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rank must be assigned to Miss Isabella L. Bird. Her delightful book on the Sandwich Islands described performances and perils such as few ladies would care to encounter; but the collection of letters in which she narrates the incidents of "A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains"* surpasses in picturesque adventurousness all we can remember that is recorded of the achievements of women. Lady Baker's walk through Africa and Lady Blount's rides with the Bedouins of the Euphrates were sufficiently surprising; but each of these ladies was accompanied by her husband and an escort, while Miss Bird rode and rambled absolutely alone through eight hundred miles of the most dangerous and dif. ficult portion of Western America-crossing almost impassable mountain-ranges on "blind" trails, traversing vast reaches of desolate plain, defying the parching sun and death-bringing snow-storms of the Rocky Mountain climate, and passing unharmed and unafraid amid the worst ruffians and desperadoes of the frontier.

Her adventures began at Truckee, where she had "stopped over" in order to visit Lakes Tahoe and Donner. Leaving the train at midnight, she discovered on reaching the "hotel" that, as the accommodation of the town was inadequate to its population (almost exclusively male), the regular hours of sleep were not observed, the beds being occupied by relays of sleepers throughout the greater part of the twenty-four hours. Taking her chance with the rest, she found the bed and room assigned to her "quite tumbled-looking." "Men's coats and sticks were hanging up, miry boots were littered about, and a rifle was in one corner. There was no window to the outer air, but I slept soundly, being only once awakened by an increase of the same din (from the bar-room) in which I had fallen asleep, varied by three pistol-shots fired in rapid succession."

Next morning, having hired a horse (equipped with a Mexican saddle, she always riding astride in man-fashion), she set out for Lake Tahoe; and here is one of her experiences on the road:

After I had ridden about ten miles the road went up a steep hill in the forest, turned abruptly, and through the blue gloom of the great pines which rose from the ravine in which the river was then hid came glimpses of two mountains, about eleven thousand feet in height, whose bald gray summits were crowned with pure snow. . . . The forest was thick, and had an undergrowth of dwarf spruce and brambles; but, as the horse had become fidgety and "scary" on the track, I turned off in the idea of taking a short cut, and was sitting carelessly, shortening my stirrup, when a great, dark, hairy beast rose, crashing and snorting, out of the jungle just in front of me. I had only a glimpse of him, and thought that my imagination had magnified a wild boar, but it was a bear. The horse snorted and plunged violently, as if he would go down to the river, and then turned, still plunging, up a steep bank, when, finding that I must come off, I threw myself off on the right side, where the ground rose considerably, so that I had not far to fall. I got up covered

* A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. By Isabella L. Bird. With Illustrations. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 12mo, pp. 296.

with dust, but neither shaken nor bruised. It was truly grotesque and humiliating. The bear ran in one direction, and the horse in another. I hurried after the latter, and twice he stopped until I was close to him, then mile in deep dust, I picked up first the saddle-blanket turned round and cantered away. After walking about a and next my bag, and soon came upon the horse standing facing me, and shaking all over. I thought I should catch him then, but when I went up to him he turned round, threw up his heels several times, rushed off the track, galloped in circles, bucking, kicking, and plunging for some time, and then, throwing up his heels as an act of final defiance, went off at full speed in the direction of Truckee, with the saddle over his shoulders and the great wooden stirrups thumping his sides, while I trudged ignominiously along in the dust, laboriously carrying the bag and saddle-blanket.

I walked for nearly an hour, heated and hungry, when to my joy I saw the ox-team halted across the top of a gorge, and one of the teamsters leading the horse toward me. ... He brought me some water to wash the dust from my face, and resaddled the horse, but the animal snorted and plunged for some time before he would let me mount, and then sidled along in such a nervous and by me to see that I was "all right." He said that the scared way that the teamster walked for some distance woods in the neighborhood of Tahoe had been full of brown and grizzly bears for some days, but that no one was in any danger from them. I took a long gallop beyond the scene of my tumble to quiet the horse, who was most restless and troublesome.

On the return next day, "in a deep part of the forest, the horse snorted and reared, and I saw a cinnamon-colored bear with two cubs cross the track ahead of me. I tried to keep the horse quiet that the mother might acquit me of any designs upon her lolloping children, but I was glad when the ungainly, long-haired party crossed the river."

