History and Politics. A History of Presidential Elections, by Edward Stanwood (Osgood), is a very convenient hand-book, which gathers into compact form all that one can desire to know respecting the mode in which our electoral machinery has worked. It contains the text of party platforms and a great deal of political matter which it would be hard for any student to collect from the various ephemeral sources. Contemporary Socialism, by John Rae, is a historical survey of the subject by a clearheaded man who is in sympathy with the people from whom socialistic movements spring, but critical of the philosophy which they have adopted. (Scribners.) The Conventional Lies of our Civilization, from the German of Max Nordau (L. Schick, Chicago), on the other hand, is a somewhat virulent attack from the socialistic side upon the various outgrowths of civilization. The author is for plucking up by the roots all the tares, regardless whether the wheat comes up or not. The True Issue is No. XVI. of Questions of the Day. (Putnams.) Its subject is Industrial Depression and Political Corruption caused by Tariff Monopolies, by E. J. Donnell, who calls for reform in the interest of manufacturers, farmers, and workingmen. The tract bristles with italics and small caps., and Mr. Donnell calls so many names that he makes one doubt if a debater so heated when treating of economic subjects can be trusted to keep carefully within the lines of reason and fact.

- The Standard Silver Dollar and the Coinage Low of 1878, by Worthington C. Ford (Society for Political Education, New York): a tract of a different order, written by a man who goes carefully to work with his facts, and labors to convince the reasonable man. — Reforms, their difficulties and possibilities, by the author of Conflict in Nature and Life. (Appleton.) The writer is a mau of conservative habits of thought, who recognizes the value of institutions, which have been the slow growth of generations, while at the same time he is ready to acknowledge the defects which weaken them. He occupies a middle ground, and endeavors in the various questions of labor, finance, and society to point the way both to preserve and to correct. Such writers are rarely heeded, but this one is worth attention. - The Man versus the State, by Herbert Spencer, contains four papers contributed originally to the Contemporary Review. (Appleton.) Mr. Spencer perceives a tendency in politics to give to the state a tyrannical power, and to check the freedom of the individual. His message is a warning to democracy, but does he take into account sufficiently the immense advantage given to the individual by the increased facility of combination and the greater ease of breaking up combination? Certainly, if political experience in the United States teaches anything, it teaches the flexibility of society, the increasing power of leagues for the accomplishment of definite ends, and the lessening power of party to enforce allegiance. Social Problems, by Henry George (John W. Lovell Company, New York), is a new edition in cheap form. In the Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science a very interesting number is Dr. Edward Channing's paper on Town and County

Government in the English Colonies of North America. (N. Murray, Baltimore.) Dr. Channing shows very clearly the connection between the English parish and the New England town. The Policy of Protection, by Charles A. Murdock (Samuel Carson & Co., San Francisco), is a mild plea for the continuance of a protective policy. - Protection and Free-Trade To-Day, at Home and Abroad, in Field and Workshop, by Robert P. Porter (Osgood), is a more vigorous plea of the same sort. Protection and Communism, a consideration of the effects of the American tariff upon wages, by William Rathbone. (Putnams.) Mr. Rathbone, who is a M. P., contends that in freetrade England's wealth is becoming more widely dispersed, while in protective America it is becoming massed in a few families. But the fact in America certainly is that the day of great fortunes for the few is passing by. There must therefore be other causes at work than those which can be referred to the two policies. The Ancient Empires of the East, by A. H. Sayce. (Scribners.) Mr. Sayce has attempted in this volume to give his readers the benefit of the latest discoveries. He writes in the spirit of the new learning, which does not see this subject through a strictly classical atmosphere, yet is well equipped in the best that Greece and Rome can give. History of Gustav us Adolphus, by John L. Stevens. (Putnams.) Mr. Stevens was at one time. United States Minister at Stockholm, and used his opportunity for becoming acquainted with his subject at first hand. He treats his work modestly, and evidently has labored to make it fair and truthful. Perhaps on this ground one should forgive the writer for being a little dull in his style. Women under the Law of Massachusetts, their rights, privileges, and disabilities, by Henry H. Sprague (W. B. Clarke & Carruth, Boston) a careful summary, under heads, of the statutes relating to the subject, accompanied by slight comment, but the whole cast in a form to render the pamphlet of great value to those who would understand the exact standing of woman. before the law. Mr. Sprague's conclusion is that, with a few amendments, woman's position in Massachusetts may be regarded as an unusually favored one. - Icaria, a Chapter in the History of Communism, by Albert Shaw, Ph. D. (Putnams.) Icaria is a community founded by a Frenchman, Etienne Cabet, who set sail in 1848 with sixty-nine followers, landed at New Orleans, and thence went to Texas to lands near Dallas, which had been bought for the enterprise. The place chosen was unsuited, and after various vicissitudes a remnant of the company settled in Iowa, and last of all in California, where the organization still continues. The story of this enterprise is admirably told, and the book throws a good deal of light on the philosophy of communism. Fifty Years' Observation of Men and Events, civil and military, by E. D. Keyes (Scribners): an entertaining volume of reminiscences, in which Scott, Sherman, Thomas, Grant, Lee, Washburn, and lesser men are described with considerable picturesqueness by a frank and generous soldier. There are many descriptions of historical events which will be valuable hereafter to

