wife, and his determination to contract a marriage of love. A difficult matter this for a Turk, who is not allowed to make the acquaintance of any eligible young ladies before marriage! However, Mahmoud accomplished his purpose in a way we might hesitate to approve of. He bought a very interesting and youthful Circassian slaye; after a year of quiet domestic happiness, finding her of a loving and teachable character, he determined to marry her. She soon after gave birth to a child, and her rights to be considered his first, and, as he declared, his only wife, were unquestionable.

It was soon after the birth of her child that Mahmoud Pacha engaged my Swiss friend as his wife's companion and instructress, for, though most ainiable, the gentle Circassian was wholly ignorant of even the commonest French phrases. In a few months the young mother's health appeared to decline; the best doctors were consulted; they feared consumption; every art that

wealth and tenderness could bestow was tried, and for a time the foe was kept at bay.

Summer weather came; the young wife's health seemed thoroughly re-established; the happiness of the young couple was now complete, when a thunderbolt, launched by the paternal hand of the Sultan himself, destroyed it completely, and forever. Mahmoud Pacha was wealthy, and in the prime of youth; he was nearly related to the Sultan Abdul Aziz, and the latter proposed confering upon him the highest honor and favor-namely, the hand of one of his daughters in marriage. Useless to declare he was already married, or that a second wife was in his eyes de trop; in such circumstances to hear was to obey. Etiquette demanded the degradation of the Circassian slave, her removal from the handsome residence of Mahmoud, and the installation of the princess of the palace into the mystical chamber of her predecessor. Mahmoud tried the only resistance in his power, and took a sudden journey to Paris, where he sojourned many months, hop

ing the hated alliance might be forgotten, or some accident might come to his aid. Futile hope! he was summarily recalled, and some honorary post assigned him. Everything was arranged in a generous and becoming manner: his coldness was overlooked; his bride was richly dowered; and Mahmoud, like many a wiser and better man, submitted to the inevitable "kismet."

The last time my Swiss friend visited his palace, she learned that the Circassian lived in retirement, not far from the dwelling of her happier rival.

Unknown to his wife, Mahmoud continued to visit her in secret, though at rare intervals and with great precaution. Upon seeing her my friend was shocked at the ravages that grief and disease had already made upon her person. The hectic flush and dreaded cough had returned. Unconscious or careless of her danger, she was daily wasting away, but would hear of no remedies. Not a complaint as to her position ever passed her lips, and she spoke of "the Pacha" as one to whom she owed everything, and to whom everything was due. It would be well if I could conclude this touching story with some account of her last days, but as I am writing truth, and truth alone, I unwillingly admit that I am unable to give any further clue to her fate. The konak she once inhabited is at this moment deserted. Mahmoud spends most of his time at Paris. His palace is well appointed, numerous servants and slaves give it an air of grandeur it did not once possess. My dear Swiss friend was attacked by virulent small-pox during the fatal winter of 1877, and died in the German hospital at Pera, before her friends were even aware of her illness. She was a widow, and left two orphan boys to be brought up by friends in Switzerland. She rests under a bare mound of earth in our Protestant cemetery, with a rough piece of wood on which is painted a number to mark the spot.

Such are some of the sad histories, the terrible matter-of-fact dramas, daily occurring here!-Temple Bar.

Nov. 25, 1845.

-Macmillan's Magazine.

ANTHONY TROLLOPE, the subject of our portrait this month, was born in 1815, and is now, therefore, in his sixty-fifth year. His mother was the author of that book on the United States which produced such a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, and the memory of which is even yet a sensitive spot in the American consciousness. His father was a London barrister of respectable but not eminent talent; and his elder brother, Thomas Adolphus Trollope, has been almost as prolific a novelist as himself.

The young Anthony was educated at the great public schools of Worcester and Harrow, but did not graduate at either of the universities. When only nineteen years of age he entered the British civil service, and was appointed to a clerkship in the General Post Office, in which department he remained, being gradually promoted to the higher grades of clerkships, until in 1867 he resigned his position and devoted himself exclusively to literature; though shortly afterward, in 1869, he tried to secure a seat in Parliament as Liberal candidate for one of the

provincial constituencies, but was not successful.

