is, the language and literature of China. Francis Varo, a Roman Catholic missionary, published at Canton, in 1703, the first Chinese Grammar; but a hundred years elapsed before the attention of European scholars was earnestly directed to the subject. In 1815, M. Rémusat was appointed professor of Chinese in Paris. He was followed by the celebrated M. Julien. This important chair is now held by Le Comte Kleczkowski, who was at one time connected with the French diplomatic service in this country, and has more recently been chargé d'affaires at Pekin. This distinguished scholar has lately given to the world a complete grammar of the Chinese language, written and spoken, which is regarded by critics as among the best works of its kind. Mrs. Fenno Tudor, of Boston, has generously presented copies of it to several institutions of learning, one of which is Yale College, where there is already a professorship of Chinese, to which the celebrated oriental scholar, Mr. S. Wells Williams, has been appointed. Should Chinese immigration increase as rapidly as is predicted by some, the day is at hand when it will be highly desirable for our men of learning to have at least a little knowledge of a language spoken by this new element of our heterogeneous population.

The introduction to Kleczkowski's Grammar treats briefly of the material resources of China, its commercial importance to France, Germany, Russia, England, and the United States; compliments American enterprise in developing trade with the Celestial Empire, and censures the prevailing apathy, ignorance, and prejudice on a subject affecting at least one-quarter of the human race. Chinese progress is eulogized. Great transformations have been witnessed since 1860. Treaties with foreign nations are explained, and sanguine expectations encouraged as to the result of a liberal policy in the future. The relations are disclosed between the Chinese and other languages. The faithful student is cheered by being told, that if he will only master six thousand characters he can readily make his way in China. But he is also warned that each of these six thousand characters has four distinct names; hence to be truly proficient he must retain in memory twenty-four thousand signs! But, again, it is hardly expected of foreigners, that they will gain a practical knowledge of more than three or four thousand letters, by means of which the ordinary phrases can be compassed. The author recommends for two years the exclusive study of the great dictionary of

K'ang Chi; and considerately warns the impatient sinologue that for him "study must be gradual and progressive." The beauties of Chinese literature cannot be appreciated at a single glance. Beyond the period mentioned, at least two years more must be devoted to the classics, allowing from two to five hours study daily according to the habits of the student. The prize is evidently considered worthy of the effort. The mastery of this tongue, in the author's opinion, is for a young man hardly more difficult than the acquisition of the Russian, or even the German language; and it should be remembered that "a knowledge of Chinese unlocks for its possessor the door into a fourth part of the whole world."

Certainly on cutting the leaves of the Count's admirable grammar, one feels, perhaps, for the first time in his life, that an ordinary mortal might by taking pains enough, learn to converse with Ah Sin, Lee Lang, and four hundred thousand other celestials, without resorting to the absurdities of "pigeon English." The body of the work is divided into two parts. "Partie Française" treats of the nature and general principles of the Chinese idiom and the best method of study; written Chinese; pronunciation and intonation; radicals and phonetics; Chinese literature and the rewards awaiting a faithful student. "Partie Chinoise" bears on its first page the emblematic character "Yong," meaning eternal, from whose nine elementary parts all the Chinese characters are said to be constructed. The next page is Chinese text, opposite to which are two French translations, one literal and the other idiomatic. Copious notes embellish every page, of which one or two specimens may suffice. "Two characters of simple number placed one over the other always imply the coujunction or (example, three or four.) It is the same of all characters which, placed one over the other, have exactly opposite meanings (example, good or bad, black or white.)" Again, in the fifth chapter: "Chenn means God, the Spirit that animates all the innumerable deities of China. This is the character that serves the English Protestant ministers to express the idea of the only true God. Sienn means merely a genie, sage, deified hero, one of the immortals." These notes, however, chiefly elucidate the grammar and syntax. And thus through twelve chapters, this gifted and titled author unties the mysteries of the most difficult language spoken on earth.

The present review is merely designed to call the attention of

the general reader to the existence of a new and valuable work, which must be of great service to missionaries, travelers, and men of commerce, while it has a certain degree of interest for every linguist, even though he may bestow upon it only a superficial glance.

CORONATION.* This is a book of unique power and fascination, as every one who knows the author would have expected. It is not so much a story whose scene is laid in the forest and the sea, as a dramatic monograph in which forest and sea are principal actors. The two educate Cephas together, mould his habits, direct his thinking, guard his solitudes. The one shelters him while, half insane, he is tracked by the English detective and leads his pursuer such a wild chase among the California sierras; the other with tragic fate finally puts a quietus alike to his restless wanderings and his splendid dreams. The unknown home missionary, nursing his vast schemes of education in the obscurity of the forest, takes them down with him at last into the eternal oblivion of the sea. There is something intensely pathetic in this memorial of a humble life fired with the divinest enthusiasm-there is such a contrast between the grandeur of the projects and the poverty of the force which is to execute them. The author seems to be unintentionally revealing some of his own deepest secrets of spiritual life. These vivid and marvellously diversified pictures which crop out everywhere, of woods, mountains, and seas, in all their possible moods, convince us that the writer has lived in the closest companionship with nature; and it is not hard to believe, or rather it is hard not to believe, that in the equally vivid descriptions of secret conflict, solitary prayer, personal conviction and pastoral experience, the writer is opening only another door of his own inner life.

