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ARTHUR P. DODGE
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31 MILK ST., ROOM 46,

Notary Public.
Commissioner for New Hampshire.

Alaska: Its Southern Coast. And the Sitkan Archipelago. By Eliza Ruhamah Scidmore. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. In this well-written and exceedingly interesting volume the author opens up to us a country which notwithstanding so much has been said of it, is yet very imperfectly known. Although it is nine times as large as New England, and twice as large as Texas, it is the popular impression that it is all a barren, inhospitable region, wrapped in snow and ice the greater part of the year, and that a visitor to its settlements must undergo perils almost equal to those of the Greely relief expedition. Miss Scidmore in her book dispels this illusion in the most summary manner. She spent two summers in Alaska, and therefore speaks from personal knowledge. She tells us that the winters at Sitka are milder than those in New York, while the summers are delightfully cool and temperate. Some of the grandest scenery of the continent is to be found along the Alaska coast, in the region of the Alexander or Sitkan Archipelago, and the monthly mail steamer is crowded with tourists during the summer season. It is one of the easiest and most delightful trips to go up the coast by the inside passage and cruise through the archipelago; and in voyaging past the unbroken wilderness of the island shores, the tourist feels quite like an explorer penetrating unknown lands. The mountain range that walls the Pacific coast from the Antarctic to the Arctic gives a bold and broken front to the mainland, and every one of the eleven hundred islands of the archipelago is but a submerged spur or peak of the great range. Many of the islands are larger than Massachusetts or New Jersey, but none of them have been wholly explored, nor is the survey of their shores completed. The Yosemite walls and cascades are repeated in mile after mile of deep salt water channels, and from the deck of an ocean steamer one views scenes not paralleled after long rides and climbs in the heart of the Sierras. The gorges and caÑons of Colorado are surpassed; mountains that tower above Pike's Peak rise in steep incline from the still level of the sea; and the shores are clad in forests and undergrowth dense and impassable as the tangle of a Florida swamp.

On her first visit to Sitka the author spent a week at Victoria, Vancouver's Island, a place which she describes as a veritable paradise. The drives about the town, she says, along the island shores, and through the woods, are beautiful, and the heavy, London-built carriages roll over hard and perfect English highways. Ferns were growing ten and twelve feet high by the roadside. Wild rose-bushes are matted together by the acre in the clearings about the town, and in June they weight the air with their perfume, as they did a century ago, when Marchand, the old French voyager, compared the region to the rose-covered slopes of Bulgaria. The honeysuckle attains the greatest perfection in this climate, and covers and smothers the cottages and trellises with thickly-set blossoms. Even the currant-bushes grow to unusual height, and in many gardens they are trained on arbors and hang their red, ripe clusters high overhead.

The old Russian town of Sitka, the most northern on the Pacific coast, she describes as a straggling, peaceful sort of town, edging along shore at the foot of high mountains, and sheltered from the surge and turmoil of the ocean by a sea-wall of rocky, pine-covered islands. The moss has grown greener and thicker on the roofs of the solid old wooden houses that are relics of Russian days, the paint has worn thinner everywhere, and a few more houses tumbling into ruins complete the scenes of picturesque decay. Twenty years ago there were one hundred and twenty-five buildings in the town proper, and it is doubtful if a dozen have been erected since.

Miss Scidmore's descriptions of the various places she visited and the curious things she saw are vivid and picturesque, and one can learn more of both from her pages than from all the official reports that have been published. It is a book that ought to have a wide popularity. It is well illustrated and contains a map reduced from the last general chart of Alaska published by the Coast Survey.

Boy Life in the United States Navy. By a Naval Officer. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.25. It is difficult to write a book of boy's adventures without falling into what is popularly called sensational writing, that is the description of improbable incidents to arouse and excite the imagination without any purpose beyond that result. The writer of the present volume, while making an intensely interesting story, has avoided this danger, and his narrative gives a not overdrawn description of the life of a boy on a vessel in the United States Navy. Joe Bently is the son of a Maine farmer, with a strong distaste for the life to which he has been brought up and an equally strong love for the sea. His desire to become a sailor has always been repressed by his father, who, though loving his son, has no sympathy with him in this one respect.

