LITERARY NOTICES. 



753 



caught the fancy of most nations, such as 

 that of " The Master Thief," or " The Giant 

 who had no Heart in his Body." His con- 

 clusions, which we are not altogether in- 

 clined to accept, are, " that the Tell myth 

 was known, in its general features, to our 

 Aryan ancestors before ever they left their 

 primitive dwelling-place in Central Asia ; " 

 and that the Popular Tales 



" have been handed down from parent to 

 child for more than a hundred generations ; 

 that the primitive Aryan cottager, as he took 

 his evening meal oiyava and sipped his fer- 

 mented mead, listened with his children to 

 the stories of Boots, and Cinderella, and the 

 Master Thief, in the days when the squat 

 Laplander was master of Europe, and the 

 dark-skinned Sudra was as yet unmolested 

 in the Punjab." 



This is Dr. Dasent's view, and, to a cer- 

 tain extent, that of a still greater authority, 

 Prof. Max Miiller. For our part, we are 

 rather of the opinion of Prof. Benfy and his 

 school, and are inclined to recognize, in 

 at least most of the longer and more dra- 

 matic of our fireside and nursery romances, 

 mere echoes of tales told long ago by In- 

 dian story-tellers. But Mr. Fiske's creed is 

 likely to be the more popular of the two, 

 and he has defined and justified it in a 

 manner which all must praise. His remarks 

 on the vexed question of the Homeric 

 poems can scarcely offend even those crit- 

 ics who are least inclined to identify Athe- 

 ne and Helen with the dawn or any other 

 atmospheric phenomenon ; for he is fully 

 conscious of a truth which has been over- 

 looked by the more enthusiastic writers 

 on the subject that tales and traditions 

 in their present forms are seldom capable 

 of being straightway resolved into perfect 

 Nature-myths, and that in many cases they 

 have been moulded into their present forms 

 by composers or adapters who were perfect- 

 ly innocent of mythical meaning that, as 

 he justly remarks : 



" The primitive meaning of a myth fades 

 away as inevitably as the primitive meaning 

 of a word or phrase ; and the rabbins who 

 told of a worm which shatters rocks no 

 more thought of the writhing thunder-bolts, 

 than the modern reader thinks of oyster- 

 shells when he sees the word ostracism, or 

 consciously breathes a prayer as he writes 

 the phrase good-by.'''' 



vol. n. 48 



The second chapter of Mr. Fiske's 

 book is devoted to " The Descent of Fire," 

 and seems to have been originally intended 

 as a review of Prof. Kuhn's .admirable es- 

 say on that subject, or of Mr. Kelly's " In- 

 do-European Folk-lore," a book based upon 

 the works of Kuhn, Grimm, and Mannhardt. 

 The third chapter is to a great extent bor- 

 rowed from Mr. Baring-Gould's writings on 

 " Werewolves and Swan-Maidens," and is 

 rather inferior to the rest of the book in 

 the matter of critical rejection. It is .fol- 

 lowed by a chapter on " Light and Dark- 

 ness," whjch contains several interesting 

 studies of the numerous evil spirits to which 

 the fancy of different peoples has given 

 rise, and especially of " the mediaeval con- 

 ception of the devil." The fifth chapter, 

 on " The Myths of the Barbaric World," 

 will probably prove the most novel and 

 amusing of all to the general reader, but it 

 makes no pretence of offering any thing 

 that is new to students who are acquainted 

 with Mr. Tylor's works, and with those less 

 known, but valuable books, Brinton's 

 "Myths of the New World," Callaway's 

 " Zulu Nursery Tales," and Bleek's " Hot- 

 tentot Fables." Athenccum. 



Coffee : Its History, Cultivation, and Uses. 

 By Robert Hewitt, Jr. New York : 

 D. Appleton & Co., 1872. 



This claims to be the first book in the 

 language exclusively on the subject of coffee, 

 of the history, cultivation, and uses, of which 

 it gives much information. The introduction 

 of coffee into the great capitals of Europe, 

 and the history of their cafes, as well as the 

 old coffee-houses in New York, are described 

 in several entertaining pages. Java and 

 South America are the two principal coffee- 

 producing countries, the former furnishing 

 the most highly-prized bean, which is un- 

 equalled for delicacy of aroma and the mild 

 oily richness of the beverage. The latter, 

 however, furnishes the most important sta- 

 ple, and its influence as a branch of in- 

 dustry and an element of commerce is shown 

 by the fact that no less than 244,000,000 

 pounds of Rio coffee were consumed in the 

 United States in a single year, which makes . 

 us the largest coffee-consuming nation in 

 the world. Numerous methods of pre- 

 paring coffee are mentioned in the volume, 



