it treats. It is a history of American art, embodied in a connected series of biographical sketches of American artists, including between two and three hundred names. The author has lingered over his theme with a fond fidelity of research which nothing of importance has escaped. He brings to his task a nature richly endowed with the love of the beautiful and good, a mind stored with the fruits of a varied and sedulous culture, a heart and memory full of the cherished results of æsthetic studies and of life-long friendships with artists. The work abounds with racy and genial anecdotes; with romantic incidents and descriptions; with distinct portraitures of original characters; with careful discussions of the nature and rise of art, with sound and stimulative patriotic sentiment, and with winsome accounts of that leisurely life of observation, meditation, and refined ideal pursuits, which is as yet so little cultivated by our emulous and utilitarian people.

It would be easy to cite from Mr. Tuckerman's book examples of carelessness in style, of vague rhetoric, of loose or diffuse thought, and feeble moralizing. But these are exceptional. faults, and comparatively so trifling, as not much to alloy the hearty praise we are glad to give to a work which is, as a whole, so instructive, so genial, so elevated, and so timely. Let all who are interested in the cause of fine culture in America place this excellent "Book of the Artists" on their tables.

W. R. A.

homes of but, as a She has no

A FEW interesting facts of domestic life in the royal Egypt and Turkey are given in Miss Lott's latest book; whole, her revelations are neither new nor valuable. skill in description, and spoils her pictures of palace and garden by tedious multiplication of details. She has a quick eye for the materials of dress, but no power of showing the person who wears the dress. Perhaps those queens and favorites of the harem have really no character: they certainly have none in Miss Lott's pages. The heroine of the book is the author of the book; yet it does not appear that she did much or that she suffered much. She frequently mentions her "sensitiveness" and her "delicacy," and notices affronts offered to her high-born, dignity. That refinement, however, does not

* Harem Life in Egypt and Constantinople. By Emmeline Lott, late Governess to His Highness the Grand Pacha Ibrahim, son of His Highness Ishmael Pacha, Viceroy of Egypt, authoress of "Nights in the Harem." Philadelphia: T. B. Peterson & Bros. 12mo, pp. 357.

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appear in her allusions and her epithets, which are often strangely indelicate; in her account of the furniture of the rooms, and especially in her constant talk about the "eunuchs,"—" phantoms of humanity," "spectres of humanity," as she calls them constantly, while she more than once says that they hold criminal relations with the women that they guard, and become the fathers of numerous children. There is no evidence, in Miss Lott's volume, of any peculiar delicacy of feeling, or any large culture. She writes indifferent English; connects singular nouns with plural verbs; says us Europeans," instead of "we Europeans;" and jumbles her pronouns in annoying confusion. No Jew or Greek ever talked in Egypt, as she makes a Jew and a Greek talk with her in the car, when she goes up from Alexandria to Cairo; and the cheat is incautiously revealed by the words "kind reader," which slip into the Jew's remarks. From the small portion of the face shown in Miss Lott's portrait, in the frontispiece, we should judge that her fears of being violently adopted among the favorites of the pacha's harem, were quite groundless. There is no intimation that any of the wives or damsels in the palaces were jealous of the Englishwoman's beauty. Miss Lott ought to have some Irish blood in her veins, as she calls the young boy-prince "the very prototype" of his deceased grandfather; and speaks of the wholesale massacre of the Memlooks as their "decimation."

The short closing chapter of the volume sums up the iniquities of harem life, and pronounces a damning sentence upon the conduct and conversation of the caged beauties. But that chapter has no connection with any thing that has been told in the accounts of the daily life, which are rather suggestive of vanity and laziness, than of immorality. There are no pictures of intrigue and licentiousness in the actual story of Miss Lott's observations, no such tales of love, jealousy, and sensual indulgence, as we find in the stories of Parisian life, or the disclosures of the convent. The only chapter of intrigue in the book is in the highly colored narrative of an Italian count's daring stratagem in penetrating the palace of Mehemet Ali, in woman's clothes, and its half-tragic result.

The substance of what Miss Lott tells us is, that Ishmael Pacha, the ruler of Egypt, is very rich and very rapacious; that his palaces and steamboats are very splendid; that his three wives and their attendants have a great many jewels, and silks in profusion; that the boy-prince of half a dozen years is good-humored and bright, but cruel, grasping, and vindictive; that the Nubian black nurse is a cun

ning and malignant devil, deserving her name of "Shaytan;" that they are all afraid of poison in the harem; that the women of Constantinople have more freedom than the women of Cairo; that German-Jew bankers, in the East, are probably knaves; that a spot of kohl on the forehead is a "sectarian sign;" that loaves of bread are sometimes broken over the heads of princes, for a reason which she does not know; that the Egyptian royal children are very fond of raw fruit and vegetables; and that "Baksheesh" is chief among the "Princes." She fails to make harem life attractive to the reader; and yet she fails to show it as peculiarly repulsive. When we consider the opportunity of the author, the book must be called a very poor one.

C. H. B.

VERY comical, and very capital too, are Mr. Harte's volume of fugitive newspaper sketches; * and it is fortunate that such clever imitations were not left to perish, but will gain the wide fame that Carleton's press can give them. Mr. Harte must be a very pleasant companion. Thomas Starr King, to whose memory the volume is dedicated, must have found the society of so genial a humorist a large compensation for the loss of his New-England home and friends. In this instance, California has not given us coarse or boisterous wit; and there is nothing to offend refined tastes.