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those who write history and need the testimony of eye-witnesses. History of the Andover Theological Seminary, by the Rev. Leonard Woods, D. D. (Osgood): a valuable work, long in MS. in the hands of both the Woods, and now printed by a grandson of the first professor. The documents and other papers are not the least important part of the book, which will be welcomed for the light it throws on a tangled controversy. Mr. Motley's work has been both of advantage and of disadvantage to Mr. Alexander Young in writing his History of the Netherlands. (Estes & Lauriat.) Mr. Motley has undoubtedly made his task easier, though this new book makes use of new material and also of criticism on the earlier work; but, on the other hand, Mr. Young stands under the shadow of a great name. His book, to be sure, is briefer, but it will inevitably be drawn into comparison. It will not suffer in one respect, for its clearness of language and straightforwardness of style are more agreeable to many readers than Motley's high color. It also brings the subject to date, and altogether one would have to go far to find so business-like and interesting a history within the limits which Mr. Young has set himself. It is a pity that the cuts could not have been fewer if they were going to be so poor.

Theology, Exegesis, Biblical Studies, and Philosophy. Dr. Mark Hopkins, long the president of Williams College, was wont to preach at every Commencement a sermon to the graduating class. In these sermons he gave as good an example of his method in treating philosophical religious themes as can be found in any of his writings. The sermons, moreover, were charged with a personal feeling, always earnest but always subordinated to the theme. He has collected twenty of these sermons under the title Teachings and Counsels (Scribners), and it would be hard to find twenty discourses by one writer of the day of more comprehensive thought and more practical in their bearing. Dr. William Smith's Dictionary of the Bible appears in a new form, a compact volume of 800 pages, in which Rev. F. N. and M. A. Peloubet have tried their hands at bringing the work into a shape most useful to Sunday-school teachers. It might have been condensed still further by the omission of the pious reflections and a good many of the cuts. Manual of Biblical Geography (Rand, McNally & Co., Chicago): a much more serviceable book than the last, and well adapted to aid teachers and pupils in a thorough and systematic study of Bible history upon a geographical basis. The maps are clear, and the whole work has grown out of practical experiments in the class-room. - An Outline of the Future Religion of the World, with a consideration of the facts and doctrine on which it will probably be based, by T. Lloyd Stanley. (Putnams.) Mr. Stanley looks for a world's religion which will rest mainly on the teachings of Christ, but he seems to disregard the central teaching of all as regards the personal relation of Christ to God and man.- The Reality of Faith, by Newman Smyth (Scribners), is a series of sermons looking toward a new adjustment of Catholic belief with modern terms. The book has all the writer's persuasive

rhetoric and large disregard of stumbling-blocks.

