tense individuality, his contemptuous judg- | a warm and genial nature, intense in his feelings, and ardent in his affections; singularly tender, loving, gentle, considerate, and unselfish; the most loyal and steadfast of friends, the most loving of fathers, the most filial of sons. All this Madame De Witt has shown her father to have been, in a delightful memoir," in which, without undertaking to retrace his public career, and avoiding reference to it save in the most incidental way when reference to it was unavoidable, she traces his private life with a loving hand. Madame De Witt dwells quite fully upon those incidents of her father's early life that made an impression upon his character, and influenced his choice of a career; and she graphically describes his literary and social occupations, his bearing in society and in the family, his demeanor to his equals and dependents, his domestic joys and sorrows, and his attitude as husband, father, son, and friend. In the memoirs are included many interesting reminiscences of Guizot's more intimate and distinguished contemporaries; and the chapters devoted to the period of his embassy to England, besides containing familiar allusions to eminent English statesmen with whom he was on terms of intimate friendship, embody his singularly calm and self-poised impressions of English political institutions and social life, and some exquisite pictures of English scenery and manners, as they were reproduced by him in his letters home for the entertainment or instruction of his youthful daughters. MR. GEORGE F. SEWARD, late United States Minister to China, is the author of a volume which is a forcible illustration of one of Jeremy Bentham's sententious utterances, to the effect that, "for barring the door effectually against all error and nonsense, there is nothing like the simple truth." Perhaps no subject that has recently absorbed public attention has been more overlaid with extravagant error, or has been the occasion of a larger crop of exaggerated nonsense, than that which is familiarly known to us as the "Chinese Question." The presence of the Chinese in this country, the causes that have brought them here, their the nature of their condition whether as free agents or slaves for a season, their contributions to crime, disease, and immorality, and their present and prospective number, have all been so interpreted by political or labor demagogues, whose ignorance and prejudice have been only equalled by their intolerance, that a "scare" has been created, which has spread from California, where it first originated, to all parts of the country, and has even command THE world is fairly familiar with Guizot, the statesman, the historian, the man of let-relations to labor and to our civil institutions, ters; for he had filled too large a space in these capacities to be obscure or unknown. But such was the austerity and inflexibility of character that he manifested in all his relations to the public, whether political or literary, that few men who have exerted as powerful an influence as he have so little interested the sympathies or curiosity of their contemporaries as to their personal traits and characteristics. Of Guizot's private life men have known, and have been content to know, liter-ed the attention of our national legislature. ally nothing. And yet there was much that was worth knowing, much that the world will be the better for knowing, in the private life of this man commonly accounted so cold and austere and inflexible. Guizot was really of Scarcely anywhere has the subject received the calm consideration it merited; and so the Daughter, Madame DE WITT. Translated by M. Č. M. 5 Monsieur Guizot in Private Life, 1787-1874. By his SIMPSON. Svo, pp. 357. Boston: Estes and Lauriat. 6 crude and shallow assumptions and buncombe | ceed twenty per cent., and probably is not conclusions of interested demagogues have more than ten per cent., of their gross earngained larger currency and credence than they ings, while it bears an infinitesimally small deserved. Mr. Seward's Chinese Immigration, | proportion to the material wealth they have in its Social and Economical Aspects, calls a halt been the instruments in increasing; that their to this mad agitation, and by laying bare the vices are less dangerous to the individual and error and nonsense which are its basis, will give to society than are the vices of white men; the "sober second thought" of our country- that they are comparatively peaceable and men an opportunity to assert itself. Mr. Sew- easily governed, the results of the statistics ard considers the subject under four principal of hospitals and penal institutions being highheads: the number of the Chinese in this coun- ly favorable to them; that there is nothing try; the material results of their labor; the but hearsay of the most uncertain character objections that have been urged against their in support of their being tried by secret triimmigration; and the fears that have been en-bunals, or ruled by a government of their own, tertained of its becoming dangerous in its pro- while all the evidence adduced argues the portions. As to their numbers, he conclusive- | fallacy of the idea; that their non-assimilaly shows by the results of his own observation, tion is exaggerated, but, if true, could work no