UNCLE REMUS.

His Songs and his Sayings. By JOEL CHANDLER HARRIS. New and revised edition, with 112 Illustrations by A. B. FROST. 12mo, cloth, $2.00.

It is unnecessary to say anything in praise of Mr. A. B. Frost's unfaltering individuality, his instant realization of types, his quaint and unexpected turns of humor, and the constant quality of absolutely true and individual pictorial expression of things American. Of the enthu

siasm and perfect comprehension and sympathy shown in his 112 drawings the public can judge, and there can be no doubt that the verdict will stamp these pictures as the artist's crowning work in illustration. This is the final, the definitive edition of Mr. Harris's masterpiece.

GUSTAVE FLAUBERT,

As seen in his Works and Correspondence. By JOHN CHARLES TARVER. With Portrait. 8vo, buckram, $4.00.

No one who is genuinely interested in literature can afford to neglect this much-needed and valuable book. It furnishes both a critical biography and, in a sense, an autobiography, for the letters permit a more intimate acquaintance with the spirit and aims of the great realist. The interesting personages who appear here and there in these pages and the author's associations increase the value of one of the most important literary biographies of recent years.

"It is surprising that this extremely interesting correspondence has not been Englished before."- London Athenarum.

"This handsome volume is welcome. . . . It merits a cordial reception if for no other reason than to make a large section of the English public more intimately acquainted with the foremost champion of art for art's sake. . . . The letters are admirably translated, and in the main the book is written with skill and verve.” — London Academy.

THE BEGINNINGS OF WRITING. By WALTER J. HOFFMAN, M.D., of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution. A new volume in the Anthropological Series, edited by Prof. FREDERICK STARR. Illustrated. 12mo, cloth, $1.75.

Professor Hoffman, one of the most successful workers in the field of American ethnology, presents the first steps in the development of writing from tangible reminders like quipus and wampum belts, through picture writing to phonetic writing with an alphabet. These first steps are described especially as they are shown among North American tribes. Our native peoples made much use of reminders; they drew truly expressive pictures; they developed complicated systeins of pictography; and some peoples of Mexico and Central America were passing from the use of idiograms to phonograms. This transition period is most interesting. In clear and popular language Professor Hoffman sets forth the latest results of scientific study, and his references are illustrated with many helpful pictures.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NUMBER, And its Applications to Methods of Teaching Arithmetic. By JAMES A. MCLELLAN, A.M., LL.D., Principal of the Ontario School of Pedagogy, Toronto, and JOHn Dewey, Ph.D., Head Professor of Philosophy in the University of Chicago. International Education Series, Vol. 33. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.

It is believed that this work will supply a special want. There is no subject taught in the elementary schools that taxes the teacher's resources as to methods and devices to a greater extent than arithmetic, and none that is more dangerous to the pupil in the way of deadening his mind and arresting its development, if bad methods are used. The authors of this book have presented in an admirable manner the psychological view of number, and shown its applications to the correct methods of teaching the several arithmetical processes.

THE STARK MUNRO LETTERS. Being a Series of Twelve Letters written by J. STARK MUNRO, M.B., to his Friend and Fellow-Student, Herbert Swanborough, of Lowell, Mass., 1881-1884. Edited and arranged by A. CONAN DOYLE, author of "Round the Red Lamp," "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," etc. With 8 fullpage Illustrations. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.

This original and dramatic story presents fresh types, extraordinary situations, and novel suggestions with a freshness and vigor which show that the romancer's heart was in his work. How far certain incidents of the story are based upon personal experiences it is impossible to say, but the unflagging interest and unexpected phases of the romance are no less in evidence than the close personal relations established between author and reader.

THE MOTTOES AND COMMENTARIES OF FRIEDRICH FROEBEL'S MOTHER PLAY.

"Mother Communings and Mottoes" rendered into English Verse by HENRIETTA R. ELIOT, and "Prose Commentaries" translated by SUSAN E. BLOW. With 48 full-page Illustrations. Vol. 31, International Education Series. 12mo, cloth, $1.50.