- Correspondences of the Bible. The Animals. By John Worcester. (Massachusetts New Church Union, Boston.) A new edition of a thoughtful book, in which the writer, in the light of Swedenborg's faith, turns the natural world into a spiritual parable. The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru, by Albert Réville, translated by P. H. Wicksteed (Scribners): a volume of lectures on the Hibbert foundation. The study of these religions gives the author an opportunity to make certain comparisons, and to confirm himself in the belief that the religious nature is immanent and indestructible. "It teaches us," he concludes, "that there is a principle, bordering closely upon that of religion itself, which must serve as the torch to guide the religious idea in its development, not to supplant it, but to direct it to the true path. It is the principle of humanity."-Simon Peter, his Life, Times, and Friends, by Edwin Hodder. (Cassell.) It is a little odd that while Paul has had his life written a thousand and one times Simon Peter should have had to wait patiently for his turn. The material, of course, is not so abundant, but the character is quite as striking; the situations, indeed, are far more dramatic. Mr. Hodder treats his subject as if he were personally interested in it, and has made a readable, sensible book. The Destiny of Man Viewed in the Light of his Origin, by John Fiske (Houghton, Mifflin, & Co.): a suggestive little book, in which immortality is considered by a student who examines the subject by the aid of the theory of evolution. His treatment of infancy is singularly fresh and thoughtful. Occident, with Preludes on Current Events, by Joseph Cook (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), merely uses the circumstance of travel in Europe for the exploiting of views in philosophy and religion. Mr. Cook travels far in his thought, but constantly comes home to make a fresh start.

Biography. Some Heretics of Yesterday, by S. E. Herrick. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) The heretics are the great Protestants, exclusive of Luther; the term being used not technically, but to include such churchmen as Savonarola and Tauler. Mr. Herrick sets before himself no severer task than to tell over again in brief form the stories of a dozen or more of these men, but he does it with an animation and an interest in his subject which commend the book, and the adoption of a chronological order makes the volume a running commentary on Protestantism. The Letters and Times of the Tylers, by Lyon G. Tyler. In two volumes. (Whittel & Shepperson, Richmond.) The Tylers are Judge Tyler and his son John Tyler, the President. The piety of a descendant has produced a full and minute biography, involving a discussion of historical subjects with which the two men were connected in a greater or less degree. The work, of which the first volume only has appeared, promises to be monumental in character, and the diligent student will find a good deal of local history which will interest him. Judge Tyler also, whose life occupies the former half of the first volume, offers a good picture of a Virginian gentleman. Another campaign life of Cleveland, with a sketch of

Hendricks, appears in Lovell's Library, by Deshler Welch. The writer is not fulsome, but like previous biographers makes liberal use of Governor Cleveland's public papers. Some Literary Recollections, by James Payn (Harpers), is an interesting little book, written with as much candor and modesty as can be expected of a man who does not leave his memoirs for other folk to print. Like all English books that especially require an index, this has none.

Natural History and Travel. The Fishes of the East Atlantic Coast, that are caught with hook and line, by Louis O. Van Doren; including the Fishes of the East Coast of Florida, by Samuel C. Clarke (The American Angler, New York): a series of chapters originally contributed to the Angler by men who are sportsmen rather than commercially interested. The writing, like that of all enthusiasts, has humor, intentional and unwitting. In speaking of the menhaden, so useful for bait, one of the writers says, "The great use the menhaden are put to is in making fish oil, and right here lies a very threatening danger to our coast fishing. Seine nets are made that cover acres. Fast-sailing steam tugs scour the shoal waters of the coast at all times and seasons, and with one haul of the nets, worked by huge engines, countless thousands of the defenseless menhaden are taken. In this way, in season and out of season, thousands upon thousands of the most important bait fish that swims are ruthlessly slaughtered to serve the pleasure and avarice of greedy capitalists, among whom it would be safe to bet there is not an angler.". A Naturalist's Rambles about Home, by Charles C. Abbott. (Appleton.) The home is in New Jersey, and Mr. Abbott, without straying from it, has presented the results of his observations in some forty interesting chapters. He is not a literary scientist; that is, his first object is not to turn a graceful sentence; but he is a close observer, an interested narrator, and his writing is free from technicalities. Altogether the book is a capital one, which young people will read with avidity and older readers will find equally attractive.

