ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

gent, and dispassionate men, who had never | pose to which all his aims and labors were been inoculated with the virus of classical dis- preparatory, are delightfully detailed. This putatiousness, it is safe to say they would felicitous autobiographical sketch is appropromptly decide that Dr. Schliemann has made priately supplemented with a succint ontout his case. And undoubtedly, until his crit- line narrative of his first visits to Ithaca, the ics and assailants use their spades as diligent- Peloponnesus, and Troy, in 1868 and 1870, and ly and as much to the purpose as he has used of his five years' work of excavation at Hishis, and somewhere else on the Troad exhume sarlik, respectively in 1871, 1872, 1873, 1878, and a witness such as he has exhumed, however 1879. After having thus gathered the general successful they may be in pointing out gaps results of his researches, as it were, into a nutand flaws in his claims, the common-sense of shell for the convenience of the unscientific mankind will credit Dr. Schliemann with hav-reader, Dr. Schliemann proceeds more delibering discovered the site of the Troy of Homer's ately and fully to explain his work and its reIliad. Of the ornate volume in which Dr.sults in detail for the scientific scholar; and Schliemann relates the history of his researches as preparatory to this he contributes four elaband discoveries it is impossible to speak, except orate treatises, in each of which there are conin the most general terms, in the brief space to stant references to classical and historical auwhich we are restricted. His narrative of his thorities, and to his own discoveries supporting five years' arduous work of excavation-his his hypothesis of the identity of ancient Troy graphic and good-tempered record of the im- and Hissarlik. These are severally on the pediments encountered, the difficulties sur-country of the Trojans, or the Troad, on the mounted, the machinery and methods employ-ethnology of the Trojans and the topography ed, and his enthusiastic relation of the rich dis- of Troy, on the history of Troy, and on the coveries made, of the rare treasures unburied true site of Troy, the last-mentioned being a from their tombs of more than thirty centu- valuable and exhaustive paper giving the varies, and of the interesting or exciting inci- rious modern authors who have advanced more dents that happened from day to day—is one or less elaborate theories on the subject. Sepaof transcendent interest; and the grand cen- rate chapters are devoted to a description of tral fact which it emphasizes is the nucleus each of the seven cities-five of them prehisaround which is clustered in rich profusion a toric, and two more recent-which, as his exbewildering variety of learning bearing on the cavations reveal, have successively occupied site and history of Troy, the identity of Homer, the site of Troy (each upon the ruins of its the paternity of his poems, and the Homeric predecessor), dwelling of course at much the times and literature. Sometimes this learning greatest length, as being of the most curious is in the form of a pregnant brief sentence or interest, on the third from the bottom, the episode incorporated with and illustrating some "Burnt City," or the Troy of the Iliad. Dr. fact or opinion; and sometimes it expands into Schliemann's book is enriched by a number separate exhaustive treatises by Schliemann or of papers, essays, and contributions, by emihis learned friends on recondite topics that are nent scholars and specialists, which are of great of profound interest and importance in the value, either as confirming his general conclurealm of archæological, philological, historic- sions, or as illustrative of particular discussions al, ethnographical, antiquarian, topographic- growing out of or suggested by them. Several, geographical, or critical inquiry and re- al of these among others the preface by Prosearch. In an introductory chapter, whose fessor Virchow, giving a critical estimate of the brevity is its chief fault, Dr. Schliemann makes importance of Dr. Schliemann's discoveries, and himself familiarly known to his readers, in an Professor Max Müller's dissertation on one of autobiographical sketch, in which he tells the the emblems frequently met with in the restory of his life with a garrulous unreserve mains of the Burnt City-are introduced in the and a frank and ingenuous simplicity that are body of the work. Others are collected in an exceedingly winning, leaving on us the im- appendix,, and embrace a paper on Troy and pression that never before was there an en- Hissarlik-being a comparison of the Trojan thusiast so practical, or a shrewd, astute, meth- country as it is with what the Iliad says of it odical man of business so devoured by enthu--by Professor Virchow; an essay on the relasiasm, as he. Before he was seven years old it tion of Novum Ilium to the Ilios of Homer, by was the dream of his childhood that he would | one day excavate Troy; and through the dreariest discouragements and poverty the dream remained ever present with him, and incited him to the acquisition of knowledge and wealth. And when at length fortune crowned his industry, he heaped up more riches solely that he might realize the dream of his childhood, that had become more and more the fixed purpose of his mature years. The steps of these successive periods of his life, and the growth and consummation of the pur

