Sixty Years' Experience as an Irish Landlord. THIS experience, rich in thoughts on political, social, and religious questions, was lived by John Hamilton, of St. Ernan's, Donegal, Ireland, and is given chiefly in autobiographical memoirs, prefaced by a just and liberal introduction by Rev. H. C. White, late chaplain in the English Church in Paris. The Story of Venice. THE early story of Venice is lost in mystery, and legends and myths take the place of facts and assertions in the pages of her first existence. One cannot but feel, however, that such mystery is not out of place, and that it suits well with the romance which her later story does but emphasize, while one is almost glad John Hamilton was born in Dublin on Au- that too strong a light cannot be thrown upon gust 25, 1800, and upon the death of his parents was placed under the guardianship of his uncles, Sir Edward Pakenham and Rev. Abraham Hamilton, at the age of seven. At ten he was placed in school at Armagh, and went through without much special disgrace or glory, and at eighteen ente ed St. John's College, Cambridge, England. He graduated and married at the early age of twenty-three, and immediately began his labors upon his Irish estates. The diary contained in this most interesting book was begun in March, 1828, when the enthusiastic young landlord was preparing for ordination in the Church of England. He was troubled by many doubts about church systems, but remained through life an earnest doer of some of the lessons of which he occasionally questioned the origin. Mr. Hamilton, in the course of his long life, met almost all people of note who have had influence on their generation, and gives some reminiscences of hours spent with F. D. Maurice, Cardinal Newman, and many of the leaders of the Tractarian movement at Oxford. From "The Story of Venice." Copyright, 1894, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. Fairness and religious regard for the rights of others are his great characteristics. Although an ultra Protestant, he recognized the creed of his Roman Catholic tenants, and freed them from paying taxes for the support of the English Church. All the old questions that have come up in Ireland during the present century, its famines, its unjust treatment, the many plans that have been made, tried, and proved failures, in its government, are treated in this diary. (Brentano's.) the origin and rise of a city, whose charm only gathers force from the glamour cost over her by an unknown and undefined past. Her inhabitants, too, claim an antiquity so remote as to equal, or rather excel, not only the rest of Italy, but that of Europe itself, since they trace their ancestry back to the heroes of Troy and to the descendants of the gods. Once more the story of Venice is told by Alethea Wiel for The Story of the Nations series. (Putnam. ca. $1.50) The Queen of Ecuador. "THE QUEEN OF ECUADOR" is an extraordinary book. It is extraordinary alike in plot, development, mechanism, and style. It is destined to be regarded as a leader, if not in point of time the pioneer, in that very recent revival of the ultra-imaginative, romantic school of fiction which is the natural protest against alike the nauseous realism of Zola and the tedious, microscopic, introverted analysis of Howells, Bishop, and James. The author of "The Queen of Ecuador" deserves to, and therefore presently may, rank with Rider Haggard and Jules Verne for his very great success in commending intricacies of plot and impossibilities of detail to the faith of the reader by their strange verisimilitude. There is no need to anticipate the story by enlarging upon the adoption of a fiery haired Englishman as a traditional "child of the sun" by a wild tribe in the heart of South America, or upon those processes of imaginative transmutation which lead his daughter by the tribal queen to fight a sustained duel with the normal heir to the tribal throne in a suburb of New York City, where poisons, hypnotism, villany, conscience, and many other mediaval forces and arts play their several parts. These all will be best made known by a personal acquaintance with the book. The H. W. Hageman Publishing Company, of New York, have made this volume No. I of The Traveller's Library, to be issued quarterly. They could hardly have produced a more auspicious or meritorious pioneer for their new venture. (Hageman Pub. Co. pap., 50c.)Evening Telegram. Trilby. AND now we have come to the end of Trilby "the beautiful story of three men who loved each other as brothers, and a woman who loved them all with that sort of comradeship that one expects from his dearest friend. That is why you hear so many men talking about the story; for men, more than women, have a genius for comradeship. But you seldom find it in the modern novel which is given over to the immature love of boys and girls, or to an analysis of the meannesses of men and women. But Taffy, the Laird, and Little Billee were bound together by that kind of friendship that seldom gets into books; you can't