serves. "Formerly the immense majority of menour brothers-knew only their suffering, their wants, and their desires. They are beginning now to know their opportunity and their power. All persons who see deeper than their plates are rather inclined to thank God for it, than to bewail it, for the sores of Lazarus have a poison in them against which Dives has no antidote." This is only an ornamental way of saying that enlightened selfishness should prompt the rich to relieve rather than neglect the sufferings of the poor.-Mr. Lowell is at his best, not in his poetical but in his literary disquisitions: the papers on Fielding, Coleridge, Wordsworth and Don Quixote are to be read and often returned to. They are the outcome of admiring study, and appreciation and the exquisite arrangement and digestion of the ideas more than reconcile us to their lack of obtrusive originality.

IN A Step Aside' by Charlotte Dunning, the struggle in a woman's heart between love and the æsthetic sentiment, is portrayed with some ability. The author (who is apparently young and certainly inexperienced) makes love gain the day, which robs the story of the pathos it would otherwise have had, and reduces it-quâ story-to the commonplace. But the situation, though anything but new, is always interesting; and Miss Dunning has drawn the character of Pauline with a good deal of insight. The male characters in the story are fearfully and wonderfully made, as is only to be expected in a woman's first novel; but Pauline's gradual lapse into the luxury that so befits her is well traced, as far as it goes. It does not go far enough; the analysis is left half complete, being cut short in a very inartistic manner by a beer wagon, which runs over the absurd young nincompoop who plays the part of the rival of luxury in Pauline's heart. He has been filching from his employer's till: but the story had to end, so he recovers from his accident, is forgiven for his theft, and Pauline, having repaid the money he stole out of her own earnings, marries him out of hand, and they go off to starve together in the country. All this is silly, of course; but there are little touches here and there that redeem it from the charge of nothingness, as the Laureate would say.

HUXLEY defines protoplasm as "the physical basis of life." Miss Edith M. Thomas's The Round Year,' may be defined as the protoplasm of her poetry. She has been living somewhere in the country, and has thought it incumbent upon her to write a book about it. Miss Thomas writes charming poetry of her prose there is nothing particular to be said, either in the way of praise or of blame. Her descriptions of nature are nicely felt and executed; her comments and moralisings are pretty enough, but hardly worth the dignity of type. Not more than two or three women have ever lived who could do that sort of thing well. We do not need female Thoreaus and Burroughses.-Mrs. Celia Thaxter's 'Cruise of the Mystery and other Poems' is written in her well known smooth and musical style; there is a romantic savor in her muse which contrasts pleasantly with the elaborate emptiness of so much contemporary "poetry." Mrs. Thaxter has a recognizable literary personality, and she improves in workmanship and self-command with each fresh volume that she publishes. J. H.

THE first number of Murray's Magazine has for

its piece de resistance 'Byroniana' which consists first of a brief impassioned poem by Byron, headed 'Opening Lines to Lara,' which contains one or two lines that deserve to live. For instance: "Let mercy strip the memory of regret," and "What lipdare say, 'My love remember not?"" Then follows 'Some Recollections of My Acquaintance with Madame de Staël," in which we find Byron, in 1821, speculating who should be the successor, twenty or thirty years later, of the Prince Regent. "The Dukes, all of them half a century old, cannot last for ever, and who will be their successors? The little Princesses. This a 'grand peut-etre!"" If Byron's shade is interested in mundane affairs it must be some amusement to him to see this "possibility" of his printed on the eve of the year of Jubilee of one of "the little Princesses."

THE January number of Walford's Antiquarian contains articles on 'Domesday Book,' 'Frostiana," 'Some Kentish Proverbs,' 'Madcap Harry and Sir John Popham,' 'Tom Coryate and his Crudities,' and 'Notes on John Wilkes and Boswell's Life of Johnson.'

ONE of the chief features of the number with which Blackwood commences the new year is 'The Land of Darkness' a long story, in which Mrs. Oliphant delineates a novel idea of the "Inferno," differing entirely from all other conceptions of the same subject which have been formed by writers, whether in jest or earnest, from Dante downwards. The punishments, the sufferings, the situation, are new; mechanical modes of torture are for the most part supplanted by acute mental anguish; individualities are preserved, aud the vices which had characterized humanity are found playing more fiercely and freely in the doomed spiritual nature. The story forms one of Mrs. Oliphant's series of essays in the fiction of the higher supernatural, of which "The Open Door' and 'Old Lady Mary' in Blackwood will be remembered.

AMERICAN NOTES.