[ocr errors]

|

Professor Mahaffy; an essay on the inscriptions found at Hissarlik, by Professor Sayce; an account of medical practice in the Troad in 1869, by Professor Virchow; two essays, respectively on Hera Bóópis and on the relations between Troy and Egypt, by Professor BrugschBey; and other interesting contributions. The typography of the volume is superb, and it is further made complete by an excellent topical index, and a multitude of maps, plans, and illustrations of scenes and objects referred to in the text.

In his excellent sketch of the life of Words- | early day he was the universal favorite—these worth, elsewhere noticed, Mr. Myers remarks were the homely and serviceable virtues that of the poet that seldom has there been a more later in life fitted him to penetrate undiscoverimpressive instance of the contrast between ed land with means the most incommensurate, the apparent insignificance and the real im- and to win the love and confidence of the barportance of undistinguished youth than in his barous savage, as well as of the most culticase; and also that his Northern nature was vated and enlightened of our race. After a singularly late to flower. The remark is equal- day of toil that extended from six o'clock in ly true of Livingstone-another of the great the morning till eight o'clock in the evening, men who sprang up under the colder Northern with short intervals only for breakfast and skies of Great Britain, who matured late, and dinner, he pursued his studies at night till whose early years gave few indications of his twelve o'clock, or later if his good mother did future grand qualities. Both instances may not snatch his books out of his hands; and in be recorded for the encouragement of those this way he became familiar with most of the who have not the precocity of a Pope, a Charles | classical authors, and could read Virgil and James Fox, or a Macaulay. Another sagacious Horace at sixteen. At this early age, another observation of Mr. Myers, suggested by the in- | gift that was the secret of much of his power fluences that were potent in forming Words- and success in after-life manifested itself and worth's moral and intellectual character, to was put into training; namely, the faculty, so the effect that the scenery and other character- to speak, of doing two things at once, or, more istics of his native Northern air were singularly correctly, of passing with the utmost rapidity fitted to supply such elements of moral suste- and concentration of mind not only from one nance as nature's aspects can afford to man, is subject to another, but from one key or mood also as true of Livingstone as it was of Words- to another entirely different. In pursuing his worth. Of the two men, Livingstone's youth reading of books and in preparing his studies was the most undistinguished, its apparent in- while he was a humble factory lad, it was his significance was the most signal, and he was wont to place the book on which he was enfar the slowest to mature. And yet, as the gaged on a portion of the spinning-jenny, so reader of Dr. Blaikie's judicious memoir of that as he passed at his work, for less than a The Personal Life of David Livingstone will de- minute at any one time, he could catch sentence scry if he look beneath the surface, the germs after sentence-giving the most intense attenof all Livingstone's greatness as a man are tion to what he read or studied in these brief plainly discernible in a boyhood that seemed snatches, without abating his conscientions sterile of promise, whether we consider his and vigilant attention to his work. This manylowly birth, the poverty of his early oppor-sidedness of Livingstone's character also showtunities and attainments, or the unfriendly. ed itself early in another way. On disengaged circumstances that chained him to an occupa- days at the factory he would scour the countion that at the time seemed most unpropi- | try in search of botanical, geological, and zootious to his development, and from which there logical specimens; and he thus laid the founwas no visible escape. For Livingstone's par-dation of a knowledge of natural history, and ents were very poor; and at the age of ten he was put at work in a factory, and he continued to work in this humble sphere, first as a piecer and afterward as a spinner, until his twentieth year. But amid all these years of monotonousness was a faculty that never deserted him, and toil-beside which Wordsworth's youth was a fortunate and balmy one-Livingstone was developing traits, habits, and sturdy virtues that bore golden fruit, and was patiently and persistently laying up just the store of practical experience and knowledge that was destined to be invaluable to him in the great missionary and geographical enterprises that after-ed upon him in advance of all others for the ward made him illustrious. Dutiful and loving to his parents, proud of his class, industrious, frugal, calm, self-reliant, self-denying, resolute; having an indomitable but not headstrong will; burning with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, and pursuing it with an inflexible purpose; truthful, simply sincere, honest in word and action, and so genial that from an

