THIS handsome volume, a translation of the Vom Amazonas und Madeira, published in Germany during the same year, furnishes an important addition to our knowledge of an interesting and little known part of the South American continent. The author, Mr. Franz Keller, an engineer in the service of the Brazilian Government, was commissioned in 1867 to make a survey of the long series of rapids and cataracts which impede the navigation of the Madeira river, and which are supposed to be the only obstacles to an extensive trade ready to spring up between the interior provinces of Brazil and Bolivia, on the one hand, and the Atlantic sea-ports and Europe on the other. It was part of his mission also to ascertain the practicability of a railway along the banks of the stream, to connect the navigable portion of its upper waters with that of its lower course below the last rapid. Mr. Keller left Rio de Janeiro, on this important errand, accompanied by his father, in November, 1867, and returned to that city in January, 1869; not too long an interval, be it observed en passant, in which to accomplish some 7,000 miles of travel, and execute engineering surveys over a length of 230 miles of river (the length of the section obstructed by rapids), with so small a staff as four persons, all told. In May, 1869, his official report, consisting of sixty-one large octavo pages, was presented to the Minister of the Interior in Rio. The principal engineering details of this report, or such as are calculated to interest general readers, are added to the popular account of the journey in the work before us, and will be welcome to all who value solid information in books of travel.

The grandeur of the idea which led to the mission of Mr. Keller becomes evident when we examine the position of the Madeira on a map of South America, and duly weigh the facts which he gives in the appendix to his work. The upper waters of this vast tributary of the Amazons are seen to consist of a number of affluents, each, according to our European ideas, a great river, spreading like a fan over the fertile plains of Bolivia, and partly over the adjoining Brazilian province of Matto Grosso. It is stated that these streams are navigable, and continue so nearly to the north-eastern frontier of Bolivia; at that point the main stream of the Madeira has acquired the dimensions of a first-class river, having an average width of more than a mile down to its junction with the Amazons. For the last 560 miles of its course the river is again navigable, and by large steamers; in fact it may be said to be here open to the maritime commerce of the world, inasmuch as ocean-going vessels now pass its mouth (800 miles from the Atlantic) on their way

to the city of Manaos, 200 miles above it on the main Amazons. Unfortunately for the welfare of the populations of Bolivia and the Brazilian interior provinces, the navigable upper streams are severed from the great water highway lower down by the series of rapids and falls of the middle course of the river; could some means be devised of re

moving or avoiding the obstruction, a bright prospect would be opened to stagnant communities, in which, it is fair to say, the rest of the civilised world would participate. Bolivia is rich in mines, forest-productions and pastures, and contains a population of two and three-quarter millions of souls, mostly settled on the plains of the interior, and separated from the Pacific by the ranges of the Andes and a broad zone of sandy desert; the mining country of Matto Grosso is equally isolated from the Atlantic marts of Brazil. To construct a cheap railway past the unfortunate obstructions, would be to bring these regions into direct water communication with the Atlantic. It was an idea worthy of patriotic statesmen, even if they have not sufficiently weighed the great difficulties of the undertaking, arising from ignorance of the physical and economic obstacles to be overcome, and the total absence of civilised population within a radius of six or seven hundred miles from the proposed works.

To do Mr. Keller justice, he is not enthusiastic concerning the immediate results of his survey, and does not mention the fact that the railway has been undertaken. The introduction to his work gives a very fair general account of the Empire of Brazil and an impartial view of its resources and prospects. In his narrative there is no attempt to under-estimate the magnitude of the difficulties which lie in the way of the development of communications by way of the Madeira. The total length of river course obstructed by rapids he found, as already stated, to be 230 miles; within this distance he observed no fewer than seventeen falls of greater or less slope, varying from vertical cataracts of thirty-six feet drop, to rapids sufficiently obstructive to require consideration. At three of the falls it was necessary in ascending to haul the canoes by land past the obstacle, and at nearly all the remainder they had to be unloaded and towed by Indians; the cargoes being carried along the banks. Yet the total slope of the river from the first falls to the last is very slight-only 228 feet, or an average of one foot per mile. All his observations of the altitude of places above the sea confirm the curious results arrived at by many previous explorers, as to the smallness of the difference between the level of the Atlantic and that of the great river in the centre of the South American continent. At Serpa, 700 miles from the mouth, his measurements give the surface at low water as only fifty-nine feet above the mean level of the sea; and at the commencement of the falls of the Madeira, 1,360 miles from the mouth of the Amazons, the altitude was only 200 feet. The great distance above the mouth of the river (500 miles) at which the tides are felt, is another confirmation of the near approach to the sea-level of this wonderful river, the lower part of which, for a thousand miles, must be considered for

all practical purposes as an arm of the sea, and its shores as maritime districts.

