Miss Selma Lagerlof, and her new volume of stories, entitled Invisible IJnks.1 possesses all the power and charm of her previous works. The stories are full of vigorous incidents, often blended with a play of fantasy equal to Hawthorne's, and they do not fail to carry the interest of the reader to a fitting climax. They will appeal to lovers of literature by the choiceness of their wording, by the simple directness of style, the delicacy of pathos and humor, and the sympathetic human quality that pervades even the exquisite descriptions of nature. Miss Lagerlof views her scenes and incidents through the mind of some one present on the scene, and this point of view subtly impressed upon her descriptions, gives value and interest even to the slightest details. The translation is by Mrs. Pauline Bancroft Flach. whose former translations from Miss Lagerlof, have met with so much favor in America and England. Seldom has the genius of any poet lent itself so charmingly to interpretation as that of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and the Study ofher Life and Art, written by Lilian Whiting, owes much, as the writer herself insists, to a series of fortunate circumstances. For two summers Miss Whiting lingered in Florence, held under its spell of enchantment, amid the scenes which Mrs. Browning had known and loved; visiting the old gray church of San Felice, on which the win dows of Casa Guidi looked; watching the sunsets from the heights of Bellosguardo, where Mrs. Browning's elearest friend. Miss Blagden, lived, and which is in troduced in -'Aurora Leigh"; and in Rome, Venice, and England, Miss Whiting followed the traces of •Mrs. Browning's haunts and wanderings. There was, indeed, a kind of occultation of happy conditions that revealed to the writer phases of Mrs. Browning's in timate life that have not heretofore been chronicled, and if love gives insight. Miss Whiting may have gained some aid of this nature from her life-long de votion to the poetry of Mrs. Browning, which she has felt to be more potent in its influence than has been fully realized. The most spiritual of poets, Mrs. Browning has also a philosophic breadth and an intellectual vigor that richly repay study. The book is divided into five chapters, entitled : Living with Visions : " Summer Snow of Apple Blossoms "; Music-flow of Pindar; Friends in the Unseen Loves of the Poets : The Prefigured Friend; Vita Nuova; '•One day, my Siren." — In that New World: Pisa and Poetry; In Casa Guidi; Florentine Days; Walter Savage Landor. — Art and 1 Inv1s1ble L1nks. By Selma Lagerlof. 'translated from the .Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flach. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1S90. Cloth. 31.50. 2 A Study of El1zabeth Barrett Brown1ng. By Lilian Whiting. Little. Brown & Co., Boston, 1809. Cloth. S1.25.
Italy: Individuality of Character; The Clasped Hands; Kate Field's Records; Mrs. Browning's Death. — Lilies of Florence : Poetic Rank; Spiritual Laws; Modern Scientific Thought; The Consecra tion of Genius. NEW LAW BOOKS. A
Treat1se on the Law of Ev1dence. By S1mon Greenleaf, LL.D. Sixteenth edition, revised, enlarged and annotated, vol. I, by John Henry W1gmore, and vols. II and III by Edward A. Harr1man, both professors of law in the Law School of Northwestern University. Little, Brown & Co., Boston, 1899. Three vols. Law sheep. J 15. 00, net.
No work seems to hold its own as the standard authority upon the subject of which it treats as does •• Greenleaf on Evidence." Edition after edition has testified to its superlative worth, and now comes the sixteenth edition by two of the best-known authorities on the law of evidence in the country. This new edition is an advance on its predecessors in every de sirable particular. Vol. 1 alone contains about 7.000 new cases, and 249 pages more of closely set type than the fifteenth edition. Many of these cases being cited several times under different heads makes the increase in the number of citations at least 9.000. and the fuller page of the sixteenth edition makes the increase in the contents about one third. Mr. Wigmore has worked upon the following plan : The first and most important innovation has been to put the statements of all the law in the text. This will com mend itself to every man who has in former editions been obliged to read the notes with care lest law later than that of the text might there be found. In making this great change and improvement, care has been taken not to confuse the original work of 1'rofessor Greenleaf with that of the editor, but in all cases it has been carefully distinguished. In previous editions much of the late law was scattered through the notes. Now the text states the law fully and completely, the notes giving full references to the authorities on which the law rests. He has brought the citations down to date, as well as added exten sively to the older citations, and on a very large number of topics has given practically all the cita tions as a result of long search. Where the point is a matter of controversy he has endeavored to put in all citations, .on both sides, realizing that a lawyer prefers to have all the cases in his own State, rather than a few cases analyzed in full but not touching the rulings of his own Court. Many new sections of text have been written, and old sections extended, not merely by bringing up the law of the notes, but by