IT is stated that a series of Longfellow letters covering the last fifty years of the poet's life will be published in the Boston Home Journal.

IN connection with Messrs. Black & Co. of Edinburgh the J. B. Lippincott Co. will issue a new library edition of the Waverley Novels, in twentyfive volumes at $1.75 per volume.

In its number for the first of this month the Ameri-can Bookseller prints a complete list of all the books published in this country during the past year.

MR. BROWNING's new volume of poems, 'Parley ings with Certain People of Importance in their Day,' will be published in this country by Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

THE Brooklyn Magazine changes its name to the American Magazine in April. In future it will be illustrated.

THE Philadelphia correspondent of the American Bookseller says that Mr. J. M. Stoddart is rejoicingover the great success of Lippincott's Magazine under his management. Mr. Stoddart states that the sale has increased tenfold.

OWING to the large demand for Minto's 'Manual of English Prose Literature,' the publishers, Ginn & Co. announce that they have decided to print it here.

in place of importing the sheets. They will thus be enabled to reduce the price from $2 to $1.50.

WENDELL PHILLIPS GARRISON has edited and D. Lothrop & Co. will shortly publish a selection of 'Bed-Time Poetry' for children.

THE Boston Literary World states that Edward Everett Hale's book on Franklin in France' is now in print, making a volume of some 400 pages. The material employed is entirely new to the public, only three of the many letters of Franklin given having ever before been printed. Four portraits, also unfamiliar to Americans, will be included in the volume.

T. B. PETERSON BROS. announce that over two hundred thousand copies of John Habberton's "Helen's Babies' have been printed and sold. They have just issued a new edition.

THE March St. Nicholas will contain a sketch of the boyhood of T. B. Aldrich.

MESSRS. HARPER & BROS. have in preparation a memoir of Charles Reade, by the Rev. Compton Reade and Charles Luton Reade.

MESSRS. PUTNAMS announce that a large propor tion of the 600 sets, to which their edition of the works of Benjamin Franklin is limited, have been subscribed for.

MR. S. S. Cox, whose recent sickness we deplore, hopes to publish in the spring 'The Diversions of a Diplomat.'

TICKNOR & Co. have issued Happy Dodd,' by Rose Terry Cooke; Scott's 'Lay of the Last Minstrel,' edited by W. J. Rolfe; and a new novel by the author of 'Margaret Kent'--'Sons and Daughters,' a story of Philadelphia life.

HARPER & BROS. have nearly ready Dr. Franz Reber's History of Medieval Art'; 'Retrospections of America,-1797-1811,' by John Bernard, the author of Retrospections of the Stage,' and 'Haifa, or Life in Modern Palestine,' by Lawrence Oliphant.

F. T. JONES & Co. of New York, have published an edition of Manon Lescaut,' with M. Leloir's illustrations.

MESSRS. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co. have published The Pioneer Quakers,' by R. P. Hallowell; a parchment paper edition of 'The Heart of the Weed'; 'Shakspere's Insomnia and the Causes Thereof,' by Franklin H. Head; 'The Golden Justice,' by W. H. Bishop; and The Emancipation of Massachusetts,' by Brooks Adams. Messrs. Houghton, will also publish Bret Harte's new story 4 The Millionaire.'

KARL KRON'Ss 'Ten Thousand Miles on a Bicycle' has been at last published and can be obtained of the author whose address is University Building, New York.

MR. DE WITT SELIGMAN'S new literary weekly, which is to combine the reputed excellences of the Saturday Review and Spectator while avoiding the priggishness of the one and the ponderosity of the other, is to be called the Epoch. The new venture will aim also to steer clear of the femininity of the Critic and the lean and slippered gravity of the Nation.

FROM his private press at New Haven, Conn., Mr. 'W. J. Linton has issued two poetical pamphlets.

One is entitled 'In Dispraise of a Woman: Catullus with Variations,' and consists of thirty-two renderings of the four verses commencing "Nulli se dicit mulier.' The other brochure 'Good Counsel' contains nine tiny poems fashioning forth nine "morall vertues." The edition of each is limited to 25 copies.

IN the April number of the American (Brooklyn) Magazine will appear an article on 'Literary Life in Boston,' profusely illustrated.

MR. RIDEING, the Boston correspondent of The Critic, states that Mr. Underwood our consul at Glasgow is at work on a series of articles on American literature for Good Words.

MISS KATE HILLARD, who has made a special study of Dante, is translating his prose work, ‘Il Convito,' and hopes to have it ready in about a year. The work will contain translations of the notes and comments of the best Italian editors, and of the dedicatory epistles to Can Grande, and also all the references found in the 'Convito' to Dante's other writings. Full consideration will be given to the different theories concerning Beatrice.

