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Fuller's With the Procession. — Mrs. Prince's The Story of Christine Rochefort. - Stockton's The Adventures of Captain Horn.- Haggard's Heart of the World. Rhoscomyl's The Jewel of Ynys Galon. Zangwill's The Master. Sienkiewicz's Children of the Soil.- Couperus's Majesty.-Valdés's The Grandees.- Prince Schoenaich-Carolath's Melting Snows. -Schulze-Smidt's A Madonna of the Alps.--Sudermann's The Wish.

BRIEFS ON NEW BOOKS .

M. Bourget's impressions of America.- An effective
piece of dramatic writing. A drama for the closet.
Chronicles of Border Warfare.- Troubadours and
Courts of Love.- A new life of Archbishop Laud.-
War correspondence of the Crimea.- Music study in
Italy.

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SUMMER READING.

There are many, doubtless, to whom the sug gestion of a summer vacation largely devoted to reading, particularly if undertaken with profitable intent, will seem little better than a counsel of perfection. The strained nerves and the weary brain demand, they will urge, that whatever weeks or months may be annually snatched from the grasp of toil should be given up to recreation in its primitive sense, to the renewing of the exhausted vitality, to the rebuilding of the wasted tissue. At such times, the only books of which they will hear are those which the best authority tells us are to be found in running brooks, and the only sermons to which they are disposed to listen are the mute discourses of the stones upon sea-cliff or mountain-side. And there is undoubtedly a degree of tension, reached by many in our feverish latter-age life, from which relief is only possible upon condition of a complete, if temporary, abandonment of civilization with all its devices. We are impelled for a brief space to relapse into barbarism, and, seeking new strength by contact with the bare earth, to realize in our own experience the myth of Antæus.

But such relapses are not for long, and, the first joy of freedom and relaxation being at an end, the mental activities quickly reassert their need of occupation. The pendulum of life has soon swung all the way from the unendurable strain of daily recurrent labor to the equally unendurable ennui of prolonged idleness. The pure joy of existence may suffice for the moment, but the sense of vacuity sets in after a while, and imperatively calls for some form of diversion that shall not leave Nature to do all the recreative work. At such times, more forcibly perhaps than at any others, books offer us their serviceable solace, and we congratulate ourselves upon the instinctive foresight that led us to provide ourselves with such companions. Then, reclining upon shaded lawn or veranda, upon deck or seashore, or pine-clad mountain slope, fortified against the intrusions of care, and at peace with all the world, we enjoy in equal measure the ministries of Nature and of Art, as far removed from ennui as from toil, and the discords of life are resolved into the richest of harmonies.

What books are best suited to the needs of the long summer days? We have known a young man, in contemplation of an ocean voyage, to take with him the "Kritik der Reinen Vernunft." Luckily there was a library on the ship, and Kant remained undisturbed at the bottom of the traveller's trunk. On the other hand, there are too many people whose idea of a summer's literary provision becomes embodied in a package of ephemeral novels of varying degrees of unreality or imbecility, and an armful of illustrated periodicals. We hardly know which of the two extremes thus illustrated deserves the severer censure, but if either case is to have our sympathies it must be that of the Kantian student rather than that of the "Dodo"laden excursionist. The former, at least, has a rational motive, if his judgment be woefully at fault; the latter is, however unconsciously, doing his best to waste a golden opportunity. The rational person will take neither Kant nor "Dodo" to his place of summer resort, for he will know that there is a grateful mean between the substantial but not easily digestible quality of the one and the mere frothiness of the other. He will know, for one thing, that there is an abundance of literature which is of the very best, yet which makes no strenuous demand upon the faculties, which can hold the attention without conscious effort, so smooth is the flow and so harmonious the form. What reading, for example, could be more ideally fit for the long summer afternoons than the poetry of the "Faëry Queene" or the "Earthly Paradise," the prose of the "Pentameron" or "Marius the Epicurean"? Such reading as this becomes a permanent intellectual possession, an influence moulding imagination and character, and the retrospective charm naturally attaching to the memory of a summer outing will be not a little enhanced by association with the imperishable beauty of such works of literary art. There is a passage in one of FitzGerald's letters which embodies the whole gospel of summer reading. "I am now a good deal about," he says, "in a new Boat I have built, and thought (as Johnson took Cocker's Arithmetic with him on travel, because he shouldn't exhaust it) so I would take Dante and Homer with me, instead of Mudie's Books, which I read through directly. I took Dante by way of slow Digestion: not having looked at him for some years: but I am glad to find I relish him as much as ever: he atones with the Sea; as you know does the Odyssey-these are the Men!"