Mr. Bently at last gives his consent, and Joe enlists as an apprentice in the Navy. The story of his journey, his examination, his experiences, on board ship and his adventures while lying in foreign ports is very graphically told, and the boy who reads it gets a clear and actual idea of what a boy must go through on board a man-of-war before he can graduate as an "able-bodied seaman." The writer shows a thorough acquaintance with every thing on board ship, even to the minutest details. The book ends with the promotion of Joe, and a promise to continue his adventures in another volume.

The Evolution of Dodd. By W.H. Smith. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. Here is a book we should rejoice to see in the hands of every teacher of youth in the country. It is a living, breathing protest against certain features of the present school systems which obtain in various parts of the country, from that of the kindergarten to the grammar school. The points of the author are so well taken, that the reader is forced not only to admit the reality of the evils he denounces, but to acknowledge the justice of the conclusions at which he arrives.

In the evolution of character the public school has come to be a most important factor. To it has been assigned a task equal to any other agency that deals with human nature. But in multitudes of cases it has become a mere mill for grinding out graduates. The "system" has largely lost sight of the grandest thing in all the world—the individual soul. It addresses itself to child-humanity collectively, as if characters were manufactured, like pins, by the million, and all alike, and it attempts to grind out this great mass, each individual like every other, as if its members could be made interchangeable like the parts of a government musket.

To illustrate his ideas, the author selects a representative boy, Dodd Weaver, the eldest son of a Methodist clergyman, and carries him through the various schools and grades of schools from the time of his entrance to his graduation. He does not make him a model boy to begin with, and strive to show how he was spoiled by the school system. On the contrary he endows him with a good many disagreeable qualities; he makes him bright, sharp, and full of vitality, with a strong bent for mischief. He is high-tempered, quarrelsome, and disobedient, and yet in the hands of one who understands his mental peculiarities plastic as dough. It is the aim of the author to show how utterly useless it is to treat such boys—and our schools are full of them—in exactly the same manner as those of different character and temperament, and to demand that teachers have the right to adapt their methods according to individual demands. He says:

It is not a system—any set of rules or formularies—that can make our school, any more than it is forms and ceremonies that make our churches. These may all be well enough in their proper places, but there is nothing, absolutely nothing, in them, per se. It is the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees in the one case, and the dry bones of pedagogy in the other.

The evil arises, in the schools as in the churches, from believing and acting as if there were something in the system itself.

If human nature were a fixed quantity, if any two children were alike, or anywhere nearly alike, if a certain act done for a child always brought forth the same result, then it might be possible to form an absolute system of pedagogy, as, with fixed elements, there is formed the science of chemistry. But the quick atoms of spirit that manifest their affinities under the eye of that alchemist, the teacher, are far more subtle than the elements that go into the crucible in any other of Nature's laboratories.

A chemist will distil for you the odor of a blown rose, or catch and hold captive the breath of the morning meadow, and do it always just the same, and ever with like results; but there is no art by which anything analogous can be wrought in human life. Here a new element comes in that entirely changes that economy of Nature in this regard. The individuality of every human soul is this new factor, and because of it, of its infinite variability—because no two atoms that are cast into the crucible of life are ever the same, or can be wrought into character by the same means—because of this, no fixed rules can ever be laid down for evolving a definite result, in the realm of soul, by never-varying means.

And this is where many teachers are at fault. They put their faith in a system, a mill through which all children shall be run, and in passing through which each child shall receive the same treatment, and from which they shall all emerge, stamped with the seal of the institution, "uniformity."

This is the prime idea that lies at the foundation of the popular system of education—to make children uniform. This very thing that God and Nature have set themselves against—no two faces, or forms, or statures; no two minds, or hearts, or souls being alike, as designed by the Creator, and as fashioned by Nature's hand—to make all these alike was the aim of the system under which Dodd began to be evolved, and with which he began to clash at once.

But it is not the system only which is at fault. Hot with the indignation bred from a discussion of its shortcomings, the author turns suddenly upon the parents of the innumerable Dodds in the schools of the country:

And for you, who send your six-year-olds to school with a single hook, and grumble because you have to buy even so much of an outfit, what are you going to do about it when your boy drains all the life out of the little volume in a couple of weeks or a month? He knows the stories by heart, and after that he says them over, day by day, because he must, and not in the least because he cares to.

What are you going to do about this? It is largely your business. You cannot shirk it and say that you send the boy to school, and it is the teacher's business to take care of him.