-

The first half of the volume is made up of "condensed novels," short imitations of the style of the popular writers of fiction, Cooper, Lever, Miss Braddon, Mrs. Wood, Dumas, Bulwer, Dickens, Charlotte Bronté, Guy Livingstone, Maryatt, T. S. Arthur, Wilkie Collins, Victor Hugo, Michelet, Sala, all of which are so well done, that it is hard to tell which is best. The other half of the volume is equally divided between "Civic Sketches" and "Legends and Tales." These last, if less finished than the stories of Irving, are not less rich in sportive fancy. The legends of Monte Diablo and of the Devil's Point will compare with the legends of Rip Van Winkle and Sleepy Hollow. The story of the Ruins of San Francisco might well have been written by the author of the Man without a Country, and is quite as accurate in its dates and facts as the stories of that writer. A Night at Wingdom shows that the humorist can be pathetic when he chooses. The Ogress of Silver Land is

* Condensed Novels and other Papers. By F. BRET HARTE. New York, 1867. 12mo, pp. 307.

as good as some of the tales of the "Arabian Nights." Waiting for the Ship is a cabinet picture.

The pictorial illustrations by Frank Bellew are not positively bad; but they are not good enough for such choice sketches, which are worthy to employ the pencil of Darley or Eytinge. The book itself is more picturesque than its pictures.

C. H. B.

THE veteran author and renowned missionary, William Ellis, in revisiting Madagascar, to explain the objects of the London Missionary Society, and arrange the different fields of labor, has laid the religious public again under obligation,* as by his "Polynesian Researches and "Three Visits to Madagascar." But this time it is to exult over an accomplished work; to gather in the harvest he had helped to sow; to consecrate churches whose corner-stone had been laid in the blood of martyrs. When he reached this island in 1862, Radama II. had replaced the terrible persecutions of his idolatrous mother with friendship, if not favoritism, for Christian teachers. He was not a Christian himself; but anxious to hear, thoroughly humane, and only too zealous in introducing European customs among his half-civilized subjects. With the single exception of occasional intoxication, -to which foreigners tempted him, and which he deplored as deeply as any one; and a desire to carry out his own views, without regard to the advice of his counsellors, Radama showed a noble character for an hereditary sovereign nurtured by such unfavorable influences. He listened to all grievances, redressed all wrongs, was gentle to the poor, devoted hours to personal improvement, and befriended, heartily, all who desired the religious elevation of his people, whether Protestants or Catholics. But an obnoxious measure, in which he persisted, against all remonstrance, in fact, the authorization of duelling,— prompted his assassination, by the orders of his prime minister, who, not long after, for his arrogant assumption of power, was driven into exile, Queen Rabodo reigning with more limited sway than any sovereign before.

The sudden murder of so mild and worthy a prince as Radama II. does not promise much for the perpetuity of authority in Madagascar. The abundance of foreign wines, during the abolition of impost duties has assailed the self-indulgent native on his weak side: nothing but

*Madagascar Revisited. By Rev. WILLIAM ELLIS. London: Murray, 1867. Dedicated, by permission, to the Queen.

the moral energy of the gospel, as Mr. Ellis remarks, can save this interesting race from extinction. Outwardly, our religion has made amazing progress in Madagascar. During these four years, the native Christians have more than doubled, and the communicants increased tenfold. Mr. Ellis now numbers eighteen thousand fellow-believers, under seven English missionaries and ninety-five native teachers. A fresh opportunity is now offered to this easily moulded race, of entering on that course of intelligent activity, which will give them a permanent place among the nations of the earth.

F. W. H.

"CHRISTIANITY among the New Zealanders" is the title given by the Bishop of Waiapu to his eulogy of the mission among a warlike race of natives, who are doomed to disappear from the face of the earth. Bishop Williams has purposely excluded from his narrative the general information about these little-visited islands which would have rendered his book a valuable contribution to the geography of the world; and surely we did not need to see, at this late stage of the work, that Christian missionaries have shown the most admirable heroism, endurance, and self-sacrifice. His method of vindicating the wisdom of this particular mission will satisfy none who have entertained any rational doubt. Nobody doubts that there have been instances of remarkable conversions; that whole villages have engaged in church services with the greatest apparent solemnity; that savage conflicts have been many times prevented by missionary influence. Unquestionably, the same number of devoted, energetic, educated ministers would have produced marked results wherever they had labored together. These Maori were very probably ignorant of any principles of religion when the apostolic Marsden first appeared among them, cannibals in time of war, and passionately interested in warlike feuds; though we have never been able to find any thing that justified the missionary statement, of their being more abject even than African savages. On the contrary, their first visitors speak of them "as vastly superior to any thing you can imagine in a savage nation;" and the united, persevering, heroic resistance they have made to the invasion of English settlers puts them at least on the same level with the Indians of the Far West. Still, twenty years of faithful, prayerful labor, resulted in only fifty converts; and, though

* Christianity among the New Zealanders. By Bishop W. WILLIAMS. London, 1866.