In connection with his official duties as surveyor of the General Post-Office, Mr. Trollope spent part of his early manhood in Ireland, and he began his literary career with two Irish novels, "The Macdermotts of Ballydoran" (1847) and" The Kellys and O'Kellys" (1848). "La Vendée, an historical romance, followed in 1850. These early stories failed to achieve a wide reputation; but in his next works," The Warden" (1855) and "Barchester Towers" (1857), he struck his peculiar vein of clerical life and middle-class manners, and, steadily growing in reputation, has since become one of the most popular of modern English novelists, as well as one of the most prolific. "The Three Clerks" appeared in the same year as "Barchester Towers" (1847), and from that time until the present his productions have very nearly averaged a novel every year. "Doctor Thorne" appeared in 1858, The Bertrams" in 1859, "Castle Richmond" in 1860, "Framley Parsonage," which was

66

66

written for the opening volume of the Cornhill Magazine, in 1861, " Tales of All Countries" (1st series 1861, 2d series 1863), “Orley Farm" and "The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson" in 1862, "Rachel Ray" in 1863, "The Small House at Allington" and "The Belton Estate' in 1864," Can You Forgive Her?" and "Miss Mackenzie" in 1865, The Claverings," "The Last Chronicle of Barset, and Lotta Schmidt and Other Stories" in 1867, "Phineas Finn, the Irish Member" and "He Knew He was Right" in 1869, "Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite" and The Vicar of Bullhampton" in 1870, "Ralph the Heir" in 1871, The Golden Lion of Granpère" in 1872, "Phineas Redux" in 1873, "The Way We Live Now" and "Lady Anna" in 1874, The Prime Minister" in 1875, "The American Senator" in 1876, "The Eustace Diamonds" in 1877, and since then, in rapid succession, "Harry Heathcote of Gangoil, a Tale of Australian Bush-Life," "Is He Popenjoy?" Is He Popenjoy?" "John Caldigate," and " An Eye for an Eye."

Mr. Trollope, during his connection with the British Post-Office Department, was frequently sent abroad to establish postal conventions with other countries. He has visited the United States several times, the West Indies, and Australia in 1871, and again in 1875. The result of his visit to the West Indies was a volume on "The West Indies and the Spanish Main" (1859); after his first visit to the United States he published "North America" (1862) as a sort of atonement for his mother's ill-natured strictures, and a stout volume on "Australia and New Zealand" was published in 1873. Besides his novels and the works just mentioned, Mr. Trollope has written

66

"Hunting Sketches" (1864), "Travelling Sketches" (1866), "Clergymen of the Church of England" (1866), and a monograph on Thackeray contributed to the series of English Men of Letters" (1879). For some time he was editor of the St. Paul's Magazine, in which and in other periodicals many of his stories originally appeared as serials.

As would naturally be inferred from the amount of his production, Mr. Trollope is a very systematic and methodical worker. It is said that a given quantity of "copy" has to be prepared each day, and while he seldom exceeds this daily allowance, he rarely or never, whether at home or travelling, allows himself to be deterred from accomplishing it. Mr. Trollope himself has assured the world that this is his method of work, and something like it might be inferred from the character of the work itself. With all its ease and facility, there is a peculiar lack of spontaneity about it; and in reading one of the stories-one of the later ones particularly-one feels that the author might amble along at the same pace forever. At the same time, it cannot be denied that Mr. Trollope has drawn the most accurate and realistic pictures of contemporary life and manners in England that have ever been painted of any place or period. As Mr. Higginson truly says: "You may read everything ever written about the Established Church, and yet, after all, if you wish to know what a bishop or cu rate really is, you must go to Trollope's novels." And the same remark would apply to many other types of character, as well as to bishops and curates. defect of the portraitures is that they are too realistic; they are the work of a photographer rather than of an artist.

The

CAPTAIN FRACASSE. From the French of
Théophile Gautier. By M. M. Ripley. With
Illustrations by Gustave Doré. Leisure
Hour Series. New York: Henry Holt & Co.

