ance with the habits of their kind. There are thirteen sketches, or "tin-types," in the volume, and the reader will be very apt, on reaching the end, to regret that the number is not greater, for more lively and amusing studies of the kind are seldom published. The publishers have brought the book out handsomely, and have given it a striking and felicitous cover-design. (Cassell. $1.50.)-N. Y. Tribune.

CAPTAIN CHARLES KING'S STORIES.

"WELL WON; or, From the Plains to the Point,'" is probably the best of a volume of short stories by Captain Charles King, U. S. A. It is occupied with the brave deeds of a young fellow who made a dashing rescue in the far West-one of the persons saved being a little child and as a result of this was sent through military influence to West Point. The spirited little tale would have been better if Captain King had refrained from a part of his details of a soldier's life on the plains. It is, however, interesting to hear how even the officers discard uniform in their Indian campaigns, and go out for duty in slouch hats and flannel shirts or tanned buckskin. "From the Point' to the Plains" is an illustration of the fact-besides being a love story—that a scapegrace who cannot or will not obey the strict rules of a military school may turn out to be good for something after all, when he has been sobered by danger and service. "Starlight Ranche," the title-story of Captain King's volume, is not remarkable in itself. It is like a good deal of this author's work in being evidence of his desire for romantic foundations for his fiction, in spite of his abundant store of knowledge and-it must be--of experience of army life. The relations between the fort and the ranche in the little tale just named remind one vaguely and rather unreasonably of the small house and the great house at Allington. (Lippincott. $1.)-Boston Post.

THE CRIME OF SYLVESTRE BON

NARD.

OVER" The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard" the temptation is to linger-an exquisite bit of portraiture, so delicate, so fine of color, so perfect in its purity and tone. An old delver in manuscripts of the Middle Ages, an octogenarian, unmarried, living alone with his cats and his books and his deaf and crabbed servants. The sun comes in at the windows, but nothing else that has touched on the life of to-day. Where could conditions exceeding these in simplicity be found? And yet with these we have a romance both charming and real, and the crime of the good old man-it has been one of pure goodness-rescuing a child out of the kitchen of a boarding-school, where, because of her poverty, the principal has

put her to work. This girl is the daughter of that other young girl, whom, some fifty years or more before, our good old Sylvestre had loved. But it had been books ever since, with one chamber of his memory set apart. And now when the young Jeanne comes into his life, books are all he has to give her. He determines to sell them and give her a dowry.

No extract can give the charm of this book, with its translation by Lafcadio Hearn. (Harper. pap., 45 c.)-Commercial Advertiser.

RUSSIAN FOLK-TALES.

"SIXTY FOLK-TALES," from exclusively Slavonic sources, translated, with brief introductions and notes, by A. H. Wratislaw, of Christ's College, Cambridge, make up a volume which will thoroughly interest students of comparative mythology. The translations are from a collection of folk-tales made in 1865 by the Bohemian scholar and archæologist, K. J. Erbin, and include stories which have been current-some of them for centuries-in Bohemia, Moravia, Kashubia, Upper and Lower Lusatia, White and Little Russia, Bulgaria and Servia, Carniola, Croatia and Illyria. Some of these stories are the exact counterpart of those which have been told in English and American nurseries for two or three centuries. The Russians make bitter complaint that their folklore tales have been appropriated by the Germans, and there is little doubt that the charge is to some extent true. Little Red Ridinghood came to us through the German, and it is curious to see how little it has lost in the transmission. With the exception of the close of the story, in which the huntsman cuts open the wolf and releases the child and her grandmother, it might have been copied from our common version, word for word. Professor Wratislaw is a firm believer in the allegorical significance of most of these tales, and notes accompany each division, in which the references are explained. The collection adds much that is of value to folk-lore lit(Houghton. $2.)—Boston Transcript.

erature.

THE POPE AND THE NEW ERA.

