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LITERARY NOTICES. 8S
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patent-rights, and other items of information not generally accessible to the inventor or manufacturer.

The following five books and pamphlets are issued by the Woman's Temperance Publication Association: The Year's Bright Chain (price, 50 cents) consists of twelve pages of quotations from the writings of Frances E. Willard, alternating with full page pictures representing the months. Each picture is accompanied by a couple of stanzas of verse telling the wish the month grants to a boy and to a girl. A finely engraved steel portrait of Miss Willard forms the frontispiece. The artistic and mechanical quality of the book can not fail to delight her young admirers. Frances Raymond's Investment, by Mrs. S. M. I. Henry (price, 50 cents), is the story of a woman's complaint against the State for the loss, due to the licensed saloon, of what her boy had cost her. The Unanswered Prayer; or, Why do so many Children of the Church go to Ruin? also by Mrs. Henry (price, 50 cents) consists of several chapters of counsel to mothers in regard to saving their children from the evils and dangers that beset them. Songs of the Young Woman's Christian Temperance Union, by Anna A. Gordon (price, 25 cents), consists of ninety-five pages of words and music, suitable for temperance meetings. Crusader Programs (price, 25 cents) is a collection of exercises, consisting of recitations, dialogues, etc., interspersed with songs, and designed for the Loyal Temperance Legion, Sunday schools, etc., and adapted to Arbor-day, Easter, Decoration-day, and other occasions.

A new review, called The Arena, has been started in Boston, under the editorship of B. O. Flower (The Arena Publishing Company, $5 a year). The promise that it will be "a field of combat" where the many social, ethical, and political questions of the day will be fought over, seems likely to be verified, for among the contributors to the first two numbers are some of the most belligerent writers for the press who are now in the field. These are such as Robert G. Ingersoll, who opens the first number with an article on "God in the Constitution"; Lawrence Grönlund, who writes on "Nationalism"; Hugh O. Pentecost, on "The Crime of Capital Punishment"; Henry George, on the "Rum Power"; Rev. Minot J. Savage, W. H. H. Murray, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, and Hudson Tuttle. Besides these serious discussions, The Arena offers papers on literary subjects, by Dion Boucicault, Louis Frechette, and others, and poetry and fiction by Joaquin Miller, W. H. H. Murray, Edgar Fawcett, and others. Each number is to have a portrait as a frontispiece; that of Dion Boucicault appears in the first number, and that of Rev. Minot J. Savage in the second.

In Some Social and Economic Paradoxes—a reprint from the "American Anthropologist"—Mr. Lester F. Ward sustains a number of theses, the contrary of which i9 now more currently held, such as that "The artificial is superior to the natural;" "Social activities may be artificially regulated to the advantage of society"; "Reforms are chiefly advocated by those who have no personal interest in them"; "Discontent increase with the improvement of the social condition"; "The means of subsistence increases more rapidly than population," and others on the relations of capital, profits, and wages.

A pamphlet published by E. Truelove, of London—Home Rule and Federation is its name, and A Doctor of Medicine its author—advocates the federation of nations on a plan resembling that of the United States as the cure or most effective palliative for existing social and political evils. It might begin with states already showing inclinations in that direction, like those of the Balkan Peninsula and Scandinavia; then bring in France and England, whereby, it is suggested, a solution of the Irish question may be found; and at last be made universal.

Some years ago Mr. J. C. Pilling undertook the compilation of a bibliography of North American languages; visited many public and private libraries, and corresponded extensively; and embodied the results of his researches in a volume of which a limited number of copies were printed and distributed. He has since continued his investigations, and has collected enough new material to lead to the belief that a fairly complete catalogue of the works relating to each of the more important linguistic stocks of North America may be prepared. Four