ing past every man's door, the quaking bush-covered morasses bordering the high-roads and the tall dikes barring or undermined by the rush of inundation. There are few glimpses permitted into the luxurious interior life of the Netherlands or the sudden misery of war that overwhelmed it; and the great religious interest of the time is feebly dealt with in diluted controversies between women. Yet it hangs over the whole story like a shadow, and the dumb sense of oppression pervading the great towns is well conveyed. The dissolution of society under steady persecution of free thought and belief, and its rescue and reconstruction through energy and faith, are as distinctly read in the toils and fortunes of the hero and heroine as if they had been more largely and directly described. And the spirit of the time is so successfully evoked as to impress us with a feeling of wonder that the evil in human nature should have flourished so rankly and audaciously only three centuries ago, and to suggest the doubt whether in our own day it is really subdued, or only changed and diffused in its manifestation. "Fleurange." * WERE it not announced as a translation, there would be very little about this romance to indicate a French origin. It differs in kind, not in degree, from the standard wicked Gallic novel-it contains no character of mere brilliant selfishness or successful cleverness and the spring of action for the heroine, and for him who fills the place of hero at the end which he does not hold at first, is self-sacrificing duty. In both, this sense of duty is a little too tensely strained for reality, none of those occasional lapses being allowed which must occur with the best of human beings. They are rather too perfect-at least the heroine is so drawnto be quite genuine, and this excessive excellence, of course, requires for its due triumph an excess of cruel ingenuity in trial, which real life seldom offers. Making this slight deduction from her superhuman attractions, Fleurange, or the flower of angels,--for that is the synonym of Gabriel, from whom as her patron saint she takes her other name of Gabrielle, being called indifferently by either,-is a very charming personage, candid, strong, and tender. Born in Italy, and educated in a convent by Madre Madelina, who sits for another admirable but overdrawn portrait of impossible excellence, she is left at Paris, the orphan child of an improvident artist. His picture of Cordelia, painted from her face, inspires a Russian noble, Count George von Walden, with a romantic passion. Adopted by her mother's kindred in Germany, she grows up in their accomplished family, meeting there two cousins, Felix and Clement, for both of whom she becomes a destiny. The author soon finds the atmosphere of father-land too prosaic for romance, and changes the scene. Felix, managing the fortunes of the family, involves them in ruin by gaming. A Fleurange; a novel: from the French of Mme. Augustus Craven Holt & Williams. Frenchman would have solved the difficulty by suicide -the practical German only flies the country. Fleurange, unwilling to remain a burden to their poverty, goes again to Italy as a companion for the princess, the mother of Von Walden. The Count, still worshiping his Cordelia, finds the original even more adorable, and the contest between attachment to him and duty to her patroness is delicately and strongly described. She escapes from the intolerable situation to her convent and Madre Madelina again. Her lover meanwhile seeks the excitement of political conspiracies, led into their toils by the crafty Felix, who plots to destroy his rival. The good sense of Madre Madelina refuses to see in Fleurange's grief a "vocation" to the life of a recluse, and she returns to her family, now prospering again, in seeming hopeless separation from her lover. Before long the conspiracy on the accession of the Emperor Nicholas breaks out; Von Walden, involved with Felix in it, is sentenced to death or Siberia. Fleurange, attended by Clement, still devoted and still self-denying, hastens to St. Petersburg, after gaining the princess's consent to a marriage which will exile her for life as a companion and consolation to her husband. Her petition is sent to the Emperor through Vera, a maid of honor, whose marriage with the Count had once been arranged, and who, still passionately in love with him, is yet unwilling to share his banishment. Discovering Fleurange's history, Vera suppresses the petition, and extorts from her the sacrifice of her purpose, by the promise of obtaining the Count's pardon on condition of exile for four years to his own estates, and marriage with Vera. The Count is basely willing, and Fleurange, though ignorant of his ready faithlessness to her, resigns her hope and love for his sake, and returns to Germany, to become, after a due interval of illness and change and growth, the wife of Clement. The story is not so skillfully constructed as to prevent a feeling of disappointment at this dinoûment The exalted nature of Fleurange, while attracting so many passions, seems to place them all in unworthiness at distance from her. She absorbs indeed too completely the interest of the romance, and the care and finish bestowed on her leave the personages about her comparatively weak and sketchy. There is no effort at analysis of motives; every one, in a plain, straightforward fashion, either does his or her duty or does not do it, and the situations are too simple to give any room for hesitation as to what that duty is, or for self-deception in trying to evade it. Where such a doubt might arise, religion is summarily called in to solve it by mere authority, after the Roman Catholic method. Any effects of description either of scenery