This was an appropriate beginning of a tour every stage of which was marked by some equally exciting-often still more exciting-adventure. In spite of the above-described accident, Miss Bird was a remarkably skillful rider, and she tells later of some wonderful feats of cattle-driving in Estes Park, where she spent several weeks. She was among the first to ascend Long's Peak, which she did in the company of "Rocky Mountain Jim," who was the most notorious ruffian and desperado in all the West, but who was always chivalrous, as he said, “to good women." She rode six hundred miles in a single tour, entirely alone, from Estes Park by Denver and Colorado Springs, over the mountains of southern Colorado, and back through South Park-most of the distance over snow-covered trails which the hardiest mountaineers hesitated to venture upon. Several times she was lost; more than once she was caught in blinding snow-storms; on two or three occasions her boots and stockings were frozen on her feet, and her feet frozen to the stirrups. It is a truly feminine trait that, amid all these perils-and worse from the lawless men among whom she was necessarily thrown

the only thing that seems to have alarmed her was, when riding through forests, "the fear of being frightened at something which may appear from behind a tree."

It is a creditable and noteworthy fact that, in all these journeys, made under conditions which might well have excited scandal, Miss Bird met with nothing but helpfulness and kindness-rough and unpolished, it is true, but none the less hearty and generous for that reason. She herself says that "womanly dignity and manly respect for women are the salt of society in this wild West"; and certainly the record of her experiences confirms it. The special reason in her peculiar case was perhaps explained by the pioneer who told her to go ahead and never fear, "for what we Westerners admire in women is pluck"; and surely in "pluck" Miss Bird was never deficient. Nor, it should be added, was she deficient in that womanly dignity and purity which are recognized and respected by the rudest and most lawless society of the frontier.

The letters of which the book is composed were addressed to the author's sister at home, and are written in the familiar manner of private correspondence, though no doubt the idea of publication was all the time in view. Miss Bird's style is probably a faithful reflex of her character, and is clear, decided, and vigorous, animated without being affectedly vivacious, and picturesque without any attempt at fine writing. All through there is a complete unconsciousness on the part of the author that she is doing anything very remarkable or extraordinary; and yet it would be difficult to imagine more interesting experiences told in a more interesting manner.

THE publication last year of the memoirs of Baroness Bunsen has suggested the republication of the "Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany," which was originally issued in England in 1861, but in so expensive and voluminous a form that it can hardly be said to have been published, in the sense of being rendered accessible to the general body of readers. Mrs. Delany (Mary Granville) was of the same illustrious family, three generations removed, as Baroness Bunsen, and long sustained the reputation of being the most elegant and accomplished woman of her time. She was indeed an admirable example of the best and highest type of the grande dame; and no less an authority than Edmund Burke said of her, "She is not only the woman of fashion in her own age, she is the highestbred woman in the world, and the woman of fashion of all ages."

The editor of the American edition of the "Autobiography and Correspondence"--which has been "revised to reasonable limits"-thus enumerates the several features of interest which the volumes present: "The long life of Mrs. Delany comprised nearly a century of English history. Born in 1700, fourteen years before the death of Queen Anne, she lived far into the reign of George III., an interval

* The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany. Revised from Lady Llanover's Edition, and edited by Sarah Chauncey Woolsey. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 2 vols. 12mo, pp. 465, 499.

comprising the successive coronations and burials of three British sovereigns. Her childhood caught echoes from the victories of the mighty Marlborough, Blenheim, Ramillies, Malplaquet; later, she heard of Dettingen and Fontenoy, Culloden, Preston-Pans; later still, of the Declaration of Independence and the freedom of the American colonies. Her correspondence notes and chronicles in detail the changes, gradual but vast, which in that epoch of change were transforming the quaint England of the Stuarts and the Tudors into the England of our own times, and planting the germs of what we call modern usage, literature, and habits of thought. Original letters, written in the frankness of family intercourse, during the eighteenth century, could hardly fail to be interesting; but those of Mrs. Delany and her correspondents possess the special advantage of being written from the inner circle, and they comment upon the noteworthy personages of the day with all the detail and freshness of familiar acquaintance."

