Von Ranke's Universal History; the Oldest Historical Group of Nations, and the Greeks.- Réville's The Native Religions of Mexico and Peru (Hibbert Lectures for 1884).-Parton's The Captains of Industry.-Howland's · Eneid in the Original Metres.-Crane's and Brun's Tableaux de la Revolution Française.--Mrs. Rich's A Dream of the Adirondacks, and Other Poems.-Barneby's Life and Labor in the Far, Far West.-Aldridge's Life on a Ranch. The Boy's Workshop.-Thomas's Captain Phil.Trowbridge's The Principles of Perspective.-Hepworth's Photography for Amateurs.-Melodies of Verse (Selections from Bayard Taylor).-Text and Verse for Every Day in the Year, from Writings of J. G. Whittier. LITERARY NOTES AND NEWS

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

TOPICS IN LEADING PERIODICALS FOR OCTOBER

BAYARD TAYLOR.*

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Bayard Taylor was a born poet. Poetry was the passion and delight of his life. It was on his accomplishment in this field that he wished his reputation to rest. He submitted patiently to a great deal of distasteful intellectual drudgery, and the most exhausting toil, that he might gain opportunity for the practice of the art to which he consecrated his life. It was as a handsome, daring, gifted youth, about whose name was an air of romance brought from adventures in strange lands and association with remote peoples, that the public for a long time were accustomed to think of him, and not as an eager, passionate poet. It required years

of the most serious devotion to letters, and extraordinary literary accomplishment, to fix the popular regard upon his truest self, his real genius. Before he died, however, he had the satisfaction of knowing that he was fast winning a new constituency those who esteemed him for what he was, and not merely for what he had seen. After his return from his successful

journey to Nubia, at the age of twenty-seven, he writes to George H. Boker: "I am known

* LIFE AND LETTERS OF BAYARD TAYLOR. Edited by Marie Hansen-Taylor and Horace E. Scudder. In two volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Company.

to the public not as a poet, the only title I covet, but as one who succeeded in seeing Europe with little money; and the chief merits accorded to me are not passion and imagination, but strong legs and economical habits. Now this is truly humiliating." Almost every moment of leisure that he earned through a life crowded with pressing work, he devoted to the muse. His "Rhymes of Travel, Ballads and Poems," "Poems of the Orient," "The Poet's Journal," "Picture of St. John," the translation of "Faust" (which was equal in intellectual strain to the production of a long poem), "The Masque of the Gods," "Lars," "Prince Deukalion," and, added to these, his Phi Beta Kappa poem at Harvard, the Gettysburgh ode, the ode at the unveiling of Ward's statue of Shakspeare, ode for the centennial celebration of the Fourth of July, and others, show the versatility and opulence of his poetic production. The greatest of his poems, one of the great poems of this century, "Prince Deukalion," is known yet only to a small circle of readers, but I predict that it is destined to enduring fame.

Among the letters of the first volume of the present work are those that chronicle the affecting episode of his youthful attachment and bereavement. All through them breathe the highest aspirations for noble life and achievement. The literature of early love contains nothing more manly and womanly than these letters of Bayard Taylor and Mary Agnew. To this young lady he was betrothed while a youth, and he married her on her death-bed. was a person of rare loveliness, and the hope of being united to her in wedlock was an unfailing inspiration and support to the poet during the severe struggles of his early career. His bereavement was excruciating, and the very consolation that his friends tendered him only aggravated his grief. But his fortitude and resignation were admirable. He plunged into travel again, and his long Egyptian journey proved most beneficial

She

to his wounded heart and broken health. On

returning to Cairo he writes to his friend Boker: "I have found a peace as new as it is grateful --a peace which does not reproach my love, while it takes away the bitterness of my sorrow. I felt its approaches as we do those of sleep, but cannot tell when nor how it descended upon me. I only know that I am changed; that the world looks bright and life cheerful; that the capacity of being happy is restored to me; that I look forward hopefully to the future; and, better than all, that no memory of the past is less sacred.” About the

same time, in a note to James T. Fields, he says: "Life again begins to look cheerful, and I have wholly recovered my perfect trust in Godthat prop without which I was drifting so helplessly." This reference to his religious frame prompts the statement, from personal knowledge, of the high spiritual quality of Bayard Taylor's character. He lived in communion with the unseen universe. To him, God was the supreme verity. I never knew a man whose convictions of immortality were more positive and exultant.

