ESTIMATES OF NEW BOOKS.

POLITICAL.-The American Citizen (D. C. Heath & Co.) by Charles F. Dole, is a compact handbook which is designed to interest youth in the duties of citizenship and in the functions of government as they touch daily life. Starting with the type of government which exists in a well-regulated home, the necessity for authority, obedience, and cooperation in all the relations of life is most entertainingly developed. The book is an excellent preparation for more advanced treatises like John Fiske's "Civil Government in the United States" and Woodrow Wilson's "The State."The practical application of right principles to citizenship is most clearly shown in the life of that great American who learned its rights and duties by direct contact with the people in the hardships of western pioneer life. Abraham Lincoln, the Liberator (Funk & Wagnalls) by Charles Wallace French, sets forth the main facts of that life in the clear, colorless manner which characterizes so many volumes which are compiled to order for a series. This one belongs to the "American Reformers" series, and has no other reason for being. Henry Cabot Lodge has also been called upon to contribute to a series (that on "Historic Towns," which has so far consisted of nine English cities and one American city). His volume on Boston (Longmans) is less perfunctory than the usual work in this line, because he has heretofore written on aspects of the subject, and has long saturated himself with the history of the period. The bulk of the volume is taken up with the colonial and revolutionary history of Boston, and is particularly entertaining in describing the great social changes in that eity which the Tory exodus wrought. Like Brooks Adams, this son of the Puritans is peculiarly alert to the intolerance of his ancestors. Political history in another field, but one which Americans have of recent years watched almost as closely as their own, is represented by the new edition of T. P. O'Connor's summary of The Parnell Movement (Cassell), first issued in 1884. It is well-known as a vigorous ex-parte statement of the case. The new edition contains a biographical sketch of unlimited eulogy by Thomas Nelson Page, and an appendix of three pages which puts the author in thorough accord with Justin Mc Carthy's leadership, and predicts "the speedy triumph of the cause of Home Rule."

TRAVEL. A Flying Trip Around the World (Harpers), by Elizabeth Bisland, is the outcome of a rather juvenile bit of advertising in which two women became the racers which the world was expected to watch. Because Miss Bisland is a woman of refined instincts and

quick observation, her book is of more permanent value than its object would lead one to expect. She has an eye for color and picturesqueness, and is evidently a healthy and adaptable traveller who makes light of discomforts. She photographs the things which are "different," and lets the reader infer what is a matter of course. She is too impressionable, perhaps, and shows her delight with an enthusiasm that often lacks discrimination.-Another volume of “rapid" travel writing is Thomas Stevens's Through Russia on a Mustang (Cassell). It sketches a ride of 1,100 miles through the heart of Russia, from Moscow to Nijni Novgorod, and is entirely journalistic in its methods. An editor would call it "good copy" for a Sunday edition, and a reader would find in it amusement, but very little research or wise reflection. A chapter describing a day with Tolstof is valuable especially for the matter-of-fact tone of it. Mr. Stevens is not a heroworshipper, but an experienced observer of men.-Charles Dudley Warner is a traveller of a different sort, combining the methods of a literary man with the practical eye of an editor. Our Italy (Harpers) is his epitome of California-written with admiration for its beauties, but conservative in its estimate of commercial advantages. His idea is that there is so much of undoubted worth in California that there is no need to use exaggerations for literary effect. What he has to say of the orange, raisin, and wine industries is, therefore, of particular weight.- -When William Winter travels it is as a man of poetic temperament who lives in a literary atmosphere where the most real personages are creatures of the fancy of other men. His Gray Days and Gold (Macmillan) is a collection of sentimental travel sketches of wanderings in England and Scotland, with Moore, Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Byron, Johnson, and Scott as literary ghosts to haunt his dreams in many places.

FICTION. This is the publication season for "summer fiction," and it is notable that there is hardly an elaborate, full-fledged novel in the lot. Most of the volumes are reprints of magazine short stories, and novelettes of two or three hundred pages-convenient volumes for a short car-ride or a rainy afternoon in camp. There is one marked exception-the novel Jerry (Holt), by Sarah Barnwell Elliott, which is a bulky volume with all the machinery of "parts," poetical chapter headings, and the free use of rhetorical periods which marks the conventional English romance in three volumes. The popular strength of this muchpraised story lies in its emotional intensity and sympathetic style. Its artistic weakness is displayed in the entirely feminine (and heroic) interpretation of the character of Jerry, whose very existence in the situations created for him would depend on intense masculinity. That the author brought him to complete disaster at the last, when so near success, would show, perhaps, that she is artistically consistent, at any rate. -The other way of writing the romance of the humble is shown in J. M. Barrie's sketches of old Scotch village life-A Window in Thrums and Auld Licht Idylls (Cassell). There is not a touch of the

"heroic" in this author's methods. The wonderful effects of realism are wrought by simplicity and depth of feeling-not by endowing plain people with the complex emotions of artificial civilization. The pathos and humor are of the quiet kind which appeal strongly to people of taste. -Something of the same simplicity is found in Mary E. Wilkins's A New England Nun (Harpers)-though the charm of style is not the equal of Mr. Barrie's. The women who read will, however, prefer Miss Wilkins's way of looking at life and character, which is entirely domestic and provincial. Two novelettes have appeared, almost simultaneously, with old Virginia gentlemen as prominent characters. On Newfound River (Scribners), by Thomas Nelson Page, is a plantation story of the times before the war, which, in spite of its conventionally romantic plot, is entertaining. Mr. Page's sentiment and poetic feeling step in to save his story where his invention fails him.

