Naturalist, by Catharine Parr Traill. With Biographical Sketch by Mary Agues Fitz Gibbon. (William Briggs, Toronto.) This is a collection of pleasant papers on birds, flowers, and other out-of-door things, together with reminiscences of child life in England and early pioneer days in Ontario. Mrs. Traill, it will be remembered, was one of the Strickland sisters. She emigrated to Canada with her husband immediately after their marriage in 1832, and has published a number of books about backwoods life, besides a few stories for children and Studies of Plant Life. Mrs. Fitz Gibbon's sketch of her is appreciative and interesting. The reader need have no fear of encountering dry technicalities in this book, for it is only by a somewhat elastic use of the word that Mrs. Traill can be called a naturalist.—Observed and Noted, by Robert B. Risk. (The Examiner Printing House, Lancaster, Pa.) Five hundred pages of "paragraphs" reprinted from a daily newspaper, very miscellaneous as to subject, but mostly relating to the every-day happenings of country life.
Books of Reference and Handbooks. D and F are continued in the parts of Murray's New English Dictionary for October 1, Development and Field having been reached. (The Clarendon Press, Oxford; Macmillan, New York.)—Handbook of the New Public Library in Boston, compiled by Herbert Small. (Curtis & Co., Boston.) An admirably planned handbook of seventy-eight pages, liberally illustrated, and of service both as a guide to the treasures of the building regarded as a work of art, and as a souvenir. Its condensation has been well studied, and there is a refreshing freedom from rhetorical phrase, and an absence of padding.—The Chess Pocket Manual, a Pocket-Guide for Beginners and Advanced Players, by G. H. D. Gossip. (Scribners.) An excellent and convenient little handbook, beginning with an introductory chapter pointing out the differences between the modern game and that of the old school, which is followed by chapters on the moves and relative value of the men, technical terms, laws of the game, openings, and endings.
Home and Society. Democracy and Caste, by Ethel Davis. (Home Science Publishing Co., Boston.) Beginning, so to speak, with the cellar, and rising to the sky parlor, Miss Davis treats of home-keeping wits. House-Furnishing, Entertaining, Domestic Service, Housekeeping and Home-Making, Education and Religion, are the titles of half a dozen chapters in which honesty and the ideals of life are sought in the common activities. There is much sound and truly discriminating sense in this little book, and the note struck is clear and far sounding.—A sixth edition of The Social-Official Etiquette of the United States, by Madeleine Vinton Dahlgren (John Murphy & Co., Baltimore), has been issued, and we are assured in the preface that the views therein given are considered correct and logical, and are accepted as authority. (The italics are the author's, who has a ladylike fondness for them.) A comic element in an otherwise most serious handbook is furnished by the insertion of a musical prelude, a setting of the commonplace and entirely unrhythmic prose of the opening paragraphs by, we are told, Herr von Billow. We are not informed, however, at what high social function this remarkable production is appointed to be sung.
THE CONTRIBUTORS' CLUB.
War-Time Letters from John Bright.The three following letters, never printed before, were written by Mr. Bright to Mr. Aspinwall, as may be seen, at a very critical period of the civil war. Besides showing Mr. Bright's real affection for the United States, and, even in the darkest hour, his firm belief that the North would be victorious, they reveal, in the light of later history, a foresight of remarkable correctness.
4 Hanover St., June 29, 1863.
My dear Mr. Aspinwall,—I think the debate on "recognition" will come on tomorrow night, unless the absence of Lord Palnaerston should cause its postponement.