2 The Personal Life of David Livingstone. Chiefly from his Unpublished Journals and Correspondence in Possession of his Family. By WILLIAM GARDEN BLAIKIE, D.D., LL.D. With Portrait and Map. 8vo, pp. 504. New York: Harper and Brothers.

an acquaintance with the practical life of a sportsman, which afterward enabled him to make invaluable contributions to natural science. Throughout his life this many-sided

not only equipped him for sudden and dangerous emergencies, but helped him to turn them to salutary account. Dr. Blaikie's sketch of Livingstone's family and early years, of the causes that inspired him to become a missionary, of his first missionary experiences in South Africa, and of the large plans that then dawn

opening of the "dark continent" to civilization and Christianity, of his various visits home at different stages of his rising renown, and of his several great exploring expeditions, is a fit record of the career of one of the most remarkable men of modern times, whose life was a beautiful exemplification of symmetrical manhood; of fortitude, energy, and perseverance, combined with gentleness, patience, and benevolence; of heroic endurance and unexampled enterprise; of invincible integrity and conscientiousness; of a trust in God that was as simple and confiding as that of a child

in its parent; and of a faith in Christ and a dialect and provincial ballads, which form a hope in His mercy that was life-long, unfalter-large part of the volume, it must be remarked ing, and that inspired and ennobled his every that they rise little above mediocrity. Had act and plan.

[ocr errors]

they appeared in this country anonymously, and without Mr. Tennyson's imprimatur, they Of the many sterling volumes that have ap- might without violence have been attributed to peared thus far in the "English Men of Let- any one of the half a dozen clever writers who ters Series," the sketch of Wordsworth3 by Mr. F. | have acquired the knack of rendering a tender W. H. Myers most fully satisfies all the require- or moving simple story more tender and exments that we look for in the class of biograph-pressive by telling it in homely and familiar ical studies to which it belongs. Thoroughly phrase. These latest productions of Mr. Tenin sympathy with his illustrious subject, Mr. nyson do not so much evince a slackening of Myers's sketch of Wordsworth's life is a full, his intellectual vigor, or a diminution of his dignified, and rounded outline of his career as mastery of the technicalities of his art, as a boy and man, poet, philosopher, and sage, and falling off in his ideality. Never before has familiarly introduces us to him as he devel- he been so exclusively and rigidly a realist; ops from the one stage to the other, giving us never before has his realism been so little picpleasing glimpses of him among his friends turesque and so little gilded with the "heaand companions, in his walks amid the in- venly alchymy" of imagination. spiring haunts and solitudes of the lakes and mountains of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and MISS COOLIDGE has shown a fine critical disLancashire, in his visits to foreign lands, and cernment in her estimate of the quality and in his self-communings with the nature that grade of her own poetry. It is seldom we so entirely absorbed his being, and which he meet self-criticism as just and discriminating reproduced with such vivid but tranquil pow- as hers, alike free from the mock humility and er in his poetry. The literary execution of spurious modesty that invite compliment, on the volume is admirable. Mr. Myers's style the one hand, and from the arrogant self-comis natural, manly, vigorous, yet flexible and placency that regards all compliment as sugraceful, and exact without being artificial or perfluous, on the other. In the graceful premeasured; and his criticisms and reflections lude to her collection of Verses," she tells us that are eminently acute and sensible, totally free poems are heavenly things, which only souls alike from the disparagements of their subject, with wings may reach, and pluck, and bear beand from the ingenious subtleties and refine-low to feed the nations with food all-glorious; ments and the overstrained or far-fetched meanings, that recent biographical critics so much affect.