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What shall we do, then, with what Mr. Ruskin calls the good books of the hour-telling us that "we ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we make no good use of them "-if we are not to put them in our trunk when we start upon our vacation? We have no disposition to underrate the usefulness of "these bright accounts of travels, good-humored and witty discussions of questions, lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel, firm fact-telling by the real agents concerned in the events of passing history." But we think that the time for them is the hour left us after a hard day's work, or the occasional holiday, rather than the summer's weeks or months of continuous rest. When that happy season comes round, we can put it to better uses, and, if we are going to do any reading at all, it surely offers the occasion of occasions for that close acquaintance with "the authors" that we can never hope to make during the ordinary routine of active life. If we are well-advised, we will leave the ephemeral and scrappy literature of the day for the day which brings it forth, and not allow it to usurp our attention during the only part of the year when we are really free to enter upon enjoyment of our great heritage of Books in the higher and better sense. "Who would think of taking up the Faëry Queene' for a stopgap?" while waiting for the sound of the dinner-bell, Lamb asks us. And, to point the obverse of the moral, let us in turn ask: Who would think, or who ought to think, of devoting the long summer days to books whose final cause is to supply us with stopgaps, and which, when put to other uses, are as much out of place as Spenser would be in the hungry halfhour preceding the evening repast?

"select and

THE HISTORICAL NOVEL. Dunlop's definition of fiction as highly-colored history" contained within itself the germs of all the discussions that have arisen on the historical novel and the limits of history and fiction. While Huet, the first to write a treatise on the novel, described it as "a fiction of love adventures, written in prose, with artistic method, for the pleasure and instruction of the reader," thus ignoring the element of realism, a consensus of opinion on the modern novel would surely base its structure upon life. Fiction includes every narrative prose description of human life into which enters consciously the element of the imagination,-narrative, as opposed to annalistic or dramatic; prose, as a quite arbitrary

but very convenient exclusion of an exceptional species with which are associated a troublesome kinship of varieties.

. But history, too, treats life; and, in the shape of biography, more or less in narrative form. And much of what passes for the standard history of the world contains a very large element of imagination. The once universal conception of history as properly confined to the rise and fall of governments and the deeds of rulers, gave, to be sure, a ground of distinction in the nature of the events and characters treated; the novel introducing personages not known to history, and treating war and politics only incidentally. But ideas of history have changed since Huet's day, and we recognize that the records of the common people and their daily lives are as important for the guidance of posterity as the chronicles of kings. So that any record of human life, or of any product or activity of men, may fairly be said, in so far as it is true, to be history.

We cannot escape the entangling alliance by trying to draw a line between the present and the past. We now write contemporary history; and the novel would be classified as historical, no matter how recently past were its data, if its subject-matter were on other grounds recognized as historical. "Waverley," the type and pioneer of the species, treated events only sixty years gone by. Antiquity is not a mark of the historical in fiction or elsewhere.

