Empire of the Tsar.

NEITHER those who know M. Leroy-Beaulieu's masterly work on Russia in its original and complete form, nor those who have read the first volume of Mme. Ragozin's slightly condensed translation of it, need to be reminded that as a first-hand investigation of the political and social system of the Empire of the Czars there is nothing comparable with it. What Brice has done for the United States, LeroyBeaulieu has done for Russia; and his work, at least for some time to come, will stand as the best authority on its subject. It will be of special service just now in connection with the inquiries and discussions that will rise out of an impending event of great consequence in that really little understood land.

The second volume of Mme. Ragozin's translation is freer than the first from those unEnglish turns of expression which annoy, even if they do not confuse, the reader. But a few verbal infelicities still remain to remind us that the translator is not herself to the English manner born. However, it is information rather than literary form that is sought in a book of this kind, and information there is in it in abundance-information industriously collected, judiciously sifted, and lucidly presented.

From "Norseland Tales."

The first volume, it will be recalled, was devoted to the country and its people; the second deals with its institutions. It is thus the more important of the two and, in proportion to the greater difficulty in preparing it, the more deserving of praise. In it the learned author, with fairness, discrimination, and sympathy, describes and analyzes for us the Russian system of both general and local administration; the bureaucracy; the police; the provincial assemblies and municipal councils; the administration of justice and the courts; the press and its censorship; and the revolutionary party and political reforms.

These are just the subjects on which the ordinary person outside of Russia is least correctly and fully informed, the chief sources of information being hitherto in the prejudiced and often rather hysterical accounts of such writers as "Stepniak" and Kennan. Whoever, therefore, desires the most trustworthy descriptions of contemporary Russian life in all its essential features, and a thorough understanding of the great political and social problems now vexing the Russian people, must read Leroy-Beaulieu's work. The third volume has just reached us, completing a most valuable book that all who can possibly afford it should

make their own. (Putnam. $3 per volume.)-Brooklyn Times.

Norseland Tales.

LIKE an invigorating breeze from Norseland is the stirring amination of these pretty stories of the joys and pleasures of life lived by natives of Norseland in their wanderings upon the face of the earth in search of food and work and glory. Several of the stories have appeared in the periodicals for the young, but these stories appeal to an as yet unawakened taste and appreciation of their fine literary merit when they are put into the hands of young people. They are worth reading by all who can understand the fine tinges of local color, the pretty comparisons of northern and southern impressions, the varying ideals born of a harsh or a sunny soil. The book should be laid aside and enjoyed in some cosey family gathering around the evening lamp. It consists of ten short stories and is just the thing for reading aloud. (Scribner. $1.25.)

The English Novel Until Waverley. PROF. RALEIGH's brief, comprehensive, and careful review of a broad field of literay labor has just the qualities such a work ought to possess. It includes the material he has used in his lectures on modern literature at the University College, Liverpool, augmented and elaborated, and is to be regarded as an educational handbook rather than a contribution to belles-lettres.

As such it has the merits of conciseness and clearness, accuracy and impartiality. The author's taste is sound and his teachings are wholesome, while his manner is equally free from pedantry and petty dilettanteism. His opinions are fixed and are based on thorough knowledge, and therefore are valuable to any one whether or not he is pursuing the study of English literature. What he says of Chaucer, Defoe, and Fielding denotes a sound heart and a clear head, a mind able to properly appreciate artistic merit wherever and whenever it is demonstrated, and never tending to over-enthusi

asm.

The book may be opened at almost any page and read with interest and profit, but its scope is broad, as Professor Raleigh traces the origin of the English novel from almost the dawn of literature, touching the late Greek and Latin romances upon which mediæval romance was founded, drawing fine distinctions between such "romance as the Chanson de Roland and the English romance that grew out of it, passing swiftly from Malory to Chaucer, from Ascham and the early translators of the Italians to Lyly and Lodge, and encompassing the whole field of English fiction, romantic and satirical, from the fifteenth century to the beginning of the nineteenth. (Scribner. $1.25.)—The N. Y. Times.

The Green Carnation.

IT comes to us with a rubricated title-page, and a cover of green and silver, and two hundred pages of delicious absurdity. Lord Reginald Hastings is introduced posing before a mirror with a green carnation in his buttonhole, looking like an angel a little blasé from the injudicious conduct of his life. Although a man of twenty-five, his conduct and conversation are asinine to an inconceivable pitch. Perhaps we ought to say here that the story is a brilliant satire on some phases of London society, but so exaggerated as to pass the bounds of possibility. Lord Reginald is an imitator of a Bunthorne-like individual, Esme Amarinth by name, whose epigrammatic conversation is extravagant nonsense. The highest humor, he says, often moves him to tears; which statement is immediately capped by Lord Reginald's remark, that that was why he

From Across Asia on a Bicycle." Copyright, 1894, by The Century Co.

FIRING THE 4TH OF JULY SALUTE. laughed at his brother's funeral-his grief expressed itself in that way.

The book is full of just such amusing talk, told in a way that is captivating despite the inane chatter of the precious two. There is lead some to say aut Gilbert aut diabolus. something familiar in the motif which may

Lord Reginald's self-satisfaction is colossal and some of his sayings are delectable, such as, "There are some passages in the book of Job that I should not be ashamed to have written," and "Is not this marmalade godlike? Surely, surely marmalade can never die." His mentor, however, surpasses him in his unnaturalness of conversation, for, as he says, Nothing on earth is so middle class as Nature."

The literature and art of the day come in for witty and sharp criticism. The "cult of the green carnation" means a putting aside of the old ideals and setting up in their place a dyed artificial goddess who has no counterpart in nature or human life.

