that indicate how much of the poet has gone into the making of this prose piece. Mr. Story is always clever, but in this slight work it is not his cleverness so much as his refinement of feeling which strikes one.- - Mr. Grant Allen's novel, Babylon (Appleton), may be called an international novel from the other side, and we don't know but his Americans and their lingo are as near as we get to the English and their talk. Mr. Allen is a bright man, very handy with his pen, but, on the whole, brighter in spots than in the business of constructing a whole novel. — Slings and Arrows and other Tales is a collection of four stories by the late Hugh Conway. (Holt.) -Another volume in the Leisure Hour Series (Holt) is At Bay, by Mrs. Alexander. - A Mortal Antipathy is the apt title given to the tale which Dr. Holmes included in this last year's papers of the New Portfolio. (Houghton.)- John Maidment, by Julian Sturgis (Appleton), is the agreeable work of an agreeable writer. It has the circumstance of youth in it; it has also some of the ingenuousness of youth. In spite of Mayfair, there is always a suggestion of unspoiled human nature, and the whole effect is of fiction which is not great nor profound, but is honest and unaffected. - Bonnyborough, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. (Houghton.) It is so long since Mrs. Whitney has published a new story that we are curious to see whether she has retained her old audience or is compelled to draw a new one about her. This story has all her old characteristics, though not perhaps the intricacy of plot of the last one. — High Lights (Houghton): a slight novel, in which an artist is the hero, and the whole story is led, not so much in the ordinary light of day as under a glass skylight. Recent numbers of Harper's Handy Series are The Flower of Doom, and other stories, by M. Betham-Edwards; The Dark House, by G. Manville Fenn; The Ghost's Touch, and other stories, by Wilkie Collins; The Sacred Nugget, by B. L. Farjeon; Goblin Gold, by May Crommelin; Primus in Indis, by M. J. Colquhoun; In Quarters with the 25th (the Black Horse) Dragoons, by J. S. Winter; A Barren Title, by T. W. Speight; Half-Way, an Anglo-French Romance; Christmas Angel, by B. L. Farjeon. - Recent numbers of Harper's Franklin Square Library are My Wife's Niece; The Mistletoe Bough, edited by M. E. Braddon; Self or Bearer, by Walter Besant.

Music. The Franklin Square Song Collection, No. 3, edited by J. P. McCaskey (Harpers), contains two hundred favorite songs and hymns for schools and homes, nursery and fireside. A good deal of reading about music and musicians is mixed in. We think a selection is just now more important than a collection of songs.-St. Nicholas Songs, with Illustrations (The Century Co.), is a charming and novel book for the household where there are children. The volume contains upwards of a hundred pieces, accompanied by music composed expressly for the work. The reader will find nowhere else so large and excellent a collection of American music. - Music, by Henry C. Bannister (Holt), is a compact hand-book, intended originally for the use of candidates for middle

class examinations in England, but useful for the large class of amateurs in this country who desire to study the subject in a less formal manner.Musical History, with a roll of the names of musicians, and the times and places of their births and deaths, by G. A. Macfarren, is a number of Harper's Handy Series, and is a reprint of the same article in the Encyclopædia Britannica. It would be hard to find in the same space a more convenient hand-book of the subject. Here may be placed, also, Dancing and its Relations to Education and Social Life, with a new method of instruction, including a complete guide to the cotillion (German), with 250 figures, by Allen Dodworth. (Harpers.) The author is a veteran teacher, and what he has to say about teaching will receive attention. It ought to receive it all the more for the good taste which he shows in his general observations. The Standard Operas, their plots, their music, and their composers, a hand-book, by George P. Upton (Jansen, McClurg & Co.): a useful and well-prepared little volume, which comes almost with a surprise when one considers the incredibly poor accounts of the operas which have appeared in connection with this or that opera company. Mr. Upton tells one just what one wishes to know, and tells it in a simple, readable English. - The Principles of Expression in Pianoforte Playing, by Adolph F. Christian. (Harpers.) The author, who is himself a teacher, has aimed to find and formulate principles of expression which answer to a definition of music that does not confine the art to the expression of emotion. Intelligence, not feeling, he says, is the chief requirement in expression. His book bears the mark of thoroughness.