fortified by the returns of the census just tak- harm; and that the peculiar vices charged to en, that the grossest exaggerations have been them are not greater than they are among current. Instead of there being over 200,000 white men in foreign countries, and are caChinamen in California, and double that num-pable of regulation and partial suppression. ber in the country at large, as has been confidently asserted, the fact is that there are only 105,448 in the United States, 75,025 of these being in California (21,745 in San Francisco), or less than nine per cent. of the population of that State, instead of their outnumbering its voters, as has been again and again alleged. With reference to the material results of their labors in California, he shows conclusively that while they have at no time displaced white labor to any appreciable extent, but merely supplied the want of it, they have rendered great public works possible, and also some important enterprises that were not public, which otherwise would have been impossible; and that thus, by railroad-building, by the reclamation of swamp lands that white labor dared not undertake, by mining, farming, fruit culture, and certain branches of manufactures, they have added hundreds of millions of dollars to the material wealth of the State-wealth, too, which they do not and can not carry away with them, but which is owned, held, and enjoyed by the white citizens of the State. In the third part of his interesting volume Mr. Seward examines seriatim and minutely the objections which have been urged against Chinese immigrants, to the effect that their labor is servile, that they displace white labor, that they send fabulous sums of money home, that they are a vicious people, that they have set up in secret a distinct civil government in California, that they will not assimilate with our people, and that they are addicted to prostitution, gambling, and other criminal courses; and we think he establishes, by evidence that will satisfy all reasonable men, that Chinese labor is as free as American labor; that they do not displace, but at first supplied the want of, and then supplemented, white labor, with a present tendency to be displaced by it; that the amount of money they send home does not ex 6 Chinese Immigration, in its Social and Economical Aspects. By GEORGE F. SRWARD. 8vo, pp. 421. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. The last division of Mr. Seward's volume is a calm and dispassionate examination of the reasonableness of the fears that have been expressed as to the overwhelming flow of Chinese immigration, in the course of which he maintains by argument and statistics that there is no danger of a large influx, and that it will be time enough to legislate to exclude Chinamen when their tendency to come among us in dangerous numbers is established. He demonstrates further that the demand for Chinese labor in the past in California was exceptional, and is now failing because the needs that stimulated it have passed away, and that it is now being supplanted by the increasing supply of white labor, and its employment in all the more important forms of manual work. The work concludes with several highly interesting chapters showing that the Chinese are not naturally a migratory people, and examining the causes which have conspired to impel their emigration to the outlying districts of China, and to Australia, Peru, and Cuba. It will be perceived that Mr. Seward has confined himself to a consideration of the social and economical aspects of Chinese immigration. He, however, hints that he reserves for a future occasion a discussion of the political and commercial issues involved in the movement. It may be said of some of his arguments in the volume before us that they are colored by his prepossessions, and of some of his conclusions that they are either not fully demonstrated by evidence, or are based upon speculations and reasonings concerning a future which has yet to be developed; but it will have to be conceded that generally the evidence he adduces is full and convincing, that his deductions from it are cogent and reasonable, and that the tone of his discussion is honorable alike to his candor and manliness. Two other volumes, relating to the Chinese at home, have a timely value in view of the recognized and tolerated, and all sharing some degree of the imperial patronage, although the Confucian has the greater influence with the ruling classes, and a marked prominence in state ceremonials. In his first two lectures Professor Legge describes Confucianism—first, considered with relation to its doctrine and worship of God, and second, with respect to its worship of the dead and its teaching concerning man. The lectures also comprise an account of the old religion of China (which Professor Legge believes was originally monotheistic, but became corrupted by nature worship on the one hand and by a system of superstitious divination on the other), through its various modifications until the appearance of Confucius, and an outline sketch of the life and work of Confucius. In the third lecture Taôism is examined both as a religion and a philosophy; its origin is described, its polytheistic and superstitious characteristics before the advent of Buddhism are traced, and its assimilation of