A NOTE FROM CAPTAIN FORBES.

DEAR MR. EDITOR,—

MILTON, MASSACHUSETTS, 15th July, 1889.

In the excellent article on John Ericsson in your July number I fail to find any mention of one of the most remarkable vessels of his engineering, built in 1848. She was named after myself by her owners, the underwriters, of Boston. I considered this a great compliment, although it was intended as a punishment for daring to endorse a twin-screw built of iron at East Boston by Mr. Otis Tufts. I had strongly advised the construction of this vessel as far back as 1838, but, being obliged to go to China, her construction was deferred until after my return in 1841. My object was to introduce a relief-vessel for saving life and property. It was said that the screw would not tow so well as the paddle, and that an iron vessel would be worn out by the action of salt water in a short time. She proved eminently successful, and did much service for about fifteen years, when she was sold to the United States government, and at the battle of Port Royal she was used to tow a sailing-frigate, and fortunately escaped being hit in any vulnerable place. Not long after, she was ordered for some Southern port, and on her way, following some shoal-draught vessels round the Carolina coast at night, was run on shore, and, as the enemy was close at hand, her commander set fire to what was consumable on her and embarked with her crew in her boats. Ericsson deserved great credit for her efficiency, but, as she consumed much fuel and her owners never charged enough for her work, she was disposed of, as before said, and a single-screw relief-boat, called the Charles Pearson, was built for a relief-vessel: she could tow a ship from Boston to New York cheaper than my namesake, and was in consequence more popular than Ericsson's splendid boat. I think that Mr. Habberton should have given "our greatest inventor" the credit due for building the best tug we have ever had in New England. R. B. Forbes.*

BOOK-TALK.

THE trouble with Mr. Henry James appears to be that he is all brain and no heart. Like the man in Tennyson's "Palace of Art," he sits as God, calmly contemplating the human weaknesses from which he holds himself aloof. He has made sundry minute studies of women, but all from the outside; he never cared enough for the sex to investigate after the manner of Burns and Goethe. Once only has he descended from this bloodless superiority, and shown human feeling for of his characters, and then it was a man. "The Princess Casamassima"

any

Captain Forbes needs no introduction to our readers. There is no higher or more intelligent authority on American shipping than he, and the admiral of the navy-D. D. Porter -recently enthusiastically endorsed Captain Forbes's new sail plan for war-ships. Mr. Habberton's only reason for omitting mention of the famous boat Captain Forbes refers to was lack of space. The list of Ericsson's great inventions is about as long as Homer's catalogue of the ships.-ED.

is immeasurably his greatest work, because his interest in poor Hyacinth Robinson led him from mere photographic details and acute analysis into the region of realistic romance. People would not believe it, for they had fixed him in their minds as hard, merciless, wholly unsympathetic, void of all qualities but the purely intellectual. So to that he promptly relapsed, and has ever since diligently written up (and down) to his reputation. His "Four Stories" (Macmillan) are coldly pessimistic enough to suit Schopenhauer or Hartmann. The heroine in "A London Life" goes frankly to the dogs in a way not usually approved in English-speaking fiction; in "The Patagonian" she jumps overboard because she has fancied the wrong man. Why so much destruction of souls and bodies in so few pages? Yet let not the anxious reader fear lest hisor her sensibilities be unduly harrowed: you are not asked to weep, or take other than a simply cerebral interest in these condensed tragedies. Not at all; you are instructed far more than by the criminal columns of the newspaper, and moved somewhat less. Why do we live, brethren and sisters, but to note dispassionately the quaint eccentricities of our poor humanity, and digest doses of what M. Taine aptly calls practical psychology?

"The Liar" is an exquisite character-sketch, and bearable, since nobody is killed and nothing badly broken,-for there was not much to break. Mr. James would be a genius if he could be touched by a coal from the altar: almost any altar would do, if it had warmth upon it. But he is past his first youth, and perhaps no longer open to the softening influences which might make it possible for his admirers to regard him as a being of like passions with themselves.

"Far Away and Long Ago" (Henry Holt) is a doleful little book, with an undue amount of tragedy for the limited contents. One would suppose that Mrs. Kemble knows her Berkshire of the past, but there is a haziness about the period: was it fifty years ago, or only twenty? An allusion to the Atlantic Monthly on p. 218 implies a date at which the peculiar clerical methods and manners of Mr. Killigrew would hardly have been tolerated anywhere by decent people. The minister and congregation are represented as highly Calvinistic, and yet connected with "the Methodist Church:" this will hardly do. The author's sympathies are modern, and her most agreeable people are the judge and the doctor, a pair of emancipated minds. The book will add little to her reputation.

