he had reflected that the returns of the census of 1880 would be published before his book could be placed before the reader. From those returns, which are quoted in an appendix to Mr. Seward's book, we learn that the whole number of Chinese in the United States is 105,448, of which California has 75,025; and the returns show that San Francisco, instead of having 35,000, has a Chinese population of only 21,745. This official count should settle forever the much-debated question which has been the basis of all complaints regarding Chinese immigration. Mr. Seward makes good use of this effective exposure of the exaggerated estimates of the antiChinese party. If they have so grossly overstated the numbers of the Chinese in the country, it may be logically inferred that their opinions as to the evil influence of the Chinese upon the social and economical interests of the American people are also untrustworthy to a great extent. He comes to the conclusion that the Chinese laborer has been of great benefit to California, although there is less occasion for his work in the development of the industrial resources of the State than heretofore. He shows how needful to the prosecution of large public works, and to the maintenance of smaller industries, the Chinaman has been. This variety of labor, he argues, has been of the greatest possible use in the building of the Pacific Railroad, the reclamation of swamp lands, in the less-inviting fields of mining, and in various branches of agriculture and manufacturing; and, against the objections that the Chinese are vicious, that their labor is servile, that they displace other laborers, that they send their money out of the country, and that they have set up a government of their own in this country, Mr. Seward makes a strong argument, which is fortified by what seem to be incontrovertible facts. He also argues that the Chinese are not a migratory people, and that history gives no instance of the spontaneous movement of an inferior race into districts occupied by a superior. It will be seen, then, that Mr. Seward considers that the outcry against the Chinese is unreasonable in some respects, and that its volume has been largely swollen in consequence of a misapprehension of the real facts in the case. He concludes that the Chinese will find their most appropriate sphere of activity in their own hemisphere, although there will be a continued flow to the Australian colonies and to the United States, and that this stream will be diminished by causes irrespective of legislative action or restrictive treaties. The book thus briefly noticed is a valuable contribution to the already voluminous mass of literature produced by discussion of the Chinese question, and it deserves the respectful attention which it will undoubtedly command. Miss Curtis's "Tanagra Figurines." SINCE the coming into fashion of the lively little figures dug up in the tombs of Boeotia, there has been *Tanagra Figurines. Boston: Houghton, Osgood & Co. 1879. a desire, uneasy and not altogether Greek in its nature, to find out exactly what name to give the personages. This is akin to the popular necessity of first knowing the title in the catalogue when in front of an exhibition picture. The work before us collects from various sources the tutelary names, the historical events, the local church ceremonies of Boeotia, from among which we may dip for associations likely to be in the minds of Tanagra sculptors, if we suppose that they were always bent on cele brating their provincial religion and history, rather than the religion and history of the whole country. The prominent temples of Tanagra were those of Bacchus, of Apollo, of Venus, and of the ancient Themis; and figures of Venus, and those with Bacchic attributes, are found in the graves. There were two temples of Mercury; and a large proportion of the statuettes are such as may with some straining be attributed to that divinity, while two of the specimens exhibited at the Trocadéro Palace were rough little images of Mercury bearing the ram, according to the Tanagra tradition and the Tanagra monument by Calamis. Other religious associations of a Boeotian origin were those connected with the Cabiri, and those referring to the feasts of Dædala. The Cabiri were obscure divinities of the province, of whom Prometheus was one, celebrated for the hospitality given to Ceres, and thus affiliated with the whole myth of the burial of the dead as prefigured by the planting of seed. Statuettes which it is easy to associate with Ceres and Proserpine and their rite are of abundant occurrence among the Tanagra relics. The feast of the Dædala took place on Mount Citheron, overlooking Platæa, and was celebrated by sacrificing to Jupiter wooden Dædalian images of Juno, in commemoration of the legend that Jupiter had circumvented the jealousy of his spouse with a wooden image arrayed like a bride. Tanagra statuettes clearly to be attributed to Juno are not usual, but the fact that Tanagra had a share in the production of the timber effigies for the feast may throw some light on the abundance of the clay simulacra, and the crude Dædalian character of some of them. Leaving mythology for history, we find that Tanagra was not on such sympathetic terms with her more glorious neighbors, Thebes and Platæa, that their splendid history should be found illustrated in her monuments, while we are disappointed in our search for even the most allusive reference that we can identify with the Tanagran Corinna. We may imagine, however, that we see her daily dress and aspect in some one of these fair figures with a