streams of the River Plate as far as Asuncion on the Paraguay, some 1,300 miles from the coast. In these wild sub-tropical regions, never before visited by an English yachtsman, some novel experiences are met with, as in Gran Chaco while navigating a large lagoon near Paraguay, when the vessel became, not ice-bound, but "lily bound." As it lay at anchor during a calm, the camelotas floating down in myriads got foul of the chains, and gradually accumulating, formed round about the yacht

"one great island of beautiful lilies in leaf, in flower and fruit. Finding that these were causing us to drag our anchors, we left off hanging over the bows, living up to the precious things,' and, waxing unaesthetic, commenced to ruthlessly cut them away with cutlasses and hatchets, a long and tedious process.' Here also an opportunity was afforded of verifying the statement that the curious pavo birds will remain quietly perched on a tree to be shot in detail, if the sportsman is fortunate enough to knock one over before the flock takes wing.

An interesting account is given of the present social and political state of Paraguay and its heroic Guarani inhabitants, who appear to show no signs of recovery from the disastrous war waged by Lopez against his powerful Brazilian and Argentine neighbours. But, although the country seems to have no future, "her people dance and sing and weave garlands of flowers in the sunshine; like the practical epicureans that they are."

Several well-written chapters are devoted to a graphic account of a long ride across the Argentine States to the remote province of Tucuman, the "Eden of South America," over 1,100 miles from the coast. During this expedition good opportunities were afforded of studying the present condition of the Pampas lands and their wild Gaucho inhabitants. But it requires no small amount of credulity to accept some of the astounding instances of the preternatural sagacity of these semi-nomad children of the prairie. Two Englishmen, we are told, were once sleeping in a lone hut, when one of them, hearing a noise in the bush, hurriedly put on the wrong boots in the dark, and went out with his gun in the hope of getting a shot at Some nightly prowler. In the morning his Gaucho servant said to him, "What did you think there was in the bush when you went out last night, Señor?" "How do you know I went out ?" "I saw the marks of boots in the ground, not your boots, but your friend's; but it was your tread!"

cluding this episode, and a diversion to British Guiana and Barbados, where the yacht was laid up, the cruise and land journey, extending over a period of twenty months, from August 1880 to April 1881, covered altogether a distance of some 22,000 miles, a sufficiently noteworthy performance for a yawl of eighteen tons register, manned by a crew of four amateurs and a cabin-boy. A. H. KEANE.

Maria Edgeworth. By Helen Zimmern. "Eminent Women 99 Series. (W. H. Allen.)

than when dealing with literary ladies. Opportunities to do so were few, and were as welcome as a holiday. To him, as to most men of the age, it was a surprise that women should write so well; and he expressed his surprise, not in Johnsonian style, to the effect that the marvel lay not in their writing so well, but in their writing at all, but with the charming extravagance of a school-girl. From the choral tribute of contemporary hyperbole it is well to turn to Byron's judg ment of these works, expressed with his usual searching insight: "they excite no feeling, and they leave no love-except for some Irish steward or postillion. However, the impression of intellect and prudence is profound, and may be useful." The value of the moral tales is discussed with much keen sense by Miss Zimmern. Her final remark on their popularity contains an excellent

aperçu :

that this circumstance points to a great lack of contemporary foreign fiction of a pure and attractive kind."

FEW literary women have possessed more genuine pretensions to eminence than Maria Edgeworth, and her right to a place in Mr. Ingram's series may not be disputed. For many years of her long life she was indeed pre-eminent. From nearly all her contemporaries her works received unmeasured applause, while she herself was prodigiously caressed by society. This success was owing"Like all Miss Edgeworth's writings, they in no slight degree to her social gifts, her found instant favour, and were translated into French and German. With no desire to detract powers of observation and conversation, her from their merits, we cannot avoid the inference admirable good sense and serene geniality. The story of her life has never before been told with such completeness. Miss Zimmern's style is in accord with her subject; and her work is commendably free from digressions, skilfully arranged, and well-proportioned. There is much that is interesting, even more that is attractive, in Maria Edgeworth's life. Her strong life-long affection for her father is very charming. It is something even deeper and more pathetic than the love Mdme. de Staël bore towards her father. Miss Zimmern instinctively recognises in this ruling passion a biographical fact of primary importance, the key-stone of a life not less exemplary in itself than fruitful in influencing others. The right estimation of this fact may seem a slight matter, yet it is on some such fundamental truth that all biography, worthy of the title, rests. To it may be traced all that is valuable in Miss Zimmern's book, its consistency and unity and truth.