or manners are rarely tried, and no movement of humor is attempted. The work is very clever closetnovel writing, and it is singular that a story which combines so few of the elements and rejects so many of the usual arts for exciting interest, should yet succeed in gaining the reader's admiring attention to the simple figure of a candid, resolute girl pursuing no other object than that of doing what is right. "Songs from the Old Dramatists." * HERBERT'S verse should be the motto for these se nice finish of their expression; and though his verses are of rather too delicate a kind to win sudden popula rity, they would have been more generally read and liked, had not interest in the stirring events of the time banished literature from the minds of all but its did not improve his chances of recognition among a professors. His later passionate war-songs, of course, people who knew him only as the Tyrtæus of the South, nor had he any reason to complain of this neglect. Judges of poetry could admire their lyric fire and large execution apart from their motive, just as they distinguished between the divine afflatus and the Hebraic savageness blending in Whittier's inspiration. But ordinary readers could not be expected to care just then to hear themselves called, however melodiously, despots and hirelings. Even among his own people his fame proved very barren. Though he was applauded for reversing Cassandra's story, and chant lections—“ a box where sweets compacted lie." Many of these songs are the only things their authors are known by to general readers. And those most familiar with the writings of a period singular in the richness of a dramatic literature which then flowered and ripened once and for all, find renewed delight in these fragments from their favorites, so grouped as to be brought into comparison. It is a pleasure mingled with pity for our own degenerate time. Not more surely are their contemporaries of the South masters in painting than these are the masters, for our language, in song. One asks the question with wonder, Whither have the freshness and pliancy of the Englishing to believing ears prophecies that never were fultongue gone? All the labored brilliancy and strained variety of the newest verse is tame beside the aptness and sweetness of this nervous speech. Its thought runs over with vigor, if sometimes coarse,—though full of conceits, they are no riddles of introspection,—and its blunt freedom is manlier than veiled sensuousness that grazes indecency. Leaving the later age to its changed tastes and ways, it is interesting to trace in their lighter work the distinctive characters of the early great authors. The very limited conditions of song-writing to which they all submit have not effaced individuality. The peculiar traits of each genius still shine in this narrow range. To name only those most easily recognized, Shakespeare's lithe ethereal fancy does not droop when so confined, nor Jonson with all his fullness of strength forget to be a little cramped and pedantic, nor Milton lose in trifles his pure serenity. So the rollicking license of Beaumont and Fletcher, and Massinger's stateliness, are here in little. The latter unbent less readily than his compeers. In the eighteen plays of his which are preserved, scarcely half a dozen songs occur, and one of these has been fairly likened to Swift's nonsense-stanzas. The song here given is not only the best, but it is the only good one. But to trace the characteristics of each dramatist, as here drawn in miniature, would lead us too far. The book, coming from the Riverside press, is of course a luxury of typography. We only regret that the accomplished illustrator did not shape a clearer finish out of the intentional haziness in which he veils his fine fancies. "The Poems of Henry Timrod." † THE publication of a small volume of Henry Timrod's poems at Boston, about twelve years ago, occasioned no difference of opinion among the critics as to the vigor and purity of his poetic conceptions, or the *Songs from the Old Dramatists: Collected and arranged by A. S. Richardson. New York: Hurd & Houghton. 1873. E. J. Hale & Sons, Publishers. filled, he reaped only the poet's reward of praise and poverty. The pressure of war in a ruined state accounts for so hard a fortune, with which the common cant about the fate of genius has nothing to do, for Timrod was neither a weakling like Keats, nor a vanrien like Poe. His life, as reflected in these poems and described in the sketch that introduces them, was a wholly pure and manly one. The "Vision of Poesy," the longest work in this volume and the one most resembling a personal record, discloses the limitations of his powers and experience. He kept too much alone in crowds, and, to quote his own confession of the contrast between his endeavor and the poet's true aim, instead of living in "A sympathy that folds all characters, it could be said of him "It was thy own peculiar difference That thou didst seek: nor didst thou care to find So narrow a range of purpose excluded the hope of fame as a great poet, and there were other reasons sufficient to prevent his becoming a well-known one. He wrote nothing to catch the ear of the groundlings He was completely classic and old-fashioned, in the sense of having studied the best masters, chosen simple themes, and written upon them with severe taste, in unaffected style. He dissects no morbid morals, and apes no mental paroxysms by corresponding verbal contortions. Whatever is subjective in his verse, and there is very little that is so, touches on tender and natural feeling. The poem that strives to be peculiarly classical in its narrower sense, "the Arctic Voyager," catches something of the tone of Tennyson's Ulysses, but