seven, the various advances made to the girl | are laid for the most part in agricultural disby mercenary lovers, and her own disappoint-tricts, the chief interests are rural and bucolic, ing experiences in her efforts to distribute her the majority of the actors are farmers and fortune so as to make people happy and grate- peasants, and the heroines are handsome, vigful. Without lifting the curtain higher than orous, and masterful, but sweet and womanly, to pique curiosity, we may say that she is re- maidens, who own and manage their farms lieved from her embarrassments by the man with masculine ability and success. The of her own heart, who manages so adroitly to treatment of these factors by the two artists extort the consent of the marriage committee is thoroughly diverse, however. Mr. Gibbon's that they become husband and wife before a heroine, who is the "queen of the meadow," single one of the seven years had elapsed for from whom his romance derives its title, is a which her father had so astutely plotted. more pleasing creation than Mr. Hardy's heroine. Her sensibilities are more active and more refined, and she is less hard and masculine. After a courtship that is as pleasant to the reader as it must have been exasperating to the lover, she is wooed and won by a fine, stalwart yeoman, who is a better farmer than herself even, and who joins to a will as resolute and a spirit as high as her own a wise

THE author of The Leavenworth Case1 has written another romance, based, like it, upon the strange and sudden disappearance of one of the leading personages from the scene, and depicting the anxieties, embarrassments, suspicions, accriminations, and efforts for discovery that are caused by it. The tale is a de- | tective story, which keeps the curiosity ingen-head and a heart full of chivalrous gentleness iously stimulated. Although the situations are generally sensational, they are not extravagantly or morbidly so, and several of them are quite dramatic.

and self-sacrificing love. Mr. Gibbon's novel is less intense and less dramatic than Mr. Hardy's, but it is less prolix and less heavily handicapped with dialect colloquies, and its story is more magnetic.

THE task Mr. George Barnett Smith set for himself when he undertook to place before the world "the story of Mr. Gladstone's life, through the medium of his writings and speeches," has resulted in a biography20 so dry and ponderous that it must prove exceedingly unattractive reading to most folk, though statesmen, and those who are in training to become such, will find much in its compact pages amply to repay an attentive perusal. The biography is almost exclusively political in its character. Introducing us only to Gladstone the eminent statist, financier, political leader, thinker, and public man, it traces the growth, development, and transitions of his political opinions with laborious minuteness, and sketches his long and active public career with painstaking ability and fullness; but it is grievously barren of all those interesting details which throw light on his private life, and on his personal, social, and domestic characteristics. He tells us almost nothing of Gladstone's early childhood and boyhood; of his re

MR. CHARLES GIBBON'S pleasing prose pas-lations as a lover, husband, father, and friend; toral, The Queen of the Meadow, has some striking features in common with Mr. Hardy's Far from the Madding Crowd. In both the scenes

16 Sir John. By the Anthor of Anne Dysart, etc. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 66. New York: Harper and Brothers. 17 Little Miss Primrose. A Novel. By the Author of St. Olave's, etc. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 61. New York: Harper and Brothers.

18 Golden-Rod. An Idyl of Mount Desert. "Harper's Half-hour Series." 32mo, pp. 115. New York: Harper and Brothers.

19 The Queen of the Meadow. A Novel. By CHARLES GIBBON. "Franklin Square Library." 4to, pp. 63. New York: Harper and Brothers.

of his bearing in the family, among his intimates, in his study, or in those rare hours when he carried his bow unbent, and laid up new stores of mental vigor and physical vitality in the rest of recreative enjoyments. Not a line of his familiar or friendly private correspondence enables us to feel "the pulse of the machine"; but instead we are given digests of Parliamentary reports, summaries of Parliamentary and other speeches, and abstracts of and liberal quotations from his controversial

20 The Life of the Right Honorable William Ewart Gladstone. By GEORGE BARNETT SMITH. 8vo, pp. 596. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

writings. There is nothing restful in such a | of being hypercritical rather than critical, and biography, and little that is interesting, ex- that the tone of his book is more jaunty and cept to the student of political history. In garrulous than is quite consistent with good this respect the volume contrasts disadvanta- taste, and more patronizing and depreciatory geously with the admirable Life of Macaulay than we can reconcile with our own estimate by Trevelyan, which addresses itself at once of Hawthorne's character and genius. It needs to the interest of the general reader and of the to be further said that Mr. James's criticisms political student or observer. and valuations of Hawthorne are marred by the occasional interjection of sneering disparagements of American literature, whose captious levity are an imputation upon his judgment, and detract from the other substantial merits of his performance. They can only be accounted for, but not defended, by the supposition that they were penned in a moment