It may be thought feasible to establish a distinction on the basis of the intention of the writer. As Mr. Marion Crawford says: "It is doubtful whether any genuine historical novel has ever yet been written for the sake of the history it contains ; and a parallel proposition might be set up that no genuine history has been written for the sake of the romance or imagination it contains. But the latter proposition will directly be met with doubt, and in the former will be detected the assumed difference between the theme of history and that of the novel. Possibly a distinction may be made by viewing the writer's intent upon the reader; his aim in the case of the novel being to amuse and entertain (not excluding a suppressed but controlling willingness to elevate), and in the case of the history, to impress and instruct, or, in the language of Mr. Crawford, to furnish in the first case intellectual artistic luxury," in the second "an intellectual lesson." In general, this distinction, though elusive and not profound, may prove ser

viceable.

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In the line of biography the two branches of literature approach most closely, and it is difficult here to find any other distinguishing mark for the novel than that of the conscious introduction of the imagination. But as to the proportion of this element, I doubt whether anything definite can be said. However fantastic and improbable a narrative and descriptions may be, the original materials are all from life and nature: it is not possible to invent something out of nothing. On the other hand, the

amount of fiction may be almost imponderable. More than one successful novel has been a faithful narrative of real events, with merely the names of persons and localities altered enough to escape a libel suit. Usually, of course, the author wanders over the broad intervening territory, combining pieces of real persons into a new individual, regrouping real events, revising the decision of fate, substituting what he conceives to be more interesting motives for actual ones,-most commonly, perhaps, imagining what he himself would have felt and done, or would have wished to feel and do, under circumstances in which he had observed others. But ever the tendency has been to restrain the vagaries of the imagination, and make the product more true to life- more like biography.

Whence, then, is the disposition to decry the historical novel? Quite evidently, it seems to me, from a false conception of the function, or discouragement over the possible achievements, of history. It is due chiefly to this false conception that we were so long in learning that "the bygone ages of the world were actually filled with living men, not by protocols, state papers, and abstractions of men." It was discouragement over the possibility of any other result that led Goethe to say: "The times of the past are a book with seven seals; and what we call the spirit of the times is at bottom the spirit of the writers, in which the times are reflected." But with the new conception of history which says, "I consider nothing human out of my sphere," every novel becomes a human document, in a measure historical.

It is not true that "the historical novel occupies a position apart and separate from others." On the contrary, it merges by such imperceptible degrees with other fields of the novel that in many cases no critical surveyor can stake it off. Sometimes, as in "A Tale of Two Cities," there are neither personages nor events which are to be met in ordinary narrative history; only the background, the atmosphere, the spirit of the time, are historical. Again, as in Erckmann-Chatrian's “ Conscript of 1813" and "Waterloo," the events, many of them, are of world-wide importance, while the characters are all to fame unknown. More commonly—as in "Waverley," Hauff's "Lichtenstein," Freytag's "Marcus König," "Romola," or "Ben Hur,"-the time is partly fixed by events and surroundings, but more by some historical personage who towers like a mountain in the more or less remote background, while the actors who fill the foreground are as in the previous case obscure. Yet again, some or all of the leading characters, as well as some of the elements of the plot, may be the property of familiar history; such are " Kenilworth," "Hypatia," Hammerling's "Aspasia," Dahn's "Ein Kampf um Rom."

It is with historical novels of this last type that critics are most apt to lose patience. If the fictitious events and persons introduced in connection with the familiar ones are of any significance we

are sure to get an impression of improbability. We ask, How does it come that we have never heard of these events and persons before? Then the critical scent for anachronisms is aroused: we discover printed books in the tenth century, and lightningrods in the seventeenth; we find the furniture of classic Greece introduced into Christian Rome, and the instruments of Judea jangling in the halls of mediæval Germany. As Mr. Crawford says: "So soon as a man deals with events that have actually taken place, he is bounded on all sides by a multitude of details with which he must be acquainted and from which he cannot escape." Plainly, the wisdom to be derived from this is that known persons and events are to be avoided by the novelist, or to be used only as background. But it does not at all follow that the historical novel is thereby condemned. What is the harm in laying a story in proximity to some place, event, or person, whose presence gives a sense of assurance and confidence? The principle is the reverse of that of a cyclorama, where a few logs and stones, an overturned cannon, and a stuffed and blood-stained uniform in the foreground, help out the perspective of the painting on the wall. Only, here the realistic touches make tolerable some very indifferent fresco-painting; while with the author the historical background enables him to concentrate his powers on other points.