Mrs. Alexander is an approved writer of serial fiction after the contemporary British fashion, with nothing to startle the nerves or shock the proprieties, and much to entertain the unexacting reader in a reposeful, mildly human and feminine way. She has confessed that her acquaintance is nearly limited to her own sex, and it is apparent that her male characters are evolved from the inner consciousness rather than drawn from real life; but her conjectures as to how men would probably talk and act are seldom wildly improbable. In “A Crooked Path" (Harpers), Mr. Errington, who poses as the hero, is so virtuously tame and dim that readers will be tempted to prefer the not-wholly-to-be-approved-of De Burgh. The heroine, with the best motives, suppresses her uncle's will, and suffers many qualms in consequence of this peccadillo: a natural heir afterwards turning up, she surrenders the property and marries the man she had defrauded, who had long ago magnanimously forgiven her. It is not easy to detect the source of Katharine's alleged attraction for her lovers: to the disinterested outsider she appears a worthy person and far from brilliant.

The early medieval is not an easy field for contemporary fiction, but in "Passe Rose" Professor Hardy occupies it with abundant courage and eminent success. His touch is light and free, as of one who knows his theme. He manages to give us a better idea than we had before of manners and matters eleven hundred years ago. But amid the shower of praise which is now descending, this may be said, not in contradiction, but in qualification: it is possible to read the story through and not see clearly what it is all about. It was levelled at the highly cultivated people who are supposed to take the Atlantic, and the average reader may easily miss connection more than once. It might be well to give notice in a preface, as professors sometimes do to their classes before a lecture, that the closest attention is required, and any wandering of the mind may be fatal. Not that it is not an interesting story and ably told, but it would be no worse if one could without undue labor obtain an exact idea of the nature of the conspiracy which the heroine frustrates, and of the relations of the various characters. Mr. Hardy is not so orphic as Mrs. Stoddard, but he leaves a good deal to the imagination, and some who live at a distance from Boston may prefer to have their entertainment laid level to a plain understanding. Robert Timsol.

"Paying the Penalty, and Other Stories." By Charles Gibbon, George Manville Fenn, Clive Phillipps-Wolley, S. Baring-Gould, Helen Shipton, Katharine S. Macquoid. New York, Thomas Y. Crowell & Co.

Charles Gibbon and Katharine Macquoid contribute the first and the last stories in this volume. "Gone" is not in Mrs. Macquoid's best manner, because her best manner seems possible only when she touches French subjects. She is most at home in Brittany. Mr. Gibbon is at his best. The other stories are short novels, satisfying and solid, but without that tact and touch which our American writers of short stories have of late brought to high perfection.

"French Traits: an Essay on Comparative Criticism." By W. C. Brownell. New York, Charles Scribner's Sons.

Mr. Brownell has done a remarkable thing. He has managed to make himself so impersonal that his essay on comparative criticism might have been done by a man without a country. It is entirely without prejudice,-entirely without any of that feeling, so common among nous autres, which caused the amiable Mr. Lillyvick to pronounce French a dismal language. Mr. Philip Gilbert Hamerton has several times attempted to interpret the French for us, but the effort has been too apparent. The French done into English are generally poor creatures, seemingly exhibited for the purpose of showing how holy, moral, and superior is the Anglo-Saxon. "What is the word water in French, sir?" asks Mr. Lillyvick of Nicholas Nickleby. "L'eau," replies Nicholas. 'Ah," says Mr. Lillyvick, shaking his head mournfully, "I thought as much. Lo, eh? I don't think anything of that language,-nothing at all." Mr. Brownell's essay ought to be the death of Lillyvickism in judging our sparkling French friends, with whom Americans have more traits in common than they imagine. "French Traits" is philosophical, and at the same time it has that lightness of touch which philosophical analyses do not usually possess. France, Mr. Brownell says, has changed most conspicuously of all nations with the epoch. "She was the star in the ages of faith, as she is the light of the age of fellowship." He explains this plasticity by the fact that France is the in

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carnation of the social instinct. The chapter on French morality—in the consideration of which we frequently show our Lillyvickism—is admirable. Because most of the French novels we read are risqué, if not immoral, we conclude that French literature is given over to lubricity. We forget that the paper with the largest circulation in the world, Le Petit Journal, is as carefully and as conscientiously edited in the interests of morality as the Philadelphia Ledger. Mr. Brownell tells us truly that honor in the French code of morals often takes the place of duty. "French morality," he says, "is simply misconceived when it is summarily depreciated as it is our vice to depreciate it. It is as systematic as our own, and by those interested believed to be as successful." Life in France is not arranged, as it is with us, for the young girl. She is left out of it. And we are amazed by the fact that Alexandre Dumas fils would not permit his unmarried daughters to see "The Lady of the Camellias," and that Halévy writes "L'Abbé Constantin" for the ingenuous maidens, forbidding them to read his other works until after they are married. But, to understand the French, we must efface our point of view; and Mr. Brownell is so far the first writer who thoroughly helps his readers to do this.