scroll, and that her individual style of beauty may be perpetuated in these fashions of auburn locks parted into radiating lobes, these movements and smiles of incomparable ease, these red lips and blue eyes. Diotima, the learned Tanagran haitara, whom we should be gratified to see sitting in the person of one of the more intelligent figures, "teaching him who died of hemlock," we could hardly expect to find, as nothing would be more unlikely than that a Boeotian potter should apply himself to illustrating a conversation of Plato. Plutarch of Cheronea, a Roman-naturalized Boeotian, of a period four hundred years later than the production of these images, is out of the question. In the little volume before us, Miss Curtis brings together as much as is attainable of the history and civic life of Tanagra, and affords a very convenient view of the things it is well to know in studying out the collections of figurines. The tempting guesses at the identity of the personages should not, however, be followed out with too much hopefulness in the lines she has indicated, for after all these lines of research are so few and doubtful that they may hardly count at all in the maze of myth and history which really influenced the Boeotian burial customs. Her attempt to connect the "sudden inspiration of ceramics" in Tanagra with the Dædala festival is not made out, nor can it be until clay images are there found suggesting the wooden block, the true " Dædalian" form of statue. The Dædalian style of early sculpture is well known; it is based upon the aspect of the post or terminal figure, with head merely separated from the trunk, and limbs adhering together, or looking as if inclosed in a sheath. To imagine these multitudes of developed forms, emancipated from archaism with all the freedom of the period of Apelles and Lysippus, as "representing the Boeotian people in garb of ceremony, and in costume of each locality, and also in dramatic disguises, taking part in the procession, or assisting at it as spectators," is, whether an original or a borrowed idea, nothing but a fantastic extravagance. Yet the author dwells on this notion with compla cency in more than one place; the images constantly appear to her mind as "forming parts of some dramatic combination, either as actors or spectators, in a joyful celebration," amounting to an "expression of peace, gladness, and sportiveness, tempered with a mood of pleased attention," "in the hour of death." This is too modern. Egyptian or Christian doctrines of metempsychosis are especially to be thrown behind us in looking into the Greek treatment of the waiting in the tomb. Among the Greeks, the only approaches to a hope of resurrection were a few very timid ideas of subterranean consciousness-the presence of feast-companions, musicians, or actors, as a comradeship for the deceased; of Mercury, the guide of souls; of Bacchus, who descended into Hades; of Ceres and Proserpine as patronesses of the whole machinery of earth-covering and coming to life-being about all of didactic imagery the sepulchers show us. So far, the figures revealed by the excavations may be granted to have a doctrinal meaning; and there is a recognizable allusion to the hazardous cast of fate in the images of maidens throwing dice on the ground, reminding us of the selection of this game for ancient pictures of the victims of an early death, as the children of Niobe in one Pompeian picture, the children of Medea in another, and those of Pandarus in the fresco by Polygnotus at Delphi. But a far greater number appear to be simple advertisements of the state and condition of the deceased,-maidens for the tombs of virgins, warriors for those of soldiers, and athletes for the graves of youths. The individual study of the statuettes this little work leaves almost entirely alone; this is the more to be regretted as there are illustrations, by an excellent reproductive process, of photographs of thirteen of the finest Tanagra statuettes in Europe. Among these are two exhibited in the Trocadéro building by Camille Lécuyer; one (attributed in the work, mistakenly, we believe, to the Louvre collection) represents a seated maiden, with ball and Cupid; another a female acrobat stepping through a hoop. There is also among the illustrations the very interesting group explained by Heuzey as Ceres carrying Proserpine from Hades, and thought by him to reproduce a lost statue of Praxiteles. The work only explains the first of these three, and that with an attribution to the wrong ownership; it is, at least, assigned to the Lécuyer collection in the "Gazette des Beaux Arts," vol. 18, p. 353. But the explanation of specimens-even of those illustrated, and of the few in American collections-is unfortunately beyond the scope of the work, which is simply a convenient resumption of the views of certain French and German writers on the subject. Indeed, the writer follows these guides with unquestioning fidelity, even to renouncing any consistent plan of representing Greek spelling-using C for kappa when she takes the word " Citheron " from a French authority, and K when applying to a German one for notes about "Kalamis" and "Kyrikion." throws aside the Greek spirit, again, for a very modern one, when she banters the antique mythology about "that scamp Mercury," and the antique fashions about garments "cut half high, as the milliners say." And what is her authority for declaring that external wall-paintings colored the distant aspect of a Greek city, or that these decorations were found anywhere but in the shadow and shelter of the porticoes? We have investigated this manual with a higher object than that of giving it superficial and unmeaning praise. It is more than a brochure on "ceramics," such as modern dilettanti so profusely turn out, to be read for amusement. It is a necessity, and the best popular guide, we think, in any language to the study of a fascinating branch of Greek art-a branch in which the kind genius of the tomb has left us singularly full and grateful examples. Miss Bird's "Unbeaten Tracks in Japan."