Across Asia on a Bicycle.

THE two young American students who are the authors of "Across Asia on a Bicycle," beginning in June, 1890, made a bicycle journey around the world-so far as they could on land -and were back in New York, whence they

the Scotch traveller's description which divided Persia into two portions-" one desert with salt and the other without salt." They found worse deserts, though, before they reached China. This journey was by no means without danger, and more than once, both in Persia and China, the young men were called upon to show their stamina. They met

extremes of hospitality and extortion, but their diplomacy and firmness brought them safely through all difficulties. While in Peking they had an interview with Li Hung Chang, who "for genuine inquisitiveness" stands peerless. He wanted to know of their adventures, their age, their wealth, their politics, and their ambitions. Altogether, he appeared in

had sailed for Liverpool to begin their wheeling, in three years, lacking twenty days. They regard their journey through Western China and the Desert of Gobi as the most interesting and most dangerous part of their travelling. "Never since Marco Polo had a European traveller succeeded in crossing the Chinese Empire from the West to Peking." They did not employ guides, and so had to learn a little of many languages, and consequently came to know a great deal more about the Asiatics than they would otherwise have done. Their sketches have already been published serially and are now gathered together in book form. The authors give a most interesting account of the journey across Turkey and the ascent of Mount Ararat-an adventure which they could not afterward persuade the Persians to believe they had enjoyed. The beauties of Persia seemed to them largely a figment of the poet's imagination. A flower crushed at every step" did not seem to fit the country half so well as

telligent, "frequently smiled and sometimes came so near overstepping the bounds of Chinese propriety as to chuckle." They make glowing predictions concerning his future and that of China under his rule-predictions which the events of the last few months have hardly borne out. He was certainly an interesting man, and they could hardly be expected to foresee how he would shrink in stature under the trials of leading an unwieldy nation to battle with a more warlike foe. (The Century Co. $1.25.)-N. Y. Tribune.

THE GOLDEN KEY.

To love the right things rightly, this enspheres
Wisdom, religion, art; forges the key
That opens Eden through the Gate of Tears,
Where by life's river blooms the mystic tree.

(Dodd, Mead & Co. $1.50.)-John Todhunter in "The Second Book of the Rhymers' Club."

Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan. NOBODY who reads has forgotten the fate of Lost Island, though the grim story was told long ago, and nobody who ever saw the tourmaline sea of the Tropics, or the hills of Martinique that glow with ineffable green flames, ever expects to find again such descriptions of them, at once absolutely accurate and infinitely poetic, as Mr. Hearn wrote. What he did for the Pearl of the Antilles he has done for the Land of the Sunrise, and again has made visible the intimate psychical beauties of a country often visited, indeed, but never really seen till he went there and discovered it. For just as Mr. Hearn discovered Martinique, notwithstanding Columbus and Raleigh, so now, for all of Perry and Arnold, he puts Japan on those charts whereby men navigate their ideas into restful habors. Aided by a poet's deep-reaching sympathy, he has comprehended an amazingly enigmatical people, and he has set down, in phrases of magnificent simplicity, implacably royal, the very spirit of a nation.

Not glimpses" of Japan are these, but ultimate pictures of its sea and its shore, of its rice-fields and mountains, the thoughts and the lives of its princes and peasants, their spirit and instinct, their hopes and their memories, the fears and the joys of a race-not collected, collated, numbered, ticketed, exclaimed over, admired, reprehended, or even observed, only felt, and then, as it were of themselves, finding expression for no complexer reason.

About Mr. Hearn's possession of that power there is no manner of doubt whatsoever. It is not necessary to have seen Japan to be convinced, or rather to know, that in this book are no mistakes or misunderstandings-none, that is, as to things even faintly essential.

