queen of circulating libraries, in which are stacked whole editions, of the books whose day is dead. Mudie subscribed for thirty-five hundred copies of Disraeli's Endymion, and on the day it was to be issued a large crowd in the street awaited the opening of the library. It is curious what fluctuations the literature market is subject to. The ebb of Stanley's popularity threw back on the library a dead weight of about