Country Cousins, Short Studies in the Natural History of the United States, by Ernest Ingersoll. (Harpers.) Mr. Ingersoll writes partly at first hand and partly at second hand. His book lacks, therefore, some of the freshness of Dr. Abbott's, and while much of his matter is interesting there is often a lack of simplicity and directness, a wordiness in short, which renders his book occasionally unnecessarily tedious.- Our Birds in their Haunts, a popular treatise on the birds of Eastern North America, by Rev. J. Hibbert Langlille. (Cassino.) The author does not lay aside his cloak altogether, but the reader of his preface will be misled if he fancies that he is constantly to be reminded of the argument for design. On the contrary, the book is a readable account of birds in widely remote districts, and is drawn much more from personal observation than from books. Life and Labor in the far, far West, being notes of a tour in the Western States, British Columbia, Manitoba, and the Northwest Territory, by W. Henry Barneby. (Cassell.) One ought to read this book on a long, long, weary day. As a hasty series of letters writ

ten home to one's wife it has some excuse, but the writer makes little discrimination between the trivial and the exceptional, and occupies his pages with a good deal of detail which supplies one with little real knowledge of the country traversed. -Descriptive America, a Geographical and Industrial Monthly Magazine. (George H. Adams & Son, New York.) The August number, devoted to Michigan, has reached us. The somewhat unwieldy form of the magazine appears to offer convenience only to tabular views, but the general plan of such a magazine is well adapted to give a rapid survey of the features of the several districts of the country. A State, however, is rather a large field for one number. - Ten Days in the Jungle, by J. E. L. (Cupples, Upham & Co.: a simple, unpretending narrative of personal experience in a journey from Penang, told in the form of letters.

Fiction. Where the Battle was Fought (Osgood) is the title of the first novel published by C. E. Craddock, whose stories collected under the title of In the Tennessee Mountains are already familiar to readers of The Atlantic. A Yankee SchoolTeacher in Virginia, by Lydia Wood Baldwin. (Funk & Wagnalls.) The title-page further describes the book as a tale of the Old Dominion in the transition state, and the scenes are carefully studied, too carefully, one might think, for entire freedom and naturalness. Nevertheless, the freshness of the subject compensates for what might otherwise be only a conventional tale. The Children of Issachar, a story of wrongs and remedies (Putnams), has its scene also laid in the South after the war. It is a confusing mélange, in which a purpose struggles through, intelligible apparently to the author, but somewhat concealed from the reader. Love and Marriage, or the Waiting on an Island (Harpers), is a sentimental English tale, in which the actual facts are enveloped in a gauzy unrealism. A Young Girl's Wooing, by Edward P. Roe (Dodd, Mead & Co.), a moral tale. - Recent issues in Harper's Franklin Square Library are: Hago the Dreamer, a tale of Scotch University Life, by William Sime; Between the Heather and the Northern Sea, by M. Linskill; Judith Shakespeare, by William Black; Joy, or the Light of Cold-Home Ford, by May Crommelin. - Admiral Porter has begun a serial romance, Allan Dare and Robert Le Diable. It has an oldfashioned honest tang about it, and if the admiral brings his venture into port he will probably find a good many of the inhabitants waiting to cheer him. (Appleton.) - Tales of Three Cities, by Henry James (Osgood), includes the Impressions of a Cousin, Lady Barberina, and a New England Writer. An Old Sailor's Yarns, Tales of Many Seas, by Capt. R. F. Coffin. (Funk & Wagnalls.) A continuous stream of maritime lingo unrelieved by any reasonable English gives one a fatigued sense of trying to keep on his legs in these stories, and a doubt whether he is going to reach any harbor at all. It may be well to record here the sensible little paper by Walter Besant on the Art of Fiction. (Cupples, Upham & Co.)- The sixth volume of Stories by American Authors (Scribner's Sons) is notable for Mr. C. H. White's The Village Convict. This sketch and Mr. Bunner's Love in

Old Clothes (in volume five) seem to us the best stories in the collection thus far. — In Partnership, by Brander Matthews and H. C. Bunner (Scribner's Sons), contains eight short stories, the first and fourth being written in partnership. Of these two, The Documents in the Case is much the superior, in both motif and execution. Mr. Matthews goes alone" in Venetian Glass, The Rival Ghosts, and a pretty little parlor piece called Playing a Part. Mr. Bunner contributes The Red Silk Handkerchief, A Letter and a Paragraph, and Love in Old Clothes, the last being easily his best work in this line. It is difficult for a person with ink of only one tint to write adequately about a book The printed upon paper of seven different colors. Inner Sisterhood, by Douglas Shirley (J. P. Morton & Co.), is a series of social studies supposed to be written by several (feminine) hands. The conception demanded a sort of dramatic ability which the author does not seem to possess. The sketches differ from each other in degree and not in kind. The most successful of the series is cleverly called Flirting for Revenue Only. The printing and paper of the volume remain its most striking fea

tures.