fails in transporting us to the sphere of clear heroism, with all accidents of thought, ancient or modern, falling away. The author is happiest in the careful elaboration of some delicate fancy, linked with pathos, as in "The Mother's Wail," or rising into fainter connections, still firmly held, with wide human interests, as in "The Cotton Boll." Within the limits of its powers, Timrod's genius was so complete and sincere that his usual seriousness does not exclude sportive sentiment and a tender grace of humor. "Baby's Age" and many touches in "Katie" leave the lightest effect of playful delicacy and aptness. His characteristic purity of conception and finish of manner are well illustrated by the sonnets, showing the miniature perfection of a Timrod was one of the very few Americans who understand the laws that govern both the form and substance of the sonnet, prescribing a rigid rhythmical frame of setting for a single precise idea. Though he was called the poet of the South, the literature of the country has lost in Timrod an artist in verse who wanted only more fortunate circumstances and a longer life to do it honor by the fulfillment of very noble promise. cameo. Another Volume of the Bible Commentary. THE second volume of the Bible Commentary, which Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co. have just published, illustrates, even more perfectly than did the first volume, the general plan and scope of the work. Here we have, in the compass of six hundred pages of most readable type, introductions to, and notes upon, the six books of Scripture which immediately follow the Pentateuch. It is evident that for such condensed space the notes must be brief and concise and preeminently practical. There is no room for long discussions of mere speculative criticism. Such discussions, even if there were room for them, would be foreign to the purpose of the work, which is, to give the results of scholarship rather than to show the processes of it. In the names of the learned authors into whose hands the separate books have been committed, there is sufficient assurance that these results will be fairly and ably stated. To give to the readers for whom this Commentary is especially designed the details of exegesis and of argument by which results have been reached, would be like darkening counsel by words without wisdom. The ordinary Bible student, who is to find in his commentary the assistance which he needs to make his Bible intelligible as he uses it in private and domestic worship, or in the Sunday-school or Bible-class or church, has neither the time to spend in wading through the foggy obscurities of German criticism, nor the learning which shall help to make such criticism luminous. A word or two of honest and sensible suggestion, to correct some error of translation, or to explain some point of oriental custom or of ancient history, or to reveal the spirit of the word beneath the letter of it, is far more helpful to such an one. And it is for such an one that this work is especially designed. The historical books with which the present volume of the Commentary is occupied are among the most difficult and obscure of all the books of Holy Scripture. As a natural consequence, they have been some what neglected by the present generation of Bible readers,-partly from an uneasy suspicion that they would not bear a very close scrutiny in matters of chronology, for instance, or of statistics, or even of ethics, and partly for the lack of critical apparatus for such study. This volume will help devout and thoughtful readers of the Bible to see how groundless are their suspicions, and how full of picturesque historic interest and of practical religious suggestion and counsel are even those parts of Scripture which seem comparatively unimportant. "The Foreigner in Far Cathay." MR. W. H. MEDHURST, the consul for the English Government at Shanghai, has given, in a little volume of two hundred pages, his impressions of China and of the Chinese, especially in their relations with the outside world. These impressions are the result of many years' experience and observation, by a most skillful and competent observer. Mr. Medhurst's thorough knowledge of the Chinese language, his fair-mindedness and willingness to recognize what is good in the Chinaman as well as what is evil in the foreigner, his appreciation of the enormous difficulties which attend the work of the merchant, the diplomatist, the missionary, in a country where the habits of thought and the ways of conduct and the very spirit of life are so different from our own, all fit him to speak with authority in the matters whereof he treats. How he has managed to compress his statement of fact and of opinion into so small a space, and to tell so much and to tell it so well in so few words, is really a marvel. His book should be a hand-book for all who for any reason need to inform themselves concerning the relations of the West with the far East. It gives just the kind of practical and varied information which an hour or two of familiar conversation with a good talker would elicit. By a kind of instinct, Mr. Medhurst divines what we desire to know and tells us in a word. Testing the volume by direct personal knowledge, in many points, we have found it singularly accurate. And, testing it by the rapidity and delight with which we have read it, we may pronounce it highly entertaining. The publishers (Scribner, Armstrong & Co.) have done the American public a good service by giving to the volume such prompt and elegant republication. Our own relations with China are increasingly intimate, and such a volume surely concerns us on this side of the Atlantic hardly less than it concerns Mr. Medhurst's own