The increased interest in kindergarten work and the demand for a clearer exposition of Froebel's philosophy than has heretofore appeared have made a new version of the "Mother Play" an imperative necessity. No one is better equipped for such a work than Miss Blow, as her late book, "Symbolic Education," has attested. In the "Mottoes and Commentaries" the original pictures have been faithfully reproduced, except where bad drawing rendered slight changes necessary. It is an attractive volume of a convenient size, and a book of specific value to mothers as well as to teachers of every grade. It will be followed shortly by another volume containing the songs and games.

NOT COUNTING THE COST.

By TASMA. No. 175, Town and Country Library. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

This novel seems likely to be accounted the most ambitious work of its talented and successful author. The literary value of her work has been abundantly recognized, but "Not Counting the Cost" is certain to add to her reputation and increase her popularity.

OUT OF DUE SEASON.

A Mezzotint. By ADELINE SERGEANT. No. 176, Town and
Country Library. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
The development of Miss Sergeant's power is well shown in this
strong and significant study of life and character.

SCYLLA OR CHARYBDIS?

A Novel. By RHODA BROUGHTON, author of "Nancy," "A Beginner," etc. No. 177, Town and Country Library. 12mo, paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.

The new story by this popular author will be found full of human interest, agreeable, and entertaining.

THE WATTER'S MOU'.

By BRAM STOKER. 16mo, cloth, 75 cents.

This is a singularly dramatic story of the English coast, worked out with excellent command of forceful motives and an abundant power of graphic description.

THE DIAL (founded in 1880) is published on the 1st and 16th of each month. TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION, $2.00 a year in advance, postage prepaid in the United States, Canada, and Mexico; in other countries comprised in the Postal Union, 50 cents a year for extra postage must be added. Unless otherwise ordered, subscriptions will begin with the current number. REMITTANCES should be by check, or by express or postal order, payable to THE DIAL. SPECIAL RATES TO CLUBS and for subscriptions with other publications will be sent on application; and SAMPLE COPY on receipt of 10 cents. ADVERTISING RATES furnished on application. All communications should be addressed to

OLIVER Wendell HOLMES. (Obiit October 7, 1894.)

He that so often bade us smile,—

What later whim hath bid us weep? ?
Or was it some new jest, that while
He jested he should fall asleep?
His mirth, we now remember, stood
Next neighbor always to regret.
Responding to his merriest mood,

We often found our lashes wet.

With courtly quip, and kindly scoff,
And laughter never long or loud,
His fun was not the common stuff,
His fancy fooled not for the crowd;
But, Humor's mild aristocrat,

He bowed him through these busy days,
Half wondering what the world was at,
And shrewdly smoothing it with praise.
And now he lives but in his page,
Where wit and wisdom are comprised,—
The gentlest breeding of the age
Most graciously epitomized.

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.

THE ITALIAN NOVEL OF THE YEAR. One of the foremost books of the in Italy, year and certainly the foremost novel, has been Girolamo Rovetta's "La Baraonda." Signor Rovetta has been held, for some time, to be one of the cleverest of the Verists; but he has done nothing which has met with the amount of attention bestowed on "La Baraonda." There are particular reasons for this. The novel is entertaining as literature, but it is also striking as an epitome of the precise social, political, and moral crisis through which Italy is now passing. One may go further, and say that Signor Rovetta's book gives the measure of a crisis in the evolution of the whole Latin race-a crisis than which it has known none more serious. This means much; and it explains the mark which the book has made, and the fact that thoughtful minds should have occupied themselves so much with it.

"Baraonda" is an untranslatable word. It is nearer in meaning to the French "Débâcle" than to any work that we have in English. It signifies a crumbling to pieces, a going down, a breaking up, a foundering. The main motif of Signor Rovetta's novel is the career of one Cantasirena, formerly friend and associate of Giuseppe Garibaldi in the liberation of Italy, and now become, by a gradual

descent through devious ways, a bombastic, mellifluent, tireless, and an utterly unscrupulous promoter of bubble companies. This character is a type, a creation. It is drawn with a masterly hand. Cantasirena has a niece, who has beauty and a voice, and whose moral sense is about what might be expected from the precepts and practices current in the household where she has been brought up, where friends under one pretext or another are dexterously relieved of ten-franc notes to pay waiting cabs. Acquaintances and strangers are manipulated for loans that are never paid back, and the air is perpetually filled either with the infuriated denunciations of ancient dupes, or the orotund discourses of the great Canasirena drawing new ones into the nets of countless associations and societies that spring into being, fully organized, from hour to hour, in his fertile brain. The niece succeeds in marrying the Duke of Casalbara, an elderly viveur, but the possessor of an ancient name and of untarnished reputation and honor. The end is to be expected. TheZio Matteo uses the Casalbara influence to float a wild-cat scheme on a gigantic scale, the government lends its support, and we have the whole tragi-comedy of the Panama scandals, and of the Giolitti and Banca Romana infamies, unrolled before us.

