excellently printed, and illustrated with Gustave Doré's striking designs, may be expected to take the place of the bulkier and less-attractive volume that has found its way into countless households.
Unlike Josephus, Herodotus has a distinctive and delightful manner of his own which has endeared him personally to readers in all centuries from his own time down to ours. These graces of style Professor White has endeavored, not unsuccessfully, to preserve, while giving a careful and sufficiently literal translation, omitting nothing essential and discarding only what most readers might consider mere redundancies. Any intelligent boy or girl in reading this edition can hardly fail to experience something of the fascination that belongs to the artless narrative of the Father of History, who was also the earliest of famous travellers and the most wonder-loving story-teller of any age. The book is attractively bound and printed, and has pictures, besides useful maps and tables.
Mr. Knox's book about the voyage of the Vivian to the North Pole is a compendium of information concerning Arctic explorations, and is tilled with pictures, which if they do not strictly follow the text are at least suggestive and illustrative. Lieutenant Greely's expedition, to say nothing of the ill-fated De Long's, is, however, too fresh in our minds to permit us to be more than feebly interested in imaginary adventures and privations among polar bears and icebergs. Youthful readers, however, may find in this cruise of the Vivian the same zest as in Colonel Knox's former volumes, and feel sure of a variety of perils and vicissitudes which need not occasion a too painful shudder and a narrative padded with all sorts of facts and theories. It seems a little singular that the author should have adopted for his expedition the idea of the commander of the Jeannette, of entering the ice-pack for the sake of drifting into the open polar sea; but perhaps this exploded fallacy was more convenient for his purpose than any other. The Vivian realizes the hopes which led De Long to his destruction,—crosses the open sea at the poles, and safely drifts along the coast of Greenland into the Atlantic.
"Young Folks' Ideas" is an entertaining volume, full of dainty and piquant pictures of child-life, interspersed with designs representing the various industries concerning which the young people are curious. Besides the talks, fancies, and ambitions of the young people there is a story running through the various incidents and episodes, in which a rich and eccentric uncle figures largely, who at his death leaves little Molly sole heiress of his large fortune. Of all the childish freaks of which the book is full, that of Molly, who puts the will that is to enrich her into the fire, may be said to be the most striking.
There seemed to be practically no limit to the Bodley books, since the "world was all before them where to choose," and Mr. Scudder in the happiest manner could go on recounting the sayings and doings of the family with felicitous quotations of the right poem at the right time. But this account of the Bodleys' trip to Norway and Denmark is, it seems, to be the last of the series. It is one of the best of those which give the travelling experiences of the Bodleys, and takes up fresh matter and offers novel pictures. We hope that the new field to which the author declares his intention of turning will yield us as good results as this very agreeable series.
We do not altogether approve of Mr. Frank Stockton, who is peculiarly a writer of our own day, turning his back on his epoch and taking up a story of the Middle Ages, with knights, squires, robbers, castles, falcons, and the like. But the "Story of Viteau" is nevertheless likely to be dear to a boy's heart, since it is full of those incidents which every lad of spirit burns to encounter. The ill luck which perpetually forces the little hero to get into scrapes is equalled only by his facility in getting out of them. Arrows fly on every page; spears, swords, battle-axes, ring in hard encounters. It seems to have been a very uncomfortable time to live in, unless one enjoyed a general mêlée,—fights, escapes, rescues, ransoms, and the like. Although there is a good deal of invention in the story, little of it suggests the distinctive powers of the author of "Rudder Grange," and only one character in the book—that of Jasto—is indicated with any special degree of originality.
"Tip Cat," being the pathetic story of an Oxford student who at the height of his undergraduate career is thrown upon his own resources and obliged to support two engaging little sisters on the mere pittance he can earn as a secretary, naturally rouses a tender interest in the reader's mind. Eighty pounds is not a great income, and the economies it enforces arc very painful of their kind,—
