many misprints in the Latin, and he would have paid a better compliment to his Holiness, and also to Mr, Lang and Mr. Francis Thompson, if he had given their versions, of which he speaks so highly. There may be difficulties of copyright, but these could probably have been overcome. For we cannot call his own adequate. They are not very literal, and yet they do not sufficiently compensate by original merits, either of diction or versification. A single example will suffice. Pope Leo was born at the little town of Carpineto, a sort of "eyrie," as it is described, high on a cleft of the Monte Lepine, a portion of the Volscian range:

Quam felix flore in primo, quam laeta Lepinis

Orta jugis, patrio sub lare vita fuit!

Carpineto, like many such Italian towns, suffered from the want of good water. When the Pope became Bishop of Perugia he set himself to remedy this defect. He constructed an aqueduct, and brought a stream of good water down from the Lepine Hills into the great square of the Cathedral. He commemorates the act in a Latin inscription:

Fons ego decurrens, nitidis argenteus undis

Quem cupide irriguum florea prata bibunt.

At non prata bibent, cives, me florea; vestris

Gratius est largo spargere rore domos.

Mr. Henry renders:

I am a silvery fountain, at whose brink The flowery meadows love to drink. And yet they shall not! It belongs to you

Ye cits, my widely-scattering dew.

But it would be ungracious to look too closely at the translations. They have the merit of being generally pretty ac

curate, and making the meaning clear. And we are really indebted to Mr. Henry for collecting and presenting the Pope's poems in this form for the English reader. The volume is daintily got up and turned out. And the collection is a very interesting one, and, as he very fairly says, "interesting because of the sublime dignity of their author, if possible even more valuable as mirroring the genial, cultured, affectionate, devout soul of the man and priest." Pope Leo XIII. is indeed a notable and beautiful figure. His immense age, his frail frame, the unearthly pallor of his features contrasting with the lustre of the eyes through which the nimble Italian intellect and large soul still look so keenly, exactly become his unique throne. The question of the temporal power is a tremendous one, not to be discussed incidentally, but if ever a Pontiff seemed fitted to break with the temporal and assume a purely spiritual sway, it is he. And his has been a strange story. One of the poems, that first quoted, describes his life and fortunes. first piece in the book was written in 1822, eighty years ago, a quarter of a century before, in days that now seem ancient history, Landor in his classic letter hailed his predecessor, Pius IX., as the savior of society. But the next, "De Invalitudine suâ," is even more striking. At twenty the Pope despaired of long life, almost of life at all, so feeble was his health:

The

Puber bis denos Joachim vix crescis in annos,

Morborum heu quanta vi miser obrueris!

He confronted the prospect of an early death with Christian resignation and fortitude, and seventy years later was writing his remarkable "Ode to a New Century." The secret of his life, and the most beautiful thing in the book, is not a poem, but a short piece of prose

composition, it is the vow which he made when he became Pope. We give it in English, though his Latin is finer. In it he resolves-"For the rest of my life daily to offer the Sacred Host, and 80 cleave closer and closer to God, and with ever-increasing diligence to labor with watchful spirit to procure the eternal salvation of mankind."

In that striking, now perhaps littleknown, novel of Cardinal Newman's, Loss and Gain, there is one scene marked by real humor: where it is whispered in a little Evangelical coterie that the Pope "has just died a believer." But in truth it is no little thing that the head of a Church which often appears one vast political and historical and worldly system should make and keep such a profession of simple piety. Had all Popes lived like this the history of the Roman Church and the history of the world would have been very different. It is that that gives this little volume its interest. It is what Tennyson said poetry should be,-the outcome of a life, in this case of a beautiful and cultivated and devoted life. Here are the Pope's interests, his deepest wishes, his keenest sorrows, his intellectual tastes, his recreations; an Ode for a marriage, a solemn piece for his brother's death, The Spectator.

stanzas for the literary club of which he was an ornament, a playful recommendation of plain living and high thinking, inscriptions, and charades. The pieces are not all in Latin; some are Italian, especially the charades, as, for instance, one addressed to Sylvia, in which the Pope shows that he knows his Shakespeare. He knows his Italian poets of course; but his favorite author seems to be Horace, whom he imitates alike in his Ode to the Twentieth Century and in his Epistle on a Frugal Life, the two most elaborate efforts in the volume. What, we may ask, would have been the feelings. of the complacent little Epicurean poet-critic of Augustus's Court, if he had been told that some nineteen centuries after he had written the Carmen Saeculare Rome would profess a faith of which he had never heard, the very antithesis of Epicureanism, and that its Pontifex Maximus sitting in Cæsar's place would address a wider Empire than Cæsar's in alcaics modelled on his own? This would be indeed a strange Non omnis moriar. "Credat Judaeus Apella," he might well say, "non ego, namque deos didici securum agere aevum." But it is even the truth, so enigmatically is the history of mankind interwoven.

Deland has written a new series of "Old Chester Tales" which will appear in the same magazine.

Mr. Swinburne is about to publish a collected edition of his poems, and for the introductory volume, he will write, in the form of a letter to his friend, Mr. Theodore Watts-Dunton, a long account of his literary effort and of how he came to write the various books.