* She directed to those portions of the country which are comparatively unknown to European and American travelers. In pursuance of this bold intention, Miss Bird, beginning her expedition at Tokio, set out for the north, unaccompanied by any one but her interpreter, a native youth of some eighteen years. One cannot help admiring the courage and pluck with which this indomitable woman departed alone, like a solitary voyager into the midst of trackless seas. The obstacles to such a journey were innumerable, and kind friends endeavored to dissuade her from what seemed to be a hazardous undertaking. No woman of foreign birth had ever penetrated those unexplored regions, and very few foreigners of the sterner sex had been seen by the people among whom Miss Bird was about to trust herself. But the arguments of her kindly intentioned advisers seem to have stimulated rather than abated the desire of this determined Englishwoman. The results of the observations of the alert and shrewd traveler are embodied in the two volumes before us. Miss Bird traversed the whole of the upper portion of the island of Japan, her most northerly objective point being the island of Yezo. Her itinerary, ending at Hakodaté, the chief sea-port of Yezo, involved a journey of more than three hundred and seventy miles, and this was undertaken through a country in which the roads were, to use the favorite epithet of the author, "simply infamous." There were few, if any, accommodations for wayfarers, and even those usually provided for the people of the country were ludicrously inadequate to the wants of civilized journeyers. On the island of Yezo, Miss Bird made an extensive tour, studying the manners and customs of the Ainos, or hairy men, a people of whom we have had very little information heretofore. These singular beings, by many supposed to be the remnants of the aborigines of Japan, furnish materials for one of the most interesting chapters of modern travel. does not appear, however, from what the author has given us, that she has any new facts to substantiate the theory (which she unquestioningly adopts) that the Ainos are really a part of the aboriginal races of Japan. It Miss Bird made several excursions (we are tempted to call them incursions) into the region of country lying south and west of the capital of the empire. In all of these, as in the journey to the north, she confined herself to the "unbeaten tracks." As might be expected, she was an object of the liveliest curiosity wherever she went. Her experience at one of the interior towns may be taken as a fair sample of what she was compelled to endure in nearly every similar community through which she passed. She says of her reception: "In these little-traveled districts, as soon as one reaches the margin of a town, the first man one meets turns and flies down the street, calling out the Japanese equivalent of "Here's a foreigner!" and soon blind and seeing, old and young, clothed and naked, gather together! At the yadoya the crowd assembled in such force that the house-master removed me to some pretty rooms in a garden; but then the adults climbed on the house-roofs which overlooked it, and the children on a palisade at the end, which broke down under their weight, and admitted the whole inundation; so that I had to close the shoji, with the fatiguing consciousness, during the whole time of nominal rest, of a multitude surging outside." She saw the people in their homes, as yet unaffected by contact with foreigners, and living in the simplicity, and even squalor, of old Japan. The general aspect of the towns and villages, as painted by the impartial hand of the author, is mean and poor. The scenery is monotonous, and Miss Bird complains of the everlasting sameness of the green fields, hills, and mountains. She found a few spots of brightness about the temple, and, here and there, a picturesque relic of the old feudal times. But there were no grand castles, no gorgeous palaces, and the interior of Japan cannot be said to be a part of "the magnificent Orient." Miss Bird found no beggars in Japan, but much poverty and discomfort. Still, she found the people cheerful, mild-mannered, and generally disposed to kindliness to strangers. Her womanly sympathies went out toward these simple-hearted and gentle creatures, and she studied the problems presented to her attention with most affectionate interest. To her observation, the introduction of Christianity seems to offer but little for the encouragement of the philanthropist. In the chapters which she has devoted to a very careful and minute record of her observations in this field of missionary work, Miss Bird says: "Though the labors of many men and women in many years have resulted in making 1617 converts to the Protestant faith, while the Romanists claim 20,000, the Greeks 3000, and a knowledge of the essentials of Christianity is widely diffused through many districts, the fact remains that 34,000,000 of Japanese are skeptics or materialists, or are absolutely sunk in childish and degrading superstitions, out of which the religious significance, such as it was, has been lost." Here and there