MR. CASPAR of Milwaukee has issued a prospectus of a General Directory of the American Book, News, and Stationery Trade, and Kindred Branches, wholesale and retail, of the United States and Canada.' The following is a synopsis of the contents of the volume:- 1. All firms in a General Alphabet; with full information in regard to their nature, their specialities, etc.; firm changes of Publishers, Manufacturing Stationers, Jobbers, etc.; the approximate commercial standing and the present Post Office Address of all firms, etc.; II. Digest of the Trade Lists of the various Book Publishers; III. Digest of the Trade Lists of the Manufacturing and Jobbing Stationers, and the Blank Book and Paper Makers; iV. Geographically according to States and Towns; V. According to Specialties of firms represented; VI. Theory and Practice of the Book and Stationery Trade; Hints and Suggestions to Booksellers, News Dealers and Stationers; Trade Bibliographies, Trade Journals, etc. The price to subscribers will be eight dollars net, to non-subscribers twelve dollars net. The book will be issued from the office of the Publishers' Weekly, New York.

FOREIGN NOTES.

MR. WRIGHT of the Plymouth Public Library is writing a work on Kissing.' Its title will probably not be 'Lip-service.'

THE Villon Society's 'Decameron' is in the binder's hauds and will be published at once. All the copies were subscribed for, one London bookseller alone taking fifty.

WE understand that Messrs. Chapman & Hall have arranged for the issue of what it is hoped will be a really satisfactory edition of 'The Pickwick Papers.' The new edition will probably be published on the day of the Queen's accession, and it will con tain facsimiles of all the original drawings, including some never yet published.

THE next volume in the Eminent Women' series will be 'Mrs. Siddons,' by Mrs. A Kennard. MESSRS. MACMILLAN & Co. announce:- The Life of James Fraser, Bishop of Manchester,' by Thomas Hughes, Q. C.; 'The Life of l'eter de Wint,' by J. Comyns Carr, illustrated with twenty photo

gravures from the artist's pictures; Romantic Love and Personal Beauty; their Development, Causal Relation, History, and Natural Peculiarity,' by Henry T. Finck, two vols.; "The Song of the Nibelung' translated into English verse by Alfred E. Foster-Barham; 'Godliness and Manliness,' a miscellany of brief papers touching the relation of religion to life, by John W. Diggle, M. A.

MESSRS. LONGMANS have in the press a volume of papers on gambling, &c., by Mr. R. A. Proctor, entitled 'Chance and Luck.'

HENRY STEVENS & SON announce the fourth part of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads' edited by Prof. Child of Harvard.

A NEW collection of short stories by Mr. Grant Allen will presently be issued by Messrs. Chatto & Windus, under the title The Beckoning Hand.'

MR. MURRAY has issued Dr. J. H. H. Guillemard's record of travel 'The Cruise of the Marchesa to Kamschatka and New Guinea.' The work also describes generally the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Maps accompany the text, which is embellished with upwards of 150 illustrations.

MR. SWINBURNE's new patriotic song, 'A Word for the Navy' is said to be a fiery denunciation of those whom he believes to be antagonistic to the welfare of England. It will appear immediately in Mrs. Davenport Adams's anthology Sea-Song and River-Rhyme.'

PROF. MAHAFFY'S 'Rambles and Studies in Greece,' now out of print, will appear very shortly in a third edition, with many additions of new matter and corrections to bring the book up to the present date.

THE second volume of Prof. Pfleiderer's 'Philos ophy of Religion,' now in press, will include not only many corrections and additions by the author, but also some new matter on the English philosophers of the present day.

THE first fasciculus of an extensive 'Dictionnaire Théorique et Pratique d'Electricité et de Magnétisme,' edited by MM. G. Dumont, Maurice Leblanc, and E. de Labédoyère has been published in Paris. The work will extend to about twenty-five parts.

MESSRS. LONGMAN & Co. have published a work on Railway Problems: an Inquiry into the Conditions of Railway Working in Different Countries,' by Mr. J. S. Jeans, Secretary to the Iron and Steel Institute.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & BOWES, of Cambridge, are about to issue by subscription, in an edition limited to one hundred and fifty copies, facsimiles of the three first works issued from the Cambridge The books are typographical press of Siberch. curiosities. Some valuable notes on Siberch by the late Henry Bradshaw, who was greatly interested in the scheme, will be given in the first volume, the 'Oratio habita Cantabrigiæ' of Henry Bullock 1521.