The remedy for the wrongs and faults of the system is, in his opinion, to recognize the individuality of children in the schoolroom to study the mental peculiarities and needs of each, and to do away with the system so far as it interferes with the liberty of the teacher to adapt his means to the proper ends to be attained. It is demanded that teachers be selected on the sole ground of fitness and adaptability, and not because of favoritism or the mere fact that their book education is sufficient, and it is further insisted that parents interest themselves to see and demand that the best that can be done is done for their children. These are the means suggested in the way of reform, and they seem adequate in a large degree to accomplish what is desired. We commend the book to teachers and parents.

Money in Politics. By J.K. Upton. With an introduction by Edward Atkinson. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. The author of this comprehensive and valuable work was for several years Assistant Secretary of the United States Treasury, and in that responsible position had admirable facilities for studying the question of money as affected by congressional acts from the earliest history of the republic down to the present, and he has made good use of his opportunities in this book which is a succinct narration of the numerous changes made in American money beginning with the continental issues, in fact, earlier, the colonial money. The work is, therefore, a history of American coin and the numerous issues of paper that served as money. To the student there is in this book a fund of information extremely interesting, particularly at this time when the popular will is likely to compel farther legislation. A topic of present interest, is the silver dollar, to which the author devotes a chapter historical in its character, and another chapter concerning circulation of this coin. In the former chapter he begins with the Spanish milled dollar, "the Mexican pillar piece," which was the first silver dollar known in American commerce, and had, in colonial times, 386.7-8 grains of pure silver. In 1785 the American standard was fixed at 375.64 grains of pure silver which became the unit of account, the standard dollar. In 1792, after a Congress of the States was organized, the standard dollar was required to contain 371.25 grains of pure silver, or, with the admixture of baser metal, the standard of silver coin 416 grains, the pure silver rated by itself as before. These facts are of interest as showing the origin of the American dollar recognized as the standard down to 1873.

The chapters on "Circulation of the Silver Dollar" and "The Trade Dollar" are interesting and timely, inasmuch as the questions considered are now before Congress, or at least with the committees, and legislation of some kind will be demanded within the next year. There is, even now, a proposition embodied in a bill to suspend coinage of the silver dollar, because it has been found impossible to put the great sum coined directly in circulation. A great part of it has been made the basis of silver certificates, a kind of currency that, by and by, will bring distress to commercial interests if the issues are maintained, or if they are materially increased. Mr. Upton treats all these matters with very clear understanding of every question, and with certain facility of expression that appeals directly to the reader who has only common understanding of money affairs. From beginning to end the book is a rich mine of facts, of historical matter, and of statements that have undergone the scrutiny of the wisest financier during the critical period between the appreciation of values, with the disturbing influences of war, and the return of true values with resumption of specie payment which was effected with gold. While the work must have absorbing interest for that extended school of economists that has made finance a special study in the past dozen years, it will prove very useful to representatives in Congress, who may find here in compact form facts of history with which they should have familiar acquaintance before they attempt legislation intended to correct the errors incorporated in our money system.

The Old Stone House. By Anne March (Constance Fenimore Woolson). Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. This capital story, by one of the brightest American writers of fiction, has been placed by the publishers in their Young Folks' Library Series, where it ought to find a new lease of popularity. The Old Stone House is the home of five young people, representing three families. They are all orphans, and are living with a widowed aunt, whose single and constant aim is to educate them into real men and women. The young cousins, who dearly love each other, differ in tastes and temperament, but not in such ways as to interfere with each other's enjoyments. The younger ones are jolly and fun-loving, and no occasion for having a good time is left unimproved. The main interest of the story, however, lies with the eldest of the cousins, Sybil Warrington, a girl of strong feelings but quiet exterior, whose ambition to shine in society is held in check by a feeling that something higher and better is required of her. The story of her struggles is quietly but effectively told, and will have a peculiar interest for young girls. Miss Woolson has written much, and her work has given her a very enviable reputation both in this country and in Europe, but in all her writings there is nothing more earnest.

How Success is Won. By Mrs. Sarah K. Bolton. With Portraits. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. This handsome volume is made up of biographies of twelve men who have achieved distinguished successes in the various directions in which they turned their respective energies. Mrs. Bolton not only rehearses the main incidents of their lives, but shows that in every case the success and honors attained were the result of industry, economy and high moral principle. Among those selected to illustrate how success may be won under different circumstances are Peter Cooper, John B. Gough, John G. Whittier, Henry M. Stanley and Alexander H. Stephens. The several sketches are bright and pointed, and the portraits which illustrate them add to their value.