Mr. Keller has not, we think, adopted the most attractive arrangement of the matter of his book; giving the narrative briefly in two chapters, and all his remarks on the country, its productions and people, in classified order under separate chapters. The usual method would certainly have been better, namely, that of interspersing the general observations throughout the narrative. His style, however, is pleasant; he describes well and imparts a great amount of interesting and solid information under the various heads he has chosen. Thus we have a chapter on "Canoe and Camp Life;" another on

Hunting and Fishing;' a third on the "Vegetation of the Amazons Valley;" a fourth on the "Wild Indian Tribes," and so on. The country in the neighbourhood of the falls of the Madeira is still in the possession of aboriginal tribes, the principal of whom, the Caripunas, sometimes attack passing traders. Keller's party fell in with bands of these picturesque savages, and some of the most interesting parts of his book relate to his intercourse with them. Except a few small canoes which pass annually up and down the river, bringing down produce from the Bolivian settlements to exchange for European goods at the towns on the Amazons, the Madeira is visited only by parties of india-rubber collectors, who meet with great success in the boundless virgin forests of its banks, where the tree yielding this costly sap exists in great abundance. In one of his chapters Mr. Keller gives an exhaustive and amusing account of the mode of collecting and preparing the rubber.

An important feature of the volume is the engravings, sixty-eight in number, with which it is adorned. These are far superior in design and execution to those usually met with in books of travel. The author informs us that he not only sketched the scenes from nature, but copied his drawings on the wood-blocks himself. The result shows that he is an artist of no mean attainments; but we do not think he has succeeded so well in the Indian figures and groups as in the landscapes, and especially in the details of tropical vegetation. Rarely have these been presented in the illustrations of books of this class with such fidelity and beauty as in the sketch of Caripuna Indians with Tapir at p. 89. Many of the engravings being of large quarto size, a correspondingly large format for the volume has been required; but it would be a matter for regret if this circumstance should stand in the way of a wide circulation for so meritorious a book of travels.

It is with reluctance that we allude, in conclusion, to certain shortcomings in the translation. Surely it is necessary in a book for English readers to reduce all measurements of temperature, size and distance to English scales. All these, however, are left untranslated. The temperatures are Centigrade and Réaumur, and the distances in mètres; but a serious confusion is caused when miles are mentioned, as they are styled "geographical miles," although it is evident that German miles are meant, which makes a vast difference, especially when areas are in question. Without special attention, a most

erroneous idea would be conveyed by the table of areas in square miles of the Brazilian provinces, at pp. 2 and 6, where after having just stated that the empire was nearly as large as Europe, the author gives its area as "144,500 geographical square miles; an unintelligible statement to those who remember that Europe contains nearly two millions of square miles. In a work dealing largely with the result of surveys, greater attention should have been paid to all the numerical data. We notice also numerous misprints, in most cases of proper names; such as Puro Preto for Ouro Preto, Bertholetis excelsae for Bertholletia excelsa, and many others. In one place (p. 57), the difficulties are alluded to of passes over the Bolivian Andes "at least 1,500 feet (!) above the sealevel." A good map of the part of the Madeira explored, with a sketch-map on a small scale of South America, would have been useful additions to the work. The original German edition, we notice, has a map of this kind. H. W. BATES.

History of the United States, from the covery of the American Continent. By George Bancroft. Vol. X. (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.; London: Sampson Low & Co., 1874.)

