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he has succeeded, for one can easily imagine that they are just such incidents as might take place under the eye of a watchful minister at the time. French History seems to be an inexhaustible field for both the French and English novelists, and Mr. Weyman has made a place for himself in it that puts him beside Dumas and Doyle. The book is well illustrated with half tones of wash drawings.

Doctor Gray's Quest.'

IF ONE were inclined to criticize Doctor Underwood's last novel it would be done in a kindly spirit and with full knowledge that its brilliant author was beyond the reach of both advice and praise. He died a few months after the book appeared. Doctor Gray's Quest follows the line of thought and description used by Henry Ward Beecher in his charming novel, "Norwood." The scene is laid in a New England town in the early part of the century and the characters, with the exception of the Kenmore family and their friends, are Yankees.

The harsh stern religion of the village magnate, Winterton, the keen good-natured humor and unswerving loyalty of Ezekiel Collins, the practical common sense and justice of Esquire White, the shrewdness and self-possession of Mercy Starkweather, and the single-mindedness of James Gray, combined with the individuality and quaintness of the inhabitants of Little Canaan, are pictured with a powerful brush and form a group of characters that become living friends. The author is best at description. His love passages are not so well done. One takes but little interest in the final outcome of James Gray and Flora Kenmore's affair. It is a trifle insipid. Mercy Starkweather is by far the most interesting and most strongly drawn character in the book. One finds himself wondering as to her after life in France, as he lays down the book. Anything might happen to her. She is of the stuff of which great actresses and famous queens are made.

Daudet's Fromont Junior and Risler Senior.2

A NEW edition of Daudet's works is always welcomed by a big reading public in America. No French writer living has a larger number of 'Doctor Gray's Quest. By Francis H. Underwood. Boston: Lee and Shepard: 1895. $1.75.

Fromont Junior and Risler Senior. By Alphonse Daudet. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company: 1895.

admirers on this side of the water. Lippincott has brought out a new and large edition of one of Daudet's best known and most generally read novels - Fromont Funior and Risler Senior. It has been translated with great care by Edward Vizetelly and illustrated with eighty-eight wood engravings from original drawings by George Roux. In every respect the edition is the most perfect and praiseworthy that has appeared in English.

The story is too well known to need reviewing and is one that will be read by generation after generation. It is a classic.

Dumas's Two Dianas,3

DIANE DE POITIERS possesses a fascination for the reader of French history during the reign of Henri II. that is too real to be overlooked. No historian can ignore her influence on events, and Dumas has recognized in her and her court material for one of his most brilliant romances. The period of French history between the years 1540 and 1574, covering as it did the epoch of the Reformation and the driving of the English out of Calais, is filled with enough heroic incident and figures to please the most fastidious historical novel reader. In The Two Dianas Dumas has made use of fewer imaginary characters and scenes than in almost any other of his historical romances. The historical characters introduced and made to live are the great Guises, Catherine De Medici, Constable Anne De Montmorency, Prince de Condé, Coligny, and the leaders of the Reformation - John Calvin, La Renaudie, Theodore de Bèze, Ambroise Pare-besides Henri II. and his brood of young kings.

Almost this same period, closing with the massacre of St. Bartholomew, is covered by Balzac in his "Catherine de Medici,” and it is interesting to note wherein the two great novelists diverge and agree in their estimates of the characters of the time. Dumas treats Catherine with scant courtesy and glorifies Le Balafre Guise, while Balzac apologizes for Catherine's acts and lays the blame for the persecution of the Huguenots and the death of the young king François II. on the Guises. Dumas paints a charming picture of Mary Stuart and enlists all the reader's sympathies in her behalf, while Balzac considers her a character too weak for serious thought. The theater of The Two Dianas is much broader than that of "Catherine de Medici," as it deals with the field as well as with

3 The Two Dianas. By Alexandre Dumas. Three vols. Boston: Little, Brown and Company: 1894.

the court.

The defense of St. Quentin and the storming of Calais are two of the most thrilling scenes in the story. While the love passages between the hero of the story, the young Count de Montgomery, and Diane de Poitiers's daughter, the other Diane, are charming. The real interest from first to last is the story of the intrigues that grew and flourished about the throne. There is not a dull page in the narrative from beginning to end.

The three volumes are illustrated and handsomely bound, uniform with the entire editions of Dumas's novels by the same publishing house.

The Little Huguenot.1

The Little Huguenot is a sweet little story of a semi-historical character. It depicts an episode in the licentious court of Louis, "the well beloved" of France, in which a Jesuit priest saves the honor of a Huguenot widow. The book is brightly written and the scenes are graphically painted. It can be read in an hour, and will 'do the reader no harm. It is said to have had a big sale, and has no doubt pleased nine readers out of ten even if it has not benefited them. The edition contains a portrait of the author.

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Houghton, Mifflin & Co's Riverside Literature Series is the result of a wish on the part of the publishers to issue in a cheap form for school use the most interesting and instructive masterpieces of such writers as Longfellow, Whittier, Holmes, Lowell, Hawthorne, etc.

