of listening to the divine voice of music, or watching the calm brightness of autumn afternoons ?"

"Ballades and Verses Vain." By Andrew Lang. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

THE author of "The Pleasures of Memory" was not given, if we may credit report, to the display of sentiment in conversation. He merely suffered his wit to hover over its borders when at the age of eighty-eight he looked back to his lost youth and said to the blooming beauty at his side, "Ah, my dear, if sweet seventy-eight would only come again! mais ces beaux jours sont passés." It is in a similar view of mock retrospect that the little group of poets, who, conservative though they be, represent just now what is most modern in English literature, take cognizance of the fact that the world is no longer young, and that we live in an age of prose. Half gayly and half in regret Mr. Dobson revives, with a finish and persiflage which at that date would have exposed him to the reputation of a classic, the faded sentiments and graces of a century ago. In the same spirit Mr. Lang, while seemingly engrossed in the management of his triple rhymes, blends classical memories with archaic love-dreams, and sings of Homer and Theocritus in the measures of Villon.

A good deal of cleverness is an understood factor in poetry of this kind. Nevertheless, the distinctive charm of Mr. Lang's verse seems to us to lie less in its cleverness than in its spontaneity, its naïveté, and a slender vein of sadness which crops up here and there. The ceramic and bibliographic ballades by which he made his reputation are ingenious morsels of literary arabesque, but gathered with others into a collection like this they do not give the pervading tone to the book. This is rather to be sought in such lines as the "Ballade to Theocritus in Winter,"-a delicious lyric, in which the thought is as musical as the refrain and recurs to the mind with the same dreamy insistence. A trifle as exquisite in its way as anything in the book is the bit of song-dialogue, “A Sunset of Watteau," where the measure is as unforced, to all appearance, as breath itself, the sentiment delicately plaintive, and the thread of irony running through it barely perceptible. It is a sigh turned to rhyme, pathos painted on a fan. It is in sentiment like this,

which is hindered from cloying by a faint tincture of irony, that Mr. Lang has made some of his happiest hits: he is at his best when very nearly in earnest.

Translations of Villon and Marot are almost necessary ventures for a poet who is so frankly indebted to those masters as Mr. Lang. Rossetti, in his rendering of "The Ballade of Dead Ladies," strove to reproduce its quaintness, its unevenness and antiquity. Mr. Lang's version is smoother, and follows the lines of the original more closely, although the additional syllables of the verse render its flow more commonplace. Both translations are far above the average; but the old ballade is a miniature sphinx, and its simplicity remains as much of a poser as its questioning refrain," Où sont les neiges d'antan?"

With Frère Lubin Mr. Lang has been completely successful. The jovial friar falls into his version line by line, and, save that he is clearly an antique, fits the new frame as well as the old one. How perfectly Mr. Lang is at home in the old measures may be seen from the fact that his translations, while unusually literal, have the flexibility of original poems, while his own ballades are as easily and unaffectedly modern as if their rhythm

were a new invention.

"The Cup and The Falcon." By Alfred Lord Tennyson. New York: Macmillan & Co.

In reading a drama by the laureate we have an irritating sense of walking over rough stones, not so massive as the boulders which Mr. Browning hurls in the path of his readers, but producing through that very fact more discomfort. Verse which the resources of technical skill have rendered harsh instead of smooth, lines where the accent seems to fall at hap-hazard and often with a shock, characters condemned to a brevity of language which leaves no room for any finer shades of development, passions which pass with a jerk from one phase to another, all these things do not exclude they even compel-a certain measure of admiration, but they are not calculated to make deep inroads upon the reader's heart and fancy. But suddenly we experience a movement of pleasure; one of the characters has begun to sing; the rock is parted; a little rill of verse starts up and flows as no other poet can make it flow; we recognize the old charm of the lyrist and feel ourselves conquered again. It is an involuntary

criticism, and worth no more than the worth of an instinct. But after a second and a third reading we are forced to the same conclusion; right or wrong, we find ourselves unable to get away from it. The least of Tennyson's lyrics is true lyric, but the dramatic ring is not in his dramas.