Not the least charm is the perfect gravity and seriousness with which this stuff is taken by the women who are their friends. Amarinth is drawn so deftly that the skin of the ass does not altogether conceal the fox. It may be that he has an archetype in London society; if so, common sense must be indeed on the wane within those charmed limits. While some of the allusions necessarily lose their force at this distance, the clever satire cannot fail to be appreciated. (Appleton. 75 c.)—Public Opinion.

46

Danvis Folks. 'DANVIS FOLKS," by Rowland E. Robinson, author of "Sam Lovel's Camps," etc., appeared in part in Forest and Stream. The author's familiarity with Vermont has been shown by his contribution to the American Commonwealth Series. But he knows not only Vermont's geography and her political history but her country folk through and through, their thoughts, their language, and their warm hearts. "Danvis Folks" is a series of rural happenings bound together and made into a more or less continuous

narrative, and its chief ingredient is drollery,

good clear, sheer fun. Grant'her Hill with his pa'tridge; Josie bracing himself for the extracted tooth; Uncle Lisha's summing up of the West vs. the East; the paring-bee and its lesser bees; fishing, hunting; and again the quiets of home. Anent hasty pudding, aunt Jerusha says: "The' haint no hulsomer ner cleaner-tasted victuals, ner cheaper ner easier 'Lisher likes it, tew, but he says it don't stay by him none, an' if he's goin't tu eat puddin' and milk fer supper he wants ter ondress him fust an' sit on the aidge o' the bed an' swaller it as quick as he can, an' then

got.

tumble in an' go tu sleep afore he gits hungry." Antoine, the Canadian Frenchman, figures in the story, and Sam Lovel is its hero. The old New England ways are fast fading out and "Danvis Folks" is well worth the writing and reading. (Houghton, Mifflin & Co. $1.25.)Portland Transcript.

Life and Letters of Erasmus.

MR. FROUDE is always brilliant and attractive. In these lectures delivered at Oxford, 1893-94, he has a congenial subject and he treats it with sympathy and power. He gives us a vivid picture of the struggles of Erasmus against the fate which would make him a monk, of his literary aspirations and the personal extravagances which hampered and hindered him, of his friendship for the young English prince who became Henry the Eighth, his hatred of monkery, and his warfare against the monastic orders. He sets forth the relations of Erasmus to Luther and the Reformation, and exhibits in a clear and impressive manner his connection with the learning and religion of his age. The lectures are enriched with opposite quotations from the writings of Erasmus and from authors who have commented upon them. It is probable that this is Mr. Froude's last work, for while we write he is said to be sick unto death. (Scribner. $2.50.)-N. Y. Observer.

The Birds About Us.

DR. CHARLES CONRAD ABBOTT, the indefatigable and enthusiastic student of nature, has again prepared for us a book of delightful details about the birds of the lower Delaware River Valley, their appearance, habits, plumage, haunts, etc. The book is as bewitching as his former little masterpieces, entitled "Recent Rambles," Travels in a Tree-top," etc. The work is profusely illustrated, showing counterfeit presentments of perching birds, goatsuckers, woodpeckers, cuckoos, birds of prey, game-birds and pigeons, shore-birds, herons, rails, etc.; ducks geese, swans pelicans, cormorants, petrels, gulls and terns, divingbirds, etc. It will make a beautiful gift-book, both for its intrinsic merit and its very pretty "get-up" in delicate gray cloth with tracery of green leaves with silver birds swaying amid the branches. Dr. Abbott has the feeling of a poet about our little feathered relations and the accuracy and knowledge of a scientist. He says of the swallows we show in the cut: "They twitter as they go, a gladsome, ringing twitter, bespeaking a merry heart; and this attempt at song has become so inwoven with our summer days that its loss would now be more keenly felt than the happiest efforts of a thrush. A summer without swallows would be a summer with summer left out." (Lippincott. $2.)

Abandoning an Adopted Farm. "ABANDONING AN ADOPTED FARM," by Kate Sanborn, who, we see by her title-page, is the author of half a dozen or more books, is a piece of writing which means much more to the personal friends of the writer than it can ever mean to the public, even in its most idle and least literary moods, for it is little but a manifestation of the individuality of Miss Sanborn, who seems to enjoy her own sayings and doings, and attempts at farming, and the interest which attaches to her in consequence of her adopting an abandoned farm. We have called this rev

to his friend, Captain John G. Bourke, of the United States Army, in remembrance of the time when the friends studied together. Wild beasts have often been written about, both carelessly and dogmatically. For the most part men write about them as if they knew what it is impossible they should know, and it is difficult to banish the suggestion that many of our prevailing opinions are in fact survivals from savagery. The author confines himself to facts gleaned from his own observation and much careful, well-digested reading, and his book is full of new matter and of continuous interest. In constructing his portraits the author quotes freely from the literature of the subject, throwing much new light on the characteristics of animals. Profusely illustrated and attractively bound. (Scribner. $2.)

elation of Miss Sanborn a piece of writing, but it runs on in such a slapdash, helter-skelter fashion that a fit of talking would describe it better, it is so garrulous, so inconsequential, so impulsive, and so good-natured. She describes her experiences of rustic life with great spirit, and with a sense of the fun of it all which is contagious, never hesitating to see herself as her neighbors saw her, and to find them amusing, even when they were, as they often were, intrusive and impertinent. Her sense of humor is large, and the best things in this careless chat of hers are the amusing things which happened her, the clever or stupid speeches which were made to her, and which she recovers from an attentive memory, as thoroughly characteristic of the country folk of New England. (Appleton. 75 c.)-Mail and Express.