cessful aspirants. A record of failure is often more helpful than a record of triumphant achievement, and Miss French, in her record, gives abundant evidence that she too is human, and no exception to the maxim, humanum errare est. In vivacious and unconventional language, she tells the reader of her early tribulations, of the pitfalls upon which stumbled her unwary feet, and of the methods and formulæ in which she finally found salvation. Miss French's book is good, first, to read, and second, to keep at hand for practical guidance in all the stages of photographic work. It is entitled "An Adventure in Photography " (Scribner).
Appreciative
chats on
American artists.In a series of essays and sketches
reprinted under the collective title,
“Picture and Text” (Harper), Mr.
Henry James chats appreciatively of the admirable
group of artists — Messrs. Abbey, Parsons, Millet,
Boughton, Reinhart, Sargent, etc. — best known to
many of us through the medium of “Harper's
Magazine.” The excellence, in point of illustration, of American magazines is justly a matter of
national pride — one of the shining exceptions to
which we refer the carping foreigner; and it is
well to learn something of leading personality and
methods of the illustrators. Touching the illustration of books and magazines in general, the author
observes that it “may be said to have been born in
our time, so far as variety and abundance are the
signs of it; or born, at any rate, the comprehensive,
ingenious, sympathetic spirit in which we conceive
and practise it. If the centuries are ever arraigned
at some bar of justice to answer in regard to what
they have given, of good or of bad, to humanity,
our interesting age (which certainly is not open to
the charge of having stood with its hands in its
pockets) might perhaps do worse than put forth
the plea of having contributed a fresh interest in ‘black and white.’” The little book, which contains several illustrations, is a companion volume
in the “Black and White Series” to Mr. Curtis's
“From the Easy Chair,” Mr. Warner's “As We
Were Saying,” etc. Of Mr. James's quality as an
essayist we need not speak. Even those who do
not care for him must admit his painstaking fidelity to his models; and, at the worst, he may serve
to sharpen the reader's appetite for a bit of downright Anglo-Saxon.
Interpretations
of Tennyson's
Idylls of the King.Mr. Harold Littledale's “Essays on
Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King” (Macmillan) are based upon lectures written for students in India. It was certainly worth while to offer the book in its present
form to English and American students. Like
other books prepared for the use of Indian undergraduates, this volume explains many things that
any good dictionary could explain, but on the other
hand it interprets many phases of the Idylls that
no reference-book alludes to. There are chapters on
the sources of the Arthurian story, on its growth from
Malory to Tennyson, and on personages and localities
spoken of in the modern epic. Then follow studies of each Idyll, and annotations on particular words
and obscure points. The work is by no means exhaustive, but the material is carefully selected and
well arranged. There is a constant comparison
of Tennyson with Malory and the Mabinogion, and
many interesting points of departure are suggested
to the reader. The interpretation of the allegorical bearing of the Idylls is sensible and appreciative, and the treatment of the rise of the legend, although brief, is in the main accurate. Rather
strangely, however, Mr. Littledale takes no account
of such an authoritative work as Professor Rhy's
“Arthurian Legend.” The work can readily be
used as a handbook in a Tennyson class.
A sailing-voyage
from New York
to Cape Town.“Under Cotton Canvas” (Cupples)
is a lively account, with much incidental “yarn-spinning,” of a sailing- voyage from New York to Cape Town, thence, over two hundred degrees of longitude, across the Indian
and Pacific Oceans, to the coast of Chili, and from
Chili to the Falkland Islands. The author, Captain J. H. Potter, of the ship “Onward,” observes in
his Preface: “While Cooper, Marryatt, and others,
have let the world know all about sailing before the
day of steam, I know of no writer having yet come
to the front to give anywhere near the correct idea
of how it is with us, the ‘wind-jammers,’ since the
introduction into our profession of that powerful
element. This work was accordingly begun with
the sole view of contributing towards the supply of
that deficiency.” A “wind-jammer,” it may be
said parenthetically, is a sailing-vessel, as contradistinguished from a steamer. The story is told,
as it should be told, for the most part, in an offhand, breezy, sailor-like fashion, with plenty of incident, humorous as well as stirring. But oddly
enough there is a tendency here and there to “work
in,” at all hazards, a tempting literary allusion or
citation — which results once or twice, where the
connection is remote, in the Captain's getting his
syntactical sails “all a-back and shaking,” and narrowly escaping shipwreck.
A good summary
of the French
Revolution.Mallet's “The French Revolution” (Scribner), written by a lecturer on
the staff of the Oxford University
Extension for the “University Extension Manuals”
series, may be thoroughly commended. It is the
best summary of the Revolution yet published, and
is a large improvement on the sketch by O'Connor
Morris, also published by Messrs. Scribner. The
author has availed himself of all the recent literature of his subject down to Mr. Morse Stephens, and
has not only summarized but has unified these contributions. His first two chapters clearly introduce
the Revolution through its social causes, and he is
very successful in showing why the Constitutional
party failed, why the Jacobin party followed, and
why the latter also failed. He ends his narrative