The story starts on Cape Anne (the author revives the ancient spelling), and hovers caressingly over the rocky headlands and long beaches of that much billowed promontory. Once or twice it takes a sudden flight to California or Colorado, but instantly attaches itself to the nearest mountain peak or plunges into the heart of the woods. The chief actor, Cephas by name, is the young pastor of several small parishes in succession, situate along the rough shores of Cape Anne, in which he lives sublimely content on humble fare, but with the loftiest spiritual ambitions for

* Coronation. A Story of Forest and Sea. By E. P. TENNEY.

his people and himself. The story is told by a friend who is also a young pastor, and who has a talent for looking after a "wider field." The two characters are foils to one another. And while "I" preaches solemnly to Cephas on the subject of burying himself in such obscure parishes, Cephas retorts upon “I” with counsel which is often as keen as it is sagacious. Here is a specimen, which we commend to all young men about to graduate from theological seminaries: "Your success, Edward, is in your own hand, in your own study. It avai's not for you to seek this and that high place. Some one may object to your removal to this or that station; but no one can object to your being a man where you are. There is no objection to your being a man.

You have many times complained to me that yours was only a common career. Now what you want is to turn to and make that common career illustrious. If you want to rise in the world,

rise in your parish. Do not try to climb the heavens and occupy a prominent place, but first of all make your soul luminous, and then the planets will circle around you." (p. 127.)

In one of these parishes, his island home, Helen died. Cephas buried his young wife on a hill overlooking the sea, turned the key of his house, and never entered it again for many long months of agony. When, in later years, another bolt descends upon his health and his hopes, it wrings from him the confession, "This is the heaviest blow of my life, putting an end to the sleeping and waking dream of all my years. Nothing has so completely wrecked me mind and body since Helen's death. I cannot so truly say that Providence has balked my plans, as that I have done it. . I have known so little of the usual course of divine providence that I have made impracticable schemes. My knowledge of human nature has not been sufficient to prevent my being buoyed up by vain expectations, the failure of which has sunk me deeper in difficulty, there are many, wise

and unwise, who finally face the fact that life-long projects are overthrown by mistakes that could have been easily avoided." (p. 299.)

Between the early experiences and these riper reflections of this lonely man, there stretches a period of toil, courage, joy, suffering, and adventure, sufficient to hold the reader's eager attention to the story, and enlist his hearty sympathy; and at the same time there is enough of ideal development and wise counsel to set him to thinking even in spite of himself. The book is really two books

in one; a literary experiment somewhat hazardous. There is the story itself, running its clue through the whole, sometimes slight and scarcely visible, sometimes flashing into brilliancy and breathless rapidity; but the main structure of the book is a mass of philosophy, apothegm, speculation, and instruction, through which the silver thread of story deftly weaves its way without being overwhelmed or even concealed. It is this that makes the book so rich with suggestion to thoughtful minds. Preachers will find in it a strangely direct and pertinent fund of inspiration both for their homiletical studies and for their devotional moods. Cephas was a man who made his whole experience a prayer-guage. His mind "was fixed upon gaining the highest possible power by the inspiring presence of God in all his studies." And it would seem to be impossible for any earnest pastor to read this memorial of such an ambition, and not rise from it with a hearty resolve to pray more and preach better.

At the same time the story is as redolent with the fragrance of nature as it is with the incense of religion. It smells of the piney woods, and like a shell, echoes with the beating of the "multitudinous sea." "Not yet," says the story in its closing pages, of one of its characters who had been rescued in childhood from shipwreck, "Not yet does he know the dark tragedies of the sea, not yet has he read the record of his own drawing forth from the waters. The sea is a robber and full of graves. English Helen's death was hastened by long pounding on the bar in a storm at the mouth of an English harbor. Cephas, and his brother, and the brother's wife so like the first Helen, were the victims of the sea. The grave of Helen on the island home has been almost swept into the ocean. The mighty waves have, in these last years, broken through a thin barrier of rock and found an approach to the cliff where her body lies, and have torn out the soil; and now the foaming tusks of the sea' are goring the rocks at the base of the crag. So find I the sea mingling with my affairs, as if it were one of the characters of this story; an instrument in moulding the spiritual nature of men and shaping their destiny: rather, these incidents, which are so much to me, form a minute part of the grand story of the sea." (pp. 387, 388.)

The total result of Cephas's habits of solitude and prayerful study along the sea shore and aloft in mountain fastnesses, can be best summed in the author's own words (p. 375): “I ask-What is the use? I am more impressed by the strangeness of his con