TRUE, AND OTHER STORIES. By George Parsons Lathrop.
New York: _Funk & Wagnalls_.
NOBLE BLOOD. A Novel. By Julian Hawthorne,
author of “Sebastian Strome,” “Garth,” “Bressant,” etc.
New York: _D. Appleton & Co._
PRINCE SARONI’S WIFE AND THE PEARL-SHELL NECKLACE.
By Julian Hawthorne. New York: _Funk & Wagnalls_.
DR. GRATTAN. A Novel. By William A. Hammond,
author of “Lal.” New York: _D. Appleton & Co._
THE OLD-FASHIONED FAIRY BOOK. By Mrs. Burton Harrison.
Illustrated by Rosina Emmet.
New York: _Charles Scribner’s Sons_.
KATHERINE. A Novel. By Susa B. Vance.
Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._
WHITE FEATHERS. By G. I. Cervus.
Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._
Mr. Lathrop, whose little collection of stories heads this list of
recent fiction, is a young American author who is well and favorably
known as a writer of subtlety and penetration in the delineation
of character, as well as marked by a notable picturesqueness of
presentation. The volume before us, though by no means representative
of his best, has much of his characteristic quality, both on its
serious and comic sides. “True” is a tale of North Carolina life, the
scene being laid, for the most part, near Pamlico Sound. It has the
merit of being thoroughly an American story, though the basis for the
plot is laid in the separation of two English lovers in the early days
of American colonization, the lady going with her father to the new
world, her lover being at the last moment forced to remain in England,
never again to rejoin his sweetheart. From this separation and the
chance meeting, after two hundred years, of a descendant of the young
Englishman with representatives of his sweetheart’s line, Mr. Lathrop
weaves a tale of uncommon interest, and of much dramatic power. He
has struck perhaps the richest vein of romance that American history
affords, and the literary skill, and yet simplicity, with which he
improves his opportunity, are worthy of high commendation. The other
stories in the volume, “Major Barrington’s Marriage,” “Bad Peppers,”
“The Three Bridges,” and “In Each Other’s Shoes,” are good, each in its
own way, and afford a pleasant variety of excellent reading.
Mr. Julian Hawthorne’s story of “Noble Blood” is a pleasant yet subtile
and quaint story, the scene of which is laid in Ireland. A young artist
becomes acquainted with a very beautiful woman whose ambition is to
link her own with noble blood. The hero of the story, who loves his new
friend, who, though of Irish birth and family, is descended from an
Italian merchant, discovers through a singular chain of circumstances
that the lady is the descendant of the noblest blood in Venice, her
so-called merchant forefather having been a great Venetian noble, who
was compelled to fly from his own land to escape the consequences of an
act of mad revenge. This strange revelation satisfies Miss Cadogna’s
desire for noble blood, and she contents herself with her plain lover.
Out of this simple yet quaint and dramatic material Mr. Hawthorne has
woven a singularly interesting little romance, in which the graver
elements are touched up by little flashes and strokes of humor. It is
a piece of good literary work and will add to the author’s reputation,
though it is by no means up to the author’s best level.
As good as the foregoing novel is there is much stronger and subtler
work in “Prince Saroni’s Wife” and the “Pearl-Shell Necklace,” two
short stories that well illustrate Mr. Hawthorne’s peculiar power.
Each is of a tragical cast, and the latter especially has at times a
dramatic intensity that becomes almost painful. Mr. Hawthorne, as did
his father, embodies his most tragical conceptions in such simple and
direct language, that the spell wrought upon the reader does not pass
with the reading, but remains long after the book has been laid aside.
There is a psychological value, too, in Mr. Hawthorne’s work, which
rewards a close study of his characters. One feels that he is not a
mere story-teller, but, as well, an acute analyzer and a close student
of human nature in some of its most perplexing phases. “Prince Saroni’s
Wife” is the tale of an Italian prince, and “The Pearl-Shell Necklace”
is a story of American life. Both of them are well worth the reading,
and told with a clear-cut strength and directness which mark the writer
as a literary artist as well as a man of genius.
Dr. Hammond’s second novel, “Dr. Grattan,” is not equal to his first
in power, freshness, and dramatic sense, qualities which partly
redeemed the crudeness and extravagance of the latter book. “Lal” was
in many ways a notable work, and though the work of a prentice hand
in the art of novel-writing, had plenty of strength and vigor in it.
In “Dr. Grattan” one must confess to a feeling of disappointment, as
the story is a trifle dull, and none of the characters have any of the
_vraisemblance_ of flesh and blood, except a few of the village loafers
and loungers, who haunt the village store of the Adirondack town, where
the scene of the story is placed. Dr. Grattan, the hero of the book, is
a middle aged country physician, who has one fair daughter, and who is
pictured to us as a noble specimen of a man, in his physical, mental,
and moral attributes. Mr. Lamar and his daughter Louise are personages
of a singular cast. The father is a monomaniac, though a gentleman and
a millionaire, and the daughter a superb and glorious woman, endowed
with all the noblest qualities of her sex. The main animus of the book
is apparently to show that a middle-aged country physician may have a
justifiable taste for novel-writing, to while away the intervals of
medical practice; and that he, if well-preserved and good-looking, even
if encumbered with a pretty daughter herself marriageable, may win the
superb and glorious woman before mentioned for a second wife. Both of
these points the author establishes to his own satisfaction. There is
enough material to make a very good story, but we do not think Dr.