On the return voyage, a visit was paid to the almost unknown islet of Trinidad east from Rio de Janeiro, abounding in tame fish, still tamer water-fowl, and horrible land-crabs, but destitute of all other animal life.

In

Miss Zimmern is a little prone to exaggerate the importance of women's work in literature. It is difficult to restrain a smile when we are told that, "When the literary history of the nineteenth century is written, its historians. will be amazed to find how important a part the contributions of women have played therein; and this is observed à propos of Maria Edgeworth and her contemporaries. Surely the fact that they played a part is more important than the part they played, and the amazement of the future historian will be duly tempered with the proverbial justice of posterity. Miss Zimmern's natural appreciation of nineteenth-century literature is combined with a little injustice towards the eighteenth century. In allusion to the worldliness and somewhat low morale of Maria Edgeworth's heroines, who are ever looking out "for a good establishment," Miss Zimmern remarks:

But, after all, she was teaching only in accordance with the superficial philosophy of the last century, which led people to found their doctrines entirely upon self-interest.” In what respect, it may be asked, did they differ from the practice of the present century? In another place we read of "the crude mechanical school of Rousseau," and feel it hard that Rousseau's theories should be involved in Mr. Edgeworth's and Thomas Day's clumsy application of them.

These little blemishes, however, do not affect the general excellence of Miss Zimmern's book, which will do good service to literature if it only assist in a revival of Maria Edgeworth's writings and a reconsideration of her place in literature. It also furnishes some capital little pictures of the home-circle at Edgeworthstown and the interesting Lichfield society presided over by the amiable and accomplished Anna Seward.

J. ARTHUR BLAIKIE.

turbulent and intriguing (though The Pastoral Care shows that there was another side to his character) Gilbert Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury. It is interesting to enquire what it was in these Italianised Spaniards of whom the one taught at Naples (1530-41), the other at Rome (1665-96)-which attracted to them men of schools of thought in some respects so opposite to their own.

"Juan de Valdés, as a commentator, is wellnigh unique. His commentaries are the most personal and subjective of any that I know. Though of considerable scholarship evidently translating from, and able to think in, the original Greek; showing on every page that he was no unworthy friend of Erasmus; not unacquainted, as his noble version of the Psalms proves, with the Hebrew-he makes no parade of his learning, but sedulously depreciates it in comparison with inward light. In textual criticism he is wholly subjective; thus, he thinks the words, 1 Cor. i. 12, "and I of Cep has, and I of Christ," an interpolation, simply from his exegesis of the context. As a translator his renderings are often singularly happy. On difficult and disputed points he either says plainly that he does not understand them, or gives his opinion as one of many from which the reader must make his choice. In accordance with this, his theory of inspiration is far removed from the Protestant one of verbal inspiration. He does not hesitate to say, g., 1 Cor. v. 9-13, "St. Paul, throughout this passage, speaks so confusedly that it is scarcely possible to understand what he means." Apostolic inspiration differs only in degree and not in kind from that of every true Christian. He is free from Bibliolatry, and says "that the faith which springs from man's report, or from the Scriptures, will never plant them in the Kingdom of God." The doctrine of imputation he holds in its most extreme form, and also that of election. Assurance consists in inward peace of conscience. His views of baptism are high, but on the Eucharist he is far more reticent. His attitude generally is that of an esoteric teacher speaking to a select circle of disciples. At times he seems conscious of what is lacking in this attitude: "Were it permitted to true Christians to live Christianly, they would not have to hide as they do." Yet he does not attain to toleration; he would have all the vicious and those who differ "excommunicated and cast out of the Christian Church." What, then, is it in such a writer which could attract G. Herbert and Ferrar in the times of the Puritans? The magnet is, I think, his incomparable style. Valdés saw that beauty of language does not consist in elaboration and affectation, but in natural fitness to the thought. He never descends to the coarse abuse of opponents current in his day. To read his works is like listening to the conversation of a high-bred, courteous gentleman; he says plainly what he thinks, he is not afraid to call a spade a spade, yet he still preserves all the grace of the most refined courtier. This is the charm of Valdés. It is for this that he will find readers fit, if few; and of those whose religious views are in ympathy with his, he must ever remain a

most choice favourite.