Buddhistic ideas, as shown in the worship of evil deities, in its acceptance of the belief in transmigration, and in many of its moral teachings, is analyzed. Professor Legge concludes that it is not an ancient religion like that which was followed, illustrated, enlarged, and transmitted by Confucius, but that it was begotten of Buddhism, out of the old Chinese superstitions, and that its voice and spirit are fantastic, base, and cruel. The lecture closes with a brief sketch of Laô-toze, the reputed author of the Tao-Teh-King, the sacred book of the Taoists, and a synopsis of its teachings. The final lecture is a statement of the points of agreement in Confucianism, Taoism, and Christianity, a series of comparisons and contrasts of their doctrines, and a summing up of the results, showing not only the barrenness and absurdities of the Chinese religions, and the transcendent superiority of the religion of Christ, but the utter absence from the former of the Divine stamp which is everywhere visible in the latter. treaty recently negotiated by our government | ligion to the exclusion of the others, all being with China, and the larger commercial intercourse between the two countries that may result from it. One of these is a series of essays by Rev. Dr. Martin, the president of the Tungwen College, at Pekin, that have appeared in various periodicals in this country and in China, at intervals from 1862 till 1879, and are now collected in a volume entitled The Chinese: their Education, Philosophy, and Letters. Three of the essays, respectively on the Hanlin Yuan, or Imperial Academy, on Competitive Examinations, and on Education, discuss the educational processes which culminate in the Imperial Academy, describe the progress of those who devote themselves to scholarship and form the real gentry of the country as the reward of their distinction in letters, and give an account of the examinations and contests through which they must pass to attain official dignities and emoluments. The essay on competitive examinations is an interesting exhibit of the severe and elaborate system that has existed for centuries in China, and of the gradations by which the few most highly successful competitors win a place in the front rank of letters, and plant their feet securely on the rounds of the ladder that leads, without the prestige of birth or the support of friends, possibly to a seat in the rand Council of State, or to a place in the imperial cabinet. The other essays comprise an account of an ancient university still existing in Pekin, which had its origin more than a thousand years before Christ, an outline of the three religions of China, and interesting dissertations on the ethical philosophy of the Chinese, on Oriental dualism, on alchemy in China, on the style of Chinese prose, on Chinese fables, and on the recent mental awakening, or, as Dr. Martin styles it, the Renaissance in China, under the influence of European and American thought, as manifested in the development of new political, religious, scientific, commercial, and other ideas. In an appendix Dr. Martin has preserved several very interesting papers, severally on the Worship of Ancestors in China, on Secular Literature as a Missionary Agency, and giving an account of his journey to Horan, 470 miles in the interior, and of his visit to a colony of Jews there, who profess to have entered China as early as the dynasty of Han, or 200 years before the Christian era.-Four recent lectures by Professor Legge, of Oxford University, form an appropriate supplementary volume to Dr. Martin's, as relates to Confucianism and Taoism. Professor Legge agrees with Dr. Martin that neither the Confucian, the Taoist, nor the Buddhist religion is a state re The Chinese: their Education, Philosophy, and Letters. By W. A. P. MARTIN, D.D., LL.D. 12mo, pp. 319. New York: Harper and Brothers. The Religions of China, Confucianism and Taoism, Described and Compared with Christianity. By JAMES LEGGE, Professor of the Chinese Language and Literature in the University of Oxford. 12mo, pp. 308. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. BIBLICAL and archæological scholars will be profoundly interested in comparing the new edition of Mr. George Smith's Chaldean Account of Genesis, prepared by Professor Sayce, with the original edition, published about five years ago, just before the learned and industrious author was setting out on his last ill-fated expedition to the East. The five years of active work and research by Assyrian scholars that have elapsed since the publication of the first edition have revealed numberless new tablets and fragments both in Assyria and Babylonia, The Chaldean Account of Genesis. Containing the Description of the Creation, the Deluge, the Tower of Babel, the Destruction of Sodom, the Times of the Patriarchs and Nimrod; Babylonian Fables and Legends of the Gods. From the Cuneiform Inscriptions. By GRORGE SMITI. A New Edition, thoroughly Revised and Corrected, with Additions. By A. H. SAYCR. With Illustrations. Svo, pp. 337. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. and the knowledge of the Assyrian language | English literature, who have earned the dishas been immeasurably increased by the labors tinction of being called poets, as well as (canof eminent investigators in France, Germany, dor requires us to say) of many who have a England, and America. Texts which Mr. Smith very dubious claim to the title. The collecfirst deciphered with wonderful success, con- tion has not been designed so much to win the sidering the slender equipment of dictionaries approval of the scholar and critic—although and vocabularies at his command, have been it is by no means deficient in critical taste and pruned of their imperfections, his translations scholarship-as to afford multiplied means of of the Chaldean tablets have been materially refined delight and gratification to the housemodified and changed in essential particulars, hold. It is therefore more miscellaneous and corrected renderings have been supplied, and catholic than select, and its merit consists in a number of new cuneiform texts derived from the fact that its selections touch nearly every Babylonian sources have been discovered and chord, and sound nearly every note of emotion incorporated, which more perfectly illustrate and sentiment. If it is less full in examples the earlier portions of Genesis, and fill up some of the Tudor period of English poetry than we of the lacunæ in Mr. Smith's Assyrian text. At could wish, the omission of such names as Dunthe same time these new Babylonian texts bar, Boleyn (Lord Rochford), Richard Edwards, furnish proof of the trustworthiness of the As- | Nicholas Grimoald, Sir David Lindsay, Tusser, syrian copies. Professor Sayce has carefully Skelton, Breton, Francis Davison, Sir Kenelm gone over Mr. Smith's original edition, and, | Digby, Sackville, Phineas and Giles Fletcher, availing himself of the advances that have and others who might be named, is doubtless been made in comparative philology since Mr. chargeable upon the limitations that must Smith's time, has incorporated all the new dis- constantly have forced themselves upon the coveries and translations, so as to bring the attention of Mr. Sargent while executing his translations now given up to the level of the enormous task. How enormous this task realpresent knowledge of the Assyrian language. ly was may be conceived when we say that the So extensive are the additions, revisions, and volume comprises, in 958 double-column royal corrections supplied by Professor Sayce, that octavo pages, over two thousand examples, sethe new edition has all the value of an origi- lected from the works of nearly nine hundred nal work, and throws new light on many ques- authors. tions which Assyrian decipherers had supposed to be settled. Professor Sayce does not assume that anything like a finality has even yet been reached in the commentary with | which he now accompanies the translations, but frankly states that surprises are constantly in store for Assyrian scholars, and that every month enables them to introduce fresh corrections and improvements. He thinks it possible that fresh excavations will bring to light | some of the poems mentioned in the lists of Chaldean epics and legends which have been discovered since Mr. Smith wrote, and indeed such excavations have already been made while the edition before us was passing through the press, and have afforded important aids in revising the translations and in supplying the breaks that existed in them. THE late Epes Sargent has left behind him a gracious and pleasant memory in the last work that resulted from his industry as a man of letters. For several years past he had been engaged in the preparation of Harper's Cyclopædia of British and American Poetry,10 and he had completed and just given the final touches to it, when the inevitable summons came. As its title indicates, the work is an anthology of British and American poetry. Extending from the time of Chaucer to the present day, it contains more or less numerous examples of the verse of nearly all, during the five and a half centuries that have elapsed since the dawn of 10 Harper's Cyclopædia of British and American Poetry. Edited by EPES SARGENT. Royal 8vo, pp. 958. New York: Harper and Brothers. SEVERAL of the more elaborate poems in Commander Gibson's Poems of Many Years and Many Places" are distinctively and richly classical, alike in their conception, their form and spirit, their themes, their coloring, and their atmosphere. Especially are classical myths and ideals reproduced with surprising subtlety and spontaneity, and with exquisite delicacy and grace, in the two poems "Persephone" and "Sibylla Cumana," in the fine legendary lines inscribed to Empedocles, and in several cantos of the richly sensuous (not sensual, be it observed) Italian tale "Castellamare." Many inequalities might be pointed out in these and other poems in the collection, but their sterling excellences infinitely outweigh their extrinsic defects. Worthy of high commendation for their poetic elevation and their vivid impersonations of delicate shades of feeling and character are the group of nine sonnets, near the close of the volume, to the Brides of Christ, and the fine sonnet on the ecstasy of St. Theresa. THE poems in Mr. Whittier's new volume, The King's Missive, and Other Poems,12 are the utterances of a sage, rather than of a poet. Notwithstanding many passages of rare but modest beauty, which could only have been conceived by a true poet, their dominant tone 11 Poems of Many Years and Many Places. By WILLIAM GIBSON, Commander U.S.N. 18mo, pp. 166. Boston: Lee and Shepard. 