This description is in a measure true, but it conveys an idea of attractiveness and readableness on the part of the book which the book itself, we are afraid, will hardly be found to justify. With the utmost willingness to be pleased and entertained, we found the reading of the two stout volumes an undeniably tedious task, and long before the end was reached yielded to the irresistible inclination to "skip." The plain fact is that these memoirs of Mrs. Delany are characterized by precisely the merits and defects which we mentioned as pertaining to the memoirs of Baroness Bunsen. They are interesting and even edifying, for the intimate fidelity with

which they portray a singularly fine and noble character; but the canvas is immeasurably too large for the subject, and the portrait itself is blurred and obscured by the vast mass of details. Nor are these details of sufficient intrinsic importance to justify the pains bestowed upon their reproduction. We cheerfully admit that "chops-and-tomato-sauce” revelations are sometimes more significant than any that are likely to be included in set compositions; but very much the larger part of the correspondence contained in these volumes differs in no respect from the hundreds of homely domestic epistles which are to-day exchanged between intimate family connec

tions and friends, and which no one would ever dream

of publishing. Even admitting that certain of the details which they contain are interesting as showing the changes which have come over the face of society between Mrs. Delany's time and our own; yet, even so, nothing can be gained by the incessant repetition of minutia which do not even possess the merit of presenting the same facts in a new or fresh aspect.

Miss Woolsey, the American editor, "begs leave to say" that in her revision she has omitted nothing of real interest or value to the narrative, "the excluded portions being in almost all cases letters of insignificant interest or small bearing on the biography, and foot-notes of a genealogical character, which possess little meaning or attraction to the more distant public for which this work is intended." A

more appropriate apology would have been for not having exercised her editorial prerogative more discriminatingly. As they stand now, save for the small circle of family relations for which they were originally designed, the Memoirs are fully four times too long.

WHEN called upon to describe Julian Hawthorne's new novel, "Sebastian Strome," the word which rises most naturally to the lips is "power"; it is a work of remarkable power, force, and vigor, both in conception and in execution. While conscious of this, however, from the beginning to the end of the story, the reader will be apt to lay it aside with a feeling of disappointment—with a feeling that the power is misdirected and misapplied. Though a much more finished and artistic production, "Sebastian Strome" has very nearly the same faults as "Garth," Mr. Hawthorne's previous story. Each starts out with the promise of being a really great novel; each seems to secure a commanding outlook upon those infinite horizons of the mind which render the study of man so interesting to other men; and both, it must be confessed, fail signally to fulfill the promise of the beginning. "Garth" failed because the author was unable to fuse and smelt the rich but crude ore which he had heaped together for his use. "Sebastian Strome" fails, not because of any deficiency of artistic power on the author's part, but from a defect that is more radical still-a defect of taste. Mr. Hawthorne probably knew that the story, as planned, must necessarily prove a very painful one; but we doubt very much if he had any conception of the extreme repulsiveness which its latter half would have for the average mind and taste. We doubt this because the lesson and value of the story depend wholly upon our sympathies being retained for the leading characters in their truly tragic situation, and by the constant assumption on the part of the author that such sympathy exists; yet the incidents are so managed that we are gradually brought to distrust and dislike-almost to despise the whole group of characters, and to lose our faith in the reality of feelings on our sympathy with which the whole effect of the situation depends. The story is deeply, intensely interesting from beginning to end—this is its conspicuous and great merit; but toward the last it is less the interest which comes from enlisted sympathies than the sort of reluctant fascination with which one contemplates the commission of a crime. The regeneration of man through sin is one of those mysterious problems which always have possessed and always will possess the profoundest interest; but the method by which it is to be worked out has seldom been rendered more dubious and forbidding than in "Sebastian Strome."

It should be added that none of these defects, radical as they are, destroy the impression of power

Sebastian Strome. A Novel. By Julian Hawthorne. (Appletons' Library of American Fiction.) New York: D. Appleton & Co. 8vo. Pp. 195.

which we mentioned at the outset as characterizing the book. If one should read the first half of it and then leave off, his feeling would be that the author had the power to do anything; and, after reading the whole of it, the feeling is that he would have the power to achieve the very highest in novelwriting if his taste and discretion were only equal to his imaginative grasp and vigor, and to his command of language.

In respect of style, and in a certain ease and confidence and grace of manner, "Sebastian Strome" is a marked advance upon any of Mr. Hawthorne's previous works. "Bressant " is still the most pleasing of his stories, and the promise of that remains as yet unfulfilled; but, in spite of all their faults, the later novels have shown a distinct growth in imaginative vigor and in technical mastery of the literary art.

THE little book of poems by William Young, from which the translations from the French of M. Coppée, given on a preceding page of this number, were taken, contains also some original verse of a

very pleasing character. * The translated poems, it

will have been observed, are mostly of a reflective, serious, and even tragic cast; but, when singing in his own proper voice, Mr. Young's preference seems to be for playful and whimsical poetic conceits, with a gayety and sparkle which bring them almost within the definition of vers de société. Here is a little poem which strikes us as very good, and which will serve to illustrate this feature of the volume's contents:

BOTH.