generalize about it or give recipes for it in platitudes. You only know that it can't be found among men who are without that depth and fidelity in their emotions which is called honor. It is not a matter of culture or æsthetics-for Kipling's "Soldiers Three" exhibit it in as admirable a manner as Du Maurier's Pleasure "Three Guardsmen of the Brush.” and good-fellowship may have had much to do with the beginnings of such comradeship, but, when it is once established, their office ends; for the test of comradeship is the hardships and the sorrows that are endured in its name. It is one of the permanent things of life that give it continuity. The beautiful thing about it all is that it carries with it none of those generally accepted obligations that are called duties. The whole relationship is so absolutely voluntary. Now Trilby " made her first appeal to these men, because she had the faculty of taking a man's view of comradeship She saw what a genuine, unselfish thing it was; she grasped, what so many women of finer opportunities seldom understand the meaning of honor among men. She did not ask them to pity, protect, or flatter or pet her (the appeal which most women make) - she simply said, "Let me be your comrade on the same terms as you are I ask no quarter beeach other's comrades. cause I am a woman.' She had lost her honor among women, but she kept a man's standard "to think of other of honor to the uttermost people before myself, and never to tell lies or be afraid." But "Trilby" was a beautiful, magnetic woman, as well as a comrade, and so Little Billee and Taffy loved her with a great passion. One of them gave his life for it; the other, because he was stronger, grew to be a finer, nobler man by reason of it. . . . Of course we have spoken of the charm of the four characters in this story as though they were real people. That is, perhaps, the highest tribute that one can pay to Du Maurier as a writer. His art has been so fine that he has made real for us his visions. The style of the narrative is so spontaneous, so unconventional that one feels that it is the veracious record of real experiences. Du Maurier is not afraid of his emotions-they bubble up and sparkle from a clear spring. They are not meant for analysis, but for enjoyment. That is why people are saying that he writes in the manner of the last generation. It is, one suspects, the sort of spontaneity that comes from hard work. The soul of the artist felt deeply, saw clearly, and then worked away with the instrument of language till his vision was made plain to others. That is not an easy thing to do; and the greater the artist the harder the work. For he alone is fully conscious of the imperfections of the language at its best to image the mind of man. The charm of the story is entirely apart from the machinery; it lies in the region of genuine emotion which springs from a zest for living. Notwithstanding its pathetic ending, lonely-for they give the emotions something the story is profoundly optimistic-for it breeds to cling tofaith in human nature, respect for individuality, and a manly sympathy for error. It is "A little warmth, a little light Of Love's bestowing-and so good-night!" Quaker Idyls. "QUAKER IDYLS," by Sarah M. H. Gardner, consists of eight sketches, in six of which the Quakers are the chief characters. "Twelfth Street Meeting" and "Uncle Joseph" both treat of the bashful Quaker in love, with a quiet humor and an effective but unobtrusive description of Quaker customs. "A Quaker Wedding" continues "Twelfth Street Meeting." "The Two Gentlewomen" had belonged to a family of Friends; but one of them having become the widow of a fast young Englishman, they both take up the ways of the mothercountry. A courtly old colonel courts them both with rare impartiality. "Our Little Neighbors" is a sympathetic picture of childhood, with a quaintly humorous ending; even more humorous is "Pamelia Tewksbury's Courtship," laid in central New York. Mrs. Gardner's treatment of this episode, though it really recalls Miss Wilkins, can bear the comparison. Next come the "Ante-Bellum Letters," which occupy about one-third of the book, and make an excellent foil to the more demure tales which they interrupt like a sort of vigorous interlude. The Quakeress who writes them is suddenly plunged into the comparative dissipations of Boston, into the lively society of Harvard undergraduates, and into gay raiment that distresses her; but this lively intermezzo ends with a graver strain. The figures of the great abolitionists are faintly seen, and at the trial of a poor negro boy, who is demanded as a fugitive slave, Lucretia Mott appears and sits by the prisoner, cheering him through the long night session of the court. The frontispiece represents this scene. A quiet idyl follows, and the book closes with a quaint old story, way back in 1815, in which a romantic French boy, who has escaped from jail, plays an important part, and a Quakeress, more beautiful than her parents care to have her, another. There is a note of pathos in this tile, and the good influence of the Quakers, especially of Elizabeth Fry, in prison reform, is shown, as is their brave work for abolition already indicated in the "Ante-Bellum Letters." (Holt. 75 c.)