12 The King's Missive, and Other Poems. By Joun GREENLEAF WHITTIER. 18mo, pp. 101. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co. The forms of things unknown,.......... The offspring of the ethical rather than of the is that of the mild censor and gentle moralist. | years, of the "birth of things from soulless There is nothing in them suggestive of that matter," and of the evolution, through "fins "fine frenzy" which "doth glance from hea- and wings, of the breath that sways creation ven to earth, from earth to heaven," and which, high and low," reads like a chapter from Owen "as imagination bodies forth or Tyndall or Huxley, and, save for the rhyme and metre, is almost as little poetical as any of their abstrusest speculations. The body of the poem is taken up with the description of the building and adornments of the tower, and with intimations of its purposes. On the part of Nimrod these were purely personal and despotic, but on the part of Ahram they were national and theocratic. The real poetry of the poem is concentrated upon the figures of Ahram and Esther, the latter having been put forward by Ahram as the priestess of the tower, and the bride of the Sun-god in whose honor it was ostensibly built. Esther lends herself to her compatriot's far-reaching plans to beguile Nimrod to a purer worship, until her passionate woman's heart asserts itself; and at last, tired, spent, and hating her solitary grandeur as the pretended bride of the Sun, she pours out her passion of love for Ahram in a tempest that overwhelms the seer, who had sought to crush out all thought of love in his devotion of himself to his race, but who now finds that he is yet human, and that love is mightier than any plans for national or religious ascendency. Nimrod's tale ends abruptly with a confession of his own mad love for Esther, and with an obscure allusion to some unhallowed flame which wrought his fall," after which he disappears from the scene as abruptly as he had entered upon it. The poem concludes with another episode, of no special brilliancy, in the life of Ali and Gourred. MR. DE KAY'S Vision of Nimrod13 is a vigorous intellectual effort, with occasional pleasing or powerful poetical effects. The argument of the poem may be briefly stated as follows: Two modern Persian reformers and lovers, Ali and Gourred, are revealed to us in the waste where "Babylon once stood in all her pride." The man is choked with grief and convulsed with wrath at the remembrance of an indignity which had just been offered to Gourred by a base purveyor for the Sultan's harem, and is buried in despairing thoughts over the failure of his efforts for the moral elevation of man and the purification and social elevation of woman. But he is won back to hope by the woman's gentle fortitude and healing love. As they discourse of their woes and of their plans for the regeneration and welfare of mankind, a “shape of awe" rises before them, first in the form of a lion, then of a bull, whose brute's head changes into a human head, and finally of a giant leaning on a war club, and clad in a purple and golden robe all torn and spotted. This awful shape is the ghost of Nimrod, the builder of old Babel, who vouchsafes to his affrighted but fascinated listeners a history of his life-of his vast enterprises of war and peace, and of the building of that mighty tower which threatened heaven, and symbolized the hours and days, the months and seasons, the races and dynasties of the world, and the history of the earth itself. Nimrod's tale includes the story of Ahram-a conquered Hebrew seer, part magician, part necromancer, who had penetrated all the mysteries of nature and creation. Ahram is raised to the highest dignity by Nimrod, and it is his genius that devises and his skill that builds the mighty pile. Nimrod's version to his hearers of Ahram's account of the formation of the earth through millions of 13 The Vision of Nimrod. By CHARLES DE KAY. 12mo, pp. 261. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 66 THE important relation that the kitchen has to the health and comfort as well as the pleasure of the household will warrant a brief reference to two books of cookery, which have been tested by those whom we know to be well qualified to judge, and pronounced excellent. One of these is a New Cook Book," by Miss Maria Parloa, the accomplished principal of the School of Cooking in Boston. Miss Parloa's book is an exhaustive one, covering the details of marketing, the choice of groceries and food-the latter with special reference to its seasonableness-the furnishing and outfit of the kitchen, the preparation, potting, pickling, cooking, and preserving of all sorts of appetizing things, and the arrangement of the table with a due regard to good taste and elegance.-Miss Parloa's book is specially adapted to dwellers in large cities, who have access to the choice and inexhaustible variety which their markets afford. But there are many thousands in country homes and out-of-theway villages to whom the variety, the luxuries, and the conveniences of cities are impossible. To meet the wants of such as these, to 14 Miss Parloa's New Cook Book. A Guide to Marketing and Cooking. By MARIA PARLOA. Illustrated. 12mo, pp. 430. Boston: Estes and Lauriat. |