She was the laziest little woman
That ever set a mortal crazy;
'Twas marvelous how my erring spirit
Could be subdued by one so lazy.
To monosyllables addicted,

To use all else exceeding loath,

Asked which of two things she preferred, She only murmured, "Both!"

It is no paradox to say so:

Her every movement was repose; As on a summer day the ocean Slumbers, the while it ebbs and flows. Yet was there latent fire; her nature

That of the panther, not the sloth.

I asked her once, which she resembled :
She only murmured, "Both!"
Her person-well, 'twas simply perfect,
Matching the graces of her mind;
To perfect face and form she added

A keen perception, taste refined.
But when I challenged her to tell me,
What I knew not myself in troth,
Whether her wit or beauty charmed me,
She only murmured, "Both !"

Provoked at last at never hitting This lazy little woman's point,

* Gottlob et cetera. By William Young. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 16mo. Pp. 128.

I scanned her armor, and discovered
Haply therein one open joint.
In careless tone I asked her, knowing
Her word was binding as an oath,
"Shall love, or friendship, be between us?"
She smiled, and murmured, "Both!"

In the great work of popularizing science, as it is called, perhaps no book has rendered more effective service in times past than Johnston's "Chemistry of Common Life," and a still longer career of usefulness will doubtless be secured to it by the preparation of a new edition, revised and brought down to the present time.* Written at a period when chemical science was almost in its infancy, and before the general public had been prepared for the elaborate expositions which are greedily devoured now, the original work deliberately ignored many important and interesting topics, while the progress of discovery has rendered obsolete much of what it did contain. In spite of these defects, however, it has as yet found no equal among the many books of a similar character which its success called forth, and it steadily maintains its preëminence in the popular scientific literature of the day. For this reason, no changes would be likely to be acceptable which radically altered the character of the work; and it is gratifying to know that, in preparing the new edition for the press, the editor has scrupulously respected Professor Johnston's matter, method, and style. "Only such corrections," he says, “and such omissions have been made as the progress of science demanded, while the additions which I have introduced are confined to subjects congenial to the original plan of the book, and such as will, I hope, prove useful in filling up a few blanks in the sketch." In making his changes and additions, the editor has had the opportunity of consulting Professor Johnston's private and corrected copy of his book, and also of incorporating many fresh details which the Professor had gathered; and there can be no doubt that the result of his revision has greatly enhanced the usefulness of a work which well deserves to be kept up to the most advanced stages of the science which it expounds.

.... Another book which is, in a sense, a new edition of a well-known and highly valued scientific treatise, is Dr. Henry Maudsley's "Pathology of Mind";† but in this case the changes introduced are so great that the new edition is practically a new work. The relation which the present work bears to the original upon which it is based is thus explained by Dr. Maudsley in his preface: "The first

The Chemistry of Common Life. By the late James F. W. Johnston, M. A., F. R. S. S. A New Edition, revised and brought down to the Present Time. By Arthur Herbert Church, M. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12mo. Pp. 592.

The Pathology of Mind. Being the Third Edition of the Second Part of "The Physiology and Pathology of Mind," recast, enlarged, and rewritten. By Henry Maudsley, M. D. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 12m0, pp. 580.

edition of the 'Physiology and Pathology of Mind.' was published in the year 1867, and the second edition in the year following. A third edition of the first part was published in the year 1876 as a separate treatise on the "Physiology of Mind." In the order of time and development this volume on the 'Pathology of Mind' is therefore a third edition of the second part; but in substance it is a new work, having been recast throughout, largely added to, and almost entirely rewritten." Among the new material added are chapters on "Dreaming" and on "Somnambulism and its Allied States," covering those abnormal mental phenomena which are exhibited in dreams, hypnotism, ecstasy, catalepsy, and like states. The valuable chapters on the "Causation and Prevention of Insanity are also to a great extent new, while those on the symptoms and treatment of mental disease have been largely expanded and improved. The book has been from its earliest publication a standard and authority in its field; and in its present shape its value has been very greatly increased.