pared with the earlier ones. From the moment that France, followed soon by Spain, enters into the struggle, instead of becoming fiercer on the American continent, it only slackens. So far as yet were the Americans from that self-reliance which years of independence have since developed in them, that as soon as they won allies for themselves, they were disposed to cast the whole burthen of the war upon the latter, and could only be whipped up by the most earnest appeals, the most strenuous exertions, to make any efforts themselves, either in men or money. Not a battle was fought by the Northern army under Washington after that of Monmouth (June 28, 1778)—a mere blow struck at a retreating foe, which only delayed his progress by a day-until the siege of Yorktown. From the time of the battle of Monmouth till the news of the signature of the preliminary articles of peace, a period of more than three and a half years, it is almost incredible to think that the British forces were left virtually unmolested in New York, simply because the American people could not be brought to supply a trusted comDis-mander-in-chief with sufficient means, even with French assistance, for driving or south, interesting as it is, was only the starving them out. The campaign in the result of British invasion, and Charleston, like New York, was only at last voluntarily surrendered by England at the peace. For stubborn perseverance under defeat, bull-dog tenacity in pursuit, constancy under all hindrances, Greene is almost another Washington, and, like another Washington, he is equally starved of support by his country. Imagine the position of the commander of an army, to whom his finance minister has to write, "You must continue your exertions with or without men or provisions, clothing or pay! No nation ever struck the first blows for independence with more fervid enthusiasm than the Americans; none ever more sluggishly the last. When Clinton, after that surrender of York-town which virtually stopped the war, was willing to be responsible for the conquest of America if he could only have 10,000 additional men, he was probably wrong, for he had Washington still in front of him. But Washington himself knew that it was 66 high time for a peace," and when at this day one considers carefully and dispassionately the position of the belligerents at the end of 1782, it is clear that England was the least exhausted of any, and that had she not been engaged in a cause which her own people felt to be an iniquitous one, a few more blows, such as she was alone capable of dealing, might have secured, though only for a time, her material triumph, and thus delayed by perhaps a decade or two the final loss of the American colonies. Thank God that it was not so! Sharply as we may feel to this day the pang of that rending in twain of our great English race, England's victory, on the ground which she had taken up, would have been the knell of freedom throughout the world; her defeat rang in the renewal of its life, and peals yet in every successive conquest which it has since achieved. The struggle with America gave to ourselves the publicity of Parliamentary debates; Pitt's, the first great motion for Parliamentary Re

THIS tenth volume of Mr. Bancroft's History of the United States forms also the fourth of his American Revolution; and judging from the statement prefixed to the ninth volume, that "one volume more will complete the American Revolution," as well as from the decisive monosyllable "End" which closes the present one, it is intended to be the last. The contents spread over the four years 1778-1782, closing with the signature by the American Commissioners of the provisional articles of peace, November 30, 1782. It is to be presumed, therefore, that in the judgment of the veteran historian the American Revolution terminated with this act, although it left the British troops in the occupation of two chief American cities for a twelvemonth longer, and although to many the revolutionary era would seem not to have closed till the "rope of sand" of the Confederation gave place in 1787 to the firm bonds of the Union.

A large portion of the volume, and probably nearly all of novelty that it contains, consists of diplomatic matter, for which, as the preface shows, the archives of France, Prussia, Austria, Russia, and Holland, as well as of Great Britain, have been ransacked, besides unpublished papers of the American Peace Commissioners, and of two of the English ones. Mr. Bancroft claims also to have been able "to trace the division between the North and the South, arising from slavery, further back than had as yet been done; and this is in a measure correct, although Professor Von Holst's work, Verfassung und Demokratie der Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika, reviewed some months back in these pages, which might perhaps have deserved Mr. Bancroft's notice, contains many of the facts from which he derives this conclusion.

The four years over which this volume extends offer but little interest, so far as the war in America itself is concerned, as com

form, was brought forward in the interval between the cessation of actual hostilities and a formal peace. For the continent of Europe the American revolution was the forerunner of that far more terrible struggle in France, which, as its results unroll, seems to have given more of freedom to almost every civilised country than to that in which it took place, although, if we except hapless Poland, there is not one whose share it has not increased. And if, through the shock of conflict which it involved, that struggle retarded for a while our own constitutional development, this has since proceeded for us on the same lines which were virtually opened out through American independence, those of "peace, economy, reform." Spanish America, lastly, the American revolution gave in due time both independence and the forms in which it is clothed, while it has throughout the world introduced freedom into the relations between colonies and the mother-country, either through that almost absolute self-government which England freely concedes to her own, or through colonial representation in the Parliament of the mother-country, as in the case of France and Portugal.