The Rochester (N.Y.) Herald speaks of this extremely interesting book as "a singular collection of names, wide apart in many respects, but they represent men whom it is interesting to read about."

Anna Maria's Housekeeping. By Mrs. S.D. Power. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. If we were asked to recommend any one single book to a young housekeeper which should serve as a domestic guide, counsellor and friend, we should unhesitatingly name Anna Maria's Housekeeping. So far as our knowledge extends, there is no other book which so exactly and thoroughly fulfils the needs implied in those titles. It is no mere collection of receipts, but a complete and common-sense treatise on the whole science of housekeeping, tersely and clearly written, with a flavor of experience about it that makes one accept it as authoritative. It is a staff upon which the young housekeeper may confidently lean, and by the aid of which she may overcome obstacles which without it would seem insurmountable. Mrs. Power does not believe in a house keeping itself. It requires continual care and oversight, and a clear knowledge of what is to be done. She believes, too, that a house can be well kept as easily as badly kept, and that a bright, clean, well-ordered home has a deal to do with molding the temper and even character of its members. "It is no small thing," she says, "to stand at the head of affairs, and be the motive power on which depend the welfare and credit, the health, temper and spirit of the whole family. When in midlife you come to find how essential the comfort of a well-kept home is to the bodily strength and good conditions, to a sound mind and spirit, and useful days, you will reverence the good housekeeper as I do, above poet or artist, beauty or genius." In the opening chapter of the book the author instructs Anna Maria in the art of "How to Make Home-work Easier." In the succeeding chapters she takes up the various kinds of work there is to be done about the house, and describes the easiest methods of doing it. "No attitudinizing," she remarks, "no fine lady affectations over the griddles and saucepans; instead, cultivate the fine character which acts up to the need of the hour swiftly, promptly, but with quiet and certainty." Her definition of "good food" is to the point. "It is not," she says, "rich food, nor even the tolerable fare which is just undercooked and flavorless enough to tax digestion more than it ought. It is the best of everything cooked in the nicest possible way, and with pleasant variety." Passing from the kitchen the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is very handsomely brought out, but even were it not, it would be worth its weight in gold to the young and inexperienced housekeeper.

Gertrude's Diary. By Pansy. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price 60 cts. A new book by Pansy is always hailed with delight, and that delight generally mingled with wonder can possibly write so much and yet keep the freshness and brightness which runs through all her books. Gertrude is a girl of fifteen, wide awake, full of life, generally good tempered, and yet with as many faults as most girls of her age have; faults which arise more from thoughtlessness than from intent. She is one of four who agree to keep diaries, in accordance with a suggestion made by their Sunday-school teacher, and she records with impartiality all her good and bad times, her trials and her triumphs. Aside from its interest, it contains suggestions which cannot fail to make an impression upon the mind of any young girl who reads it, and to strengthen her in like temptations and under the same conditions. A pleasant story runs through the diary.

Many Colored Threads. From the Writings of Goethe. Selected by Carrie Adelaide Cooke. With an Introduction by Kev. Alexander McKenzie, D.D. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. No other volume of the Spare Minute Series contains more real meat than this. Goethe was epigrammatic, and his ideas took the concentrated form of bullets, instead of scattering like shot. We doubt if there is another author, always excepting Shakespeare, from whose books so many noble and complete thoughts can be extracted. In the two hundred and fifty pages of this volume are more than a thousand of these gems, each worth; its setting. Dr. McKenzie says aptly of Goethe that he is able by virtue of his own genius to set more than the common man and to put his visions and his reflections in such form that others who would never have seen the tilings for themselves or been able to think deeply upon them, can have the benefit of his generous study and thought. He was many-sided. His mind took a wide range and seemed almost equally at home in many places. The real and the ideal both interested him and were cherished by him. Science and art, philosophy and poetry, engaged his attention and were enriched by his handiwork. In this versatility of his power and the manifoldness of their application he was remarkable. Out of this breadth of study came varied and large thoughts of the world and of human life. He had the faculties with which nature and humanity and divine power could breathe their inspiration for the world's instruction and delight, and that they were fully employed no-one who turns over the pages of this collection can doubt. A brief biography of Goethe takes the place of a preface, and there is an index of subjects.