In order that the reader may be brought into the closest possible contact with the author, each masterpiece is given as it was written, unaltered and unabridged, and the notes, while sufficiently helpful, are not so voluminous that the reader's mind is occupied with the editor rather than with the author.

The numbers already issued have been extensively used for the study of Language, for the study of Literature, for Supplementary Reading, and as substitutes for the graded Readers. In whatever way they may be used, the principal benefit to be derived from them will be the formation of a taste in the reader for the best and most enduring literature; this taste the pupil will carry with him when he leaves school, and it will remain through life a powerful means of self-education.

Mr. Eric Mackay, concerning whom the amusing mistake was lately made in The Bookman of calling him Miss Marie Corelli's son, rather than her brother, has just issued a new volume of poems. "The Love Letters of a Violinist," his former book attained a tremendous sale both in England and America. Mr. Mackay has popularity, which is a rare thing nowadays for a writer of verse. "A Song of the Sea, My Lady of Dreams, and Other Poems" is the title of the new volume, which is to be issued by Stone & Kimball.

66

THE Commercial Traveler, the organ of the Pacific Coast Commercial Travelers' Association, comes to us this month under the editorship of D. M. Frazer a well known newspaper man of the city.

The editorials are lucid and clean cut, and the advice to Commercial Travelers to unite for their own protection and that of the firms they repre

'The Little Huguenot. By Max Pemberton. New York; Dodd, Mead & Company: 1895. 750.

sent is good. Mr. Barr, the proprietor, gives the P. C. C. T. A. an organ of which they should be proud.

The Land of Sunshine, Los Angeles's charming little magazine, improves in interest with each number. Mr. Charles F. Lummis has given it the atmosphere and flavor of Southern California, which in itself is enough to make it a favorite wherever it goes. Its pictures are superb and its reading matter bright, breezy, and up to date. May it wax fat and grow strong, if only to prove that California enjoys literature above the Durrant Case type. This Coast will support half a dozen magazines when it has had half a dozen magazines to make it aware that all the good things do not come from the Atlantic Coast.

CHARLES HOWARD SHINN has written for Messrs. D. Appleton & Company soon to be published "The Story of the Mine." It is the second volume of "The Story of the West Series," of which each number is intended to present a picture peculiar and characteristic of the country beyond the Missouri River. However the writers who have been chosen to depict the Indian, the trapper, the soldier, the explorer, and the railroad builder, may handle their subjects, the readers of Mr. Shinn's many brilliant contributions to the OVERLAND will have perfect confidence that the Mine and the Miner will receive a practical and sympathetic treatment in his hands, and will look forward with pleasure to the appearance of his work.

*

"The Panglima Muda" is a romance of Malaya by Rounsevelle Wildman, editor of the "OVERLAND MONTHLY," in which journal it appeared as a serial. We read it at the time, and with great pleasure and much profit. Mr. Wildman spent some years in the Malayan Archipelago and in the land in which the scenes of this romantic story are laid. The book takes one into a life of which the many know but little, and lets us in to view the civilization of some of the strangest and most romantic people of the earth. The story is graceful, scholarly, witty, and graphic. Sacramento, Cal., Record-Union.

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Other Books Received.

Lively Plays for Live People. By Thomas Stewart Denison. Chicago: T. S. Denison : 1895.

Autocrat of the Breakfast Table. By Oliver Wendell Holmes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 50 cents.

Twice-Told-Tales. By Nathaniel Hawthorne. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 60 cents. Stenotypy. By Rev. D. A. Quinn. Providence, R. I.: 1895.

Report on Total Eclipse of Sun observed at Mina Bronces, Chile. By J. M. Schaeberle. Publications of the Lick Observatory.

God Forsaken. By Frederic Breton. G. P. Putnam's Sons: New York: 1895.

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AN IDEA suggests itself as one stands before that vast monument to the commerce of the 20th Century on Market Street, San Francisco,-The Emporium. Passers may not have given the subject a thought as they hurried back and forth day after day as this building neared completion,- for this is the day of great buildings, but this Emporium building is the greatest of its kind on earth. The idea that suggests itself is,- Would it not be interesting to place in the heart of this structure- the climax of the architect's skill a museum, showing by models or object lessons the development of commerce in its many branches from the first dawning of primitive barter VOL. xxvi.-36.

down to the present methods of trade, steel-steamships, Bon Marchés, and Emporium Buildings? Dugouts and wampum would furnish vistas of history that would cause the sight-seer more fully to realize that commerce as well as the sciences have influenced the development of the human race. The study of the stars and the study of the almighty dollar and what it represents have marched hand in hand down this vista of the ages, until their humble origin and first steps have been forgotten. There is a world of history and a world of human achievements mixed with the mortar and iron in one of these wonderful marts. The products from the utter

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A PORTION OF THE STEEL FRAMING. THE CIRCLE IN THE CENTER IS ONE HUNDRED FEET IN DIAMETER.

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