-Philadelphia Press. The Author of The Maiden's Progress. MISS HUNT confirms the prevailing doctrine of heredity. Her father is not only a landscape artist of eminence, but a man of singular brainpower in the line of literature. Mr. Hunt is singular, or all but singular, among his artistic confrères as the master of an excellent prose style, as readers of The Nineteenth Century well know. We believe, too, he is alone among British painters in having taken honors at Oxford and being a fellow of his college-a married Fellow, of course, for his wife, Miss Hunt's mother, is Mrs. Alfred Hunt, the distinguished and very charming novelist. On her mother's side Miss Violet Hunt comes of a line of scholars and gentlemen in the north of England, who have made their mark in the church and in Antiquarian literature. Elle chasse de race therefore, and it is not surprising that, though destined for the easel and palette, Miss Hunt should have turned early to litera LUCRETIA MOTT QUIETLY TOOK HER PLACE BESIDE THE COLORED MAN. son, and that the prose-pen is mightier than the pen that only achieves odes and sonnets. There has latterly been a movement in periodical literature towards short pieces in dialogue, of which movement Miss Hunt took advantage. She had lived all her life in her parents' house in Kensington, among all sorts and conditions of clever men and women-the people whose trade and talk is not of Hurlingham, Sandown, and of church parade, but of ideas, and the newer movements of thought, and all the current wit and humor of the day. Miss Hunt had accordingly lived within sound of much smart dialogue, and, being herself possessed of quick observation, and not poorly endowed with wit, the new literary method was exactly suited to her, and she quickly showed herself to be one of the smartest dialogue-writers of the day. It is a way of telling a story which many of our younger writers have attempted, and in which very few have succeeded. That Miss Hunt's is among the most brilliant of the successes of the day no one who reads her "Maiden's Progress" will deny. We have dealt with the book elsewhere. (Harper. $1.50.) -London Literary World. A Change of Air. IN Mr. Anthony Hope's "The Prisoner of Zenda" there was an endless amount of action. It was a transformation of the nineteenth century into the sixteenth. Rapiers flashed, and there was the merriest clicking of steel, with innumerable gasconnades in the true d'Artagnan method. The wonder was how well the business was managed, for if Alexandre Dumas was not redivivus, at least he was happily recalled. There is variety in Mr. Hope. "A Change of Air" is pitched in an entirely different key. Dale Bannister suddenly becomes a popular English poet. "The Clarion, and Other Poems" was his first small book. Then followed "The Sluggards," and lastly "The Hypocrite's Heaven" brought fame and remonstrance; but what was perhaps more pleasing, a fair lot of money. The question arises, May one not write in verse, and for the sake of a startling rhyme, manufacture opinions one does not really feel? We fancy Dale Bannister may have believed at first that he wrote what he thought and had taken himself seriously. He may have worn as a necessity for the rôle, an extraordinary hat to cover his long hair, but Dale was a good up and down man, not the least conceited, and just as reasonable as anybody else. . . . "A Change of Air" is a highly clever performance, with little touches that recall From "A Change of Air." Copyright, 1894, by Henry Holt & Co. ANTHONY HOPE HAWKINS. both Balzac and Meredith. We again call attention to the fact that Mr. Hope, being disinclined to follow any of the beaten tracks of romance-writing, is endowed with exceeding originality. (Holt. 75 c.)-N. Y. Times. The Abbe Daniel. "THE ABBÉ DANIEL" is one of those literary gems which the French excel in producing. Simple in plot, chaste in style, dainty in humor, its beauty consists chiefly in its artistic counterpoise of the characters: the abbé himself, with his affectionate, unselfish nature, unworldly, sweet-tempered, easily crushed; his namesake, growing up from an impetuous youth into a gallant soldier, hearty, frank, likeable; the flower-like Denise fading away and leaving a still brighter flower as a consolation for her husband and the abbé who had loved her; Beauvais, the rough, hearty proprietor, so genial under the outside bark, so wise and generous! These are the four chief actors, and how perfectly they balance and contrast with one another! The story is a sort of pastoral, though free from all insipidity, seasoned as it is with wholesome French spice. It is sentimental, but free from mawkishness. It is pure as crystal, and yet it does not flaunt this purity with a hypocritical grimace. It is often said that France has no word for |