"The Cup" is so closely associated with the successes of the Lyceum Theatre that even American readers, who have had no opportunity as yet of seeing the play acted, will hardly be able to read it without having the personalities of Mr. Irving and Miss Terry vividly brought to mind. Reading it thus, it is impossible not to perceive a certain similarity between the art of the poet and that of the actor. There is the same bare and Calvinistic creed of art, preaching the grace of angularity, the same endeavor not to hide but to manage a radical defect, the same substitution of picturesque effect for life and passion: in a word, the drama of Lord Tennyson bears the same relation to real drama that the representation of Mr. Irving bears to real acting. By this we do not mean to assert that The Cup" is what is commonly called a "reading," not an "acting," play. If there be such a distinction (which we incline to doubt), it is not applicable here. The marvellous scenic resources which Mr. Irving has at command, the action of the stage, the use of skilful by-play, would all tend to round and complete the outlines of the piece, and perhaps do away with a certain abrupt and sketchy air which pervades it: it has, we think, everything to gain and nothing to lose by translation to the stage. But the real test of the drama is the same in both cases, and the objections which we understand have been made to "The Cup" as an acting play will be felt in the closet as well as in the auditorium.

66

"The Falcon" belongs to another province, the dramatic lyric, which lies nearer to the poet's vein. In form and in manner it suggests comparison with some of Mr. Austin Dobson's work in this genre; but the resemblance is only superficial on looking closely we find it is the manner of the laureate's earlier dramatic trifles, which have a nearer relation to the verse of this latter day than we always remember to ascribe to them. Wit and innuendo are Mr. Dobson's favorite weapons, and of these Tennyson is hardly a master; but the grace and distinction and a certain pervading sweetness which we find in "The Falcon"

"Kitty's Conquest." By Charles King, U.S.A. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"Not Like Other Girls." By Rosa Nouchette Carey. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

"Stratford-by-the-Sea." (American Novel Series.) New York: Henry Holt & Co.

WE are glad to see Mr. Craddock's stories-each of which has been in its way noteworthy-brought together, that they may be re-read and compared. Although the whole collection may be said to be written in the same key, and that a minor one, the combined effect is neither sad nor monotonous, and every sketch has gained something by accumulating the passionate and unrelieved intensity of emotion of the others, as each variation of a wild and sombre fugue finds fresh expression in a different treatment of the same theme. Mr. Craddock is a true artist, and, faithful as he is to the least details, always subordinates them to the whole meaning of his story. He makes clear, to begin with, to the reader's imagination the wild and beautiful background created by the mountains, with their long, dark ranges, their precipices and cascades, their smiling picturesqueness and their glooms and shadows, the alternate chasing of day and night across the mist-filled valleys, and then powerfully realizes to the fancy the sort of lives lived in these out-of-the-way places. Benumbed, torpid, most of these people seem, intellects and souls half submerged in the every-day routine of habit and need. The clear air of the mountainsummit brings no inspiration, and the wide prospect no thrill. Yet the stories tell how in some epoch of their existences these human beings quicken out of their inertia into passion and aspiration;

and, though they rarely compass any real solution of their problem or deliver themselves from their trouble, they yet make for themselves an individual life as men and women, whether by their fall, martyrdom, or apotheosis. The author is satisfied to be artistically suggestive and dramatically truthful, and does not impose any favorite ideas upon us. If he has a creed, it is probably that human nature is fundamentally everywhere alike. "The metropolitan centres, stripped of the civilization of wealth, fashion, and culture," he remarks, "would present only the bare skeleton of humanity outlined in Mrs. Johns's talk of the enmities and scandals, sorrows and misfortunes, of the mountain - ridge." Α rude nature is, besides, more efficient than a highly-civilized one in touching the heart, in its display of the strongest phases of human passion and emotion. But Mr. Craddock has nevertheless carefully maintained a tone of moderation and truthfulness,--nowhere exaggerating, nowhere rising to the purely ideal, except in far-seeing glimpses of the meaning of the struggling instincts and aspirations he depicts. The stories are singularly even in interest and value, and it would be an act of individual preference to decide which was the best. "The Dancin'Party at Harrison's Cove" is perhaps as comprehensive in effect as any, with its spirited dénouement and its account of Miss Mandy Tyler, the queen of the revels, who was asked by five different admirers to ride home with him, and, narrates Mrs. Johns, “tole all five of 'em yes; an' when the party war over, she war the last ter go; an' when she started out'n the door, thar war all five of them boys a-standin' thar, waitin' fur her, an' every one a-holdin' his horse by the bridle, an' none of 'em knowed who the others war a-waitin' fur. An' this hyar Mandy Tyler, when she got ter the door an' seen 'em all a-standin' thar, never said one word, jest walked right through 'mongst 'em, an' sot out fur the mounting on foot, with all them five boys a-followin' an' a-leadin' thar horses an' aquarrellin' enough ter take off each other's heads 'bout which one war agoin' ter ride with her." Miss Mandy, little as this incident is developed, shows her aptitude as a coquette. The deep and sombre realism of "Old Sledge at the Settlemint," and the weird suggestiveness of "Over on the T'other Mounting," also deserve special mention. The stories would probably be ranked among "dia

lect tales," although the dialect, faithfully given as it is, is only that vitiated form of the mother-tongue which is common to the "poor whites" of the South and the Southwest.