The repertory of amateur actors will be considerably increased by the collection of "Comedies for Amateur Acting," which Mr. J. Brander Matthews has edited, with a prefatory note, for Appletons' New Handy-Volume Series. There are six pieces in the collection, each in one act, and all except one translated or adapted from the French, with such changes as will render them better fitted to please an American audience. The excepted play is an entirely original little comedietta, by Julian Magnus and H. C. Bunner, who have also assisted in translating the other plays. Mr. Matthews's prefatory note is pungent as well as practical, though it is hardly adapted, we should imagine, to increase the enthusiasm for "amateur theatricals."

. . . . The practice, long familiar with us, of writing "campaign biographies" of political leaders on the eve of any great political struggle seems to be gaining a foothold even in conservative England. Several "lives" of Lord Beaconsfield have recently appeared, and now a voluminous record of Mr. Gladstone's services is opportunely placed before the public just at the moment when voters are about to be called upon to decide the respective claims of him and his rival. It is only just to say, however, that Mr. Barnett Smith's "Life of the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone"* is of far higher quality than the average of political biography with us. Save for the constraint which an author must necessarily place upon himself when writing of a living man, the work is adequate and trustworthy as well as useful; and, being based largely upon the speeches and writings of Mr. Gladstone, it has enough of personal flavor to make it interesting. One point worthy of special recognition is that it is written in a praiseworthy spirit of fairness and decorum. Mr. Smith is a Liberal and an admirer of Mr. Gladstone; but he is not so blinded by political bigotry that he can not perceive the ability or good faith of his opponents.

*The Life of the Right Hon. William Ewart Gladstone, M. P. By George Barnett Smith. With Portraits. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 8vo, pp. 516.

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should be the cause of having this unhappy man, who doubtless believes himself in safety, de

WELL! yes! My romance was folly. You nounced! Discreet as Ali is, to wall up the win

dow he had to send people; perhaps they have seen him! It is so easy to lodge information! If my fatal imprudence has betrayed him! For three days I have not been to Adilah's, and horrible apprehensions besiege me momently. I tremble, as at the approach of a crisis. I could never be consoled if I should be the cause of misfortune to him.

do not imagine, I suppose, my terrible preacher, that I am not ready to own it, and that the wicked turn of my volatile nature does not appear to me now as a very imprudent trick. I am still alarmed; but, luckily, Prince Charming is in ignorance. I was so well concealed that a perfect incognito protects me. What suspicion could a solitary promenader have but that it was one of those accidents the cause of which could not be fathomed? As he passed, a sprig What I dreaded has happened. Yesterday of jasmine fell at his feet-that was all. The my brother came to see me, and you may supwalled window, a whisper of the wind among pose that, though I was quaking, I concealed my the palm trees, will waft him an adieu. As alarm, and tried to question him with as much for me, I have enough on hand, I assure you, indifference as I could command. The return with this great marriage question, to occupy all of Hassan is no longer a secret: they know he my thoughts. A Turkish wedding, my dear; is in concealment in Cairo. I was distracted. only think of it! Before it, in view of my bad My brother has a heart, but he belongs to this education, my father, contrary to all precedent, Arab court, where a man dreads compromising will grant me the inestimable satisfaction of a himself. I can not, then, depend upon him to previous interview, when I shall hear-extreme warn the unhappy exile. Besides, will Hassan, happiness!—the voice of my intended husband if he is the rash, proud man Ali considers him, before the wedding day. After that all will be ever consent to obey an order or yield to fear? concluded. You can conceive that this alluring perspective makes me ponder, and I will venture a word with my father to hasten his great scheme. Here" what is written is written "-I awaityielding, in spite of myself, to the idea of fatality, which seems to impregnate the air of the harem like some subtile perfume-the slavery to which we are compelled to submit. This bondage takes you, annihilates you-I know not by what strange power, swallows up your volition, and makes you live indifferent to the present hour, which is precisely like that of yesterday, and will be the same to-morrow. I am still troubled by a thought which savors of remorse, at the foolish act of which the memory remains. If I

VOL. VIII.-19

A wild idea flashed into my brain; I would write, and send it to him immediately. Write to a man-a stranger-one unknown! Yet should I not pay for my heedless mistake by performing one of those duties which, though the laws do not make binding, are none the less sacred to an upright, honest conscience? Alas! what could I do? Powerless as I am, was I not compelled to let things work their own accomplishment? Yet, when discouraged I tried to be resigned, a rebellious feeling prevented me. It seemed to me that I was guilty-guilty of not doing anything; guilty in being silent! The struggle was a long one. At one moment my pity conquered my scruples; at another, my scruples deadened my

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