Medicine and Hygiene. Cholera, its Origin, History, Causation, Symptoms, Lesions, Prevention, and Treatment, by Alfred Stillé, M. D. (Leas): a conservative work. Dr. Stillé, at the close, pays a little attention to the proposed or rumored cholera inoculation, and decides that it is entirely opposed to the whole course of pathological investigation of the disease. Lectures on

the Principles of House Drainage, by J. P. Putnam. (Ticknor.) The principles are fully and freely illustrated by intelligible examples, and the book is one more contribution to the art of clean and healthy living. We notice, by the way, a curious paragraph on the last page. The peppermint test is described. The assistant is to carry a twoounce bottle of oil of peppermint up to the roof and pours the contents into the soil-pipe. "The assistant," Mr. Putnam proceeds, "remains upon the roof until the examination within the house has been completed; otherwise the odor clinging to his clothes will be likely to follow him into the house." Can't the poor fellow come down from the roof and sit on the doorstep? - Brain-Rest, being a disquisition on the curative properties of prolonged sleep, by J. Leonard Corning, M. D. (Putnams.) Dr. Corning describes also the mechanical contrivances which he has invented for regulating the cerebral circulation. - Common Sense in the Nursery, by Marion Harland (Scribners), has appeared in part in Babyhood, but in its present complete and comprehensive form will be

of real value to many mothers. It is experience, judgment, and affection precipitated into advice so simple and rational as to commend itself at once to right-minded people. - Twenty-Five Years with the Insane, by Daniel Putnam. (MacFarlane, Detroit.) Mr. Putnam is not a physician, but a clergyman who was chaplain of an asylum, and in this volume he recounts some of his experience as well as indulges in some historical retrospect. The book is temperate in its tone, somewhat desultory, and not especially instructive. - A Guide to Sanitary House-Inspection, or hints and helps regarding the choice of a healthful home in city or country, by W. P. Gerhard (Wileys): a sensible little volume, intended for householders rather than for professionals. A Text-Book of Nursing, for the use of training schools, families, and private students, compiled by Clara S. Weeks. (Appleton.) While designed for regular tuition and examination of nurses, this book may profitably be used in any thorough training of young women in the practical duties of life. It does not attempt to render a physician superfluous, but to make the nurse more efficient. - Psychiatry, a clinical treatise on Diseases of the Fore-Brain, based upon a study of its structure, functions, and nutrition, by Theodor Meynert, M. D., translated, under authority of the author, by B. Sachs, M. D. Part I., The Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistry of the Brain. (Putnams.) The anatomical facts given in this volume are made the basis of reasoning, which doubtless will be carried out more fully in the more strictly psychological portion of the work.

Political Economy and Public Affairs. Principles of Political Economy, by Simon Newcomb. (Harpers.) The author has attempted in this work to present the principles in a scientific manner and without the customary polemic method. Perhaps it is this consideration of a purely scientific spirit which leads him, in discussing the application of principles in the question of protection, to ignore wholly the view which makes national integrity a factor in the problem. - The Postulates of English Political Economy, by the late Walter Bagehot, with a preface by Alfred Marshall. (Putnams.) It is unfortunate that Mr. Bagehot could not have revised his work; with current information, we think, he would not have spoken of the Tehuantepec ship railway as a fraudulent scheme and a collapsed one. Protectionism, the ism which teaches that waste makes wealth, by W. G. Sumner. (Holt.) Professor Sumner is rapidly reaching the point where he will burn heretics or knock them on the head. He has lost what little patience he may once have had with protectionists. He has given up trying to convince them, and devotes his attention now to exposing them. -Practical Economics is the title which Mr. David A. Wells gives to a collection of essays, printed originally in The Atlantic and elsewhere, respecting certain of the recent economic experiences of the United States. (Putnams.) Mr. Wells's long service as an economic writer enables him to bring to his work an advantage which younger students miss; he has lived through great changes in economic conditions, and has