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Molinos presents us with a more difficult, but not less interesting, problem. Though at first his writings were received with favour in

Italy and at Rome, it is hardly exact to imply that his condemnation was due to the Jesuits alone. He was condemned by Bossuet and by Fénelon. Burnet's attraction to him can have consisted solely in the fact that he was condemned by Rome. Mr. Shorthouse concludes his Preface with a page of rare eloquence and beauty in praise of the service of the Mass; but, though Molinos wrote a treatise on Daily Communion, his followers seem to have been first remarked, and afterwards detected, by their abstention from the Mass as well as from other external observances. This volume is called Golden Thoughts, and beautiful some of them are; yet the sense of straining and effort after an almost unattainable end contrasts sadly with the deep calm of the De Imitatione; and of the penultimate chapter, the climax of the whole, the conclusion is, "Walk, therefore, in this safe path, and endeavour to overwhelm thyself in this nothing [the italics are not ours]; endeavour to use thyself, to seek deep into it, if thou hast a mind to be annihilated, united, and transformed." What is this but Nihilism? Can it be, as Menendez Pelayo has suggested, that the revived study of Molinos marks a secret sympathy between his doctrines and those of pessimism and agnosticism? Neither Juan de Valdés nor Molinos attains the highest rank. Even as mystics, both need the contact with practical life which did so much for St. François de Sales and for Sta. Teresa. Neither can vie with St. Augustin, who ruled the theological, or with St. Bernard, who swayed the political world of his day, yet whose mystic writings speak still to the inner soul of millions now, as they have done to successive generations of almost every Christian tongue and Christian sect in the past.

One word as to the merits of these translations: that of Mr. Betts is far superior. On p. 55, l. 11, of the Golden Thoughts a word must have dropped out. "Interiorising" is surely not a gain to English. Why follow Mr. Bigelow in saying that Molinos was born at Minozzi (Minuesa), in Aragon? This is like stating that an Englishman was born at Londres. Nor can Sta. Teresa be truly said to be" of Arila.

WENTWORTH WEBSTER.

The Girl of the Period, and other Social Essays. By Mrs. Lynn Linton. In 2 vols. (Bentley.)

CONSIDERABLE interest attaches to the republication of these Essays. In the first place, there was long a doubt as to the identity of the author, which we were surprised to find settled in favour of a lady whose novels we so thoroughly dislike. Again, it is curious to be reminded of the fuss and indignation which were excited by the setting up and demolishing of that monster of fiction the Girl of the Period, and to note how far, and to what good purpose, the world has travelled since then. Still stranger is it to find that these papers, which, as we used to skim them each Sunday, seemed so largely tinctured with paradox and clever flippancy, when read in the light of later controversies are very full of truth and soberness. This, indeed, is the legitimate excuse for their re-appearance, and it is a very sufficient one. The book possesses a distinct value, not only as a permanent record of a bad tidal wave which passed over

(but by no means engulfed) Society when we were all about fifteen years younger, but as an able and cheerful polemic against most of the worst follies which will pester us, and possibly our children, to the last-recorded not without a good deal of plain-speaking, which may yet do something, as it must have done already, to stem the torrent.

Ephemeral in its exaggeration and nervous striving after effect such writing must be of necessity; but it would be unjust and ungenerous to deny that, taken as a whole, a rapid review of the book will cause most readers to modify very materially their opinion of its demerits. In fact, we agree in the main with Mrs. Linton's views as she summarises them in her Preface. "More than ever convinced that I have struck the right chord of condemnation," she says, "I neither soften nor retract a line of what I have said. One of the modern phases of womanhood-hard, unloving, mercenary, ambitious, without domestic faculty, and devoid of healthy natural instincts-is still to me pitiable mistake and a grave national disaster." As in her attack on what she called the "Shrieking Sisterhood," she still disapproves of a "public and professional life for women,' thinking "that the sphere of human action is determined by the fact of sex, and that there does exist both natural limitation and natural direction."

a

Probably no satirist has ever yet been fair to his victims, for exaggeration is the practical difference between satire and history. If something, therefore, is to be conceded to a Persius or a Churchill, still more may be allowed to a weekly Juvenal who can only instruct by amusing. In the existence of the Girl of the Period probably no one ever seriously believed any more than in the possibility of a Mrs. Gamp; but there can hardly be much doubt that the monster was compounded of certain well-defined follies and vices, which were each sufficiently unmistakeable and prominent at the time in various individuals. The famous article will now be read with little more than antiquarian interest, since the monster it attacks has now somewhat changed her mien; but we can hardly dismiss as of bygone interest such passages, for instance, as the description of a "fair young English girl"-"a creature generous, capable, modest, something franker than a Frenchwoman, more to be trusted than an Italian, as brave as an American but more refined, as domestic as a German and more graceful," with much more that is well worth an English girl's attention.

The papers on "Modern Mothers" are, perhaps, too severe; but they strike at a crying evil, and are scarcely yet out of date. It would be useless to single out for special mention a few of the essays, which, indeed, preserve a pretty uniform level of tone and of ability. Nor do we wish to point out those which, while passing at the time without reproof, seem now open to the charge of bad taste. There is often in the very titles a something not quite pleasant, and much also on the surface; but, considering the necessity of writing up to the popular craving for novelty and piquancy, the general impression is one of sound sense and apparent rectitude of feeling. Two volumes, and bulky volumes, of light satires on departed follies are rather

ance.

as

psy

Ir is impossible not to regret that M. Bourget has deferred, or appeared to defer, to contemporary fashion (unkind folk might call it contemporary cant) by calling his book " ehological" essays. Who will deliver us from psychology and physiology and all the rest of the pseudo-scientific jargon in matters literary? M. Bourget would be at least as well qualified as another to attempt this deliverHe has in reality given us five excellent literary essays-on Baudelaire, on M. Renan, on Flaubert, on M. Taine, and on Beyle. But his title, or rather the aim which prescribed his title, has induced him to dwell chiefly on the mental peculiarities of his authors as displayed in their works, and on the effect which these peculiarities exercise on the mental development of their readers. For our part, we frankly own to a preference, in matters literary as in others, for dealing with the ding an sich; but that is, no doubt, a personal preference and an arguable point. However this may be, M. Bourget has, a matter of fact, been led very little, if at all, astray by his desire to elevate or to degrade (let us give the fullest choice of terms) literary criticism into a branch of experimental science. His five essays are all remarkable pieces of work. The first, on Baudelaire, is the shortest, and not, we think, the best; for M. Bourget hardly gives sufficient expression to Baudelaire's remarkable faculty of irony, and to the strong and sound sense which lay behind his affectations and extravagances. Unquestionably the critic is aware of these things, and more than one remark of his suggests his knowledge. But a reader of his essay who did not know Baudelaire's own work, and had not corrected the Fleurs du Mal by La Fanfarlo and the critical essays, might go off with the same entirely erroneous notion of the poet which has deceived not merely the common herd of Philistia, but even such a writer as Mr. Henry James. On M. Renan M. Bourget is copious and extremely interesting; as a characterisation of the man, his paper is the best critical study yet published. That on Flaubert is also very good, and M. Bourget does yeoman's service in showing how

that great novelist was a romantic, and not a naturalist, in creed and method. With the fourth essay, that on M. Taine, we confess somewhat less satisfaction; not that it does not contain much good literary criticism, and, like that on M. Renan, some acute analysis of character. But M. Bourget seems to us to put the brilliant author of Thomas Graindorge a little too high in the scale. To most English readers the last essay, that on Stendhal," will contain most that is new, for the author of the Chartreuse de Parme is anything but 80 well known here as he ought to be. Besides this accidental attraction, the paper (which, though its length is considerable, we could wish longer and increased by a detailed notice of all Beyle's work) is distinguished by

CURRENT LITERATURE.

Red Deer. By Richard Jefferies. (Longmans.) Everything that Mr. Jefferies writes about wild nature is worth reading, for he possesses both an observant eye and a descriptive pen. But we had begun to fear that he had yielded to the temptation that besets every successful man of letters nowadays of repeating ad nauseam those effects by which he first won breaks new ground for him, though the reputation. In the present little volume he ground is not so entirely new as he would have his readers think. He takes us to Exmoor, the one part of England where deer are still found wild, and the one part of the United Kingdom where they are still hunted with hounds and horses for the legitimate object of slaughter. He describes the hunt, though apparently not purpose, however, is to describe the red deer as one who has taken part in it. His main themselves, and the peculiar tract of country which is, as it were, consecrated to them. From the huntsman and the "harbourer" he has picked up many wrinkles; but he has also much to tell from his own keen experience. The readers of his other books-and who has not read them ?-will find the same elaboration of details that would be tedious if each detail were

not true and expressed in such choice English. The book, it must be confessed, is a slight one, and somewhat lengthened out with poachers' stories. Still, it is one not to be overlooked by those who love nature and the literature of nature.

Sailors' Language: a Collection of Sea-Terms and their Definitions. By W. Clark Russell. (Sampson Low.) Mr. Clark Russell, like Mr. Jefferies, has got the ear of the public; and, in a matter of this kind, the public are never entirely wrong. In this book he provides us with a glossary to his other books. Quite apart from the attraction the sea will always exercise on Englishmen, there is a special attraction in sea-slang, which is not so entirely unintelligible to landsmen as Mr. Clark Russell seems to imply. There are, of course, a large number of purely technical terms which can only be explained by experience, or, perhaps, by illustration. But most of the metaphors and proverbs would, we venture to think, be sufficiently understood by all who have kept their eyes and ears open. To say (p. ix.) that "sailors' talk is a dialect as distinct from ordinary English as Hindustanee is, or Chinese," is certainly a gross exaggeration. Still, we are far from wishing to grumble (nautice "growl") at what Mr. Clark Russell has here given us. It is undoubtedly the best modern sailor's dictionary in existence. of the many matters in it that have arrested crankum whales "those that can't be cotched; our attention we will only mention "crinkumand, with much deference, ask Mr. Clark Russell to reconsider whether " on the beam is satisfactorily defined as "said of an object right abreast."

"

Days and Hours in a Garden. By E. V. B. (Elliot Stock.), A beautiful book in a beautiful dress. Though the idea is admittedly taken from Mr. Milner's Country Pleasures-for that

was the true title of the work referred to in the Preface as a "Year in a Lancashire Garden yet the treatment is all the author's own. Mr. Milner indulged in bountiful quotations from the poets; E. V. B. draws her chief charm from the personal associations she is able to weave round her flowers, her shrubs, her trees, and her birds. In addition, she has used with much effect for head- and tail-pieces that graceful pencil with which the world is already familiar. It must be a grievous thought to some who were themselves brought up in a garden, that their children cannot have the same privilege. Half the pleasures of the country are due to the revival of old memories.

John Bull and his Island. By Max O'Rell. Translated from the French under the supervision of the Author. (Field & Tuer.) It is unnecessary now to recommend this book to anyone. It deserves to have the same sort of success as had The Fight in Dame Europa's School or The Battle of Dorking. We will only remark that the translation has been unusually well done, and that the geniality of the satire is undergone this process. attested by the success with which it has John Bull's best defence is that "Max O'Rell" knows little of the inside of an English home, and still less of English country life.

An Infallible Way to Contentment in the Midst of Public and Personal Calamities. First published in the year 1638. (Religious Tract Society.) This is the third of the society's Companions for a Quiet Hour." We have read it with much interest, and can testify that it is judicious and sober in tone, singularly free from all trace of sectarianism, uniformly well written, and that it attains often to a considerable degree of eloquence, which is well sustained, and shows but little tendency to sink into the bathos that is the pitfall of minor writers of the seventeenth century. Scattered through it are interesting historical allusions, such as the metaphor from the closing of the Exchequer at p. 109. From the references to Hobson, the carrier, Hieron (here spelt Heiron), and Luther, and, among others, the concluding passages referring to "reproaches, oppressions, into prisons, draggings before tribunals," we and persecutions; false accusations, halings had suspected that the author was a Cambridge man, and a Nonconformist of the school of

Baxter. But we are indebted to the courtesy of the secretary of the Religious Tract Society for the information that the original edition, to which we have not had access, purports to be by the author of The Devout Communicant—i.e., Abednego Seller, then rector of a parish in Devonshire, and afterwards a non-juror. Particulars of his life and works are given in Wood's Athenae; and Hearne makes mention of him in 1705 as recently dead, and as having supplied Cave with materials for his Historia Literaria. Perhaps the attribution may be open to some doubt; but there can be no doubt on another point-viz., the writer's indebtedness to the author of The Whole Duty of Man. The latter's Art of Contentment was published in 1675, and a comparison of the two shows that the later author was indebted to the earlier not only for the general scheme of his treatise, but also for many illustrative details. It may be added that Fell, at the end of his Preface to the anonymous author's collected works, compublished in the form of an Appendix to it, plains of another imitation of the Contentment, and entitled The Art of Patience under all Afflictions.

The Marriage Ring. By the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., Bishop of Down and Connor, and of Dromore. A Reprint from the Fourth Edition of his ENIATTO published in 1673. Edited, with a Preface, Appendix, and Notes, by Francis Burdett Money Coutts. (Bell.) As