Maurice F. Egan.

"The People I've Smiled with. Recollections of a Merry Little Life." By Marshall P. Wilder. New York, Cassell & Co.

"He," says Charles Lamb, "who hath not a dram of folly in his mixture has pounds of much worse matter in his composition." This wise remark of the gentle Elia can also be generally applied to books. Mr. Wilder's very agreeable book has the requisite dram of folly in its mixture, but it has also pounds of good common sense in its composition. Shoddy people who contemplate a trip to England would do well to read carefully some of the chapters relating to London life and English manners. Mr. Wilder seems to have met about everybody worth knowing, taking the term in its general acceptation, for of course there are thousands of people worth knowing who have not achieved distinction, and he has kind things to say about every one, and generally some capital stories to tell. It is pleasant to learn that there are fine human traits even in some prominent people whom the newspapers delight in denouncing, and the cheerful optimism of the book is an agreeable contrast to the host of gloomy, pessimistic works whose authors persist in delving among the sewers, shutting their eyes to the glorious sunlight above, and diving amid the filth and exclaiming, "Ah, here are nourished the very roots of life; now we really know it, let us tell nothing but the truth," forgetting all about the flowers that bloom above the earth, and the sunshine and gladness around them. Mr. Wilder dwells above the earth, as all live men should, and finds much to cheer not only himself, but also others, on his way,-a kindly, happy being, who if he ever did go into dark places would do so only to bring light and cheer, not to moan out that there was nothing but darkness. The man who is not amused by this genial soul's book has not the necessary dram of folly in his mixture, and is one to be avoided on a dark and lonely road, for he who has no humor in his composition is like the man "that hath no music in himself," and is fit for "treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

Dr. S. Weir Mitchell is beginning to be as well known in the field of literature as in that of medicine. Following fast upon his clever novel "Far in the

Forest," and his charming book of verse, "A Masque, and Other Poems," comes his latest poetical work, "The Cup of Youth, and Other Poems." (Houghton, Mifflin & Co.) The book is dedicated to Oliver Wendell Holmes, and in his brief dedication the author says, addressing the genial Autocrat, "When I was a young man your kindly advice kept me from inflicting a volume of verse on the public, by which it would not have been profited, and by which I should assuredly have been injured." Whatever the justness of the verdict upon the early and perhaps crude efforts mentioned, a verdict which the author himself accepted, we are glad that he was not discouraged, but patiently allowed his poetic feeling to grow mellow with the years, like wine, which, poor and thin at first, at length richly repays the sunshine which the grape had stored. Surely no poet now would doom to eternal silence such fine poetry as is to be found within the pages of "The Cup of Youth," such lovely lines, for instance, as these:

Or as these:

How very silent is the sea to-night!

The little waves climb up the shore and lay
Cool cheeks upon the ever-moving sands
That follow swift their whispering retreat.

I would I knew what things their busy tongues
Confess to earth.

Alas, the best is ever to be won!

There is no rose but might have been more red,

There is no fruit might not have been more sweet,

There is no sight so clear but sadly serves

To set the far horizon farther still.

In "The Violin" the very music of that instrument is caught in such lines as these:

And how fine is this!

Let the yearning joy-notes linger
'Neath the coy, caressing finger,
Till the swift bow, flitting over,

Dainty as a doubtful lover,

Slyly, shyly, kisses dreaming,

Falters o'er the trembling strings,

And the love-tones, slowly streaming,
Fade to fitful murmurings.

Break, sad heart,

Or learn to know the poor man's art,—
The art to bear with patience meek
The blow upon the other cheek.

But the book is full of quotable lines, and did we once start to quote from the charming poem entitled "My Châteaux in Spain" we should give it entire. Dr. Mitchell, like Dr. Holmes, has shown us that though the eye of the physician may be focussed upon the mere mechanism of the human frame, he still may 'see with the spirit's eye," and that he can hold on through multitudes of distractions to that impalpable, indefinable thing which is known as the poetic instinct.

To all readers who take an interest in Russia (and their name is legion) can be heartily recommended "Impressions of Russia," by George Brandes,