been a watchful contemporary student, and not merely a retrospective inquirer. - Railroad Transportation, its history and its laws, by Arthur T. Hadley. (Putnams.) It is interesting to find a great subject like this, which has been attacked from a great variety of individual points of view and in multitudinous petty particulars, brought under review by a student who is not a railway manager, and who looks at the whole subject as an economical and political problem. Mr. Hadley's work shows a marked advance in American economical literature. The Silent South, together with the Freedman's Case in Equity and the Convict Lease System, by George W. Cable. (Scribners.) Mr. Cable has collected in this volume his recent papers on the subjects which form the ground swell of political thought not so much in all America as in the South. For better or worse, the negro has been left, politically, to the States in which he is found; in respect of education and religion he is still the ward of the North, and it remains to be seen if each part of the country, using the means in its power, finds a certain ground of reconciliation and common work where once they found the occasion of conflict. - The third number of Military Monographs (Putnams) is the Necessity for Closer Relations between the Army and the People, and the best method to accomplish the result, by Captain George F. Price, U. S. A. Captain Price believes that we should organize the militia more perfectly and bring the regular army into more intimate connection with the volunteer force, but he does not give a very clear notion as to the relative part to be played by the general government and the state governments.

Books of Reference. Johnson's New Genera! Cyclopædia and copper-plate hand-atlas of the world (Johnson) is a solid two-volume work; in effect, an expanded dictionary of nouns, proper and common. Further condensation is secured by an abundant use of abbreviations. The Cyclopædia is tolerably strong in brief legal definitions, though we miss Libel, and in biography gives perhaps less attention to literature than to science or mechanics. Alexander Agassiz, by the way, did not resign his position in 1855. There are some rather queer entries, like Rank of States. The work is freely illustrated, though there seems to be no law about the choice. Why should Chipmunk, for example, be given a cut as big as his neighbor Chlamydophorus? The maps are clear and ugly. Part II. of a New English Dictionary on historical principles has been published at the Clarendon Press, Oxford. (Macmillan, New York.) This is Dr. Murray's great work of which the first number appeared some time since; it is now promised more rapidly under the new arrangement of his residence at Oxford. This part covers Ant-Batten, and like the previous number is rich in historical illustration. The tracing of a word through its successive uses is the only thoroughly satisfactory lexical treatment for students, and if Dr. Murray's work is completed on its present plan it will be indispensable to literary and historical students. One might well buy each number as it appears for the sake of the amount of curious lore

which he will be sure to pick up in running it

over.

Books on Art and Illustruted Books. Wonders of Sculpture, by Louis Viardot (Scribners), is a convenient book for giving one a running view of famous works. A chapter on American sculpture, descriptive rather than critical, is added by another hand. Essays on the Art of Pheidias, by Charles Waldstein (The Century Co.), is a work for the archæologist rather than the general reader. The essays on the sculptures of the Parthenon, with the preliminary chapters and the miscellaneous papers included in the appendix, will be found very interesting and valuable by the classical student. The volume is handsomely printed by Clay & Son, London, and is illustrated with numerous plates and wood-cuts. - Mr. S. R. Koehler's interesting history of Etching (Cassell & Co.) reached us too late to be included in our detailed notice of similar holiday books, among which it deserves a very high rank.. Keats's Eve of St. Agnes has been illustrated by Edmund H. Garrett (Estes & Lauriat) in a style which is perfectly creditable without either interpreting or magnifying the poem. Indeed, the richness of the poem would have permitted and encouraged a more strictly decorative form of embellishment.

A Library of Religious Poetry, a collection of the best poems of all ages and tongues, with biographical and literary notes, edited by Philip Schaff and Arthur Gilman. (Funk & Wagnalls.) This is a new edition of a work brought out a few years since, and we do not quite understand the preface in its date and statement. Certainly the editors have not thoroughly revised the book to the close of 1884, as therein stated. A number of steel plates illustrate the work.