To

Mr. Bancroft may well be congratulated on having brought to a close the history of a period so momentous in its results. His work, though it will not place him in the front rank of historians, even among those of his own country, is likely to remain a standard one, and by its fulness and what may be called its workmanlike character deserves to do so. It is moreover observable, that in quality it has improved as it has gone on; that through the mellowing either of age or official experience it has, besides acquiring more comprehensiveness of scope, gained also in moderation of tone. Perfect impartiality as between his own countrymen and foreigners is not indeed to be expected from the author. Those negotiations for the exchange of prisoners, which occupy so large a place in Washington's correspondence during this period, and throughout which the object of the Americans appears to have been either to keep as long as possible a large number of trained English soldiers in their hands, as against their own raw levies, whose terms of engagement were mostly long since expired, or, if compelled to give them up, to entrap England into some political concession, find no place in the pages of the present volume. There is an evident slurring over of the discreditable haste of the American Commissioners in signing a peace behind the backs of their French allies, although admitted ere this by his own countrymen, as will be seen by reference to Jared Sparks's Life and Correspondence of Franklin. Cases like those of the execution of Hayne and Huddy have two sides to them, one of which is barely indicated. In some instances, indeed, perhaps a slur is cast where none is intended; but probably few people, reading of Burke's acceptance of office under the second Rockingham ministry, that "He was more than content with the rich office of paymaster for himself, and lucrative places for his kin," would imagine that one of the first uses he made of place was, in bringing forward again his plan of economic reform, largely to cut

away the emoluments of his own office. English readers, one trusts, are mostly aware of this, but one doubts whether American readers are, and for their benefit it would have been surely better, if not more candid, to have qualified such a sentence by a note. Mr. Bancroft's English hero, it must be added, is Lord Shelburne, Burke's conduct towards whom is one of the uglier passages of his career; but just on that account a true historian should have been scrupulous in giving the latter his due in a matter wherein he deserves all praise.

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Mr. Bancroft's style, never unfortunately pleasant, is in this volume strongly tinged with what may be called Continentalism. Complot" is an ugly Gallicism which one may have met with in previous volumes, but in the present one it is odiously prominent, giving, for instance, a title to a whole chapter, "The Complot of Sir Henry Clinton and Arnold." No less unpleasant in the same direction is "she repugns every exertion." On the other hand, in the use of regent in place of "ruler". "He united in himself the qualities of a great regent,"-Mr. Bancroft has slid into a Teutonism as unmistakeable as it is useless. Indeed, that there should not be a stronger Teutonic flavour in Mr. Bancroft's style is rather matter for surprise, when one considers the large space he has allotted to Germany in the present volume. Whether, indeed, many readers will be disposed to accept his character of Frederic II. as of one who "lived with and for the people," may be a question; as also, whether his description of Duke Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar as "warm-hearted,' " is ex

actly carried out by the statement in the same sentence that at the age of nineteen, while he refused leave to open recruiting offices for the English service, he "consented to the delivery of vagabonds and convicts." "Cold-blooded 'cuteness" would, perhaps, be rather the term which a reader would be inclined to apply to such a transaction who is less of a Philo-Teuton than the United States Minister at the Court of the German Emperor. J. M. LUDLOW.

Contes Populaires recueillis en Agenais. Par M. Jean-François Bladó. Traduction Française et Texte Agenais, suivis de Notes Comparatives par M. Reinhold Köhler. (Paris: Librairie Joseph Baer, 1874.)

A COLLECTION of popular tales annotated by Dr. Reinhold Köhler is always a welcome boon to students of folk-lore. So copious are his stores of learning, drawn from the popular literatures of all nations, that he is able to render precious even a commonplace text by the richness of his attendant commentary. The collection now before us is interesting in itself, both to the philologist and to the comparer of folk-tales; but its value in the eyes of scholars will be greatly enhanced by the fact of its being attended by fifteen pages of "notes comparatives," into which Dr. Köhler has compressed such a mass of information as only he or Professor Felix Liebrecht could supply.

M. Bladé published in 1867 a collection of "Contes et Proverbes Populaires recueillis

en Armagnac," and he has now done the same good service for the stories he has found in the Agenais, a district which formerly extended along both banks of the Garonne, coinciding with the ancient bishopric of Agen. But in 1317 the creation of the diocese of Condom reduced the feudal and ecclesiastical Agenais to the portion situated on the right bank of the river. By visiting the much frequented fairs in this district he was enabled to make acquaintance with some thirty possessors of popular lore, but he has chiefly drawn upon the stores supplied "by three persons, gifted in the most eminent degree with such respect for tradition and fidelity to old memories as are becoming more and more rare." Each story is given exactly as it was written down, but the Agen text is accompanied by a translation for the benefit of ordinary FrenchThe stories comprise eight "Contes," which M. Bladé defines as tales which both the teller and the hearer acknowledge to be fictions of a marvellous nature-five "Récits," or anecdotes which, if not true, are at least truthlike, and are usually of a humorous cast --and five "Superstitions," which are generally accepted as true by the narrator and his audience. For the last division, "legends" would perhaps have been a better designation.

men.

