dote and comment. We are not disappointed in the substance of his book,* on which the future historian of the events and scenes here described by an eye-witness will probably draw largely for striking, suggestive, and illuminating details. The author's style, while having no pretensions to extreme literary finish, is fluent and readable; Mr. Poore can tell a story neatly, and depict a person or an incident with a few rapid, telling strokes. Nor should we omit to mention that the publishers have done their share of the work well, contributing, by numerous illustrations of more than average merit, to render the book attractive to a wide audience. We scarcely need say that the volume that is likely to give most pleasure to the present generation of readers is the second, which deals with the quarter of a century beginning in the last year of Mr. Buchanan's administration. The impressions made at the time on an intelligent spectator by the stirring and pregnant events that have taken place in the Federal Capital during the momentous period just named are here delineated with the joint efficiency of a practiced pen and skillful engraving. The prospective usefulness of such a record may be measured, if we reflect how much life and spirit might have been infused into the pages of Bancroft and Hildreth could those writers have availed themselves of similar assistance for the epochs they described. Few persons who have not themselves tried their hand at it have a just conception of the difficulty of putting a French novel into idiomatic English, which shall satisfy Dryden's definition of a translator's duty to his original, to be "true to his sense, but truer to his fame." The difficulty is, of course, redoubtably enhanced in the case of authors accustomed to think in metaphor and whose analogies and similes take a wide range, and often stray into recondite or technical fields of knowledge or activity. Perhaps the work of no French prose writer, not even Theophile Gautier's, lends itself less tractably to adequate reproduction in English than that of Balzac. Not only, moreover, is his style peculiarly refractory to transplantation, but the vast extent and variety of the ground covered by the novels grouped under the general title of the "Comédie Humaine" are calculated to dismay the most accomplished and self-confident translator. It is, therefore, hard to speak, except in terms of superlative satisfaction, of the American translation of Balzac's novels which is now in course of publication. The particular volume of the series which now lies before us, the version of Le Médecin de campagne, is a memorable example of what translation ought to be. In the first place, it is a faithful transcript of the original, faithful not only to the nicest shades of meaning, but to the play, the color, the analytic subtlety, the infused emotion, the nervous energy of Balzac's diction. Secondly, while scrupulously accurate, it is at the same time singularly free from Gallicisms; it is not French-English, but good English, idiomatic, flowing, racy, smacking of the soil and hitting the nail on the head. We do not mean to say, indeed, that the tran-lator has not shrunk from disclosing the crudities and nudities in which Balzac was at times permitted to indulge by the widely different composition of the French novel-reading public. But even what might seem to an American or English ear indelicacies of expression are not austerely excised or utterly denaturalized; they are only, so to speak, parboiled in a lukewarm paraphrase. * Perley's Reminiscences, or Sixty Years in the National Metropolis; by Ben: Perley Poore. Two volumes. Philadelphia, Hubbard Brothers. + Honoré de Balzac ; The Country Doctor. Boston, Roberts Brothers. INDEX 20 THE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOURTH VOLUME OF THE North American Review. ALLEN, I. J. Donn Piatt on Arthur | BRINCKLE, ADRIANA P. Life Among Americans, Un-American, 545. American Stage, The Condition of the, Andover Controversy, That Everlast- Anthracite Coal Pool, The, 43. Are the Heathen our Inferiors, 110. ARMITAGE, REV. THOMAS, D.D., LL. AUSTEN, COL. DAVID E. A Chaplain's Drury's the Insane, 190. Burnside's Controversies with Lincoln, BYERS, S. H. M. War Letters, 291, CALDWELL, M. H. H. Rip Van Winkle's Chaplain's Record, A, 411. Some Unpub- lished War Letters, 291. Coercion Bill, The, 528. Commercial Education, 462. Congregationalist? Why am I a, 330. CONWAY, MONCURE D. Our King in CROSBY, ERNEST H. High License, 498. History of the Second Army Corps, The Making of New England, by S. Rambles in Old Boston, by Edward Harvard, the First American Uni- CURRENT AMERICAN LITERATURE. Historical Atlas, Robert H. Labber- Brazil, by C. C. Andrews, 433. Geographical and Geological Distribu- A Digest of the International Law of Outlines of International Law, George The Story of Persia, S. G. W. Benja- The Story of the Jews, James K. The Story of the Normans, Sarah The Story of the Saracens ; Arthur Famous Women Series: Margaret of Cathedral Days, Anna Bowman Dodd, 655. FRY, GEN. JAMES B. Grant and Mat- Future Probation, 129. GEORGE, HENRY. Labor in Pennsyl Good Works of False Faiths, 36. Grant, Thomas, Lee, 437. Good Works of Hanged? Should Women be, 211. Henry George's Land Tax, 107. Commercial Educa- The Anthracite Jew? Why Am I a, 596. KIRKE, EDMUND. My Public Life, by KNOX, JOHN JAY. Future of the Na- Labor in Pennsylvania, 86. Land Tax, Henry George's, 107. LATHROP, GEORGE PARSONS. Literary Lawyer, My Experience as a, 565. Life Among the Insane, 190. Literary Backbiting, 200. LONG, C. CHAILLÉ. Heroes to Order, Lowell, Hon. James Russell. Letter to, LYMAN, J. CHESTER. Our Inequalities | Rejoinder to Gen. Beauregard, A, 308. of Suffrage, 298. MAGNUS, JULIAN. The Condition of Maximilian's Fate, Our Hand in, 471. Mentality, Storm Effects on, 427. "The South in the Union My Public Life. 451. My Experience as a Lawyer, 565. Nationalism, The Renaissance of, 1. New Churchman? Why Am I a, 61. New York, Constitutional Reform in, Open Nominations and Free Elections, Opera, 340. ORD. War Letters, 374. OSWALD, FELIX L. Meterological Pre- OUIDA. Vulgarity, 148. Our Hand in Maximilian's Fate, 471. PIATT, DONN. Defense of the President, Political Economy in America, 113. Prayer, A Letter on, 272. President, Defense of the, 111. the Civil War, 583. Some Legacies of Progress of Minnesota, 22. Public Opinion, The Court of, 625. Rebellion, The Conspiracies of the, 179. Religion, 106. RICHMOND, ARTHUR. Letter to Hon. SEARLE, W. S., M. D. Beecher's Per- Shakespeare Myth, The, 572. Socialism; Its Fallacies and Dangers, 12. Storm Effects on Mentality, 427. Surplus What Shall be Done with the, SWETT, LEONARD. The Conspiracies A That Everlasting Andover Controversy, "The New South," Financially Re- "The South in the Union Army," 316. Transportation Problem, The, 402. Un-American Americans, 545. VERDERY, MARION J. "The New South" War Letters, Some Unpublished, 291. WELCH, JOHN C. The Transportation What Shall be Done with the Surplus? WHITMAN, WALT. Some War Mem- Why Am I a Baptist? 232. WILKS, HELEN MAR. Should Women |