UNDER the title of "The Pope and the New Era," Cassell & Co. issue in a single volume Mr. William T. Stead's "Letters from the Vatican," published within the last six months in the Pall Mall Gazette and other English papers, and in a number of American journals. Those familiar with these remarkable productions are well aware that Mr. Stead is frank and outspoken to a degree. Though by education and instinct a strenuous opponent of the Roman Catholic Church, he is far from wishing its dissolution as a religious body. He compares it to a mighty river draining a continent, and which cannot be destroyed. "It may be drying up; but, if so, the process is so slow as to be almost imperceptible. It may have overflowed its banks, filling the lowlands with marsh, but it is there and cannot be got rid of. Huge mud banks may have choked its channel, rendering it unnavigable; snags may abound; the whole stream, whether as motive force or irrigating source or inland waterway, may have become utterly waste; but so long as it exists it must be reckoned with, and, if possible, utilized." This striking passage affords the keynote to the whole work. Few Protestants have ventured to approach the subject in so broad a spirit, and few probably would treat it with such candor and freedom from prejudice. But the author foresaw what was to be the outcome of this candor when he wrote in his preface: "There is much in these letters, I fear, which will give pain and offense to those within and to those without the Catholic Church. That, however, was inevitable from the standpoint which I occupy." (Cassell. $1.50.)-N. Y. Sun.

THE CITY OF WINCHESTER. THE city of Winchester has a history illuminated with past grandeur, feudal customs, ecclesiastical splendor, civic liberties, picturesque tradition and anecdote. Once the capital city of England, the royal seat of Alfred, long the chief city of the realm, until London outstripped her in the race for preëminence, Winchester's annals are as important as they are curious. Dean Kitchin, than whom no fitter person for the task could be found, has, in his brilliant style and with solid erudition, sketched the story of his beloved city for the Historic Towns Series. To give an idea of the scope of Winchester's history we quote this from Dr. Kitchin's preface: 'Seven years hence will come the thousandth anniversary of the recorded death of a Wicgerefa, or townreeve, of Winchester, so that the city has had a settled government for a millennium; five years ago the civic authorities, rightly or not, com

"

We have learned to expect good fiction from the author of "Reata" and "Beggar My Neighbor," and the reader need fear no disappointment in opening her last novel, which bears the "fetching" title " Lady Baby." The heroine indeed is a very perverse and naughty young person, who does a great many things which she ought not to do, and leaves undone most things which she ought to do. She knows nothing of the world save through novels-which is to say she knows nothing of the world, cynics may declare. If the man who wins her had not been preternaturally cool, patient, and imperturbable, Lady Baby certainly must have driven him frantic. But there is abundant matter of interest outside

of lovers' quarrels. The story has two egotists, Carbury, the former, is really male and female. a contemptible character, and rather grotesque, with his black hair and eyes and his beauty as of a stage brigand or pirate king. The author does not appear to intend doing so; but she has, wittingly or unwittingly, caused Mr. Carbury to be very nearly ridiculous, and that is fatal to taking him seriously. Lady Euphrosyne, the female egotist, is less firmly drawn and less carefully filled in, therefore not so impressive or amusing. There is stir and movement enough in the plot, and the wicked woman is that mild type of iniquity engendered by civilization-the penniless girl, namely, who dowered only with social accomplishments, and used only to the highly artificial life of "society," is driven to intrigue and plot for the sake of a husband who will solve the problem of permanent bread-andbutter. Maud Epperton has no little good in her, but the exigencies of her position have gone far toward smothering it. She is not an adventuress of the "Miss Gwilt" type in Wilkie Collins' "Armadale," but she is driven to base expedients, and comes to grief in one way, though her creator is merciful enough to let her marry a wealthy tallow-chandler and finally go out, like one of her husband's candles, with an unpleasant odor. (Harper. pap., 45 c.)—N. Y. Tribune.

THE BAGPIPERS.

CRITICS of George Sand divide her writings into four distinct periods. In the first, 1831 to 1840, the emotions of a stormy youth find expression in poetic and impassioned fiction, of which "Indiana" and "Mauprat " are examples. In the second period, 1840 to 1848, the writer has less care and thought for her own feelings. Theories and doctrines interest her; she longs to reform society, and writes "Letters to the People," with many political pamphlets.