4

but that verses such as hers are not of these, but bloom on the low-hung stem of earthly trees, where they may be gathered by those who can not fly to where the heavenly gardens are. And she describes her office to be that of one who, by devious ways, has pulled some easy sprays from the down-dropping bough which all may reach, and has knotted them, both bud and leaf, into a rhymed sheaf; or as one who has culled and brought to us a hedgerow offering of berry, flowers, and brake. Tru

THE most fervid admirers of Mr. Tennyson will find it difficult to discover anything in his new volume, Ballads and Other Poems, that deserves to be classed among the inspirations of genius of the highest rank, or even with the best of his own productions. Several of the poems-conspicuously the noble and ringing ballads describing gallant Sir Richard Gren-ly as this describes the general characteristics ville's heroic sea-fight in his good ship the Revenge with the Spanish fleet of fifty-three sail, and commemorating the memorable defense of Lucknow, and the exquisitely finished blank-verse idyl "The Sisters"-will bear comparison with the best of his foregone performances of the second rate. So, also, the soliloquies of Sir John Oldcastle, when wandering in Wales in the shadow of his approaching martyrdom, and of Columbus, moaning on his death-bed the ingratitude of Spain and Ferdinand, have some lofty and some tragical touches; but the dignity of these heroic and stately personages is marred and belittled by their whining querulousness, and the atmosphere of both the poems is cold and prosaic. Of the

of Miss Coolidge's verses, it is easy to perceive in many of them the higher qualities of poesy |—ideality, impassioned feeling, and pictorial suggestiveness. Few fairer pictures have been painted by more ambitious poets than are to be found here and there in her collection.

Wordsworth. By F. W. H. MYERS. "English Men of Letters Series." 12mo, pp. 182. New York: Harper and Brothers.

Ballads and Other Poems. By ALFRED TENNYSON. 16mo, pp. 112. Boston: James R. Osgood and Co.

THERE is something indescribably delicate and pure and gentle in some of the brief poems of the youthful Goodale sisters, which have been collected in a volume entitled All Round the Year. The poems are devoted, with few exceptions, to descriptions of some of nature's loveliest offspring and most beauteous phases.

5 Verses. By SUSAN COOLIDGE. 18mo, pp. 181. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

• All Round the Year. Verses from Sky Farm. With which are included the Thirty Poems issued in Illustrated Form in the Volume entitled "In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers." By ELAINE GOODALE and DORA READ GOODALE. Illustrated. 16mo, pp. 204. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

66

It is evident that the hearts of these children | of the earth, organic and inorganic, throughlie very close to Nature's breast, and they interpret her as loving children interpret a beauteous and bounteous mother. The poems in the collection grouped under the heading "In Berkshire with the Wild Flowers" have been already noticed in the Record for January, 1880. The additional poems, grouped under Early and Late" and "Harvest-Home," manifest gradual improvement-a style less frequently marred by, though not yet quite free from, trite, or commonplace, or conventional phrases and sentiments; a steadying of the mental vision; an increased glow and fervor of emotion, and generally a healthful ripening of the perceptive and imaginative powers. As yet there is no betrayal of any familiarity with the more sensuous and passionate side of human nature; and however it may delay their ripeness as poets, we trust, for their own innocence and happiness, that it may be long ere experience shall enable them to paint all the complexities or to comprehend all the throbbings of the human heart.