THERE is hardly an admirer of Shakspeare but has been tempted, by the dearth of known incidents in the poet's life, to indulge in spec

able. Mr. Calvert has yielded to this feeling in some measure in his gracefully written Biographic Esthetic Study of Shakspeare." The book derives its title from its first two papers, in which he gives a concise summary of the ascertained facts of Shakspeare's life, arranged under the heads of its "first decades" and its "ripeness," filling up the gaps in the outline with such imaginary surroundings, situations, and incidents as are suggested by or are naturally inferable from the real ones. The first paper accompanies Shakspeare from his birth and through the years of his childhood and youth to his twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh year, when he had completed Love's Labor Lost; and the second carries him forward from his twenty-eighth year-when he leaped suddenly from the spring into the summer of his life, and signalized the transition by the production of Romeo and Juliet-through the years of his young and middle manhood and of his mighty prime, till "he passed away without

MR. JAMES'S contribution to the "English Men of Letters Series" of a volume on Hawthorne"1 will not suffer in comparison with the best of its predecessors. None of them more completely than it fulfills the design of the series-to rouse and satisfy an interest in literature in the minds of that large and intelli-ary fit of indigestion. gent class who have to run as they read, by supplying them with the means of nourishing their curiosity as to the performances of our greatest masters in a form copious enough to be profitable, and brief enough for the oppor-ulations as to those that were possible or probtunities of their scanty leisure. Mr. James designates his performance as a critical essay rather than a biography. But while this is essentially true, the critical essay nevertheless embodies an exquisitely graceful biography, gleaned mainly, as Mr. James is careful to avow, from Mr. Lathrop's Life of Hawthorne, but supplemented by finely colored bits of mosaic drawn by Mr. James from Hawthorne's note-books, tales, and novels, the effect of the whole being to make the reader thoroughly acquainted with all the phases of Hawthorne's life and character, and the essential incidents and circumstances that affected them. So judicious are these gleanings, so admirable Mr. James's faculty of choice and selection, so deft and artistic his disposition and arrangement of his second-hand materials, and so felicitous his narrative presentation of them, that although we were already perfectly familiar with the original sources of his information, we have risen from his book feeling that we know and understand Hawthorne bet-looking into old age." Mr. Calvert's outline ter than ever before. Satisfactory, however, as are the biographical portions of his volume, its chiefest excellence undoubtedly resides in its careful accounts and valuations of Hawthorne's writings, its delicate tracings of the unfolding of his literary character, and its sparkling, subtle, and often extended criticisms of them and of the genius and idiosynerasies of their author. These criticisms, moreover, are constantly interrupted and agreeably diversified by a succession of essay-like episodes, giving us glimpses of Hawthorne's friends and contemporaries, and acutely analyzing or nimbly painting local phases and conditions of American life, society, manners, and literature. We should not be candid if we concealed our conviction that, however sparkling and subtle Mr. James's criticisms are, they are frequently overdone to the extent

21 Hawthorne. By HENRY JAMES, Jun. "English Men of Letters Series." 12mo, pp. 177. New York: Harper and Brothers.

includes a review of the circumstances under which Shakspeare's various dramas were written, and of the question of the probable dates of their production. The remainder of the volume is devoted to two suggestive critical and interpretative studies, respectively on King John and Hamlet.

MR. ARTHUR GILMAN has been at the pains to cull from Shakspeare's writings those passages which enunciate the moral sentiments of the poet or shadow forth his religious be liefs, and to gather them into a volume entitled Shakspeare's Morals,23 where they are grouped under distinct heads. These groups are preluded by brief excerpts from great masters of

By

22 Shakspeare: A Biographic Esthetic Study. GEORGE H. CALVERT. 18mo, pp. 211. Boston: Lee and Shepard.

23 Shakspeare's Morals. Suggestive Selections, with brief Collateral Readings and Scriptural References. Edited by ARTHUR GILMAN, M.A. 12mo, pp. 265. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co.

thought, ancient and modern, that further il- | the translator has done his part with the utlustrate their themes, and they are also accom- most accuracy and good taste. panied in foot-notes by Scriptural texts suggested by the poet's thought. The book is a pleasant companion volume to Shakspeare's writings, giving a compacted view of the moral and religious reflections that are to be found in them, and sustaining the accuracy of Bishop Wilberforce's remark, that if we take the entire range of English literature, and put together our best authors who have written upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, we shall not find in all united so much evi-ciety, is as honorable to the character of those dence of the Bible having been read and used as we find in Shakspeare alone.