countrymen. A Year's Gleanings in Science. "THAT'S worth remembering," we say to ourselves perhaps a dozen times a day, when some suggestive fact in natural history, some important discovery in science, some hint of a handy device or useful direction for one of the ever-recurring needs of daily life, turns up in our daily reading. But memory takes slight hold of these fugitive gleams and waymarks of advancing civilization; it is seldom convenient to make on the spot a note of what we want to keep; and we think no more of the matter until, some day when it is needed, there flashes across the mind the tantalizing recollection that somewhere we have seen the 'very thing we want-but where? For all such vagrant cattle Dr. J. C. Draper has per. formed the part of impounder (Year-Book of Nature and Popular Science: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.), gathering up the more important discoveries, ob servations, opinions, and suggestions of general interest set adrift during the past year, and preserving them for reference in a handy volume, carefully classified and indexed. In this last much-neglected virtue, indispensable in good book-making, Dr. Draper's work is a model. The analysis of the contents and their tabular arrangement suffice in themselves to make the book a positive contribution to applied science. The editor disclaims any responsibility for opinions not expressly acknowledged as his own: still the fact that each article has been deliberately chosen on its merits by a competent man of science, naturally gives them, individually and collectively, a trustworthiness far surpassing similar selections by less critical collectors. To the readers of our monthly record of Nature and Science we need only say that the Year-Book embraces the notes which Dr. Draper has already laid before them, with much additional matter of a similar quality. Early Photography. UNIVERSITY NEW YORK, MARCH 6, 1873. To the Editor of SCRIBNER'S MONTHLY: SIR-My attention has just been drawn to a paragraph in your March issue, contained in an article “On Professor Morse and the Telegraph," in which its au thor, Mr. Lossing, states, that "the first photograph ever taken in America was that of the tower of the Church of the Messiah, on Broadway," by Professor Morse; and further, that, experimenting with me, he succeeded in obtaining likenesses of the human face; my part of the invention "was that of shortening the process, and being the first to take portraits with the eyes open." Will you oblige me by permitting me to say, that the view of the church here referred to was taken by myself, from the window of my lecture-room, which is now the small chapel in the University? The building of the New York Hotel subsequently obstructed this view. It was by no means the first photograph that had been made in America, for I had made others previously. As to the photographic portrait from the life, it was I who took the first, and that not merely in America. At that time photographic portraiture was considered in Europe to be an impracticable thing, and when the difficulties were overcome, the credit of the success was given to me (See Edinburgh Review, Jan., 1843, p. 339). Professor Morse never made a photograph until he had learned the art in my labora tory, in which at that time he spent every evening. I had been publishing papers in the scientific journals on the chemical action of light for many years. Professor Morse never made any pretension to a knowledge of chemistry or optics. His life had been spent in the study of art, not in the severe discipline of science. I think it is to be deeply regretted, that any well-meaning but indiscreet friends should put forth claims on his behalf that can never be sustained. He was not the inventor of photographic portraiture. Yours truly, JOHN W. DRAPER. Elevation of River Beds. NATURE AND SCIENCE. IN a report on the supply of water to Yonkers, Professor Newberry says: Before any plan is adopted for supplying the city of Yonkers with water, I would strongly recommend that a thorough exploration be made of the materials which occupy the bottom of the rocky valley of the Nepperhan, and underlie, perhaps, very deeply the present stream. It is probably known to you that most of the draining streams of all the region between the Mississippi and the Atlantic are now running far above their ancient beds. This fact was first revealed to me by the borings made for oil in the valleys of the tributaries of the Ohio. All these streams were found to be flowing in valleys, once deeply excavated, but now partially filled and in some instances almost obliterated. Further investigation showed that the same was true of the draining streams For example, of New York and the Atlantic slope. the valley of the Mohawk for a large part of its course is filled with sand and gravel to the depth of over two hundred feet. In the Hudson the water surface stands now probably five hundred feet above its ancient level-the old mouth of the Hudson and the channel which leads to it being distinctly traceable on the bottom nearly eighty miles south and east of New York. The excavation of these deep channels conld only have been effected when the continent was much higher than now. Subsequently it was depressed so far that the ocean waters stood on the Atlantic coast from one hundred to five hundred feet higher than they now do. During this period of submergence the blue clays in the valley of the Hudson-the "Champlain clays"—were deposited, and the valleys of all the streams were more or less filled. The Future of our Race. ALFRED R. WALLACE thus reviews a recent work by De Candolle on the Doctrine of Natural Selection: In the last section, on the probable future of the human