MR. WALLACE's Island Life' is an interesting contribution to natural history, supplementary to his able work The Geographical Distribution of Animals. In the preliminary chapters, the author reproduces and summarizes many of the questions that were treated of in his former work; but the discussion of them is more popular and elementary, being less exclusively restricted to the consideration of genera, and more largely devoted to an investigation of the distribution of species. Without in the least undervaluing the importance of the study of the animal and floral productions of continents and other large divisions of the earth, in order to a solution of the complex and often anomalous problem of the phenomena, laws, and causes of the dispersal of organisms, and while fully recognizing the fact that the problem can only be satisfactorily solved by the combination of many distinct lines of biologic-| al and physical inquiry, Mr. Wallace is yet of opinion that islands offer the best, or at least the most convenient, subjects for an interpretation of the facts of distribution. "If," he says, we take the organic productions of a small island or very limited tract of country, we have in their relations and affinities-in the fact that they are there, and others are not there a problem which involves all the migrations of these species and their ancestral forms; all the vicissitudes of climate, and all the changes of sea and land, which have affected those migrations; the whole series of actions and reactions which have determined the preservation of some forms and the extinction of others-in fact, the whole history

[ocr errors]

7 Island Life; or, The Phenomena and Causes of Insular Faunas and Floras. Including a Revision and Attempted Solution of the Problem of Geological Climates. By ALFRED RUSSELL WALLACE. 8vo, pp. 522. New York: Harper and Brothers.

|

out a large portion of geological time." Before proceeding to the discussion of the remarkable evidential phenomena presented by insular faunas and floras, and the complex causes that produced them, Mr. Wallace prepares the unscientific reader to accompany him intelligently by a series of preliminary studies, severally devoted to explanations of the mode of distribution, variation, modification, and dispersal of species and groups, illustrated by facts and examples; of the nature of geological change as affecting continents and islands; of changes of climate-their nature, causes, and effects; and of the duration of geological time and the rate of organic development. Having thus laid a foundation for a scientific interpretation of the phenomena of distribution, Mr. Wallace proceeds, in the Second Part of his work, to apply the numerous facts established and theories advanced in the First Part to the phenomena presented by the floras and faunas of the chief islands of the globe. In order to this, he classifies these islands, in accordance with their physical origin, in two principal groups or classes"continental islands," or those which have been separated from, and are merely detached and not distant fragments of, continents; and "oceanic islands," or islands of volcanic or coralline formation, which have originated in the ocean, and have never formed a part of any continent, and are usually distant from continents, and separated from them by deep The "continental islands" are again subdivided into "recent" and "ancient," the recent being those which are situated on submerged banks connecting them with a continent, from which they are separated by a shallow sea, seldom exceeding one hundred fathoms, and which they resemble in their geological structure and their animal and vegetable productions-plain indications that they were separated from the mainland at a recent geological period; and the ancient being those which are separated from the adjacent continent by a deeper sea, of one thousand fathoms or upward, whose mammalia and amphibia almost all form distinct species, and many of them distinct and peculiar genera and families, and whose faunas are fragmentary, many of the most characteristic continental orders or families being quite unrepresented among them, while some of their animals are allied, not to such forms as inhabit the adjacent continents, but to those which are found in remote parts of the world-all these circumstances indicating that they were separated from the adjacent continent at a very remote geological period. To the first-named class belong Great Britain, Borneo, Java, Japan, and Formosa, aud to the last-named the Madagascar group, and the anomalous islands of Celebes and New Zealand. Mr. Wallace observes that the floras and faunas of all these islands uniformly exhibit certain well-defined biolo

sea.

gical features, common to all organisms, which are an important element in ascertaining their origin, the course of their migration, and the motive power which has urged them on. These are: a constant tendency to increase in numbers and to occupy a wider area; a constant exercise of powers of dispersion and migration, through which, when unchecked, they are enabled to spread widely over the globe; and finally, a constant obedience to those laws of evolution and extinction which determine the manner in which groups of organisms arise and grow, reach their maximum, and then dwindle away, often breaking up into separate portions which long survive in very remote regions. Mr. Wallace's descriptions of the geological and zoological characteristics of these islands and groups are no less noteworthy for their picturesqueness and their freedom from technicality than for their scientific precision. His chaste and vigorous style, his faculty for lucid generalization, and the coincidence of their opinions, will remind the reader of Mr. Darwin; nor will his reasonings and speculations suffer by a comparison with those on kindred topics by that eminent philosopher. Especially able and interesting are his speculations and demonstrations with reference to the affinities and probable origin of insular flora and fauna, the powers of dispersal of animals and plants, the barriers that are in the way of those powers and the causes that favor them, the changes-geographical, geological, and climatic which have influenced the dispersal of organisms, and the routes and agencies by which Northern plants have reached various Southern lands.