CAPTAIN FRACASSE. By Théophile Gautier.
Translated by Ellen Murray Beam. New
York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.
Gautier's "Le Capitaine Fracasse" is un-

doubtedly entitled to rank among the masterpieces of modern French fiction; indeed, so competent a critic as Mr. Henry James, Jr., declares that in his opinion it ranks with the first works of the imagination produced in our day. In it the author has achieved the rare feat of producing an historical novel which not only possesses the "local color " of the place and period which it aims to de

pict, but which also has a genuine human interest and reality. Some of the characterstudies are so individual and life-like that they would be interesting even if dissociated from their surroundings; and yet so appropriate are these surroundings, and so natural the background, that one feels that a beautiful picture would be spoiled if any change were made in the relations of either the characters or the accessories.

The novel describes the adventures of a company of strolling players in the time of Louis XIII.-their vicissitudes of fortune and misfortune, their experiences, collective and individual, their loves and flirtations, their swift alternations of misery and gayety, hunger and prosperity, tragedy, comedy and farce; closing with that genial distribution of comfort and happiness all around which is so grateful to the heart of the novel-reader. There is no deep probing about the roots of consciousness-there is, in fact, quite a notable absence of that "psychological analysis which the later school of novelists pride themselves upon. The "glorious god of day" rises in the heavens precisely as though Mr. Micawber had never laughed him into obscurity; the gallant Captain Fracasse trembles and blushes, and is abashed before his adored Isabelle as if the cynical garçon of the boule. vards had never thrust his brazen visage into the face of the "gentler sex;" and the good people and the villains are as sharply contrasted with each other as though the distinctions between right and wrong had never been confused or tampered with. It is as frankly objective and picturesque a narrative as “The Count of Monte Cristo;" but vastly more artistic and life-like, more human and humane. In the variety and opulence of his picturesque effects, no writer has ever equalled Gautier, and in "Le Capitaine Fracasse" he has surpassed all his other achievements in this line-a populous and splendid panorama is continuously passing before the reader's eyes. The story is not one to be resorted to for the aid it may render to those who like to grope amid the hidden mazes of character and conduct it keeps to the broad highway of life, and is to be read purely and simply for enjoyment.

One ingredient in that "local color" to which we have referred has evidently proved too much for the Anglo-Saxon modesty of Miss Ripley, the translator of the Leisure Hour edition of the novel. The "playhouse manners and morals," of which Mr. James speaks, were by no means confined to the playhouse in the good old days of Louis XIII.; and the general license of speech and conduct formed altogether too "picturesque" a feature of the time to be overlooked or sub

.

ordinated by a writer like Gautier, whose creed in such matters would easily have conformed to the celebrated formula of "art for art's sake." Many of the episodes and passages introduced into "Le Capitaine Fracasse" are of a kind which it would be peculiarly difficult to translate literally, partly because our English speech is too downright and straightforward for those nuances and disguises and suggestive vaguenesses which slide so glibly and innocently into French. Miss Ripley has solved the difficulty by simply omitting the dubious passages; and while Mrs. Beam has been less squeamish in this particular, she also has discreetly lowered the curtain upon certain scenes in the little drama.

The truth is that neither of these versions

is in any proper sense a translation of “Le Capitaine Fracasse;" and it would be unfair to base a final opinion of Gautier's masterpiece upon either or both of them. Not only have Miss Ripley and Mrs. Beam eliminated or blurred certain features which were objectionable on the grounds we have named, but they have also freely abridged those descriptive passages which the author relied upon for giving background and tone and picturesqueness to his story. The treatment to which they have subjected the work, indeed, raises at once the question as to the duties and functions of a translator; but this is too large a subject to be entered upon here, and we must content ourselves with warning the reader of either of them that he is not looking at the picture which Gautier painted, or even at a fair copy of the original, but at that literary hybrid sometimes called euphemistically an "adaptation."

CERTAIN DANGEROUS TENDENCIES IN AMERI-
Boston:
CAN LIFE, AND OTHER PAPERS.
Houghton, Osgood & Co.

If, as Carlyle says, there are books which are not books merely, but deeds, then the volume above named is entitled to take rank among them; or if it fails, only fails because the mode of address adopted by the author is too disjointed and unsystematic to secure its full force and effect for what he has to say. The book is composed of a series of papers which have appeared from time to time during the past year or two in the Atlantic Monthly, beginning with the remarkable one on "Certain Dangerous Tendencies in American Life;" and though they excited much comment and discussion at the time of their original appearance, it is only when they are read together, so that their cumulative effect is obtained, that their full value and importance can be properly appreciated. A certain identity of aim and subject pervades them all; the first article

being a sort of thesis or summary, for which the other articles furnish the illustrative or confirmatory evidence.