Books for Young People. The Boys and Girls' Herodotus is a companion volume to the Plutarch of last year, edited by the same scholar, John S. White. (Putnams.) Mr. White has not had the advantage of such good translations as served him in the former instance, and has given, we think, a little too involved a form. Sir John Mandeville ought to have translated Herodotus. The project, however, is admirable, and a better book for young people it would be hard to find. - Under the title of Captains of Industry, or Men of Business who did something besides making Money (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), James Parton has written nearly fifty brief biographies, in which he gives in sharp outline the careers of men who have made their mark not only by achieving personal success, but by making the success carry with it the good fortune of others. Of the list about four fifths are Americans, the remainder being English and French. The book is one well calculated to stimulate the honorable ambition of boys. - Hawthorne's Wonder-Book has been charmingly illustrated by F. S. Church (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), and the page and style generally of the book are fit form for the most delightful modern translations of the ancient stories. The very frankness with which Ilawthorne throws away all the antique dress of the stories enables one to accept them, not as imitations or even as reproductions, but as transmigrations. - Queer Stories for Boys and Girls, by Edward Eggleston (Scribners): lively stories of a bizarre order, and we think they might have been just as lively and just as natural if Mr. Eggleston had used a little more reserve in the boyish language. The Viking Bodleys, by H. E. Scudder (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.), implies by its title far more savagery than the readers of the mild Bodley books are accustomed to, but the Berserker rage is all on the title-page and in an occasional picture. The book intends a jaunt through Norway and Denmark. The author takes leave

of his readers at the end of the eighth volume of the series, and promises not to write any more. — The Hunter Cats of Connorloa, by Helen Jackson (H. H.), is a story of California, in which cats and children and Chinamen figure in a very interesting fashion. The story is a bright one, well told. (Roberts.) Tip Cat, by the author of Miss Toosey's Mission and Laddie. (S. P. C. K., E. & J. B. Young & Co., New York.) Tip Cat is not one of H. H's. kind, but an English squire, Tipton Cathcart, of eccentric memory, and the story centres about him. It is rather for misses of the romantic period than for children, but it has character and humor in it. Published also by Roberts Brothers. -The Story of Vitean, by Frank R. Stockton (Scribners). Vitean is the name of a château in Burgundy, and the story is of the time of Louis IX., with two boys for the principal characters. Mr. Stockton has told his historical tale with simplicity and directness, and while he cannot altogether lay aside his drollery he has not allowed it to dominate in his work. One discovers from this book, if he has doubted it before, that the author's humor, dry and unintentional as it appears, is really a subtle force which he understands perfectly. His naïveté is a distinct, measured quality. -A Sea Change, by Flora L. Shaw (Roberts), is a story of a waif saved from shipwreck, whose history is unraveled in the course of the book. The scenes are laid in England among gentlefolk, and the story is what may be called a novel for children. Ralph the Drummer Boy, a story of the days of Washington, by Louis Rousselet, translated by W. J. Gordon (Holt), a French version of our war for independence. The foreign accent to the story makes familiar things picturesque, but it is a pity that the author could not have kept to facts a little more closely. His desire for dramatic effect has made him negligent of historic truth. - The Ice Queen, by Ernest Ingersoll (Harpers): the story of how some young people moved themselves and luggage a hundred miles across the frozen Lake Erie to Cleveland, with the thrilling adventures which they met on the way. Mr. Ingersoll has seized on a very clever and novel theme, and his story illustrates the immense field of new adventure open to writers of American life.-Jack Archer, a tale of the Crimea, by G. A. Henty (Roberts): the old story of a young English midshipman who marries not the captain's daughter, but a Russian nobleman's daughter. We suppose these gallant tales will go on forever, and old heads continue to sprout from young shoulders. -Our Young Folks' Josephus. (Lippincott.) Josephus has been simplified by William Shepard, and the book makes a volume far more likely to be read than the original unabridged Josephus, although that has been the nutriment of many minds now mature. The heroism of the Maccabees can be read nowhere else so well. Young Folks' Ideas, a Story by Uncle Lawrence (Lippincott): chats about the philosophy of familiar fact, such as cooking, printing, photographing, mining, etc. It requires some threshing to get the wheat, and the story portion is not especially to be commended.