Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, Charles Sumner, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, John Foster; and, though he was not gifted with any considerable insight into character, his accounts of these people have a certain value. But the most interesting portion of the book is that which relates the author's own share in the Abolitionist and other political movements, and in the establishment of the Vassar and Holloway colleges for women.
Rev. Robert B. Fairbairn, who is doubly a doctor, being a D.D. and a LL.D., has published a book "Of the Doctrine of Morality in its Relation to the Grace of Redemption" (Whittaker), which is made up of "lectures that have been read to classes in Moral Philosophy." "They were intended," says the author, "to show the relation of a system of morality, such as moral science deduces from the nature of man, to the redemption by the Son of God, and to the grace which comes from that redemption." Many other useful moral lessons may have been gained by the young men who listened to these lectures if they only succeeded in keeping awake, and now that they are collected in book-form their effect upon the general public may be equally edifying and soporific.
"Letters from Heaven" (Funk & Wagnalls) has no author's name on the title-page, but is announced as being "translated from the Fourth German edition." Is it by the author of "Letters from Hell" which Mr. George Macdonald translated a couple of years ago and which had a considerable popular success? The internal evidence seems to point that way. "The Letters from Hell" were morbid, mawkish, unpleasant. "The Letters from Heaven" are morbid, mawkish, unpleasant.
The series of neatly-bound and well-printed little books, "English History from Contemporary Authors," of which F. York Powell is the editor and the Putnams are the American publishers, are well conceived, and in the two volumes already published the plan is well carried out. These are "Edward III. and his Wars, 1327-1360," by W. J. Ashley, M. A., and "The Misrule of Henry III.," by Rev. W. H. Hutton, M.A. The authorities laid under contribution in the first book are Froissart, Jehan le Bel, Knighton, Adam of Murimuth, Robert of Avesbury, The Chronicle of Lanercost, the State Papers, etc., and in the second, Matthew Paris, Robert Grossteste, and Adam of Marsh, together with political songs, the Royal Letters, and other contemporary records. The respective editors have done their work intelligently, not only in the character of their extracts, but also in their notes and Appendices.
Among other books on the Reviewer's desk, he may briefly mention "Elocutionary Studies and New Recitations," by Mrs. Anna Randali-Diehl (Edgar S. Werner), a book of fairly good selections, with sensible instructions on the art of elocution; "A New Graded Method of English Grammar," by M. D. Mugan (H. I. Ingerson & Co.), embodying a new method of teaching language which has been tried successfully in St. Louis, but seems a little too intricate for the enfeebled intelligence of Eastern children; "The New Honduras: its Situation, Resources, Opportunities, and Prospects, concisely stated from Recent Personal Observations," by Thomas R. Lombard (Brentano's); and "The Margin of Profits, How it is now Divided, what Part of the Present Hours of Labor can now be spared," by Edward Atkinson (Putnams), a sensible little book.