Hammond handles it with as much skill and deftness as might be woven
into it. The style is slipshod and careless, and such as one might
fancy would be the instinctive method of an author who had rattled off
the matter at race-horse speed very much as a woman would reel off a
skein of worsted. One or two unpleasant faults are specially noticeable
in a minor way. One among them may be mentioned as a disposition to
sneer at novelists, who, whatever their faults of conception as to the
function of the novelist, rank deservedly high as master-artists in
style and finish of method. The questionable taste of such criticism,
under the circumstances, is very much such as would call forth
condemnation for Howells or James if they had the audacity to practice
medicine to the infinite peril of their fellow-beings, and then
satirize a skilful and experienced physician whose ability was widely
recognized. _Ne sutor ultra crepidem_, or, if he will insist, let not
the shoemaker use his last to measure the art of Apelles or Praxiteles.
Mrs. Burton Harrison’s “Old-Fashioned Fairy Book” is a collection
of fresh and charming fairy stories and middle-age myths happily
adapted to the taste and comprehension of young people. This lady has
discovered in the various examples of literary work, she has given the
public, fine artistic taste and facility. The present little volume
is a charming present for lads and lassies, and the stories told are
not such as the youngster finds in the ordinary book of fairy stories.
They are derived from out-of-the way sources, and though some of them
are rather grim for young people, they are on the whole sufficiently
healthy and cheerful for their purpose. The chief recommendation of
these selections is that they do not belong to the class of hackneyed
and conventional tales mostly utilized for fairy book-making. The
illustrations by Miss Rosina Emmet are spirited; graceful and
appropriate.
The last two novels mentioned in our list may be dismissed with a few
words as belonging to the eminently proper and virtuous school of
fiction, which demands that there shall be a certain fixed proportion
of such haranguing as would be ordinarily heard in a Sunday-school,
whatever other elements may be introduced to meet the tastes of the
novel-reading class. The excellent moral advice so freely scattered
throughout these novels we cordially commend as worthy to be pondered
and inwardly digested, but probably the average novel-reader would wish
for it in a different place. Yet there are novels and novels, just as
there are people and people, and it may be that there is a public for
just such productions as the above. It is with unqualified pleasure
that we commend these two volumes, “White Feathers” and “Katherine,” as
quite gorgeous specimens of bookbinding and cover designing in a cheap
fashion.
EGYPT AND BABYLON. FROM SACRED AND PROFANE SOURCES.
By George Rawlinson, M.A.,
Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.
New York: _Charles Scribner’s Sons_.
This contribution to ancient history is a useful companion to Prof.
Sayce’s “Ancient Empires of the East,” recently published by the same
house. It is the work of one of the most noted of English scholars, and
he has brought all the latest researches to bear on the study of the
two great empires of Egypt and Babylonia, with whom the Jewish people
had most to do. The method of Prof. Rawlinson is to make the Biblical
references to these two mighty nations the text or foundation of his
studies; and then to turn on the somewhat obscure and contradictory
accounts of the Sacred Records the fulness of light brought out of
archæological and linguistic research. The result is very happy, and
the Biblical student of the Old Testament will find in this book a
guide of the greatest value in clearly grasping the accounts of the
Biblical writers.
THE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN:
PORTRAITS OF THE HUNDRED GREATEST MEN IN HISTORY,
REPRODUCED FROM FINE AND RARE STEEL-ENGRAVINGS,
WITH GENERAL INTRODUCTION BY RALPH WALDO EMERSON;
AND TO BOOK I. BY MATTHEW ARNOLD; TO BOOK II. BY H.
TAINE; TO BOOK III. BY PROF. MAX MÜLLER AND ERNEST
RENAN; TO BOOK IV. BY PRESIDENT NOAH PORTER; TO
BOOK V. BY VERY REV. DEAN STANLEY; TO BOOK VI. BY
PROF. H. HELMHOLTZ; TO BOOK VII. BY J. A. FROUDE;
AND TO BOOK VIII. BY PROF. JOHN FISKE.
New York: _D. Appleton & Co._
The editor of this collection of pen portraits of the hundred
greatest men, informs us that the project is one side of an attempt
to view the history of the world as natural history. In this way he
conceives biography as the physiology of history just as archæology
is its anatomy. With this thought in mind Dr. William Wood has been
for fifteen years a collector of engraved portraits and antiquities
regarding them as historic documents. Out of this mass of material
he has given us the illustrations of the book, which consist of the
portraits of the great men, the primates of their race, while to
illustrate the portraits we have short, and, it need hardly be said,
meagre accounts of the men themselves, with a brief tabulation of
their work, and a condensed estimate of their place in the world’s
progress. The principal literary value of the book, we think, is to
be found in the prefaces or introductions to each department, with
the general introduction by Ralph Waldo Emerson. All of these are
written in a scholarly and able style, and will be read with as much
or even more interest than the biographical sketches themselves.