MR. CHARLES LANMAN THE AUTHOR OF "THE LEADING MEN OF JAPAN."

Mary Cole Baker writes in the Washington (D.C.) Republic: "Mr. Lanman is well known both in England and America as the writer of some of the most delightful descriptive books in the English language. To the facile wielding of his pen he adds an equally adroit and skilful use of the pencil, and his admirable results in these combined pursuits won for him from his friend and brother of the quill, Washington Irving, the apt and deserved soubriquet of 'the picturesque explorer of America.' To the pleasure which Mr. Lanman derived from these pursuits he added a sportsman's love for the field and took genuine delight in the 'contemplative art' of angling. He was the first American to cast the artificial fly in the Saguenay region and to describe for the angler the charms of that since famous locality. He has followed this sport in nearly every State in the Union, never without his sketching materials, which he used unstintingly. The results of these labors are many hundreds of sketches of American scenery, invaluable now that the march of civilization has so completely changed the face of a large part of the country. It is delightful to find a man who has been able to get so much good from life as has Mr. Lanman. One would think that the writing and illustrating of more than thirty books, some of which are in two large octavo volumes, was the work of a lifetime. But this has been to Mr. Lanman his recreation. The fact that his books have been successful pecuniarily has not prevented him from following the duties of the various governmental positions in which he has been placed. No sinecures they either—librarian at different times of the House of Representatives, the War Department, of copyrights in the State Department and of the Interior Department, secretary to Daniel Webster, at the head of the returns of office of the Interior Department, and for the last ten years the American Secretary to the Japanese Legation at Washington. A lover of social intercourse, Mr. Lanman has led the typical busy life of the American, untouched by the direful and disastrous ills it is supposed to bring. He is now engaged in editing fourteen of his books for reproduction in uniform style, and a new book, The Leading Men of Japan, is ready for issue." 12mo, $1.50. Boston: D. Lothrop, & Co., Publishers.

Couldn't be Bought: and Other Stories. By Faye Huntington. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price 75 cts. A delightful collection of short stories for boys and girls, adapted to the Sunday-school library. The volume takes its name from the leading story. The author has a pleasant and attractive style, and her stories have a large amount of "telling" force in them.

China. By Prof. R.K. Douglas, of the British Museum. Edited by Arthur Gilman, M.A. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.50. This volume comes just at a time when there is a strong demand for something brief, exact and authoritative in the way of Chinese history. Current events have brought China before the world as one of the really great powers, and one which in time will be able not only to defend herself against the aggressions of other nations but will be perfectly able to take the offensive should occasion require. In the arts of diplomacy the Chinese are a match for the keenest statesman of Europe, and since the beginning of the present troubles with France they have developed a military talent which is perfectly surprising. With the growth of the military spirit it would not be strange if, in the course of the next generation China should hold as distinct and important a place among the warlike powers as France or England.

The author of the volume before us had exceptional advantages for making such a book as just now the public demand and need. He was for several years a resident of China in an official capacity, and studied the people and their mode of life from actual observation. In preparing the book he also freely availed himself of the labors of others where they seemed capable of adding value to the narrative. In his preface he acknowledges his indebtedness to Doctor Legge's "Chinese Classics," Archdeacon Gray's work on "China," Doolittle's "Social Life of the Chinese," Denys's "Chinese Folklore," Mayers's "Chinese Reader's Manual," Sir John Davis's "Poetry of the Chinese," as well as to the important linguistic, religious and topographical writings of Doctor Edkins of Peking, and particularly to the late Professor S. Wells Williams, of Yale College, whose work on the Middle Kingdom contains more information of value than any other single volume in our language.

The various chapters of the work deal with the history of the empire in brief, its government, religions, its educational system, the nurture of the young, superstitions, funeral and wedding rites, the language, food and dress, honors, architecture, music, medicine and other subjects. It has been critically read by the young Chinese scholar, Mr. Yan Phou Lee, of Yale College, who has suggested a few notes. Its completeness is added to by an analytic table of contents and an index.

In the Woods and Out. By Pansy. Illustrated. Boston: D. Lothrop & Co. Price $1.00. In the score or more of short stories which make up this volume Pansy is at her best. She never writes for the mere sake of filling up, but always, in the briefest of her sketches, she has something worth telling and worth remembering. There isn't a thing in the book which will not be read twice, and certain of the stones will be perennial favorites with the younger class of readers.