Everyone knows how much more interest a listener takes in a story that is laid in a scene familiar to him. For this reason, professional storytellers whose consciences permit always represent the events of their narratives as having happened in their presence, or at least as having been told them by one of the actual participants. Not wideeyed childhood alone exclaims to Dame Saga: "Tu l'as vu, grand' mère?"

Finally, an especial challenge to the creative faculty comes from the tomb. By as much as it is more difficult to bring the dead back to life than to plant or beget for the coming race, by so much is the temptation greater to try to make, even in the imagination, "dead things relive of long ago." But the task of making men of the past seem real is not by any means so difficult as that of making dead men live. In this respect the historical novel is subject to the same difficulties and limitations as the novel in general.

The truth is that all of the antipodal differences of opinion in regard to the field, function, and possibility of the historical novel are based upon two impressions or prejudices which underlie the critic's views of human nature. One of these assumptions is that men in all times and all climes are essentially alike; the other, that each country as well as each age produces its distinct variety of man. It is this latter assumption which leads Mr. Howells to object to characters in an historical novel, because "the people affect me like persons of our generation made up for the parts," and to assign the region of historical romance to "readers and writers who cannot bear to be brought face to face

with human nature." Yet there is no more arguing over the matter than over optimism and pessimism. These tinctures are the result of a man's food, like the proportion of red corpuscles in his blood. As a rule, the cosmopolitan learns that men are about alike the world over; while the provincial on his first visit to the metropolis of his own state fancies all men he sees to be selfish and cold, and feels himself an alien among his countrymen.

If we regard the men of the past as of like parts and passions with ourselves, we shall not take offense if we find in a picture of the past the "universal human elements which are found in every time, the permanent in the transitory." If it is true, as Leslie Stephen declares, that Scott's novels are "rapidly converting themselves into mere débris of plaster of Paris," it must be that he put his "mediæval upholstery" too much in the foreground and drew too little from the human nature that he knew.

The novel is a kind of history, as the common origin of "story" and "history" in itself hints; and such dicta as that of Palgrave, that historical novels are "the most harmful of all semi-poetic hybrids, without profit for the artistic sense and ruinous to the historic sense," are based on obsolete presumptions regarding history or inadequate estimates of the importance of the novel. There is no conflict between the two forms of literature. In some respects they seek the same ends. If it be understood that the novel makes no pretension to accuracy of date, document, details of diplomacy or events, but confines itself to life in general, to making the past seem real and the men of the past members of our common family, then it will fulfil one of the functions of history in which history most easily fails, while at the same time insisting upon all life, and not simply the life of the present, as its field. WILLIAM HERBERT CARRUTH.

FICTION-READING IN THE COUNTRY.

Mr. Stevenson says that any reading fit to be called reading should be an absorbing and voluptuous process; and he bemoans the fact that this engrossing interest passes away with the youth of the individual. Miss Repplier joins the wail, and extends the loss of ardor in reading from the individual to the age. She finds that even the children now fail to be carried out of themselves by romance and fairy tales. This satiety she attributes to the flooding of their minds with weak and supposedly harmless children's books, and she strongly advocates giving them such meat of literature as Marjorie Fleming fed upon.

This change in the power of fiction may be true in regard to the people of the cities, whose lives are crowded with a variety of interests, and whose desire for change and new experience is constantly gratified. They live more in realities than in imagination, and ideal heroes seldom wield the mighty influence of a vital character whom the reader loves or hates.

The case is far different in the country, however, where books are few, time is long, and distracting events