-F. Hopkinson Smith's Colonel Carter of Cartersville (Houghton) has long been a familiar character in New York where the author has found the story grow upon his hands as he told and retold its episodes to audiences of friends. This story is in strong constrast to Mr. Page's, as it transfers an "old Virginia gentleman" from his plantation to the new conditions of modern New York.-The South is also represented in recent fiction by Joel Chandler Harris's Balaam and His Masters (Houghton)-a series of sketches depicting negro and cracker life in Georgia. They show the author's usual grasp of the eccentricities of character, and very original literary methods—with a lack of invention and constructive power.—Among humorous fictions of the month is A Box of Monkeys and other Farce Comedies (Harpers), by Grace Livingston Furniss, which contains four little plays well-adapted for parlor theatricals. They are full of that sort of exaggeration which is necessary for "fun" in domestic entertainments, where the performers are not usually artists in method. Some of the characters are needlessly idiotic and vulgar,even for a farce-comedy.-Frank R. Stockton's Rudder Grangers Abroad is humor of a more delicate kind, the essence of which is paradox-if one may invert the definition of paradox to read "something seemingly true yet absurd in fact."-F. Anstey (author of "Vice Versâ ") is surely an own literary cousin to Stocktonand one might well imagine Stockton to have invented the fanciful conceit on which is built Tourmalin's Time Cheques (Appleton). The English author has also the American's placid, unconscious style for narrating the most absurd things. One is apt to weary of their methods if one reads them at long sittings. They suggest a whole dinner of nothing but consommé.—Jerome K. Jerome has some literary kinship with Mark Twain, but so far removed that the American humorist would hardly claim it. Mr. Jerome's Diary of a Pilgrimage (Holt) is a dilution of the sort of thing that a good while ago delighted people with Innocents Abroad. We like another kind now, and the absurdities of a block-head travelling in a strange country seem a very common sort of humor.

MISCELLANEOUS.-Younger American Poets, 1830-1890 (Cassell) is a compilation by Douglas Sladen which is fairly representative, though there is no perspective whatever in the number of pages allotted to the authors of varied accomplishments. It is a piece of book-making for which there is no particular reason, and Mr. Sladen's solemn and grotesque introduction furnishes none-except, possibly, the vanity which likes to associate its name with people of talent.—To meet a demand for a concise biography of that eminent preacher, the publish. ers have issued in a separate volume John R. Howard's study of Henry Ward Beecher (Fords, Howard & Hulbert) originally published in 1887 as a preface to his "Patriotic Addresses."Among useful Transla tions should be noted Jessie P. Frothingham's version of the Journal of Maurice de Guérin (Dodd, Mead & Co.)—a well-printed volume which includes Sainte-Beuve's Memoir of the author.-In the admirable series of translations of the popular historical works of Imbert de Saint-Amand the latest volume is Marie Louise; the Island of Elba, and the Hundred Days (Scribner's). Elizabeth Gilbert Martin is the competent translator.-Porter Sherman, a student of economics, has translated from the German Dr. Lujo Brentano's valuable work on The Relation of Labor to the Law of To-day (Putnams)—an abridgment of the same author's authoritative book on “Labor Guilds." The translator was a pupil of Dr. Brentano, and this work is made with his hearty approval.

HISTORY, BIOGRAPHY, TRAVEL,
AND ESSAYS.

DIXON, RICHARD WATSON, M.A. History of
the Church of England from the Aboli-
tion of the Roman Jurisdiction, Vol. IV.,
Mary.-A.D. 1553-1558. With Copious
Index. James Pott & Co. $5.00.

DUNBAR, CHARLES F. History and Theory
of Banking, G. P. Putnam's Sons. Cloth,
$1.50.
FROTHINGHAM, O. B. Recollections and Im-
pressions. G. P. Putnam's Sons. Cloth,
$1.50.

GRONLUND, WILLIAM. Our Destiny. The In-
fluence of Nationalism on Morals and
Religion. Lee & Shepard. Cloth, $1.00.
Paper, 50 cents.

GRONLUND, WILLIAM. The Co-operative Com-
monwealth: An Exposition of Socialism.
Revised and Enlarged Edition. Lee &
Shepard. Cloth, $1.00. Paper, 50 cents.
HARDINGE, VISCOUNT. Viscount Hardinge,
by his son and private Secretary in India,
Charles, Viscount Hardinge. Edited by
Sir William Wilson Hunter. (Rulers of
India Series.) Macmillan & Co. 60 cents.
HARTZELL, I. HAZARD. Application and
Achievement. G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Cloth, $1.50.

KENYON, F. G., M.A. (editor). Aristotle on the Constitution of Athens. 2d Edition, Longmans, Green & Co. Cloth, $3.00.

LANDOR, WALTER SAVAGE. Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare, Euseby Treen, Joseph Carnaby, and Silas Gough, Clerk, before the Worshipful Sir Thomas Lucy, Knight, Touching DeerStealing. With an introduction by Hamilton Wright Mabie. Dodd, Mead, & Co. Cloth.

LIDDELL. COL. R. S. The Memoirs of the Tenth Royal Hussars (Prince of Wales, Own), Historical and Social. With3 autotype portraits, and 12 colored plates showing uniforms, etc., and many woodcuts in text. Longmans, Green & Co. Leather, $21.00.

MANN. GEORGE COMBE (editor). The Life and Works of Horace Mann. Containing the life of Horace Mann, by his wife, and lectures, reports, essays, and miscellaneous papers, edited by his son. Lee & Shepard. Library edition, 5 volumes, $12.50.

MARTINEAU, JAMES. Essays, Reviews, and Addresses Selected and Revised by the Author. Vol. II., Ecclesiastical and Historical. Longmans, Green & Co. Cloth, $2.50.