are inaccuracies of language which mar the perfect enjoyment of the critical reader; but the general flavor of the book is agreeable. Miss Bird's "outfit" seems to have comprised a large supply of writing materials, which she used to good advantage in constantly sending off numerous letters as she traveled. These letters, written to a sister in England, have since been gathered, edited, and made up into the present book. To these, however, have been added several chapters of what may be considered general observations on Japan, its history, its future, and its present condition. These, with the full information which she gives concerning the arts and industries of the country, greatly add to the value of the book. It was impossible that such a work, compiled from familiar letters to another, should be free from egotism. In fact, it is a record of personal adventures. But there is no offensive intrusion of the ego, and the frame-work * A number which the ten months which have elapsed since this letter was written have increased by fifteen hundred. adopted by the author proves to have been the very best on which could be constructed a vivid, life-like, and minute panorama of life as it exists to-day in the interior of one of the most interesting countries on the face of the globe. Harris's "Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings."'* THE British newspaper editor, who regards journalism as an exact science, who holds a leading article to be something as distinct from a purely literary production as a judge's charge or a lawyer's plea, stands aghast at seeing a "poet's corner " in a great American daily, and cannot be convinced that it is the province of a morning paper to find room for a "funny column," for magazine stories, or for essays upon abstract themes. Yet he might, perhaps, find reason to change his opinion could he look at the long line of literary men for whose introduction America has to thank her eclectic and untrammeled press. Notably in the item of humorists, this country is under obligations to the daily press. It is the medium through which almost every one of our favorite jesters has brought his cleverness before the public. John Phoenix, Mark Twain, Max Adeler are pseudonyms which were first seen attached to space-work in daily papers. Only a few years ago an evening paper of New York found its circulation largely increased by the popular appreciation of its police reports, written by a man-now dead-who contrived to chronicle the sadder side of life in a great city with a halfpathetic humor and a strange picturesqueness that raised the lowest class of reporting to the level of literary labor. Robert Burdette, who, of all American humorous writers, has perhaps the widest range, has made the Burlington "Hawkeye" known throughout the country. Within a year, the name of the Brooklyn Eagle" has been carried beyond the bounds of local fame by a writer who works one small, stray vein of humor with peculiar skill; and the Rabelaisian mirth of the "Derrick Dodd" papers has done the same office for the San Francisco "Post"; while the Atlanta "Constitution" has extended its southern reputation north, east, and west by the publication of Mr. Joel Chandler Harris's "Uncle Remus" sketches. These last, reprinted in book form, have met with a favor which they fully deserve. Character is the one thing which American readers always appreciate in their books, American audiences in their plays; and Mr. Harris has given us, in "Uncle Remus," the best sustained and most elaborate study which our literature possesses, or, in all probability, ever will possess, of a type familiar to us all-the old plantation negro. It is a character, now almost a tradition, that has been sketched in song and story; but that will never find a more faithful or sympa thetic delineator than the creator of "Uncle Remus." The gentle old darky-shrewd, yet simple-minded, devoted to the people who once owned him as a slave, yet with a certain tyrannical sense of his hold upon their affection-will live for *New York: D. Appleton & Co. VOL. XXI.-71. ever in these pages, a gracious relic of a time and an "institution" whose memories for the most part are an abiding curse. Even the occasional mild little apologies for the patriarchal system which the author scatters through his work will offend no one. They lend it a pleasant old-time, "befo'-the-wah " flavor; so to speak, they give the picture "distance." Mr. Harris puts forth on behalf of his book a somewhat timorous claim to the attention of students of ethnology and mythology; but he seems modestly incapable of realizing the importance of his work. He is the only man who has seized this great opportunity of putting on record the speech and habits of thought of a type that must soon be obsolete. It is curious to note the deprecating tone in which he calls attention to a passage that settles definitely the derivation of the muchdiscussed verb "to skedaddle," and the diffidence of his suggestion that Uncle Remus's homely tales may be akin to older mythic fictions. On page 138 Mr. Harris expresses an opinion that the story of "Jacky-my-Lantern" is "a trifle too elaborate" to be of pure negro origin. This story is one of the oldest of the German Mährchen, and is known, in part or whole, in other languages. One of its "variants," to use Mr. Harris's favorite word, was published in SCRIBNER'S for June, 1878, as a translation of an ancient Flemish legend, by W. Nichols. The old negro tells, on page 131, the tale of the were-wolf, familiar in all countries, under various names, such as