In the third period, 1848 to 1860, weary of revolutions and of theories, and glad to bid adieu to Paris, George Sand buries herself in Nohant. "The Bagpipers" ("Les Maitres Sonneurs," or "The Master Bell Ringers") is an outcome of this reactionary period, when she wrote, "Agitated and wounded by outward tempests, I endeavored to recover in solitude, if not peace, at least faith." In this period she also wrote La Petite Fadette" and "François le Champi," to the surprise and delight of the French world of letters. These three works are beautiful pastorals, as sweet and pure in their morale as in their literary style. It is hard to realize that the brilliant writer of "Consuelo" could direct her genius into such entirely new channels. "The Bagpipers" reads like a bit of actual history; the local color has been preserved, and simplicity of style is never lost. The story is told by Père Etienne, one of the peasants, and the art of the writer is never more apparent than in the naïve manner in which this peasant tells his story. The narrator is Père Etienne always in his simplicity and straightforwardness.

George Sand sinks her own literary personality to a marvellous degree in delineating the lives and loves of these simple woodland folk. The half-mad, self absorbed Joseph, with his musical freaks and fascinating eccentricities, is an admirable character study, and wholly unique; the life described is truly bucolic, and the whole atmosphere is idyllic. (Roberts. $1.50.)-Boston Literary World.

COUNTESS IRENE.

IF J. Fogerty be in truth Irish and a man— the latter we cannot quite believe, in spite of assurances to that effect-then the pleasant and by turns brilliant novel called "Countess Irene" is in some respects a remarkable work. It is certainly most unusual for an Irishman, however genial and however cosmopolitan he may be in other ways and from other points of view, to show the fair judgment of English character that is displayed in "J. Fogerty's" story; and on the other hand a man seldom grasps what may be called household shades and distinctions in the style displayed here when the writer portrays, with many delicate strokes, the family life of the

Nugents. The young countess herself, with the conventional impulsiveness of the erratic type of heroine, is less well done than her clever friend, Irma von Thurn, who is presented in the true novelist's manner. (Appleton. 75 c.)—Boston Post.

EASTER GLEAMS.

66

IN the twenty or more poems which compose this small volume there are to be traced several degrees of inspiration. Theology and poetry have ever been unwilling yoke-fellows, and whereever in these pages Miss Larcom has aimed to impart theological information she has distinctly eft the region of good poetry. Wherever, on the contrary, she has tried to make her verse the simple utterance of religious thought and aspiration she has come much more nearly towards the achievement of good poetic results. Several of these poems are decided additions to the literature of religious verse. Such are "Easter Even," "The New Song," The Lord Is Risen Indeed," A Glimpse of His Face," and "The Heavenward Call." The last named is indeed a model poem of its kind. It breathes the spirit of true, unaffected devotion; it is long enough for the proper expansion of the thought, yet not so long as to allow expansion to become attenuation, and in movement and melody it leaves nothing to be desired. Miss Larcom has written much verse of worth in her time, but for blended simplicity, dignity, and artistic completeness of execution we do not now recall any poem of hers that seems to us much better than this beautiful expression of religious aspiration, The Heavenward Call." (Houghton, M. 75 c.)-Boston Advertiser.

"

THE HEAVENWARD CALL. WHAT shall I do, my Lord, my God, To make my life worth more to Thee? Within my heart, through earth abroad, Deep voices stir and summon me. Through strange confusions of the time I hear Thy beckoning call resound: There is a pathway more sublime

Than yet my laggard feet have found.

My coward heart, my flagging feet,

They hold me in bewildering gloom: Come Thou my stumbling steps to meet, And lift me unto larger room!

The dearest voice may lead astray:

Speak Thou! Thy word my guide shall be, Oh, not from life and men away,

But through them, with them, up to Thee. It is not much these hands can do:

Keep Thou my spirit close to Thine, Till every thought Thy love throbs through, And all my words breathe truth divine! With souls that seek Thy pure abode, Let my enfaltering soul aspire! Make me a radiance on the road; A bearer of Thy sacred fire!

-From Lucy Larcom's "Easter Gleams.

The Literary News.

EDITED BY A. H. LEYPOLDT.

APRIL, 1890.