The story of" Peau d'Ane" is a version of the widely spread tale of the heroine whose betrothed or husband deserts her, but is eventually won back. The opening is that of "Beauty and the Beast," but instead of an inferior animal, a king of France demands a maiden's hand as a recompense for not eating her father, and strangely enough two out of three girls refuse the proffered diadem. "Les Deux Jumeaux" are heroic twins, one of whom saves an exposed maiden from a "seven-headed beast," and marries her. She warns him against a certain house, but he attempts to enter it. Being induced to pass a hair of his head through the cat's-hole in the door, he is swallowed up by the earth. His brother coming to seek him, substitutes a hair from his steed's mane for one of his own, so he escapes from the earthquake which swallows up the horse, and afterwards he storms the fatal house and releases his engulfed brother. "Les Deux Filles" is one of the usual stepmother stories, in which the pretty stepdaughter is deserted by her father in a wood, but finds in it a castle, the proprietress of which receives her hospitably. As on taking leave she chooses the worst of the presents offered her, she is rewarded by many good things, including three stars which descend from heaven to rest upon her brow and chin, and is married to the son of the King of England. But her half-sister, "ugly as sin," who visits the castle, behaves greedily, and therefore is utterly disgraced, and forced to become the wife of a drunkard who beats her twenty times a day. The opening of "La Gardeuse de Dindons" is one of those variants of the King Lear story in which a monarch who is very fond of salt is told by his youngest daughter that she loves him as much as he loves salt, whereupon he disinherits her. But that episode has been forgotten by the Agen narrator, in which the mistaken parent is brought by a saltless dish to a sense of his daughter's real affection for him. The second

part of the story is that of "Cinderella." Most remarkable among the other Contes are two Vampire stories entitled "La Goulue" and "La Jambe d'Or." In the former a girl of eighteen cares for neither dances nor sweethearts, but is always longing for raw meat. One night her fond parents, being unable to procure any at the butcher's, dig up a corpse, cut off its left leg, and present it to their hungering child. She eats up every morsel of its flesh, then cracks its bone and sucks the marrow. All night long a voice is heard around the house, crying "Give me back my leg." The next day the girl, being at home alone, finds suspended from the crook in the kitchen a corpse, wanting its left leg. It orders her to heat water and wash its right leg. She does so. Then it tells her to wash its left leg. She replies that it has none, whereupon it carries her off to its desecrated grave and there eats her. The other story is of a similar nature. A lovely lady, one of whose legs is of gold, is buried by her sorrowing lord. But at night her footman digs her up, and carries off her precious limb. Next morning the grave-digger reports that the buried lady is screaming for her golden leg. The husband visits her grave, explains to her that she has been buried with both legs on, and promises to have masses said for the repose of her soul. But the screams go on. Her waiting-maid pays a similar visit with no better result. Lastly the footman goes, though much against his will. And when he says, "What do you want, madam ?” the lady cries, "I want you," and bursting from the earth, she seizes that footman, drags him into her grave, and there eats him up. Of this horrible tale, which seems entirely out of keeping in the West of Europe, in which the dead seldom evince such morbid appetites, Dr. Köhler gives four variants. In the first, from Oldenburg, a servant-maid steals the leg of her buried mistress; in the second, from Schleswig-Holstein, a mother steals her son's golden leg; in the third, one of Colshorn's Märchen, a grave-digger steals a little girl's golden leg. The fourth is the English tale contributed by Mr. Baring Gould to Henderson's Notes on the Folk-lore of the Northern Counties, in which a husband purloins his dead wife's golden arm. To these we may add a Russian variant, from Tver, the eighteenth of Chudinsky's Russkiya Narodnuiya Skazki (Moscow, 1864). orphan girl, after the death of an aunt, one of whose legs was of gold, is reduced to utter distress. So she goes one dark and rainy night to the churchyard, and opens her aunt's grave, intending to carry off the golden limb. In the grave there is no trace of her aunt, except the leg of gold. This she seizes and sets off home. But on the way back she sees her dead aunt drawing near, hears her voice asking after her golden leg, and falls senseless to the ground. Next morning the passers-by find her lying there dead. But the golden leg has disappeared.