IT is said that Mr. Ernest Coleridge's 'Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge' has made great progress, and is likely to be published early this year. Mr. Hall Caine's short biography of Coleridge was announced for January 20th.

THE next volume in the "English Worthies" series will be 'Canning,' written by Mr. Frank H.Hill, the late editor of the London Daily News.

'THE next volume in the "Badminton Library," tobe published in February, will be 'Cycling' written by Lord Bury and Mr. G. Lacy Hillier.

MR. WILLIAM DAVENPORT ADAMS has in the press a 'Dictionary of the Drama; A Guide to the Plays, Players, Play-writers, and Play-houses of the United Kingdom and America.' It will be published by Messrs. Chatto and Windus.

MESSRS. LONGMANS are about to publish Part I.. of a new and enlarged edition of Professor Bain's 'Rhetoric and Composition.' In this edition the author proposes to omit a number of the topics comprised in the existing work, and to bestow a greatly expanded treatment upon points selected on account of their importance as well as their suitability to pupils of a certain standing. This first Part will be accompanied by a small volume entitled 'On Teaching English,' which is partly controversial and partly didactic. It discusses the various methods of English teaching at present in use, and exemplifies the rhetorical method in a series of select lessons. It. also handles, at some length, the vexed question of the Definition of Poetry.

AIDED by Mr. Justin Huntly McCarthy, M. P., Lady Burton is preparing, more especially for her own sex, an edition of her husband's translation of the 'Arabian Nights.' In her preface, Lady Burton says:-"I want to give to the English public for family reading, the real thing. Not the drawingroom tales which have been put before them as the 'Arabian Nights' for the past one hundred and. eighty years." That full confidence may be felt in the satisfactory manner in which the book has been prepared for household reading will be inferred from the fact that Her Majesty, the Queen, has ac-cepted the first copy issued. Lady Burton's edition will consist of six volumes, and will be issued by subscription, at three guineas. Applications for copies can be made to Lady Burton direct at 23Dorset Street, Portman Square, London, W.

M. FRANCOIS COPPEE is publishing in the Parti National a new work, Fille de Tristesse.'

MR. ALLEN, of Orpington, announces 'Christ's Folk in the Apennine: Reminiscences of her friends among the Tuscan Peasantry,' by Francesca Alexander; edited by Mr. Ruskin. Part I. 'The Peace of Polissena.'

A NEW book by Mr. John Wilson, entitled 'Aenigma Vita' is to be published by Messrs. Hodder & Stoughton. It is the outcome of quiet musings on the great problems of human life and modern thought on the part of one sojourning in quest of health in a Swiss retreat.

MR. FRED G. KITTON, the author of 'Dickensiana, is preparing for publication a comprehensive work entitled 'Dickens Portrayed by Pen and Pencil.' His primary object is to give a complete description of the numerous portraits of Dickens with illustrative anecdotes of the circumstances attending the production of each particular portrait. It is also part of the author's scheme to record the impressions produced by the great novelist's personality on the minds of the eminent men with whom he came in contact-Carlyle, Harriet Martineau, G. H. Lewes, G. A. Sala, Edmund Yates, etc. Not the least im portant feature of the book will be a series of engraved portraits of Dickens, from 1835 to 1870, some of

IN a recent catalogue a complete collection of first For the editions of Tennyson is offered for sale. forty-one volumes $262.50 is asked.

GEORGE HENRY LEWES's Life of Goethe' has reached a fifteenth edition in its German translation. AT a recent meeting of the Burns Club in Glasgow it was resolved to erect, on a rocky point overlooking the Clyde, an obelisk as a memorial to "Highland Mary." The necessary funds will be raised by public subscription.

IT has been supposed that the name 'Columbia' was first used in America in 1775; but Col. Albert H. Hoyt has found it in a volume of poems composed in 1761, mostly by Harvard graduates, in commemoration of George II. and congratulation of George III., and in poems printed in the Massachusetts Gazette of April 26th, 1764.

THE 'Pilgrim's Progress' has been translated into Japanese, and illustrated by a native artist. This makes the eighty-first language into which the 'Pilgrim' has been rendered.

MR. R. BROWN, JR., of Barton-on-Humber, Eng., has privately printed a pamphlet on 'Totemism.'

A CAPITAL portrait in water colour of Charles Lamb, as he appeared in 1819, by G. F. Joseph, has been found in an extra-illustrated copy of Byron's English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' recently purchased for the British Museum.