KING PLAGIARISM AND HIS COURT. WHEN I used to read Disraeli the wild vehemence with which some of the quoted authors repudiated any charge of plagiarism seemed quite natural; for the poor men fancied that to accuse them of literary theft was like saying that a fighting-man had shown the white feather. So far as I can understand the matter, the detected plagiarist of other days must have been one of the most unhappy creatures on earth after his fate overtook him; for he got scant mercy, and there was a fine, juicy flavor about the epithets applied to him. But all that is altered; the plagiarist has been on promotion during the last dozen years, and instead of being like a knight with spurs hacked off, he is now quite a royal personage in his way; and never a Seigneur in old France equalled him as regards the impunity with which he levies contributions. If once he does a good thing, or a passably good thing, he reckons that he is free to eke out his own powers by utilizing the powers of other people, and he interprets his supposed privileges in a manner which is highly liberal to himself. Indeed, I do not know any kind of a man who is more delicately thoughtful and considerate of his own interests than is the plagiarist. For several years his way has been smooth, and his regular methods have not been varied under any pressure from society. The mode of procedure is amongst the most delight fully simple operations known among men, and I can quite imagine that a meditative burglar must keenly envy his literary brother. Let it be granted (and we must grant the postulate, whether we like it or not) that the plagiarist takes something which strikes his imperial fancy from another man's work. Somebody is almost sure to notice the conveyance-they call it a coincidence, sometimes-and then there is a little newspaper talk. The plagiarist does not distress himself, for he knows his ground; if he is very condescending, indeed, he has one formula which comes out pat: "I can only say that I have never read the work in question." Then, if you are vicious, you point out the reasoning which runs through an algebraical chapter on chances, and you remark that although you may throw one orange from your front door and spike it cleanly on a rail at the other side of the street, yet, if you wager that you can follow up your feat by spiking twenty other oranges all in a row, the odds are millions to one against you. Applying your illustration you say that while one

coincidence might be easily understood, you cannot quite account for a clean half-dozen. The plagiarist merely repeats, "I have never read the work in question," and his friends say: How dare you give the lie to a man against whose personal honor you know nothing?" This query comes so crudely that it is apt to make a raw hand blush, and fancy he has somehow trampled on the code of honor. But the plagiarist's best plan is to keep silent, because then his backers compare him to a majestic thoroughbred, who will not condescend to raise a kick when the village curs snarl at his blue-blooded heels. The backers go on to ask, "Is it likely that the prodigal genius which gave the Makololo Monster to the world has been beholden to any one of the creatures who yelp forth their petty cry of Stop thief'?" And that is the most subtly dangerous defence of all-a defence which a quiet journalist and reviewer is best fitted to demolish.

It does not seem to be comprehended that because a man has taken one good or brilliant work out of his head he is so much the less likely to have another good work lying handy. If a writer is so clever that he turns out a book which takes the public, then the booksellers naturally want something more from him. The inevitable result follows; the successful workman discovers that his invention has failed him for the time, and that, like the powers of other persons, his powers are severely constricted. But under temptation from clamorous capitalists he helps himself here and there until he botches up something that will fetch money, and then the faithful backers will tell you first of his greatness, which makes him independent of anybody, and then they tell you that no one can wonder if, in the excitement of hauling in money, the poor man of genius sometimes got a trifle mixed concerning the things which belonged to him and the things which did not. But that will not do. An author may overdraw on his brain, just as he may overdraw at his bank. If he squares his passbook at the bank by paying in money belonging to somebody else, he finds himself in a pickle, especially if he happens to use a cheque which can be traced. When he overdraws his inventive account with his brain, he must not think himself free to meet a book-dealer's demand by grabbing another writer's property. A clever man who has earned much money is specially bound to be circumspect, because the very fact that his early labors have been profitable gives him the chance of taking leisure, and he is shabby if he steals, as the true plagiarist always does, from some struggling individual whose golden chance has not arrived. If the plagiarist's henchmen say he is so wealthy that he may be excused for picking insignificant odds and ends here and there, and if they speak of a very bad case of lit

erary stealing as though it resembled the freak of a kleptomaniac plutocrat, then I ask what would happen to Colonel North or Baron Rothschild if either of those gentlemen took to removing the tills from city dining-rooms? If I were required to describe the conduct of a person who writes himself out for a time, and yet goes on selling literary wares which are so much patchwork, I should call him impudent and greedy. I wonder, now, what some of the prolific gentry think of the fine writer who put his life into "John Inglesant"? He rested content with one work which cannot

die, and he resisted monetary temptations when he could have garnered a heavy crop for a time had he condescended to do scamped stuff, or to rake about among contemporary writers in search of handy scraps of plunder.