In it an

The "Récits" contribute little that is new, except the information that Henri IV. is represented by Agen legends as a gigantic being, strong as a bull. But among the "Superstitions" there are two which are curious. "L'Homme aux Dents Rouges" belongs to the cycle of stories relating to a journey to the other world, but Dr. Köhler

is not aware of any other tale which answers to it in its entirety. A girl refuses to marry till a wooer with red teeth overcomes her reluctance to wed. As her husband disappears every morning, to return at night, she induces her brothers to follow him. The elder brother fails, but the younger succeeds in discovering how he spends his time. Among other things, he serves a mass in church, on the altar of which burn tapers, one shorter than the rest, and against the windows of which birds keep flying. Eventually he explains to his inquisitive brotherin-law that the birds which beat against the windows were the souls of unchristened children, and that the short taper was the type of that brother-in-law's life, soon to be extinguished. The other story, "Le Jeune Homme Châtié!" is that of a false lover who betrays his unfortunate love. She dies, and remorse preys upon her betrayer's heart. So he goes with a fellow pilgrim to Rome, and confesses his sin to the Pope. And the Pope summons his companion, and tells him that on the return journey a strange beast will fasten upon the penitent, who will bear it with him, and at night will go along with it to his chamber. Into that chamber no one is to enter, whatever may happen. All this comes to pass. As the pilgrims toil along, a beast, which afar off seems small, and close at hand appears big, leaps on to the penitent's back, and holds on there by its claws. The penitent bears it with him to his room. And at night a terrible uproar is heard within his chamber, but no man dares to enter therein until the next morning. Then the room is found to be empty, nor is anything ever heard afterwards either of the man or of the beast. W. R. S. RALSTON.

en passant, Mr. Bailey could have afforded to withhold Charles Knight's very silly criticism and spared a kindly word rather is thin and empty beside this huge octavo. Perchance, indeed, its very size and massive. ness may frighten away readers, if not buyers. But for our part not one page almost of all the 826 would we wish away, a-i.e., everything here brought together deserved preservation once. As we shall indicate hereafter, Mr. Bailey may be induced to compact and give another form to his superabundant materials; but for his noble book just as it lies before us in its pleasant discursiveness, piquant asides, chatty quotations, affluent genealogical and biographical and sub-biographical compilations we have little but thanks and praise, seeing that substantially it is a capital piece of honest and genuine work. The special merit of this new Life is the compiler's open-eyed reading of Fuller's own books, and his unfailing utilisation of the very slightest personal detail hidden therein. The special defect is, that if the hero of it chances in any manner of way to be associable with any Smith, Brown, Robinson, or Jones, forthwith there is tacked on a memoir not merely of Smith, Brown, Robinson, or Jones, but of his twentieth half-cousin-which, sooth to say, so comes between the reader and Fuller as to be somewhat provoking. And yet so genial and matterful is Mr. Bailey, that he contrives somehow to interest one in the veriest Smith, Brown, Robinson or Jones of them all; so that for once, as already said, the most epexegetical note is welcome, especially as the new and old information, while irrelevant, is often in itself extremely acceptable. A glance at chapter i. will serve as a specimen of the method, or no method, of the entire book. Starting with the Latin “ men et omen," first Fuller and next Thomas are made the text of a constantly digressing dissertation, with quaint bits from Heylin (Carlyle's "lying Peter "), and from Fuller himself, and the most out-of-the-way sources early and more recent. As a rule, each quotation and reference is given at firsthand, as shown by the carefully filledin places and editions. Interwoven with all the lore on the name and surname -per se a noticeable contribution to the history of English names-are illustrations and inter-illustrations of every imaginable thing-e. g., Sir John and Lady Fullerton are lugged in, and thereupon comes their punning epitaph and the profound remark, "This is quite in character with the quaintness of the reign of King James" (p. 5)! Again, Epoche" " is incidentally quoted, and lo! there is a note on epoche, epochee, Tox as a trisyllable correspondent withepitome!! Once more: in the text we are duly informed that "to none of the branches of the family here mentioned, nor yet to the less extensive houses settled in Surrey, Kent, &c., have we been able to refer with certainty Fuller's paternal descent" (pp. 16, 17); and thereupon one would have expected those family-lines to be left unexplored. far from this, Mr. Bailey multiplies note upon note, excursus upon excursus, on

The Life of Thomas Fuller, D.D., with Notices of his Books, his Kinsmen, and his Friends. By John Eglington Bailey. (London: B. M. Pickering. Manchester: T. J. Day, 1874.)