her journeys she was able to say she had travelled the entire distance with perfect safety and absolute freedom from any rudeness or cause of alarm. Even among the aborigines of Yezo, the Ainos, a people who bear the same relations to the Japanese that our aborigines do to us, and although she was the first European woman they had ever seen, she was treated with a delicacy and consideration that would put our civilization to shame-their instinctive delicacy and politeness manifesting themselves by the repression of even a glance of curiosity while she was the recipient of their hospitality, and by spontaneously according to her an unsolicited privacy that was never observed among one another. Miss Bird's travels took her among a primitive people, in regions unaffected by contact with Europeans or Americans; and as her movements were leisurely, and she lived among them, she had the fullest opportunity to see their mode of living, and to become familiar with their cus toms, manners, costume, occupations, religion, superstitions, and conditions generally, and also with the resources of the country, its scenery, the nature of its soil, and its natural and artificial products-all of which she describes in a lively and sparkling way, halfmethodical and half-desultory, that is very engaging. Particularly fresh and entertaining, and at the same time full of interesting and novel information, are her descriptions of the native shrines and temples, of the dwellings of the people, their domestic avocations, the relation of husbands and wives, parents and children, the people and their officials; and her account of Yezo and its aboriginal inhabitants has a peculiar interest as the first full and authentic one derived from personal observation. Although the chief portions of Miss Bird's two delightful volumes are devoted to the unbeaten parts of Japan, and to people with whom foreigners have had little or no intercourse, she does not pass over any part of the country with an unobservant eye. She also describes the cities and districts with which we are familiar from new points of view, and with re

No one who read Miss Bird's capital book, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains, describing the incidents of her eight hundred miles of horseback travel through our wild far Western mountain and mining regions, will require to be prompted to read a similar book by her, entitled Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, being a spirited narrative of her travels on horseback for 1200 miles, altogether off the beaten track of travellers, through the interior portion of Ja-markable vivacity. Her observations upon pan lying north of Tôkiyô (Yedo), and including the adjacent and little-known island of Yezo. As was the case in her travels in our wild Western country, Miss Bird had the courage, in spite of the dissuasions of friends and her own fears, to venture on her several expe- Earl Hubert's Daughter is a historical roditions to these unfrequented, and in some in-mance, for which we are indebted to the gracestances half-savage, districts of Japan, without a guard or companion, and unarmed; and it is equally to the credit of her own tact and judgment, and of the natural politeness and chiv-covered the reign of Henry III. and the career alry of the rude and uncultured people among whom she ventured, that at the conclusion of

8 Unbeaten Tracks in Japan. An Account of Travels on Horseback in the Interior, including Visits to the Aborigines of Yezo and the Shrines of Nikko and Isé. By ISABELLA L. BIRD. 2 vols., 8vo., pp. 407 and 372. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

the administrative, social, and educational systems of Japan, and upon the missionary operations of the various Christian bodies, are full and suggestive.

ful scholarship and antiquarian zeal of Emily Sarah Holt. The period illustrated in this tale is that portion of the thirteenth century which

of his famous Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh— a period that was remarkable for its rapid and terrible incidents, its tumultuous politics,

9 Earl Hubert's Daughter; or, The Polishing of the Pearl. A Tale of the Thirteenth Century. By EMILY SARAH HOLT. 12mo, pp. 371. New York: Robert Carter and Brothers.

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »