from the course of instruction they will have to go through. It must be remembered that all who learn the use of such a phonetic alphabet will possess for the rest of their lives an accomplishment of great value-so great, indeed, that it may be said without any exaggeration to be coextensive with the value of letters. They will be able to describe [on paper by writing or print the pronunciation of words, when it would be impossible or inconvenient to impart it by speech, and the most ingenious manipulation of the sacred twenty-six, from A to Z, would fail to convey a notion of it. It is true that at first they will have it all to themselves, for their uninstructed elders and betters will not be able to profit by the information. But this will be only for a while. As soon as a knowledge of the phonetic characters becomes an indispensable part of general education, and is required by schools and colleges and Civil Service Commissioners (as it will be when its value comes to be generally understood), newspaper correspondents will be able to tell us what to call the people and the places about whom they are enlightening us; books of travels will be readable aloud without the interruption of a stumble and an apology at every proper name; missionaries will be able to give information which will be of use to comparative philologists about the languages of the countries in which they are laboring; we shall know whether another Captain Burnaby rides to Khiva or Kheva, and shall accompany another Commander Cameron with much greater comfort through regions that are now (because of the number of consonants without any vowel between which they require us to pronounce) not to be named. Of its uses in these ways I can speak confidently from personal experience; for I read the accounts of the Hungarian war of 1849 in the Phonetic News, where all the proper names were carefully spelt. But it is not merely in the foreign names which perplex us in English books that we shall feel the benefit the foreign languages will be better and more easily learned, especially by those who aspire to teach themselves. The many scholars who have to learn these languages from books will be furnished with directions for the pronunciation that will serve them almost as well

as a skilled teacher; and much better than an unskilled one, however good his own pronunciation may be. The latest reformation in the way of reading Latin and Greek may be circulated by post to all grammar schools. And in short, as soon as the accomplishment becomes as common as reading, it will be found that its uses are as various and as valuable as those of writing. Making it possible to hear by the eye (like a musician, who, having the benefit of a phonetic notation, hears the music as he reads it), it will extend the range of earshot both in time and space indefinitely. A man will be able to make his words heard in Australia with the next mail, and heard by the next ages as long as his book endureth. I know a poet who is happy in most things, but most unhappy in an apprehension that people who have not heard his poems read will never know how to read them. He will be able to stereotype the sounds, the quantities, the pauses, the intonations, the accents, and the emphases, for all the peoples in all the times. He will only have to publish a phonetic edition.

These results will depend upon the consistent use and the general acceptance of the alphabet which shall be chosen ; and the very variety of the persons and causes that are interested in it will divide opinions, and make the choice more difficult. It may be hoped, however, that if the reforming teachers keep to their own business and take counsel together-leaving etymologists to invent a system of etymological orthography for themselves, foreign linguists to construct such alphabets as are easiest for them to work, as ours is easiest for us; making no attempt to convert or conciliate antireformers who regard the question as unworthy of serious consideration, and therefore have never considered it seriously; but applying themselves solely to find out the best method of teaching English boys and girls to read and write modern English for modern purposes— they will be able to agree upon one set of symbols and one set of rules to be used by all; and that such an alphabet, having the great advantage of being in possession of the field, will be strong enough to resist foolish changes, to entertain friendly suggestions, to test and adopt real improvements without break

poems appeared from the press of Ticknor & Fields, Boston. It attracted considerable attention from a cultivated circle, and was pronounced by Mr. Edwin P. Whipple, the brilliant Boston. critic, "a work of great promise as well as fine performance." His second volume, published in Charleston in 1857, was a thin duodecimo, consisting chiefly of sonnets, but introduced by an exquisitely graceful and imaginative "Ode to Sleep," which marked the highest point he had yet 'reached in poetry. In 1860 his third volume ("Avolio and Other Poems") appeared, from the press of Ticknor & Fields, and was favorably received by the critics and public.

During the civil war, Mr. Hayne served first on the staff of Governor Pickens, and subsequently for some months as a volunteer in Fort Sumter; but the condition of his health forbade his regularly taking the field. As was the case with many others of his unfortunate compatriots, the close of the conflict found him, pecuniarily, ruined. He removed to Augusta, Georgia, where for some time he assisted in the editorship of the "Augusta Constitutionalist;" and afterwards, in 1866, settled down in his present residence, sixteen miles from Augusta, near the Georgia Railroad. Here, in a rude whitewashed cottage, crowning a hill among the pine-barrens, he has lived with his family (a mother, wife, and one child) for eleven years in almost complete seclusion; and here he has done what must be regarded as his best literary work. The Lippincotts published his "Legends and Lyrics" in 1872, and the vol

ume thus entitled contains, in the author's opinion, his most vigorous and characteristic verse. Three years later, in 1875, his last volume, "The Mountain of the Lovers," was issued by Hale & Sons of New York. A noteworthy feature of this latter work is a group of "Nature-Poems," descriptive of the peculiarities of Southern landscape and scenery, which appeared originally in the "Atlantic Monthly."

Of Mr. Hayne's prose writings the .most important are biographies of his uncle, Robert Y. Hayne, of Hugh S. Legaré, the eminent South Carolina lawyer and scholar, and of his brother-poet, Henry Timrod. The latter was prefixed to the collected edition of Timrod's poems (1873), and awakened an unusual degree of interest, both North and South. Another biographical work by Mr. Hayne, a life of William Gilmore Simms, is in the hands of the Harpers awaiting publication.

Mr. Hayne's verses are nearly always graceful, polished, and musical, and are pervaded by a tender imaginative sentiment and by a genuine love of nature. His prose style is animated and picturesque, but too poetical in form and manner to meet the severer requirements of good prose. His work is especially deserving of recognition from the fact that as one of the very few professional littérateurs in a section of the country where art and letters have long been completely subordinated to politics and the practical affairs of life, his career has been one of constant and not easily exaggerated difficuity and discouragement.

THE OTTOMAN POWER IN EUROPE, its Nature, its Growth, and its Decline. By Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L., LL.D. London and New York: Macmillan & Co.

To Mr. Freeman as much as to any one man the world is indebted for the fact that in the present great crisis of affairs in SouthEastern Europe the strength and influence of England are not, as in 1853-4, thrown into the scale in behalf of the Turk against the unfortunate Christian peoples whom he has oppressed and plundered for nearly five hundred years. On the first mutterings of insur

rection in Herzegovina and Bosnia, Mr. Freeman saw that the long-impending catastrophe had begun, and at once addressed himself to the task of enlightening his countrymen, by pen and by word of mouth, concerning the real nature of the issues involved, and awakening in them a perception of the atrocious crime against civilization and morals of which England would be guilty, should she again allow herself to be betrayed into extending her aid to the barbarous horde encamped in Turkey. The present treatise on the nature, growth, and decline of the Ottoman Power in Europe is a continuation of this process of enlighten

ment, and partakes rather of the character of a political pamphlet than of what is usually understood by history proper. Mr. Freeman maintains, indeed, that between politics and history no rational distinction can be drawnhistory being simply the politics of the past, while politics are the history of the present. "The past is studied in vain, unless it gives us lessons for the present; the present will be very imperfectly understood, unless the light of the past is brought to bear upon it. In this way, history and politics are one." Still, it is well to bear the fact in mind that in formal history the primary intention of the historian is to set down all the facts as they actually occurred, leaving the particular application of the lessons they carry to be made by other hands; while Mr. Freeman himself confesses that what he has here done is to use the past history of the Ottoman Turks in order to show what is the one way which, according to the light of reason and experience, can be of any use in dealing with the Ottoman Turks of the present day. In other words, his aim is primarily political and not historical.

We call attention to this point merely in order to define the character of the book, not by any means to disparage it; for we hold that neither history nor historian was ever better employed than in work of precisely this kind. The historian ceases to be a mere historian, the scholar a mere scholar, when he leaves his dry accumulations of facts, and uses his knowledge in behalf of great and pressing public questions regarding which the public stands very much in need of enlightenment; and this is the exact nature of the service that Mr. Freeman has performed. He tells us all that any one can tell us in a brief space of the origin, growth, and character of the Ottoman rule; and in addition to this-applying the teachings of the past to the problems of the present-he imparts to us such a clear conception of the elementary principles involved in the so-called Eastern Question that henceforth no jargon of the diplomatists, no raising of subsidiary or irrelevant issues, no sentimental or interested pleas, will be able to blind our eyes or pervert our judgment. The conscience and civilization of the world are against the Turk, and through Mr. Freeman this conscience and this civilization give him notice that, in spite of all the postponements of diplomatists, he must "step down and out."

Besides his history of the Ottomans, Mr. Freeman gives valuable descriptive accounts of the other races of South-Eastern Europe, of their relations to one another and to the common enemy, and of the light which their past

history throws upon future political adjustments. The text is illustrated by three colored maps, one showing the Ottoman dominions as they exist at this time (February, 1877), another showing the several States of SouthEastern Europe at the time of the entrance of the Ottomans into Europe, and a third showing the Ottoman dominions at the time of their greatest extent.

THE AMERICAN. A NOVEL. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

The first thought that occurs to one after reading "The American" is that the opulence of power displayed in it ought to have made it a novel of the first rank, and precisely why it fails of being such it is somewhat difficult to say. The plot is consistent and well-constructed if somewhat commonplace, the characters are without exception piquant and interesting, the descriptive portions are remarkably brilliant and picturesque, and the entire book is pervaded by that atmosphere of elegant culture which is so grateful to refined and educated minds. The "situation," too, is very effective-that of an American, a self-made man, fresh from the crudities of his wild Western home, confronted with the aristocratic prejudices and the inflexible social standards of the most exclusive society of the Old World. But we fear that it was the very effectiveness of this situation—its wide-reaching suggestiveness and interestthat spoiled Mr. James's book as a novel. In his anxiety to point the contrast and essential antagonism between two such alien civilizations as those of Republican America and Bourbon France, he has subordinated his characters to the machinery of his story, so to speak, and thus deprived them of that personal individuality and self-determining force without which neither real nor fictitious persons can establish any strong claim upon our sympathies or interest. No doubt in actual life men and women are constantly entangled in the web of fate and circumstance, their purposes thwarted and their aspirations turned away; but in such cases there must be coöperating conditions in their own nature, and it reduces them to the level of puppets in our eyes if we see too plainly the external predetermining agencies by which they were crushed. Hence, the reader

is dissatisfied with the manner in which "The American" ends, not because it is painful, but because it mars the conception which he has been led to form of the two principal characters in the story; because it seems incongruous with what has gone before; and because it is manifestly the result, not of spontaneously-acting natural causes, but of

a preëxistent social theory in the author's mind.

In order to reach cause for fault-finding, however, it is necessary to go very deep into the structure of the novel; for its salient qualities, taken separately, we have nothing but heartiest praise. The portrait of Madame de Cintré would be sufficient by itself to lift the book altogether above the level of current fiction; yet there are half a dozen other characters whose natures are laid bare to us with scarcely less delicacy and precision of touch. The incidents are plausible and sufficiently varied, the accessories partake of the multifarious splendors of Paris, and the affluence of resource exhibited in every direction renders the story at once a stimulus and an enjoyment.

THE FORCES OF NATURE: A Popular Introduction to the Study of Physical Phenomena. By Amédée Guillemin. Translated from the French by Mrs. Norman Lockyer, and Edited with Additions and Notes by J. Norman Lockyer, F.R.S. London and New York: Macmillan & Co.

This work has already won a wide reputation both in France and England as one of the most successful of the many attempts to popularize a knowledge of the principles, methods, and phenomena of physical science. While no concession is made on the score of scientific accuracy and exactness, its arrangement is so admirable and its expositions so simple and lucid that it presents no difficulties which the general reader can not master with a little thought and study; and it has the great advantage over most other treatises of the kind that it brings under one general survey almost the entire field of modern physical investigation. Beginning with Gravity and Attraction, it discusses in succession the phenomena of Sound, with special reference to music and musical instruments; the laws of Light and Color; Heat in all its varied manifestations; Magnetism and Electricity; and finally Meteorology, including the beautiful phenomena of clouds and fog, rainbow, and the other atmospheric wonders. The descriptions are remarkably clear and forcible, and the aid of pictorial illustration is called in wherever it can assist the reader in understanding the experiments and demonstrations. In the entire work there are nearly five hundred engravings, ranging in character from simple diagrams and figures to fine fullpage pictures and beautiful colored plates. The translation is excellent, and Mr. Lockyer's notes and comments confer an additional value upon the treatise.

The work as originally published was in

one large and expensive volume, but in order to give it a wider circulation, the publishers have begun to issue it in monthly parts. Each part contains about forty pages of text and illustrations, and eighteen parts will complete the work.

VIRGIN SOIL. By Ivan Turgénieff. Translated with the Author's Sanction from the French Version, by T. S. Perry. Leisure Hour Series. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

The primary motive of the artist-that of furnishing pleasure of a refining and elevated kind-is less apparent in "Virgin Soil" than in most of Turgénieff's other novels. It is rather a sweeping and pungent social satire than a story pure and simple, and no wonder that it produced considerable fermentation in Russia, for it applies the lash with impartial severity to all the representative classes of society. The noblemen, the officials, the landed proprietors, the merchants, the flunkeys, and even the political and social agitators with whose professed aims Turgénieff himself is evidently in sympathy, are each in turn delineated with the merciless hand of the unsparing satirist. The peasants alone escape this penetrating ridicule, and they are condemned for being sunk in the lethargy of a gross and animal stupidity. But for the consciousness of a strong and patriotic feeling underlying the heapedup scorn, the book would be painful from its excessive bitterness; but, unlike most social satire, it is inspired by a desire to awaken shame and thus produce improvement, rather than by the love of mounting one's self on a pedestal and from this height looking down Literature with contempt upon mankind. of this kind probably reaches but a narrow circle in a country like Russia, yet even there it can hardly fail to provoke thought and stimulate the national conscience.

The story, as we have said, is subordinate to the social purpose, but it is interesting, and is managed with the author's characteristic dexterity. The love is of a less sensuous type than usual, and for once a man is introduced who successfully resists the wiles of a beautiful woman. Mr. Perry's translation is remarkably spirited and graceful.

HOURS WITH MEN AND BOOKS. By William Mathews, LL.D. Chicago S. C. Griggs & Co.

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This daintily-printed volume consists of a series of essays such as a versatile and fluent man of letters would contribute to the current journals and magazines. They are very miscellaneous in character and cover a wide