Such a steadfast attitude, such a loyalty to literature, such a disdain of money that cannot be grasped without doing one's second best workthese things are not comprehensible to the genuine plagiarist. When his account is overdrawn he will not stop making further drafts, but he sells shoddy and stolen goods, and keeps things going that way. I wish him joy. The plagiarist is the direct result of the big race for money over a crowded course; the publishers, like the proprietors of enclosed race-courses, offer fancy stakes for competition, and when our royal personage has entered himself to run, he is not particular about his modes of getting home and bagging a large share of the gate-money paid by an eager reading public.-JAMES RUNCIMAN in the Fortnightly Review.

Freshest News.

WILLIAM WINTER is preparing for the Dunlap Society a memorial volume on John Gilbert. The third part of Mr. Winter's valuable "Brief Chronicles" is ready, and will be sent out shortly.

MR. LEWIS CARROLL, author of "Alice in Wonderland," is compiling a volume which is to consist of selections from the Bible, and another which is to be an arrangement of Shakespeare suitable for young girls.

THE Welch memorial fund has been closed.

More than $25,000 has now been raised, subscriptions having come from all over the country and from hundreds who were touched by the story of Welch's brave struggle. The money is to be used in educating his children.

"MISS OLIVE SCHREINER," says the London Athenæum, "has sent from Cape Town the complete Ms. of a small volume of allegories, including several that have not yet seen the light. The volume will be published by Messrs. Blackford & Sons, if we mistake not. It is said that it will be called Dreams.'

SCRIBNER & WELFORD have just ready "Shakespeare's Sonnets," edited with notes and introducof William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, of his tion by Thomas Tyler, illustrated with portraits mother, Mary, Countess of Pembroke, and of Mrs. Mary Fitton; "The Marriage of the Bourbons," by Captain, the Hon. D. Bingham, who has made a special study of the dynastic annals of France, illustrated; also "Italian Characters in the Epoch of Unification," by the Countess Martinengo Cesaresco, containing lives of the patriots Ugo Bassi, the Cairolis, Daniel Manin, Constance d'Azeglio, and others.

THOMAS NELSON & SONS have just ready a superb edition of the Oxford Parallel Bibles, containing the authorized and revised versions in parallel columns, printed in minion type on Oxford" India paper, with 12 maps and index and bound in turkey and levant morocco. It is 94x 634 and only an inch in thickness. They have vised version of the Book of Psalms; the "Finger also just ready a long primer edition of the rePrayer-Book," a unique edition of the Church of England Prayer Book one inch in breadth, three and a half inches in length, and one-third of an inch in thickness; also," Robertson of Irvine-PoetPreacher," a life of Dr. William Bruce Robertson, the famous Scotch divine, by Arthur Guthrie.

THE author of "Metzerott, Shoemaker," is Miss Katherine Pearson Woods. According to the Boston Transcript, Miss Woods was born in Wheeling, (then) Virginia, Jan. 28, 1853, so that "" she was a year when she wrote "Metzerott younger than George Eliot was when she wrote "Scenes from Clerical Life." She is a granddaughter of the late Rev. James Dabney McCabe, D.D. Captain W. Gordon McCabe, Principal of the University School of Petersburg, Va., and one of the well-known "writers of the South," is a cousin. Her father's maternal grandfather was Alexander Quainer, of French Huguenot extraction settled in Scotland. In 1884, while teaching in Wheeling, West Virginia, Miss Woods was led to study social science, especially by the great strike in the nail works in that place. She regards Christian Socialism as the great cure-all for such irregularities.

L. PRANG & Co., as always, offer an extensive line of Easter goods made especially noticeable by their thoroughly American workmanship, the text being supplied by American authors, the designs by American artists, and the manufacture being all accomplished in this country. The and include pads, book-marks, sachets, perfume Easter art-prints on satin are very attractive, bags, handkerchief boxes, portfolio and magazine covers, cushions, chair and easel scarfs, etc. There is a very large assortment of small Easter Booklets ranging in prices from 6 c. to 40 c. The Art Books issued for this season are • The Spring Song," "The Robin's Song," Hermit Thrush," and "The Messenger of Spring," all illustrated by F. Schuyler Matthews in monochrome and pen drawing: "Winged Winds" and Jesus, Lover of My Soul," illustrated by Louis K. Harlowe; "Christ Is Risen," illustrated in colors by Lucy Comins; and "The Angel at the Sepulchre," a poem by Esther B. Tiffany, with full page illustrations by William S. Tiffany.

44 A