Mr. Hearn can describe a cliff or a temple so that his readers know them better than do the men who were born in their shadows; he can reveal the spiritual meaning of a Japanese garden in terms whose lucidity a Japanese gardener might hopelessly envy; he can make you intimately acquainted with boys who go to school in Matsue, which is in the Province of Izumo, where railways and such like fantasies are not and the ancient gods are almost; he can fill page after page with details about toys, and make them of such interest as to be quite dangerously exciting; he can project into literal visibility, on paper that seems to be only printed, but which must really be painted, the absolutely convincing simulachrum of a girl dancing in the moonlight before a temple; he can do, and does, all these incalculably precious things; but it is when he has listened to priests and peasants, and to a certain mysteri

ous companion,” to whom frequent, but provokingly vague reference is made in these volumes, and tells again the old stories they have told him, that he is at his best.

How good that best would be was foreshadowed by the folk-lore in his West Indian book. Japan, however, gave him different and incomparably better material. From these "Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan" one constructs for himself the clear vision of a Japan henceforth profoundly familiar. So his is a very great book. Set it on a shelf next to "Trilby," and then grow happily old, waiting for the like of these twain to make three and the age that produced them illustrious. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 2 v., $4.)—N. Y.

Times.

A Victim of Good Luck.

"A VICTIM OF GOOD LUCK," the last novel of Mr. W. E. Norris, confirms us in the opinion that we have entertained for some years past, that he is one of the most satisfactory, if not the most satisfactory, of living English story-tellers. He confines himself for the most part to the social world of the upper and middle classes of his countrymen, which he understands as thoroughly as Thackeray understood the larger social world in which his genius exercised itself, and he draws men and women as he sees them there, with no great virtues, it may be, and certainly with no great vices, but as moderate, reasonable, well-bred, well-educated members of a social order of long standing. He is not obliged to imagine ladies and gentlemen, like so many female novelists of the time, and one or two of their brothers and sons, for he knows them, and is himself native and to the manner born. He is not distinguished for the originality of his plots, which are never startling, but rather for his skill in the combination and handling of ordinary incidents, to which he continues to impart a singular degree of interest the kind of interest which attaches in real life to the actions of those with whom we associate, but of whose individuality we are somewhat dubious. The story of "A Victim of Good Luck" is not one that will bear retelling, for there is not much of it, and what there is displays no invention and contains no surprises, but it holds us in the reading, one incident leading naturally to another, the whole passing before the mind like the well-arranged scenes of a genteel comedy. The stories of Mr. Norris are English comedies of to-day, and their literature is what the literature of comedy always ought to be-it is gay, it is refined, it is witty, and it is tolerant. It is a pleasure to read Mr. Norris for his style, which is masterly in its ease. (Appleton. $1; pap., 50 c.)—Mail and Express.

the war correspondent, intermingled with a vast variety of anecdote of personal adventure of many kinds, and of interviews and chance meetings of many kinds with the famous men of the war, chiefly on the Russian side, from the czar himself down through all grades, more especially including Skobeleff and Gourko. It purports to be told by the son of a Scotchman, who had lived for many years in Roumania. The youth is supposed to have fallen in with McGahan, the famous American correspondent early in the war, and to have been befriended and in a measure adopted by him. Through him he became closely associated with Millet, another American correspondent; Villiers, the English artist and correspondent,

sources. It is largely given, of course, to description, of a vivid personal type, of the operations about Plevna, with all their bloody and generally abortive fighting, but it includes, also,

and others, and all of them are represented to have been closely associated with Skobeleff especially. For McGahan the very highest admiration and affection are expressed, and the same, in somewhat lesser degree, for the others. The narrative is cast in consecutive form, but is made up from the letters of McGahan and the others, from the history of Captain Greene of the United Sates Army and from various other

Gourko's passage of the Balkans, of the appalling hardships of which the description is striking and graphic in the highest degree. In effect it is the story of the whole war, from the crossing of the Danube by the Russian forces to the proclamation of peace at San Stefano, and but little is said of the political motives and reasons for making the rather unexpected peace. (Scribner. $2.)-N. Y. Commercial Advertiser.