After all, we fancy the value of the work to most readers will be
accepted as pertaining to the portraits, which are reproduced in
a very artistic manner from old and rare engravings. These are of
great interest. In the biographical statements nothing but the barest
outline, not quite as much, in fact, as may be found in our best
cyclopædias, is attempted. The book is very handsomely printed and
manufactured, and is one of the best specimens of book-making which
we have recently seen.
EVE’S DAUGHTERS; OR, COMMON-SENSE FOR MAID, WIFE AND MOTHER.
By Marian Harland, author of “Common-Sense in the Household.”
New York: _Charles Scribner’s Sons_.
The author of this book is widely known, and her words respected in a
line of subjects peculiarly affecting the interests of her own sex. In
the new volume under notice she talks familiarly to her sex about those
matters where women need sound counsel more than elsewhere. It is in
the relations of wife and mother that her advice is the most urgent and
important. At a time when there is growing up among women of the better
class such a cruelly perverse view of the duties and responsibility of
their own sex, especially in relation to marriage and child-bearing,
the words of a wise, earnest and thoughtful woman are peculiarly
needed. Miss Harland speaks plainly, yet delicately, on such subjects,
and if her injunctions could be widely heeded the world would be better
off. It is a work to be specially and cordially recommended to young
women everywhere.
A REVIEW OF THE HOLY BIBLE, CONTAINING THE OLD
AND NEW TESTAMENTS. By Edward B. Latch.
Philadelphia: _J. B. Lippincott & Co._
The author of this book, for we suppose he can be called an author who
rearranges and classifies the text of the Bible with a view to bringing
out better the inner meaning and purpose of the text, we are led to
judge is not a theologian by profession. But this does not commend his
work any the less. The unprofessional enthusiast, believing either that
he has some inner illumination, or convinced that he is working on the
lines of a finer and higher logic than is given to other men, is well
justified in encroaching on a field which by ordinary consent is given
up to professional scholars. Mr. Latch is evidently profoundly sure
that he has found esoteric meanings in the great Biblical cryptogram,
which reveal themselves clearly once the clew is given. The clew in
this case is a study of the Bible, taking the interpretations of St.
Paul as a starting-point and assuming a number of bases, according to
which these interpretations are classed. The whole attempt is curious
and interesting, and is likely to prove edifying to students of the
Sacred Scriptures. Mr. Latch works out a curious historic psychology in
the sacred records, and his comments and glosses are highly ingenious
if not convincing. Of one thing we are sure. The author is convinced
that his mission is to make the purpose of the Bible clearer, more
consecutive and conclusive for the theology worked out of it by that
great codifier and lawgiver of Christian theology, St. Paul. This
modern coadjutor of the great apostle is saturated with the Pauline
theology, and yet some of his views are fresh and original, though
never at variance with those of his master, from whom he drinks at
the fountainhead. The quaint and ingenious interpretations which we
find scattered through these pages will repay reading, even when we
think his glosses forced and eccentric. To find a man in this age of
the world, after the raging of eighteen hundred years of exhaustive
religious and dogmatic controversy, who fancies that he has something
new and startling to say on the problems propounded in the Bible, is a
refreshing fact which should not go without brief comment.
THE ELEMENTS OF MORAL SCIENCE, THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL.
By Noah Porter, D.D., LL.D., President of Yale College.
New York: _Charles Scribner’s Sons_.
The remarkable President of Yale College, whose name is treasured
up in the hearts of thousands of the alumni of Yale as one of the
wisest, most genial, and lovable of the many distinguished instructors
associated with the history of the college, gives us in this study of
ethics the ripe and mellowed fruit of his thought and work. For many
years President Porter was the professor of mental and moral philosophy
before he assumed the headship of the college. The substance of the
book before us was originally given in the shape of lectures before
the senior classes. We are told that the book is not designed for
a scientific treatise, but to meet the wants of those students and
readers who, though somewhat mature in their philosophical thinking and
disciplined in their mental habits, still require expanded definitions
and abundant illustrations involving more or less of repetition.
Dr. Porter has in his own line of investigation great clearness of
statement, and the power, perhaps growing out of the needs of the
class-room, of familiarizing and simplifying abstruse reasonings.
We find this strikingly illustrated in the book before us. It is
masterly in its lucidity of reasoning, and in its applications often so
practical as to make us feel that the object of the author is not
merely to lay bare the scientific theory of ethics, but to bring
its principles home to the heart and sympathy of his readers. As a
dialectical exposition the cut-and-dried philosopher who revels in the
abstract formulas of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer and others may find
occasion to criticise Dr. Porter’s methods. But to the general reader
the speculations of Dr. Porter will prove none the less interesting
because he brings them down to the sympathies and interests of men.