Books for Young People. Chatterbox for 1885. (Estes & Lauriat.) This mélange of reading matter and pictures continues to come along, each year very much like the last. There are limits to the very good and the very bad, but there are no limits to the commonplace. Historic Boys, their Endeavors, their Achievements, and their Times, by E. S. Brooks. (Putnams.) Mr. Brooks has selected a dozen boys of ancient and modern times, though he does not come down later than the eighteenth century, and has given literary portraits of them. They were all boys who were, so to speak, born to the purple, indeed, it would have been difficult to find the early record of any others before democratic times; but then honor and courage and manliness were not born with democracy, and these stories, though perhaps a little galvanic in their activity, are honest attempts at making history real to the young by means of characters in whom they are supposed to be especially interested, and the deeds are such as point to the best elements of character. Strange Stories from History for Young People, by George Cary Eggleston (Harpers): a score of stories from history, mediæval and modern. Mr. Eggleston has selected those subjects which give opportunity for telling of courage, perseverance, fortitude, and other manly virtues, but he also thinks it well to harrow the youthful soul with scenes from the life of Ivan IV. The stories are told

with a straightforward manner, but without grace or special dramatic skill. They are simply free from fustian and sentiment, and so have a negative excellence. - Three Vassar Girls in Italy, by Lizzie W. Champney. (Estes & Lauriat.) The three young women, who have been making excursions in other countries, have reached Italy, and find in that land plenty of material for letters, chats, and digests of printed books. We find Mrs. Champney's liveliness more agreeable than much of the frippery of books of this class, but it is amusing to see how the necessity to be entertaining may get the better of one. Here are two girls suffering from the cold, who play pease porridge hot to warm themselves, and during the game one gives the other a lecture on St. Mark's. We should like to have seen that performance. — ZigZag Journeys in the Levant, with a Talmudist storyteller, by Hezekiah Butterworth. (Estes & Lauriat.) This is the seventh, we think, of the series, and is as crammed with pictures as the rest. It is also written in the same queer, jumping-frog style, and has the same ingenious automatic toys of characters. The first volume of The Child's Pictorial (S. P. C. K., London; Youngs, New York), a little monthly magazine with colored illustrations, is an exceedingly attractive book. Both pictures and stories deserve a word of hearty praise.

Practical Arts. First Lessons in Amateur Photography: a series of lectures delivered before the senior class of the Montclair High School by the principal, Randall Spaulding (Scovill Manufacturing Co., New York): a little volume intended to give specific directions to young people who have the photographic craze. — Wonders of GlassMaking in all Ages, by A. Sauzay (Scribners), is a scrappy, anecdotical book, by which one can pick up some curious information.

Theology and Philosophy. Christ and Christianity, Studies on Christology, Creeds and Confessions, Protestantism and Romanism, Reformation Principles, Sunday Observance, Religious Freedom and Christian Union, - by Philip Schaff (Scribners): a collection of essays and addresses by Dr. Schaff, who is a learned rather than an original theologian. But his learning is so varied and so kindly that the reader picks up a great many very suggestive facts and ideas, and learns to regard the author's books as never-failing cisterns from which to draw well-filtered water, — a service not far behind that afforded by a fountain which is intermittent in its force. - The Idea of God, as affected by modern knowledge, by John Fiske. (Houghton.) In reprinting the papers which have appeared in The Atlantic, Mr. Fiske has added a readable preface in which he indicates the relation which the book bears to his previous writings. It is interesting to see the occupation of the theological field by other than clergymen, and it is a good sign of the widening of the field. — Darwinism and other Essays, by John Fiske. (Houghton.) This new edition of a collection of essays is enlarged by the addition of three others. Mr. Fiske's growing reputation makes his friends desirous of following him along the many tracks which he has marked out in his mental activity.

-

I.

In the year of grace, 15-, on the last day of the month of May, to all who may chance to read this narrative, these:

I will first be at the pains of stating that had it not been for Marian I had never indited these or any other papers, true or false. Secondly, that the facts herein set down be true facts; none the less true that they are strange. I will furthermore explain that Marian is the Christian name of my lawful wife, and that our surname is Butter.

My wife had nursed the Lady Margaret from the moment of her birth; and here I must make another digression. The Lady Margaret was the twin sister of the then Lord of Amhurste, Lord Robert, and my lady and his lordship had quarreled; Marian saith, with a great cause, but I cannot herein forbear also expressing my opinion, which is to the effect that for that quarrel there was neither cause, justice, nor reason. Therefore, before those who may chance to read these words, I will lay bare the facts pertaining to the said quarrel.