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THIS is one of those rare books that seem to be growing still rarer year by year in these book-manufacturing days, and which, though their faults were multiplied fifty-fold, ought to be received with thankfulness by all who care for the great names of English literature. Brain and pen, not paste-pot and scissors, have been the implements used on it; and if, as usual, perhaps inevitable with such type of book, the thing be overdone in one direction and underdone-as will appear-in another, and it be altogether too bulky and gaseous, the research is so self-evident, the integrity of pains (in the old sense) so marked, the mastery of the entire outward facts so thorough, and the enthusiasm so innocently Elia-like, that it were worse than ungrateful even very much to qualify one's gladness and gratitude over such a new Life of such a man and wit (again in the old sense) as this of Thomas Fuller. Sure we are that the present is just such a book as Charles Lamb would have said "grace" for, and that with much more gusto than for any conceivable dinner, his own "roast pig" not excepted. There have been various inade- these same extraneous Fullers! quate sketches of the life of Fuller, but the we are furnished with a full memoir of best, to wit, Russell's Memorials-on which, | Thomas Fuller, M.D., biographic and biblio

But so

For one,

graphic, and actually a facsimile of Vertue's portrait of him; and yet this Dr. Thomas Fuller had no more to do with our Dr. Thomas Fuller than any of the diverse Fullers enumerated, Mr. Bailey's one plea for introducing him being somebody's having confounded him with the Fuller. By the way, it may be here remarked that the facsimile portrait of Thomas Fuller, M.D., reminds us of others (two vivid steel plates) of Bishop Davenant, with, of course, a memoir of him, because the venerable bishop was our Fuller's uncle and patron. And so in chapter after chapter, the proverbial needle is again and again buried in the up-piled masses of hayhay, excellent no doubt, but in the road when it is the needle (and thread, too) one is in vain search of.

Enough has been submitted to indicate that Mr. Bailey, among his qualifications, does not possess that of discrimination—or, to put it in another way, that, having accumulated materials in innumerable note-books, he is content to tumble them all out, and so to be a mere "hewer of wood and drawer of water" for some dexterous book-maker, when he shows capacity to be an artist. We put the matter thus strongly with a soupçon of reluctance, for some may misconstrue it into depreciation; but our wish is to stimulate the Compiler into a Biographer, and the day-labourer into a master-builder. Thus, nothing could be more entertaining, as we have seen, than Fuller's own references to his own name with which chapter i. is filled and running over; but how utterly out of place are they! First of all as anticipating facts and characteristics lying far off in after years, and next as missing the opportunity given in them of illustrating onward the fecundity and pleasantness of his wit as compared with the malicious heaviness of his opponents in their vulgar playing on name and life. Here indeed lies the fundamental mistake of the book as a Life. There is not so much as an attempt to analyse the elements of Fuller's very remarkable and almost (in England) unique genius. There are many good things picked out from his books and many good things said about them and him, but his large and magnificent personality is lost in the surplusage of relatively petty details. Indeed, the treatment of Lord Fitz-Hardinge's truly great and selfauthenticating portrait of Fuller, in reproducing it in a very poor and commonplace lithograph, instead of stee! from cunning hand, is ominous. Mr. Bailey, with all his quenchless industry and admirable persistence of search and research, and alertness of vision (without other men's spectacles), fails to dominate his chapters with the man himself, e.g. fails to distinguish critically Fuller's manly and unvociferous loyalty to the Throne from the greedy royalism of too many of his churchly contemporaries, and fails to bring out the many-sidedness of his ample nature as exemplified in his relations-so kindly, so full of wise charity, so magnanimous-to the men of his age, and his catholicity of heart toward every true man. Similarly, in the quasianalyses of his many books, we have scraps out of them and note upon note about them, but all higgledy-piggledy, and in nowise contributory from chapter to chapter

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