race, we have the following remarkable speculations, very different from the Utopian views held by most evolutionists, but founded nevertheless on certain very practical considerations. In the next few hundred or a thousand years the chief alterations will be the extinction of all the less dominant races and the partition of the world among the three great persistent types, the whites, blacks, and Chinese, each of which will occupy those portions of the globe for which they are best adapted. But taking a more extended glance into the future of 50,000 or 100,000 years hence, and supposing that no cosmical changes occur to destroy the human race, there are certain well ascertained facts on which to found a notion of what must by that time have occurred. In the first place, all the coal and all metals available will then have been exhausted, and even if men succeed in finding other sources of heat and are able to extract the metals thinly diffused through the soil, yet these products must become far dearer and less available for general use than now. Railroads and steamships, and everything that depends upon the possession of large quantities of cheap metals, will then be impossible, and sedentary agricultural populations in warm and fertile regions will be best off. Population will have lingered longest around the greatest masses of coal and iron, but will finally become most densely aggregated within the tropics. But other and more serious changes will result in the gradual diminution and deterioration of the terrestrial surface. Assuming the undoubted fact that all our existing land is wearing away and being carried into the sea, but, by a strange oversight, leaving out altogether the counteracting internal forces which for countless ages past seem always to have raised ample tracts above the sea as fast as sub-aerial denudation has lowered them, it is argued that even if all the land does not disappear and man so finally become extinct, the land will at least become less varied and will consist chiefly of a few flat and parched-up plains and volcanic or coralline islands. Population will by this time have greatly diminished, but it is thought that an intelligent and persevering race may even then prosper. They will enjoy the happiness which results from a peaceable existence, for without metals or combustibles it will be difficult to form fleets to rule the seas or great armies to ravage the land. Volition and Reproduction. In continuation of the observations of Mr. Potts on the retention of eggs by birds, in our February number, we present the following very interesting account and deductions by the Rev. Dr. Wilson, of Easton, Maryland: The common house wren (T. Adon) lays from five to six eggs, and raises two the nest. broods, depositing an egg every morning. Last summer I observed a pair in my garden anxiously seeking accommodations, but seemingly hard to satisfy, as the season was advanced, and others of the species were already sitting. I placed a box against an outbuilding, and within a half-hour they had commenced When three eggs had been laid a vagabond boy destroyed the nest. I saw him and gave chase, when he dropped the box and I replaced it. In two days the nest had been repaired; and when four eggs were laid the same irrepressible little barbarian carried off the box. Two days elapsed; the injured pair meanwhile flitting about and singing as if nothing had happened. I bored a hole in the building, and fitted another box inside: in twenty minutes the first stick was laid, and soon a nest had been formed with all the care of a first structure. Next morning an egg was laid, which I unfortunately broke. It made no difference-six more were deposited, the brood reared, the nest pulled to pieces, every stick and hair being carried to a distance, another nest constructed, and five eggs laid for a second brood, which was also reared successfully. Now here was the first laying delayed by the difficulty in selecting a place; the first clutch interrupted, the second also checked, and the first egg of the third broken, and yet in natural course there should have been an egg laid daily until six were deposited. Instead of eleven eggs for the two broods, nineteen were certainly laid by the same female that season; and if, as is probable, two eggs were matured which could not be retained, but had to be dropped anywhere, twenty-one, or nearly two seasons' layings, were extruded. Will that bird become sterile a year earlier than natural in consequence? But the chief point of interest lies in the fact that three several times the regular maturation of eggs was voluntarily checked under the influence of adverse circumstances, while an entire clutch and several additional ova were matured, which should not have been extruded until next summer! Now the question is, if the law of ovarian development is substantially the same in all vertebrata, may not some very important results be obtained from investigation based on these data in regard to the effect of mental emotion and volition upon the reproductive function? Facts of minor practical interest may be developed of great usefulness to all stock-breeders, and especially to those of domestic poultry. Asphalt Pavements and Fire. THE Journal of the Society of Arts states that during the reign of the Commune in Paris, in 1871, the fires made by incendiaries were never known to have been spread by means of the asphalt pavements. In London experiments were made on this point by heaping wood on the Val de Travers pavement and setting fire to it. When the fire was at its fiercest the burning embers were raked away, and only a few feeble flames were seen to issue from the pavement, and they went out directly of their own accord. |