A REMARKABLE lecture by Dr. H. Bonitz on the Origin of the Homeric Poems," first delivered in Vienna twenty years ago, and since published in Germany in several successive editions, bringing down the history of this branch of inquiry to the present time, has been translated by Professor Lewis R. Packard, of Yale College, and published by Messrs. Harper and Brothers. The principles and methods of modern criticism, both historical and literary, may be said to have grown up in and around the Homeric controversy, which began with the publication of Wolf's Prolegomena to Homer nearly a century ago, and has raged ever since in the learned world unabated. But the controversy is no longer what it was; results have been attained that are indisputable, and the widest differences of view now found among those who are familiar with the subject are trifling in comparison with the issues drawn between Wolf and his opponents. Every step gained by critical inquiry in this narrow field has had its influence in other fields of thought, and has helped to shape and direct the mind of the age. But the history of this important discussion has hitherto been locked up, for the most part, from the reach of the English reader, in dead or foreign languages, or in technical discussions and elaborate treatises not less forbidding. This admirable lecture for the first time sums up the whole inquiry, in its history and its results, in a form not only accessible, but extremely attractive to every thoughtful mind. Not a great scholar has lived in the last three generations who has not devoted his best powers and much of his time to the study of this question; and all the principal features and results of their work are outlined in the text of this little book, presenting an epitome of the movement of critical thought which is intelligible to readers who know nothing of Homer's tongue. Nor is it of less value to the special student, who will not easily find in many volumes so useful a sketch of the literature of the subject as is offered in the full and learned series of notes appended to the lecture. We may add that

24 The Origin of the Homeric Poems. By Dr. H. BONITZ. Translated by Professor LEWIS R. PACKARD, of Yale College. 16mo, pp. 119. New York: Harper and Brothers.

THAT a lady should travel eight hundred miles alone and on horseback through the most wild and lonely regions of the Rocky Mountain mining districts of Colorado, not only without insult by word, look, or gesture, but with the most chivalrous attention having been paid to her sex by the proverbially rough and lawless miners and frontiersmen who form the population at that advanced outpost of American so

25

rude pioneers as it is creditable to the courage and perseverance of the lady. This thought will constantly present itself to the reader of the fresh and vigorous letters composing a volume styled A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, in which their author describes in the frankest and most unconventional manner her adventures by flood and plain, on forest and mountain, in tavern and hut, amid strange rough men and desperadoes, with no other protection than her defenseless womanhood. Although the author of these letters is usually intensely practical and matter-of-fact, she is by no means cold, or commonplace, or unimaginative, and her realistic pictures of life among the trappers, miners, hunters, and settlers of those remote parts are pleasantly varied with glowing descriptions of the boundless views and gorgeous morning and evening skies seen from the summits of lofty parks and peaks, and with vigorous sketches of the broad prairies, wild cañons, and snow-clad hills and plains she traversed in her eight hundred miles of horseback travel.

Camps in the Caribbees" is the title of an unusually interesting volume, in which Mr. Frederick A. Ober gives the results of his observations during a two years' visit to the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles. His visit was made with the purpose of exploring the ornithological treasures of the Caribbean archipelago; and instead of following the beaten track of ordinary tourists, who usually confine their explorations to the fertile and thickly populated cleared belt that fringes the shores of these islands, Mr. Ober left the coast, its villages and cities, and penetrated their interiors, which are vast uncleared forests, covering wild and forbidding mountains, where everything reposes in the same primitive state as when discovered by Columbus. While diligently pursuing his ornithological researches, Mr. Ober turned his attention also to the natural scenery and inhabitants of these primitive interiors, and carefully photographed the birds, beasts, insects, reptiles, and cople he found there, as also such tropical scenes as most im

25 A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. By ISABELLA L. BIRD. Illustrated. 12mo, pp. 296. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

26 Camps in the Caribbees. The Adventures of a Naturalist in the Lesser Antilles. By FREDERICK A. OBER. Svo, pp. 366. Boston: Lee and Shepard.

pressed him. These photographs form the il- | in the interest of commerce and civilization. lustrations of his volume, and they are accom- The most valuable portion of the volume is panied by spirited descriptions of his adventures, explorations, and discoveries, and by interesting accounts of the several islands, their climate, products, and people, together with reproductions of the legends, traditions, and historical incidents connected with these new yet old fields. Mr. Ober writes with the enthusiasm of a naturalist, and the heartiness of a genuine traveller.

Editor's Bistorical Record.