Signor Rovetta wastes no time in pointing morals; but he goes his way, and says his say, with a cynical frankness that drives the nail in to the head. The book must indeed be a sad one to that generation of Italians who, high hopes and lofty enthusiasms burning in their souls, gathered about the noble spirits that fought with their blood, and toiled with their brain, for a United Italy. Where is the pure and ardent patriotism, where is the devotion to the most unselfish ideals, of Mazzini, Garibaldi, Cavour? What has become of these things, through which Italy was united, in the Italy of to-day? Signor Rovetta has allowed them to survive in one character of his latest book, that of the old soldier who, having lost his leg in the Garibaldian wars, now stumps it on a wooden one, but whose faith has never dimmed; who lives on in the service of the unspeakable rascal and charlatan Cantasirena, in candid ignorance and innocence of all that passes beneath his eyes, still ingenuously and heroically glazing in that great past ware of exalted patriotism, which to Cantasirena is a magniloquent catch-word to entice victims mad with the desire to get rich, and faithfully, from the bottom of his honest heart, crying "Viva l'Italia!" in response to that individual's sonorous harangues. One grows fond of the old soldier. What has been debased into a cloak for every humbuggery and corruption in others is still a great and disinterested sentiment to his simple soul. He alone purifies a little the atmosphere in which Signor Rovetta's knaves and fools and dupes and tricksters move and have their vulgar and sordid being.

It has been said that "La Baraonda" derives its value from the accuracy with which it has caught the social, economical, and political phase through

which modern Italy is now passing; through which, in a wider sense, the whole Latin race is now passing. No one who has studied the two countries can fail to have been struck with the similarity of social phenomena there occurring. The Panama and Giolitti scandals did not come so near together for nothing. They are symptoms of deep-lying causes. The pressure of the new industrial conditions, the money-fever that has spread over the world with the enormous extension that commercial enterprise has taken on, are having an effect upon the Latin peoples which presents some very curious aspects. It may be said, roughly generalizing a very complex consensus of phenomena, that money-looked upon in the position which it has and as the power which it is in modern life—and the Latin genius, are incompatible entities. Modern industrialism, in its essence, tends to create material needs in the individual, that it may supply them. That is its whole process. The race which develops these needs in the greatest number, and is most dependent upon their gratification, is the Anglo-Saxon. The uses to which the Englishman, left entirely to himself, puts wealth, and the uses to which the Italian, or Frenchman, also quite uninfluenced, would naturally put it, are different from the root up. The conception of luxury, in the Latin race, has never been separated from æsthetic conceptions. Money has meant art, in some form or other; in different words, it has the satisfaction of a certain inborn desire for that sort of grace-harmony in the surroundings which affects the spirit rather than the flesh. There is no denying that we of the English-speaking race are more materialistic. Money means, to us, before it means anything else, bodily comforts: the comforts under the guarding shield of which all the natural processes of sleep, digestion, etc., go on most easily and perfectly. Perhaps it has not been sufficiently considered how ethically dangerous such a view of comfort might become, if pushed to the extreme. However this may be, it has certainly acted, so far, upon the races with whom it is not indigenous as a very perilous dissolvent and disintegrator.

Exacting in the æsthetic direction, the Latin peoples have hitherto been content with comparatively little materially. But now that the rage for material possessions has infected them, their more sensitively-responsive nervous organization has been led to exaggerate the desire into a sort of frenzy. They are not moving along a line natural to them, and they have lost their balance.

There never was a sadder, a more ignominious, collapse of great dreams, noble ideals, than that which within this generation has befallen Italy. Its tottering financial condition has aided the causes just outlined to give impetus to a speculative mania that invades, in some shape, all classes of society. Bearers of historic names who formerly would have supported reduced circumstances in dignified retirement, secure in their station, and disdainful of advantages of the sort that any parvenu possessed of