PHILOSOPHIÆ QUÆSTOR.

The seeker of philosophical truth, which is described as the shadowy figure of a young girl, is, throughout, very expressive of desire and appreciation. The impressions she receives are those to which such a condition are most sensitive—the higher and more refined ones—and the responsive thoughts concern the nature and character of what is heard or felt. The elevation into classic importance of Concord, its philosophers, and its School of Philosophy is due to the influence of their history and teachings in American literature, and it is pleasant to recognize in this work such reverence of their classicism. Mrs. Anagnos has written a prose poem in which the last two sessions of the Concord School of Philosophy, which include that in memory of Emerson, and its lecturers excite her feeling and inspire her thought. It is sung in lofty strains that resemble those of the sacred woods and fount, and themselves are communicative of their spirit. It will be welcomed as an appropriate souvenir.—Boston Globe.

OUR NATIONAL FINANCES.

Mr. J.K. Upton used to be Assistant Secretary of the Treasury of the United States. Few men, therefore, have had better opportunities to inform themselves about our national finances. His volume, Money in Politics, published by D. Lothrop & Co., price $1.25, is a full history of the financial policy and legislation of this country. It is of the utmost value as a record, a book of reference, and an expression of sound theories. The intelligent reader cannot repress a feeling of shame that our national history in respect to finance should have been characterized by such continual bungling. The saddest feature in the case is the crass ignorance which Congress usually has displayed. Much of our legislation about money matters has been the merest experimenting, if not worse than this—the deliberate effort to enrich some one class of business men at the expense of the nation.

He utters a solemn warning of the dangers to which we now are exposed through our present acts of coinage and legal tender, whereby our gold coin sooner or later must be driven from the country and our standard must become a silver dollar of light weight and uncertain value. He also shows conclusively the futility of legislation in causing two substances to become and remain of the same value. Mr. Edward Atkinson has furnished the introduction to the book, in which he commends it warmly. While Congress continues to permit the coinage of $2,000,000 in silver a month, for which there is no demand and the coinage of which merely furnishes a market for the wares of a few owners of silver mines, it is difficult to overstate the need that such books as this should be circulated and studied attentively throughout the nation. Mr. Atkinson makes an impressive comment, which we quote:

"The productions of the hen-yards of the United States, according to the census statistics, was, in 1879, 456,910,916 dozen eggs, and, if hens have now increased in the ratio of population, it is now 500,000,000 dozen, which at only ten cents a dozen, would exceed the value of the products of the silver mines.

"It would be vastly more reasonable for Congress to order the compulsory purchase of two million dollars' worth of eggs per month," in order to sustain the hen products of the United States, "than it is to buy two million dollars' worth of silver; because the eggs could be used, or else would rot, while the silver cannot be used, and is expensive to store and to watch (pp. xvi-xvii)."—Congregationalist.

ILLITERACY AND MORMONISM.

Of Illiteracy and Mormonism, a brochure from the pen of Doctor Henry Randall Waite, just published by D. Lothrop & Co., the Boston Daily Transcript in an advance notice, says:

"In view of the present great interest in the problems treated, and the value of the material which it offers as an aid to their solution, the book is especially timely. Doctor Waite, who was for some time editor of the International Review, and whose work is well-known to readers of the standard American periodicals, is one of the clearest-headed of our younger writers on politico-economic subjects, and his views as here set forth demand thoughtful consideration and respect. He brings to the treatment of the subjects included in the title the special knowledge gained in his important official position as statistician of the late census, in charge of some of the most important branches, including education, illiteracy and religious organizations."

The Dover (N.H.) Star, says:

"He makes the best argument for the Constitutionality of National Aid [to education] which we have yet seen. It will bear careful consideration by members of Congress."

The Boston Daily Herald refers to the author's views as follows:

"One of the most original and valuable contributions yet made to the discussion of the project of extending federal aid to common school education in the States * * * The moderation of its tone and the conservatism of its suggestions will commend it to all thoughtful students of this problem, while its statistics, many of which, in their arrangement and application, are substantially new, should have a direct influence in shaping the final action of Congress * * * Mr. Waite has given long and careful study to this subject in all its bearings, and he writes with an equipment of information and reflection which has been palpably lacking in much of the Senatorial discussion of it."

ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS.