loup-garou, denvleiz, worlin, versipellis or turnskin. The account of "How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Fine Bushy Tail" (page 108) is so like a brief tale in Mr. George Webbe Dasent's translation of the "Norske Folkeeventyr," that we transcribe the Norse version for the benefit of those readers of "Uncle Remus" who may wish to compare the two: "WHY THE BEAR IS STUMPY-TAILED. "One day the bear met the fox, who came slinking along with a string of fish he had stolen. "Whence did you get those from?' asked the bear. "Oh, my lord Bruin, I've been out fishing, and caught them,' said the fox. "So the bear had a mind to learn to fish, too, and bade the fox tell him how he was to set about it. "Oh, it's an easy craft for you,' answered the fox, 'and soon learnt; you've only got to go upon the ice and cut a hole, and stick your tail down into it; and so you must go on holding it there as long as you can. You're not to mind if your tail smarts a little, that's when the fish bite; the longer you hold it there the more fish you'll get; and then, all at once, out with it, with a cross-pull sideways, and with a strong pull, too.' "Yes, the bear did as the fox had said, and held his tail a long, long time down in the hole, till it was fast frozen in; then he pulled it out with a crosspull, and it snapped short off; that's why Bruin goes about with a stumpy tail this very day.' To say that this unpretentious volume is among the most valuable contributions to the data of folklore since the publication of "Grimm's Mährchen," is only justice. As a piece of light literature, it is novel and interesting. No one can read, without a sympathetic amusement, the recital of the adventures of Br'er Rabbit,-an American Reinecke Fuchs,-a helpless hero, always victorious through childish cunning. The "Songs" have already been copied in half the newspapers in the country; but it is to be noted that these compositions show, in certain peculiarities of their versification, the influence of the white man's technical skill. As to old Remus's Sayings," many of them bid fair to pass into permanence as proverbs. There is a large allowance of worldly wisdom in such as these: 66 Ole man Know-all died las' year. Kwishins on mules' foots done gone out er fashion. Tarrypin walk fast 'nough fer to go visitin'. Good luck say: "Op'n yo' mouf en shet yo' eyes." W'en you bin cas'n shadders long ez de ole nigger, den you'll fine out who's w'ich en w'ich's who. 'Twont do fer ter give out too much cloff fer ter cut one pa'r pants. Ef you wanter see yo' own sins, clean up a new groun'. The etymologist will find food for study in Uncle Remus's vocabulary. This Georgia negro uses the old English word "haslett," or "harslet," rarely heard now outside of New England. He interjects "mon" into his discourse in true Scotch fashion. Sometimes his words suggest a subtle and profound idea: a "soon beast" is one who is 'soon"-early or prompt-in attending to the business of life; and to-day you may hear a boy, in the streets of New York, tell his companion not to be "too soon" or "too previous." "Biggity" is a most expressive word, applied to a pretentious or inflated person. 66 One thing in Mr. Harris's book calls for amendment in some future edition, i. e. his fantastic method of spelling. Not content with writing phonetically such words as his hero mispronounces, he has altered the form of others for no apparent purpose save the confusion of his readers. Had he printed the words correctly, come would have been pronounced kum; oblige, oblije; hour, 'our; resume, rezume; folks, fokes, and flirtatious, flirtashus; and they would have been more readily recognizable. Here are a few of Uncle Remus's words which may need explanation to those who have never studied his dialect: Bellust-Bellowsed, blown, winded. Bobbycue-Barbecue. Broozin'-Browsing, nosing about. Confunce-Conference. Contrapshun-Construction, contrivance. Frazzle (subst.)-Ravel, sleave, shred: "wo' to a frazzle" Grabble-An "Alice-in-Wonderland combination of grab and scramble. SINCE our last notice of "L'Art" two new volumes have appeared, the third and fourth of the sixth year. The report of the Salon of 1880 is continued. Among the etchings from Salon pictures is one after Meissonier's "Une Halte," one of the most uninteresting of this more than clever painter's performances. Bonnat's excellent portrait of President Grévy is also etched; the color of the original does not count much in its favor, so the etching does not show the portrait at a disadvantage. We are glad to find in the third volume, a reminder of one of the most striking and original pictures of the Salon-a drawing, namely, of Cazin's "Ishmael." "Striking," we say, though the eye was attracted to it at once, as the visitor passed through the galleries, by the very absence from it of those exhibition qualities that we generally call "striking." There is simplicity, sincerity, and thought in all of Cazin's work; he is no mere creature of the Academy. Some studies by Butin are reproduced by "process," with remarkable success. He is one of the most charming of the younger artists; a page from his sketch-book was given in SCRIBNER for January. Dantan has here an admirable drawing of his picture of a corner of a sculptor's studio; visitors will remember it as one of the best pieces of painting in the Salon. It has been purchased by the Govern ment, and will hereafter be seen in the Luxembourg. "L'Art" devotes considerable space to the last exhibition of the London Academy and Grosvenor *Paris, 33 Avenue de l'Opéra; London, 134 New Bond street; New York, J. W. Bouton. |