MR. ASHBY STERRY writes in the Bookbuyer: "Another book which will be gladly welcomed is "The Childhood and Youth of Charles Dickens' by Robert Langton. It contains no less than sixty illustrations. Among them may be noted the birth-place of the novelist at Portsea, the house in Ordnance Place, the Navy Pay Yacht; the "Mitre," Chatham; the 'Bull Inn," Rochester; the Theatre Royal, the Prior's Gate, the Old Bridge, the Cedars at Gadshill, Cobham Church, and the "Leather Bottle." A few large paper copies will be issued."

DR. STEINSCHNEIDER has completed his bibliographical supplement to Benjacob's 'Treasure of Hebrew Books' (in Hebrew, Wilna, 1880), which is arranged alphabetically according to titles. Dr. Steinschneider will also supply an alphabetical list of authors. These two volumes may be considered as the omega of Hebrew bibliography.

THE Benchers of Lincoln's Inn have given leave to the Society of Arts to put a tablet over the chambers of Secretary Thurlowe, the friend of Oliver Cromwell and co-secretary with Milton to the Commonwealth.

MR. GRANT ALLEN, in an article in the Nineteenth Century, entitled Falling in Love,' speaks of fiction as follows: "I do not approve of novels. They are for the most part a futile and unprofitable form of literature; and it may profoundly be regretted that the mere blind laws of supply and demand should have diverted such an immense number of the ablest minds in England, France and America from more serious subjects to the production of such very frivolous and, on the whole, ephemeral works of art." Mr. Grant Allen's last novel, by-the-way, has not been republished in America. It is a West Indian story, entitled In all Shades.'

MR. P. W. CLAYDEN, 13 Tavistock Square, London, is preparing for publication the letters addressed to the poet Rogers. There is reason to believe that many such letters exist in America, and Mr. Clayden will be very greatly obliged if the owners will send copies to him at the above address.

MR. BUXTON FORMAN Writes: "In case publishers pay any heed to the views of book-readers and booklovers, I should like to record my vote against cutting and gilding the top of any book which is not bound but merely put up in a cloth case. Gilt tops are as suitable to one format as another; but for cloth-cased books of whatever size they are unsuitable, because the pressure to which the leaves are subjected is not nearly so great as that to which bound books are subjected by a regular binder. Thus the leaves of a clothcased book are not absolutely close together; and if the top edges are shaved smooth for gilding, dust settling on the top finds its way down between the leaves, whereas that roughness which Mr. Evans describes as "a trap for the dust," at the top of a book which has been cut open with a paper-knife, is a very useful trap: it catches the dust on its way down and keeps it at the top till you remove it-an operation which is very simple." There is another good reason for not gilding the top edge of cloth bound books. In case they have to be re-bound in calf or morocco this preliminary gilding has to be cut off, thereby reducing the margin, a process which is very disfiguring in most cases, as average printers seem to delight in "skimping" that part of their pages.

MR. J. WATKIN WILLIAMS writes to the Spectator:"Will you allow me to call attention to the growing habit among publishers of fastening the sheets of books by wiring, instead of stitching them? It may, for all the suffering public knows, be less troublesome, or cheaper, or perhaps less liable to come undone. But in any climate less damp than the Sahara, these wires are liable to rust, and eat through the paper which they are supposed to fasten. I have many books in such a state that a good shake would bring out three-fourths of the sheets. One of these, which ought never to need a stronger binding than its origi nal cloth, is a somewhat bulky and costly volume, and when I explained its condition to its publisher he assured me with perfect civility that publishers would continue to use this method of wiring books until bookbuyers made it clear that they would endure it no longer. Will you, Sir, help them to say it clearly? [Mr. Williams knows little of the ways of publishers if he thinks that the wishes of the public have the slightest influence with them. Publishers are apt to think that they "know their own business best," a popular delusion entertained by many industrious people who fail to get on in life. It is the source of about four-fifths of the commercial failures. It is an error born of ignorance and nursed by vanity. ED. BOOKMART.]

IT has been calculated that the price paid by Mr. Quaritch for Brereton's Virginia, $1325, was about thirty-three times the weight of the book in gold.

MR. F. S. ELLIS announces that very considerable progress has been made with the projected concordance-lexicon to Shelley's poetry. More than one-half of the 32,026 lines of which Shelley's poetical works consist is indexed and revised.

THE new poem which Mr. Browning is about to publish is said to be autobiographical in spirit rather than dramatic. The poet tells in it his thoughts concerning life-what he holds to be the function of relig on, art, and science in the spiritual development of the human race. Longer than Ferishta's Fancies,' the poem has a prologue and an epilogue.