The New York Independent, after referring to the various books on Arctic explorations and adventure—the narratives of Kane and Hayes and Gilder and De Long—says of Dr. Nourse's work: "The field of Arctic authorship was not yet, however, covered by any of these works, and it is to the credit of Professor Nourse that he saw what remained to be done. In the work before us he comes into no competition with the literary workers who have preceded him. No one will be the less disposed to read Dr. Kane's chapters, or to peruse Mr. Gilder's, for having read Professor Nourse; nor, on the other hand, will these works prejudice Professor Nourse's chance to be read. His book stands on ground of its own, as the one complete and competent survey of what American explorers have done in the polar zones.... Professor Nourse's volume is embellished with numerous good illustrations, and provided with an excellent and indispensable circumpolar map. It deserves the successful sale we understand it is already receiving."

The Literary World in a review of the book says "it is an encyclopaedic review of the whole subject of American enterprise in Arctic seas," and adds: "Professor Nourse's book bears the credentials of accuracy and authority, is well printed and bound, has numerous engravings and useful maps, including some portraits on steel, has a suitable index and table of contents, and furthermore is provided with a bibliography of chief publications on Arctic research since 1818. In every respect, then, it is a well-made book, a solid contribution to popular reading."

BACCALAUREATE SERMONS.

D. Lothrop & Co., of Boston, have published in book form nineteen baccalaureate sermons preached at Harvard College, by Dr. A.P. Peabody, the new Professor of Christian Morals. Dr. Peabody's reputation, as a vigorous thinker and manly preacher, is as wide as this Republic; and the volume of sermons before us is something more than a series of homilies. It is a collection of addresses to young men—students just ready to embark on the perilous sea of life—which may be profitably read by every citizen of our country. The preacher does not address himself to any single side of human life. He counsels the students in their duties as men in all the relations of life. And in the selection of themes he embraces a great variety of topics. In the discourse on "Hebrew, Latin and Greek," for example, he takes the first-named tongue as standing for religion, the second for beauty and the third for strength. On this triad be formulates not only an intellectual cult but a practical rule of life. Another notable sermon is on "The Sovereignty of Law," an admirable disquisition on the supremacy of law in the intellectual life, the physical existence, the domain of morals and in every department of human activity. Dr. Peabody's style is forcible and virile, and his compactness of statement, enables him to put "infinite riches in a little room."—Chicago Tribune.

A BOY'S WORKSHOP.

Every boy with a jack-knife in his pocket and his head full of plans will fall to with delight on anything that gives him plenty to do in the boyish line. This is the merit of a little manual just published by the Messrs. D. Lothrop & Co., A Boy's Workshop, with Plans and Designs for Indoor and Outdoor Work, by a "Boy and his Friends"; with an introduction by Henry Randall Waite. The little manual goes to work intelligibly, describing the shop, and the tools, giving hints and accurate directions how to make a great variety of things whose uses will be at once apparent to the boyish mind, and suggestions as to other mysteries, the key to which makes any boy who possesses it a king among his mates.

HOW SUCCESS IS WON.

"How Success is Won," by Sarah K. Bolton (D. Lothrop & Co.), is a collection of twelve brief biographies intended to make clear to the young the character and conduct that have resulted in the success of Peter Cooper, John B. Gough, John G. Whittier, John Wanamaker, Henry M. Stanley, Johns Hopkins, William M. Hunt, Elias Howe, Jr., Alexander H. Stephens, Thomas A. Edison, Dr. W.T.G. Morton and the Rev. John H. Vincent. The sketches are gracefully and interestingly written, and the little volume is in every way to be commended.—N.Y. Com. Adv.

THE GRAY MASQUE.

The Gray Masque of Mrs. Mary Barker Dodge (D. Lothrop & Co., Boston) has won a series of splendid notices; yet, so far as we know, sufficient stress has not been laid upon the keynote of the volume. Love, in its varying phases, sounds through the majority of the verses like the refrain of a song. Sometimes sad, sometimes solemn, oftener gay and hopeful, the differing themes take up, one after another, the burden of the initial poem; and answer, in separate ways, the question there propounded, until the many-sided revelation is found to be fittingly illustrated on the cover by the winged boy, who throws aside the masque of mortality, and, soaring aloft, leaves behind him every earthly doubt and care. The "Dedication" and the concluding poem, the first emotional in its simplicity, the last intellectual in its subtlety, mark the breadth as well as the limits of Mrs. Dodge's poetical expression.—Baldwin's Monthly.