"The Tiger and the Insect" are really babies-not "Helen's" babies this time, but "Kate's"-and it is their doting aunt to whom Mr. John Habberton assigns the pleasant task of writing up their pretty pranks. Come from the Far West to take them in charge for their mother's vacation, Aunt Nell's impressions of New York diversify her experiences in the nursery, and a thread of romance, which the babies do their best to tangle, spins itself straight at the end of the story. R. H. Russell.

"A Romance of the Nursery" is to be elassed with stories about children rather than with stories for them. Janey, and her brothers, the sturdy, matter-of-fact, romping children of a hospitable English country-house, with Fiametta, the sensitive, self-conscious but fascinating little sprite whom their friend, the poet from London, leaves with them, make a charming group of characters, but the narrative is hardly objective enough for the juvenile taste. But grown people will delight in the subtleties and satire which give it its peculiar flavor. Allen Harker is the author. John Lane.

L.

The problems which confront a man of high principles, scholarly tastes and generous impulses, as he attempts to meet the demands of an ambitious

family with the earnings of his profession are the subject of Lewis Zangwill's new novel, "One's Womenkind." The scene is laid in London, the central figure is a clever young barrister, and his wife a girl of good family who has made a failure on the stage. The plot offers a variety of incident to entertain the idle reader, while the human interest-weak at the opening of the book-makes a stronger and stronger claim on the serious attention as the characters develop. The author is a brother of the betterknown Israel Zangwill. A. S. Barnes & Co.

To "Miss Muffet's Christmas Party" are bidden, by the aid of the Spider, "all the people you read about"-the Rev. Swiss Robinson and Family, Tiny Tim and all the Cratchetts, Mr. Aldrich's Bad Boy, Rollo and Jonas and Miss Edgeworth's Youths and Rosamond, Haroun al Raschid and Sindbad and the Three Wise Men of Gotham, Aesop with his Fables and Baloo and Bagheera, Uncle Remus, and Robinson Crusoe and a whole procession more, and Samuel McChord Crothers describes their mutual acquaintance in a style that will hold the children breathless with interest and keep their elders bubbling over with laughter. A more delightful compound of exuberant fancy, sly satire and genuine, good-humored fun it would be hard to find. There is a profusion of illustrations, all extremely clever. Olive W. Long is the artist. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

The figure of Thoreau has so far receded into the past that it is now possible to form a more correct estimate of his position in literature than could have been made by his contemporaries: yet the date of his death is not so long past that his personality, treasured in the memories of those

who knew him, is wholly without influence. The personal and the critical elements are well combined in the volume entitled "Thoreau, His Home, Friends and Books" in which Mrs. Annie Russell Marble presents a careful study of the naturalist and philosopher, vivified by many bits of personal reminiscence contributed by his friends, and extracts from letters and diaries hitherto unpublished, which throw light upon his character and the workings of his mind. It is a curiously attractive, even though lonely figure which is here portrayed; and the wellarranged study of Thoreau's writings which fills the later pages is discriminating. A number of excellent photogravures enhance the charm of the book and suggest holiday uses. T. Y. Crowell & Co.

Gossiping pleasantly in The London Chronicle upon "Literary Interviews," of which, by the way, he has no high opinion, Mr. Andrew Lang gives the following amusing instances of the confusion of literary personalities often existing in the popular mind:

For many years-nay, still, perhaps -the world thought that Mr. George Meredith was the late Lord Lytton, and that Mr. Matthew Arnold was the

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author of The Light of Asia. A lady told me that The Light of Asia was Mr. Matthew Arnold's best poem, and I replied that to my taste Sir Edwin Arnold would ever be most remembered for his Scholar Gipsy. A gentleman, it is said, thanked Mr. Henry James for the pleasure which in boyhood he had derived from Darnley, Gowrie, and other romances by Mr. G. P. R. James. I have known a judge of this realm converse with the Poet Laureate under the impression that he was Mr. Austin Dobson.

Lovers of Jane Austen will be pleased to hear that two new editions of her works are to be published this season, each with exceptionally inter

esting features. One of them is to he in the illustrated pocket classic series of the Macmillans, furnished with introductions by Mr. Austin Dobson. The other, known as the Hampshire Edition, introduces a novel experiment in illustration. Within the front cover of each volume is a map (in the old style, showing trees, buildings, and hills) of the country or town in which the scenes of the story occur, prepared from views and guide-books of the period; and within the back cover the neighborhood supposed to be inhabited by the principal characters is pictured in a similar style, giving the relative sizes, distances, and positions of houses and walks according to the author's descriptions.

Perhaps it would be unkind to class Mr. W. D. Howell's latest book, "Literature and Life," among essays, for does he not tell us, in his consideration of "The Man of Letters as a Man of Business" in the opening paper that essays are decadent and that no one buys them? But by whatever name one chooses to call them, these talks, reminiscences, comments, sketches, are thoroughly delightful, alike in their temper and their philosophy. Whether discussing the relations of author and publisher or writer and editor, or depicting life in summer colonies or foreign capitals, or sketching performances on the stage, or at the circus or the dime museum, or presenting realistic bits of life and experience in city streets, Mr. Howells is sympathetic and friendly. He knows how to be serious without being cynical, and humorous without being trifling, and his views of life and literature are sane and sensible and drawn from wide experience. If the great public does not buy, and read-such essays as these, so much the worse for the great public. The book is well illustrated. Harper & Bros.