"Kitty's Conquest" is also a story of life in the Southwest, many of its incidents occurring near the borderland of Mississippi and Tennessee; but it is of quite a different sort from Mr. Craddock's, being clever, sketchy, rattling, and rather of the Charles-O'Malley school. It is abundantly entertaining, and gives a lively picture of the condition of the South some ten or twelve years ago, when it was dominated by the Ku-Klux, with all the discomforts attending a fermenting and explosive state of society. The opposite ingredients of risks and pleasures, fighting and love-making, are made good use of, and the mixture is not lacking in piquancy. Miss Kitty herself is a pretty little arch-rebel, with a hatred of Yankee officers" which it is naturally the destiny of Lieutenant Amory of the United States army to overcome. Altogether, the book is both clever and readable in an eminent degree.

George Eliot somewhere remarks that "to be an unusual young man means for the most part to get a difficult mastery over the usual;" but the story of the Misses Challoner, who are "not like other girls," shows their unlikeness to their compeers to be merely superior adaptability and cleverness, charm and energy. It is an engaging history of a family, consisting of a mother and three daughters, who are suddenly reduced from easy circumstances to the most absolute poverty. There is no vagueness in the recital: the girls are clear-headed enough to see all the difficulties and dangers of their position, and canvass them at once. Although pretty, refined, and clever enough to hold their place in society, they have no special accomplishment or talent which might enable them to be governesses: so they resolve to turn to account their skill in dress-making; and this is effectively done in a little, dull, sea-side town in the south of England, where their enterprise makes a nine days' wonder. There is a cheerful naturalness and good sense about the heroines, and an attractiveness besides, which win the reader's liking, and it is inevitable, we suppose, that such pretty damsels should enlist the sympathies of all sorts of gallant knights who rush to their rescue. But, we confess, we should have liked to see the logical conclusion of the under

taking unspoiled by rich relations and well-born lovers. The story reminds one of Mrs. Alexander's earliest and pleasantest novels, and will no doubt find many readers.

66

Stratford-by-the-Sea" is described as the unchanged remnant of an old township called Stratford, on the New-Eng

two years since in the Leisure Ilour Series, and in its way a striking though not entirely pleasing novel.

Books Received.

sleepy, hopeless corner of a rocky coast is Stratford-by-the-Sea, with faintly-colored existences-hardly recognizable as lives--going on in gray monotony. There is nothing especially new about the story, although it is well told, with some of the fresh lights which requicken the most worn-out plots. Elizabeth, whose youth has been passed in this sombre quietude, oppressed and domineered over by her grandmother, is found attractive by Oswald Craig, a chance-comer to the seacoast, and won, wooed, and carried off by him to a bright, luxurious world, made various by æsthetic taste and culture,in other words, Boston. Oswald Craig is a hero of that brilliant but unlovely type which seems to point the moral that culture and refinement conspire to impoverish the spiritual man and make him hollow and shallow. His character is from the first palpable enough to the reader in its mere counterfeit of worth; but the young wife is slower to learn the lesson of its absolute egoism, caprice, and cruelty. Whatever love was left in his heart for her at the end of six months is dismissed for the allurements of a fresher fancy. The real strength of the book comes out in the unpleasing episode between Oswald Craig and the young actress Victoria Landor, and shows, we think, the author's gifts far better than the quiet picture she gives of the old town by the sea. The situation reaches a painful climax and ends tragically. Elizabeth is left a widow, and, after a time, is free to find a new and better life for herself. For there has been a second hero, a positive, aggressive, hard-fisted one, too, storming the breach of all citadels, religious, social, and intellectual, who has won her love when her husband lost it, and who finally carries her off to lend some beauty to his rugged life. The book is very well written, and, being anonymous, challenges some curiosity about the writer, and we venture to hazard the surmise that it is by the author of "Yesterday," published some

Events in the Life of an Orthodox Minister of Connecticut. By the Author of "Reveries of a Bachelor." New and Revised Edition. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

Balzac. By Edgar Evertson Saltus. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

Injuresoul: A Satire for Science. By A. J. H. Duganne. New York: American Book Print Company.