Bayard Taylor's place in the world of letters naturally brought him into intimate relations with eminent characters at home and abroad. His frankness, sincerity, generous and noble spirit, and brilliant intellectual qualities, made him especially attractive in the highest circles. Many became deeply attached to him; and, of distinguished foreigners, none more ardently than Thackeray, who loved him as a brother. Thackeray was the fortunate possessor of Schiller's dress-sword, and this he bequeathed to Bayard Taylor as the friend most deserving of the interesting relic of the great poet.

Bayard Taylor's familiarity with German life and literature, as well as the esteem in which he was held in Fatherland, is well known; and one prime object of his ambition was to produce an adequate and authoritative life of Goethe. This project had been long formed; and important progress in the collection of materials for the work, and in the interpretation of the illustrious poet, had been made, when his appointment as American Minister to Germany was announced. Nothing could have been more opportune or more gratifying to his desires. While serving his country as its ambassador, he could, without any detriment to the public service, employ his leisure in perfecting his studies for his great work, on the ground where it was necessary they should be pursued. It is greatly to the credit of President Hayes, whose scholarly tastes and strong sympathies with elegant literature have never received the recognition they deserve, that in making the nomination of Bayard Taylor as Minister to the German Court, he had prominently in view the furtherance of his facilities for writing the life of Goethe, and that he assured him that if any relief from official cares that interfered with his undertaking was desired, it should be ungrudgingly afforded him. It was the privilege of the writer to dine privately with Taylor and his family the last evening but one before his departure for his mission; and the profound interest that he exhibited in prosecuting this literary undertaking will never be forgotten. While he expressed a proper sense of the unsought honor which had come to him, and the great responsibility attending it, his

keenest satisfaction consisted in the opportunity now afforded of soon carrying out the darling wish of his heart. Years before this, he had exchanged views with Carlyle about Goethe, at an interview which he described to me as peculiarly pleasant; and while in London, on his way to Berlin, he met Carlyle again, by appointment, for further conference concerning some knotty points in Goethe's history. This meeting was mutually agreeable, and the parting a touching one. In Paris, Taylor spent an evening with Victor Hugo, whose manner he found charming. Bismarck had desired and prophesied his appointment as American Minister, and his reception was most cordial at court and among the literati of Germany; but in less than eight months after his arrival, the imperial wreath was laid upon his coffin, and the poet Auerbach gave expression to the universal grief at his death in tender and truthful eulogy beside his bier.

Bayard Taylor literally wore himself out by incessant toil. Giving himself hardly any relaxation even after the most strenuous and exhausting exertion, and trusting to a robust constitution inherited from vigorous and healthy parents (they celebrated their golden wedding sixteen years ago, and are still living), his life was an illustration of energetic and continuous mental occupation that has few parallels in literary history. Only two or three days after he had confessed to a friend that he was suffering excessive fatigue, and that he hardly knew how he had been kept for the year past from utterly breaking down, "he received one evening two thick volumes of Victor Hugo's 'La Légende des Siècles,' and the next evening delivered to the printer copy which fills eighteen pages of his posthumous volume of Essays and Literary Notes,' and contains five considerable poems," which are most admirable translations in the metre of the original. In the mean time, he also delivered one of his lectures in the course on German literature, in Chickering Hall. This pressure of strenuous toil for many successive years, added to the incessant excitement and effort attending many banquets and receptions just previous to his final departure from the country, laid the foundation of his fatal illness: his strong constitution finally succumbed to the preternatural strain.

In October, 1857, Bayard Taylor married Marie, daughter of Hansen, the eminent astronomer. The incident that led to their acquaintance is interesting. In his journey to Khartoum in 1852, he was accompanied by Mr. Bufleb, a rich and cultivated citizen of Gotha, who became passionately attached to the young poet, and who extracted the promise from him that he would visit him in his German home.