The following United States Senators have UR Record is closed on the 22d of Janu- | been chosen: January 6, Luke Pryor, from Ala

ary 20, with M. Comoundouros as President of the Council and Minister of the Interior.

Another attempt was made, December 30, to | kill King Alfonso, of Spain, while he was driving through the gate of the royal palace at Madrid. Two pistol-shots were fired at the royal carriage, but they were badly aimed, and nobody was hurt. The would-be assassin, a lad of 19, named Gonzalez, was arrested.

The bill for the abolition of slavery in Cuba passed the Spanish Senate December 24, by a vote of 134 to 14, and the Chamber of Deputies January 20, by a vote of 230 to 10.

The British forces under General Roberts routed the Afghans December 23, and re-occupied Cabool and the surrounding heights.

DISASTERS.

December 26.-Conflagration in Tokio, Japan, the third in seven years. Nearly 15,000 houses destroyed, 50,000 persons made destitute, and 100 killed by exposure to cold.

December 28.-Portion of the long bridge over the Frith of Tay, Scotland, blown down in a gale. Train of passenger cars ingulfed and all on board (about ninety) drowned.

January 21.-Explosion at Lycett Colliery, Newcastle-under-Lyne. Seventy men killed.

OBITUARY.

December 26.-In New York city, Recorder John K. Hackett, in his fifty-ninth year. December 27.-In London, England, William Hepworth Dixon, author, in his fifty-ninth year.

December 31.-In Athens, Alabama, George Smith Houston, United States Senator from Alabama, aged sixty-nine years.

January 3.-At Malden, Massachusetts, Bishop Gilbert Haven, of the Methodist Episcopal Church, in his fifty-ninth year.

January 7.-In Paris, France, J. J. F. Poujoulat, author, aged seventy-two years.

January 10.-In New York city, Frank Leslie, editor and publisher, aged fifty-nine years. January 15.-Dispatch from London announcing death of the Countess Ida von HahnHahn, in her seventy-fifth year.

January 18.-In Paris, France, Duke Antoine de Gramont, the French diplomatist, in his sixty-first year.

January 20.-In Paris, France, M. Jules Favre, French republican leader, aged seventyone years. In London, England, Thomas Landseer, engraver, aged eighty-three years.

January 21.-In New York, Commodore Homer C. Blake, aged fifty-eight years.

Editor's Drawer.

ACORRESPONDENT Mrs. to laugh; Mrs.

apropos of the large-sized words sometimes know what there was in the circumstance used by our colored brethren in their public that pleased her so much. Mrs. B. feared that efforts, says that a certain colored minister, Mrs. A. might take offense if she told her who was in urgent need of funds to complete thoughts. Mrs. A. promised that she would his church, made this "yer" appeal: "My not. "Well," said Mrs. B., "I was thinking bredren, it's a long time since we hab distrib-that probably your impracticable hen is a firm uted anyting for de constraction of dis yer believer in close communion." church. De hat will now be passed roun', an' we hopes you uns will be right peart in gibbin to de Lord. De good Lord lubs a fearful gibber."

THIS, from a city friend, seems to go straight to the point. We are sure our Episcopal friends will think so.

The Rev. Mr. Parker, who for many years preached at the floating Episcopal church in this city, was one day asked by an acquaintance, "Mr. Parker, is your church High or Low Church?"

SEATED next to the Drawer, a few evenings since, at dinner, was a bright girl, who, in alluding to the frivolous ways of a certain young man, said, "He really frivols too much." The verb is not only fresh and good, but it recalls a somewhat similar saying of Bayard Taylor's, who, on being once asked if Mr. was not a very penurious man, replied, "Well, he penures a good deal."

APROPOS of the meteoric display promised for last Thanksgiving-night, which did not 'That, sir, depends entirely upon the tide," | come off, a Maryland correspondent is remindwas the neat response.

ed of a story told in connection with the great meteoric shower of '33. Living near him were

A CORRESPONDENT avers that this took place two farmers named Jervis and Dixon, who in Connecticut:

On

commonly got well "corned" when they came Mrs. A., a close-communion Baptist, lives to town, and never left until after dark. near Mrs. B., a Methodist. Making a call one the night in question, being overtaken by the day, Mrs. A., in speaking of her poultry, of "shower," and much frightened, they took to which she had a large number, complained the woods. Being convinced that the end of that she had one hen that she could not pre- all things had come, each suggested to the vail upon to eat with the other hens, and had other to say a few words by way of prayer, to give her a dish of food by herself; which | but not being "gifted" in that way, they could