Merv A Story of Adventures and Captivity. By Edmond O'Donovan, Special Correspondent of the London "Daily News." New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

The Bowsham Puzzle. A Novel. By John Habberton, Author of "Helen's Babies," etc. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Tea and Coffee: Their Physical, Intellectual, and Moral Effects on the Human System. By William A. Alcott. With Notes and Additions by Nelson Sizer. New York: Fowler & Wells.

Franklin Square Song Collection. No. 2. Selected by J. P. McCaskey. New York: Harper & Brothers.

Bound Together: A Sheaf of Papers. By the Author of "Wet Days at Edgewood," "Reveries of a Bachelor," etc. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.

My Musical Memories. By H. R. Haweis. New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

Politics: An Introduction to the Study of Comparative Constitutional Law. By William

W. Crane and Bernard Moses, Ph.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Paper read before the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society, December 14, 1883. With Afterthoughts. By William Hague, D.D. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

The Spanish Masters: An Outline of the His-
tory of Painting in Spain. By Emelyn W.
Washburn. New York: G. P. Putnam's
Sons.

Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Edited, with
a Translation, Introduction, and Notes, by
Roswell D. Hitchcock and Francis Brown.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
Apostolic Life as Revealed in the Acts of the
Apostles. By Joseph Parker, D.D. Vol. I.
New York: Funk & Wagnalls.

J'

LIET discovered reading.

ULIET [yawns]. Where on earth is Romeo? It's a sin and a shame, the way he goes on! He pays no more regard to meal-time than a doctor's gig; and he makes such a fuss if his food is not done just to suit him! Heigh-ho! Here I am buried alive for the second time, and just as much forgotten as if I had died when I took that overdose of morphine. Why, only the other day, when I was calling on old Mrs. Lear, I heard her scream from one end of the house to the other, "Mrs. R. Montague? Mrs. R. Montague? Who the devil's Mrs. R. Montague? Is it the woman who coddles chimney-sweeps ?" No wonder her husband thought a low soft voice an excellent thing in woman.

Oh dear! If my pa and Romeo's would only forgive us and let us go back to Verona! I am so sick of being cooped up in this poky little water-cure establishment, living on next to nothing, and in-in a room without a balcony! And I could have had one, too, only Romeo was so unkind: he said I was much too good at that sort of thing, and that I had tried that once too often already. And when I told him that he, at any rate, ought not to reproach me with it, he said, on the contrary, he was just the one who should.

Ah! how well I remember that night at home, when I sat looking at the moon, thinking, like the love-sick little goosey that I was, of him and heard his soft voice wafted up amid the fragrance of orange-blossoms: "I would I were a glove upon that hand, that I might touch that cheek." His remarks about my hands now, in connection with the price of gloves, are not quite so flattering. And then he cried, "By yonder moon I swear," and I interrupted him with, "Oh, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon!" only I should have added, "Or by the sun and stars, or the whole uni

verse," if I had known how extremely addicted he was to that style of conversation. Then I asked him softly if he loved me just threw myself at his head, he says; but I didn't at all; and if I had, 'twould have served him right for jumping over pa's wall. Oh, if we had only kept a dog! Hark! there's Romeo's step! Let me hide my novel: it makes him so angry to see me read a novel. He says that a woman's first duty in life should be to make her husband comfortable, and that instead of cursing and swearing about love, she had better take off his boots. No: there, it's past! And it's not Romeo, after all: it must be that poor crazy loon of a Dane who came here with his wishy-washy little wife to recover his mind. Though how he is going to recover what he never had, I don't see.-Oh, here comes Portia.

Enter PORTIA.

Is that you, Mrs. Bassanio?

Portia. Ergo est ego-it is I! How poor that language is which to denote so great a thing employs so weak a word, it is I!

Jul. Language is a snare and a delusion, as I have found to my cost, Mrs. B.

Por. Qui tam-what of that? Because one has been weak, shall none be strong? Because one missed the right, shall all do wrong? No! no! The purity of language is not stained: it droppeth as the gentle rain

Jul. If you knew my Romeo, you'd say it dropped very much more like hail.

Por. Durante vita-do not interrupt. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes

Jul. That's true enough: at least that's the indiscriminate way in which blessings are showered on me.

Por. Mala causa silenda est-why cannot you be silent? 'Tis mightiest in the mighty: it becomes the learned lawyer better than his gown. His language shows the force of legal power, the attributes of