It was on this visit that began his acquaintance with Marie, the niece of Mrs. Bufleb, which resulted in a perfect marriage. Mrs. Taylor was every way suited to be the poet's wife, uniting admirable domestic qualities with thorough intellectual cultivation and poetic sympathies. Her literary ability has ample illustration in the preparation of these volumes, in which she was ably assisted by Mr. Horace E. Scudder. In this handsomely - printed work, the salient points in Bayard Taylor's career are vividly sketched, and the selection and arrangement of the letters are excellent. In these letters his inner life has charming portraiture. As they refer to interesting incidents of his travels, describe his literary experiences, the motives and principles of his conduct, and are written in his lively and engaging style, they will be found very entertaining and stimulating by the sympathetic reader. Indeed, no one will read them without the conviction that the character of their writer was nobly serious and exalted; that he took satisfaction in no work or life that was not genuine and sincere; that he measured himself by the loftiest standards, and that the ends he sought were such as reflect lustre on his country and on human kind. It was truly a national bereavement that removed from the republic of letters and the service of the commonwealth this noble-hearted, pure-minded, enlightened patriot, and this true, gifted, and honored poet. HORATIO N. POWERS.

have been more worthy, from weight of reasoning and affluence of illustration, to arrest the attention of thoughtful men, than the four articles comprised in this volume. If they embody a critical estimate of present institutions and policies, and an attempt to forecast their future, they are not the rash speculations of an incompetent dreamer, but the mature judgments of a singularly lucid and powerful thinker, trained to accurate and patient observation, and bringing to his theme a wider and more sagacious induction than has ever before been applied to social problems. Hence no one, however content he may be with the present condition of society, but must be appalled at many of the verdicts he records touching subjects of highest interest to the citizen.

Of these four essays, all variations upon a single theme, the substance only can here be stated, and that briefly. There have been, the author declares, two conditions of society: one in which the people constituted an organized camp, subordinated to a single head, and having such rights only as were conceded by that head as their military superior; and one in which the many had all rights, save as they consented to part with the present exercise of them for the common good, themselves forming the basis of the social structure, and their so-called rulers being but their ministers. The former condition, that of militancy, was characterized by the prevalence of status; the latter, that of industrialism, by the prevalence of contract. Although the condition of militancy is generally

SOCIETY.*

The judgments which make up the body of the Synthetic Philosophy of Mr. Spencer are based upon a wide induction of the facts of experience; and, therefore, that treatise may with propriety be denominated an historical work: it constitutes a physiological, psychological, and biological history. In the little

volume entitled "The Man versus The State," that eminent philosopher appears in a new rôle: that not only of critic of existing institutions-to which rôle he has not before been an entire

stranger-but of prophet of their ultimate fate, and of that of society as affected by them. need not be said that the new function is dis

It

charged with remarkable ability, or that, whether convinced or not, the reader is compelled to listen, as though to refuse to hear might be to invite calamity to his own household. Indeed, of all the social and political writings published since Aristotle, none *THE MAN VERSUS THE STATE. Containing "The New Tory

ism." "The Coming Slavery," "The Sins of Legislators," and The Great Political Superstition." By Herbert Spencer. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

of industrialism, it is really returning to plague mankind. Hence the epithet "The New Toryism," the author identifying with that characterized by state coercion, as opposed to discredited abstraction a régime increasingly the freedom of the individual, which marks the Of the article entirégime of true liberalism. tled "The New Toryism," accordingly, the principal feature is its array of facts to prove that the tendency of modern society in the leading states is to revert to the policy and

methods of toryism. The thesis of the second article, entitled "The Coming Slavery," is that the world is suffering from too much legislation; that it is unduly restricted in its natural men's personal habits, trades, and industries, freedom of action by laws meddling with deserved fate of the poor, the ignorant, and the and, as the author more than intimates, with the criminal, to suffer the penalties nature has affixed to their several conditions. Thus, he arraigns with great severity the "Poor Laws," by which individuals are taxed, against their will, that that may be done through corporate action which ought to be done, if at all, only