It concerned the family ghost, which ghost was said to haunt a certain blue chamber in the east wing of the castle. Now I myself had never gainsaid these norts; for although I do not believe

in ghosts, I have a certain respect for them, as they have never offered me any affront, either by appearing to me, or otherwise maltreating me. But Marian, who, like many of her sex, seemed to consort naturally with banshees, bogies, apparitions, and the like, declared to me that at several different and equally inconvenient times this ghost had presented itself to her, startling her on two occasions to such an extent that she let fall, once, the contents of the brothbowl on Herne the bloodhound, thereby causing that beast to maliciously devour two breadths of her new black taffetas Sunday gown; again, a hot iron wherewith she was pressing out the seams of Lady Margaret's night-gown. On the second occasion, she fled along the kitchen hall, shrieking piteously, and preceded by Doll, the kitchen wench, the latter having in her seeming a certain ghostly appearance, as she was clad only in her shift, which the draughts in the hall inflated to a great size. The poor maid fled affrighted into her room and locked the door behind her. But when I did essay to assuage the terror of Mistress Butter, identifying Doll and the blue-room ghost as one and the same, she thanked me not, but belabored me in her frenzy with the yet warm iron, which she had instinctively snatched up in her flight; demanding of me at the same time if I had ever

seen Doll's nose spout fire, and her eyes spit in her head like hot coals. I being of a necessity compelled to reply "No," Marian further told me that it was thus that the ghost had comported itself, that, moreover, it was clad all in livid blue flame from top to toe, and that it had a banner o' red sarcenet that streamed out behind like forked lightning. She then said that this malevolent spirit had struck her with its blazing hand, and that, did I not believe her, I could see the burn on her wrist. Upon my suggesting that this wound might have been inflicted by the iron in its fall, she did use me in so unwifely a manner that I sought my bed in much wrath and vexation of spirit. Nay, I do fear me that I cursed the day I was wed, the day on which my wife was born, wishing all women to the d—1; and that, more over, out loud, which put me to much shame afterwards for some days; although, be it said to my still greater shame, it was full a fortnight e'er I confessed my repentance unto the wife whom I had so abused.

But meseems I have in this digression transgressed in the matter o' length. Therefore, to return to the bare facts.

It was on the subject of this ghost that my lord and the Lady Margaret had disagreed. My lord, being a flighty lad, although a marvelous fine scholar and well disposed, did agree with my wife in the matter of the ghost; while my lady was of a like mind with myself. It doth seem but yesterday that she came to me as I was training the woodbine o'er the arbor that led to her little garden, and put her white hand on my shoulder. (My lady was never one for wearing gloves, yet the sun seemed no more to think o' scorching her fair hands than the leaves of a day-lily.) She comes to me, and lays her hand on my shoulder, and her long eyes they laugh at me out of the shadow of her hat; but her mouth is grave as though I were a corse.

Quoth she:

66

Butter, dost thou believe in this ghost?"

"Nay, my lady," answered I, hoping to shift her to better soil; "I ne'er meddle with ghosts or goblins. Why, an there be such things, should they wish me harm? O' my word, my brain is no more troubled with ghosts, black or white, than our gracious Queen's," here I doffed my cap, "is with snails and slugs;" and here I plucked a slug from a vine leaf and set my heel on 't.

66

Why, for how dost thou mean, my lady?" quoth I.

"Why, for mashing that poor beast to a pap." And then a-holding of her hand level below her eyes, so that she might not discern the ground, “Is he dead?" quoth she.

"Dead?" asked I, for I was somewhat puzzled in my mind.

"Ay, the slug; is he dead?"

"That he is, verily," said I; for in truth he was naught but a jelly, and therewith I drew a pebble over him with my foot, that the sight o' his misfortune should not disturb her tender heart.

"How if I were to crush you 'neath my heel, Master Butter?" quoth she at last, having peered about for the sight she dreaded, and, not seeing it, returning to her discourse. "How wouldst thou like that, excellent Master Butter?" But somehow, as I looked at her foot, my mouth, for all I could do, went into a smile. For though she was as fine a maiden as any in all Warwickshire, her foot, methinks, was of so dainty a make 't would scarce have dealt death to a