Familiar Letters of Henry Thoreau. EMERSON'S description of Thoreau's personality and analysis of his character have been accepted as the evidence of one who had unusual opportunities for studying the PoetNaturalist, as Channing called him, and whose judgment was especially worthy of credence. According to Emerson, Thoreau was "a Protestant à l'outrance," of a militant temperament, superior and didactic in his intercourse with youngmen who sought his counsel, "always manly and able, but rarely tender." That his controverbial habit proved to be, in Emerson's apt phrase, a little chilling to the social affections," is not surprising. Its effect upon those who knew Thoreau and admired him for his independence and courage is humorously illustrated by the remark of one of his friends, which Emerson quotes: "I love Henry, but I cannot like him; and as for taking his arm, I would as soon think of taking the arm of an elm tree."

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Yet Emerson was by no means blind to the existence of another and more amiable side of his friend's character-a side which revealed itself in a liking for sympathy and in affection for young people, and which ordinarily lay in the background, so to say, of the more dominant traits of his nature. It is this aspect of Thoreau's personality in his relations with his parents, his brothers and sisters and his intimate friends, that is shown forth in this series of familiar letters. Interesting and valuable, as they must prove to every student of Thoreau's life and writings, they are not likely to alter materially the impression which his extraordinary full self-revelation has left on the minds of his readers. Again and again in his correspondence the idea recurs, like an organ point upon which is built the whole complicated harmony of his life, that he is not for society and society is not for him. "I want a whole continent to breathe in," he wrote to his father and mother from Staten Island, “and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy, nor Broadway, with its wooden pavement." Midway in a letter of Harrison Blake occurs this passage: "I am preaching, mind you, to bare walls; that is, to myself, and if you have chanced to come in and occupy a pew, do not think that my remarks are directed at you particularly, and so leave the seat in disgust. This discourse was written long before these exciting times." In another letter to the same friend he says that he would rather talk to his neighbor" of the bran which, unfortunately, was sifted out of my bread this morning," than of the affairs of Turkey, which were then filling the newspapers.

The best of these letters are those addressed

to Emerson, while the latter was abroad, and while Thoreau was in charge of Emerson's household. They are lively and intimate in tone, are full of views and gossip about the members of Emerson's family and the men and doings in the village of Concord, refer with affection and playfulness to the children, and have, in a word, a great deal of the milk of human kindness in them. (Houghton. $4.) N. Y. Tribune.

The Trail of the Sword.

“THE TRAIL OF THE SWORD," by Gilbert Parker, is a singularly vivid and picturesque story of early days in this country, when what is now Canada was New France. The scene shifts, opening in New York, when Nicholls was the Royal Governor, shifting to Quebec-to the far north, on the shores of Hudson's Bay-to the tropic seas, back to New York and Quebec, all varied by fugitive glimpses of Boston, of London, and of the Court of France. The hero is the Frenchman, Iberville, afterward famous in the annals of another part of America, and the heroine, a bright, young girl of English parentage, met by the Frenchman in the house of Governor Nicholls. There is a young Bostonian, who is the rival lover, and wins the prize because present when the other is absent, and backed by the girl's father. But the men are enemies and make several attempts to fight, always with some interruption, though they meet in New York, Quebec, the tropics, at sea near Boston, and in the far North. At last the Bostonian, now a husband, is made prisoner in Sir William Phips' attack on Quebec, is tried as a spy for a former offence, and condemned to death. Then Iberville intervenes, allows him to escape, recaptures him and brings him to a house, where he means their long-delayed conflict shall take place. Meantime the wife in Boston has been notified of the trial of her husband as a spy and with friends hurries to Quebec. Through a priest and a courier du bois, who are Iberville's friends, she is led to the house in time to interrupt the duel. Here the author paints a strikingly effective scene, ending with the release of the husband and wife, and the vowing of himself and his life to the sword by Iberville. Mr. Parker has caught the spirit of those turbulent and stirring days with rare felicity, and, far more fully than the majority of English writers, does ample justice to the in many ways admirable character of the French as soldiers, adventurers, and priests. This singular justice to them, coupled with a no less acute insight into the character of the English colonists, is, perhaps, the most striking part of the book, though it is notable, too, for its singularly picturesque sketching of