The topics which the author discusses are of the most vital interest and importance to every thinking or serious-minded person,interesting not merely from the literary point of view-though their literary merit is very great-but because the right solution of the problems with which they deal involves the very existence of the social fabric. Innumerable signs of the times, not only here but in every European country, show that there is a great and increasing fermentation and restlessness among what are called the "lower classes," which, according as it is wisely or unwisely dealt with, will result in readjustment or in revolution, but which in either case involves a breaking loose from the old social order which has existed since the overthrow of feudalism. The causes, the reasons, and the meaning of this restlessness, and the best way to deal with it, are what the author explains rather than discusses-and explains in such a way that even the dullest can hardly fail to comprehend.

The author's view-point is eminently favorable for a survey of such questions. Without being a blind adherent of the theory that "whatever is is right," he is acutely conscious that civilized society, in spite of its defects, is the toilsome fruit of the accumulated efforts of countless generations of men ; without being a fanatical advocate of the "claims of capital," he does not refuse to recognize that capital is and must be the corner-stone of any civilization based upon industrial achievement; and without being infected by the popular demagogy about the "rights of labor," he is painfully aware of the disadvantages which the poor have to contend against in the "struggle for existence." Being firmly convinced that half the difficulties and nearly all the animosities between the different orders of society come from a misunderstanding of each other's position rather than from any inherent opposition of interests, he endeavors to interpret the rich to the poor and the poor to the rich,-to interpret in such a way that each shall not only understand but shall sympathize with the other. Yet it would be a mistake to infer from this that the author is one of the common types of sentimental humanitarians. He has taken the pains to get at and verify facts, and he knows that the effect of a temperate, unvarnished statement of the facts thus acquired must be such that no embroidery of sentiment or rhetoric will be required.

We are conscious that we are talking about the book rather than dealing directly with its contents; but it is in a peculiar sense a book which must be read in order to be appreciated;

no mere enumeration of subjects or description of method would suffice to convey an idea of its peculiar quality and significance. The articles on "The Nationals" and on" Sincere Demagogy" will throw light upon those problems of the hour with which statesmen must deal in the cabinet and voters at the poll; but such articles as those on "Three Typical Workingmen," "Workingmen's Wives," "The Career of a Capitalist," and "A Study of a New England Factory Town," will lodge in the reader's mind an order of facts and considerations which will remain there permanently, unless he be hopelessly shallow and frivolous.

SISTER DORA. A Biography. By Margaret

Lonsdale. From the Sixth London Edition. Boston: Roberts Bros.

This also is a book which will introduce into the reader's consciousness a new conception of the actual debasement and possible nobility of human nature. It records the life of a woman, who, in the most literal sense, put aside the "pomps and vanities" of the world and "went about doing good" - coming nearer, perhaps, to the complete fulfillment of the Christian ideal of human conduct than any one else who has lived in this age of ours, of which it can hardly be said that self-abnegation is among its more conspicuous virtues.

Dorothy Pattison, who became "Sister Dora" on joining the secular Sisterhood of the Good Samaritans, was the daughter of a clergyman of the Church of England, was reared in an atmosphere of refinement and culture, was of the most striking personal beauty, not badly off as to worldly condition and prospects, and was of a temperament which disposed her in a peculiar degree to social pleasures and gayeties; yet, discontented with the vapid and selfish routine of the life usually marked out for such women, she braved the displeasure of her family and friends, entered the Sisterhood of Good Samaritans, whose members bound themselves to "deeds of mercy," became nurse in and finally took charge of a free hospital in the manufacturing city of Walsall, and by her immeasurable services in that capacity endeared herself to a population whose whole moral tone she elevated, and by whom her memory is now fairly worshipped. To the suffering, the miserable, the wretched, the wicked, and the unfortunate, she was literally a ministering angel. No disease was so loathsome that she would not nurse it; no office so lowly that she would not perform it; no physical or mental hurt so hopeless that she could not find for it balm and consolation. Health, strength, ease, fortune, finally life itself, were sacrificed to her insatiable desire