LITERARY NOTICES. 



561 



William E. Foster for the Society for Politi- 

 cal Education, might be described as a bib- 

 liography. The references are historical — 

 to the antecedent influences, the framing 

 and adoption of the Constitution, and Con- 

 stitutional History since 1789 — and cite nu- 

 merous papers and books on each branch of 

 the subject. In the Appendix are given the 

 constitutional interpretations since the civil 

 war affecting the question of national or 

 State supremacy. 



Letters from Waldegrave Cottage, by the 

 Rev. George W. Nichols, is a collection of 

 reminiscences, portrayals of eminent or 

 lovable men, and rural sketches, which, 

 published first in a monthly magazine, are 

 gathered up into a single volume. The au- 

 thor claims descent from the Earl of Walde- 

 grave, and is able to point to the graves of 

 ancestors among the venerable tombs of 

 Trinity and St. Paul's churches, New York. 

 The essays include sketches of life, scenes, 

 and persons at various places in Connecticut 

 and Massachusetts, Yale College, Brooklyn, 

 N. Y., etc., notices of famous divines and 

 men eminent in the life of society and the 

 State, and other items of personal reminis- 

 cence such as usually furnish pleasant read- 

 ing even to strangers ; and there is an air 

 of repose about the whole that is refreshing 

 to the reader vexed with the controversies 

 of the day. (Exchange Printing Company, 

 New York.) 



The historical novels published by TV. S. 

 Gottsberger form an attractive-looking de- 

 partment in the library, and the promise 

 offered by their neat exteriors is usually 

 more than fulfilled when they are read. 

 They include pictures of Oriental antiquity, 

 the classical period, the middle ages, and 

 heroic or romantic episodes of later times, 

 sketched by the master artists in their re- 

 spective fields. Among the latest of these 

 publications is Nero, by the German Ernst 

 Eckstein, one of the most famous and most 

 prolific of the writers of this class. Its spe- 

 cial effort is to describe how Nero, from the 

 gentle and noble character he is said to have 

 been by nature, became transformed into the 

 inhuman monster of whom such incredible 

 tales are told. This purpose leads to the 

 more comprehensive treatment of the sepa- 

 rate stages of development rather than the 

 excesses of the matured criminal. — In Joshua, 

 vol. xxxvn. — 40 



Dr. Gcorg Ebers has attempted to treat the 

 wanderings of the Israelites during and after 

 the Exodus in the form of a romance. In 

 it he has made use of his own observations 

 in the field covered by the wanderings, and 

 of the latest results of archaeological explo- 

 rations in the Nile Delta ; and in the " scen- 

 ery of the drama " he has copied as faith- 

 fully as possible from the landscapes he be- 

 held in Goshen and on the Sinai Peninsula. 

 For the incidents he has relied on the Bible 

 and Egyptian records. — Ekkehard, a Tale 

 of the Tenth Century, has been written by 

 Herr Joseph Victor von Scheffel, in the be- 

 lief that a union of history and poetry, 

 for working purposes, would be detrimental 

 to neither. The materials from which it is 

 composed are derived from the tales of the 

 monastery of St. Gall, begun by the monk 

 Ratpert, and continued to the end of the 

 tenth century by Ekkehard the Younger, 

 contained in the folios of the Monumenta 

 Germanica, which are described as being, in 

 spite of much naivete and awkwardness, 

 " charming stories, made up of traditions of 

 older comrades, and accounts of eye and ear 

 witnesses." Quite unconsciously, the author 

 adds, " these annals carry us far beyond the 

 boundaries of the cloister walls, presenting 

 the life and aims, the culture and customs 

 of the Alemannia of that period with all 

 the fidelity of a picture painted from na- 

 ture." 



The Truth-seeker Company publishes a 

 symposium on the question of the Existence 

 of a Positive, Constructive Side to Free 

 Thought, to which some twenty of the most 

 prominent representatives of the school 

 described as freethinkers are contributors. 

 Besides the direct question, the character 

 and scope of the constructive side are con- 

 sidered by those who answer affirmatively, 

 or the reason why there is no such side if 

 the answer is negative. 



In his paper on Etruscan and Libyan 

 Names ; a Comparative Study, Dr. D. G. 

 Brinton seeks evidence of affinity between 

 the race of which the Berber tribes of the 

 present are the representatives and the an- 

 cient Etruscans. In a former paper (Octo- 

 ber, 18S9) he supported his theory by com- 

 parison of physical traits, customs, arts, and 

 language ; in the present one he carries out, 

 to a limited extent, a comparison between 



