LITERATURE, ENGLISH. 



LONG, CHARLES C. 



493 



higher appreciation of the civilization of that 

 Oriental " wonder-land." Mr. Anthony Trol- 

 lope, the novelist, in his book on "South Af- 

 rica," embodies his views of the condition and 

 needs of that portion of the British dominions. 

 The graphic pen of the practiced writer ex- 

 hibits to good advantage the observations of 

 the fresh eye. Mr. Augustus J. 0. Hare, in 

 his " Walks in London," does for his country's 

 metropolis what he has done with pen and 

 pencil for Rome and its environs, and for the 

 cities of northern Italy. "The English Lake 

 District, as interpreted in the Poems of Words- 

 worth," by Professor William Knight, came of 

 a happy suggestion. The landscape of the lake 

 district is present in nearly all of Wordsworth's 

 poetry, and those in which it is not directly 

 visible as furnishing the pictorial element are 

 steeped in its atmosphere, and the poems are 

 almost a guide-book to the district. Professor 

 Knight is at home in both. He is lovingly 

 familiar with the poems, and has for himself 

 traced out their local allusions, and read them 

 in the scenes in which they were born. Their 

 mutually interpretative character could not 

 have a more accomplished expounder. In their 

 " Pictures and Legends from Normandy and 

 Brittany," Thomas and Katharine Macquoid 

 continue a series of observations and recollec- 

 tions that it is safe to say have a higher charm 

 than other eyes would discover in the scenes 

 they describe. Not only from the mingling of 

 fiction with fact, but there is " speculation in 

 these eyes," which look as it were through an 

 idealizing atmosphere, and fact and feeling, de- 

 scription and legend, together give more pleas- 

 ure to the reader than most observers would 

 bring to or bring from a personal survey of 

 their route of travel. Mr. H. Hussey Vivian, 

 M. P., made a three months' tour in the United 

 States in 1877, and has published the results 

 of his observations. He traveled under such 

 special advantages, and made such good use of 

 his opportunities, that he gathered a consider- 

 able mass of valuable information, which does 

 not lose any of its freshness or interest from 

 the style in which it is communicated. Nor 

 does he lack an appreciation of the merits of 

 what he observed, and his comparatively un- 

 studied " Notes " are more instructive to those 

 for whom he wrote than many more preten- 

 tious works, while Americans will be favorably 

 impressed with the pervading good feeling that 

 characterizes the volume. Other works might 

 be named, for the literature of travel shows no 

 signs of contraction, but the above may suffice 

 as among the more noticeable. More than once 

 has the feeling found expression that, though 

 the survey of the globe is not scientifically 

 complete, yet for the pleasure of travel or the 

 profit and delight of readers little more re- 

 mained to be explored ; but every year gives 

 proof that discovery is not at an end, that ad- 

 venture has not become a thing of the past, and 

 that for good books of travel a legitimate mar- 

 ket still remains. 



POETEY. No new candidate for the laurel 

 has appeared, of sufficient promise to make a 

 sensible impression upon critical minds or on 

 the more susceptible apprehension of ordinary 

 readers, while the established favorites of the 

 public have made no demonstration. Mr. Swin- 

 burne's "Poems and Ballads" include some 

 pieces that compare with his best work ; but 

 the larger part of the volume consists of pro- 

 ductions that can not add to his fame. They 

 show, indeed, his sovereign mastery over lan- 

 guage and meter. In condensed energy of ex- 

 pression no poet since Byron can compare with 

 him, and the. melody of his verse is something 

 marvelous. But one feels that these gifts are 

 too often expended on sentiments that are 

 scarcely worthy of such investiture, and which 

 give to some of his sweetest verse a joyless 

 expression. Mr. Browning's latest production 

 is one that will be regarded as equally " rich 

 and strange" with the generality of his produc- 

 tions " rich " to his admirers and in their view 

 altogether admirable, and to others "strange," 

 amorphous, and altogether " unspeakable." A 

 seeming negligence, an occasional departure 

 (for good reasons) from the regulation move- 

 ment of verse, like a judiciously introduced 

 discord in music, has its legitimate place and 

 effect. But music in which discord is the rule 

 and harmony the exception, or verse the struc- 

 ture of which is a perpetual stumbling-block 

 to the reader, requires a taste educated into 

 the capacity of approval. A volume of " Prose 

 and Verse " by Thomas Moore, edited from 

 his MSS., contains, as might have been ex- 

 pected, little to reward the reader's attention. 

 Moore was not likely, through excess of mod- 

 esty or for any other reason, to withhold from 

 the press anything that was worth printing. 

 What he published would have been the better 

 for sifting ; the shreds and patches of his liter- 

 ary workshop were not worth collecting. In 

 " Lautrec," by Mr. John Payne, whose produc- 

 tions are coming to be recognized by a widen- 

 ing circle, confirmation is read of the promise 

 seen in his previous productions. Not by su- 

 perficial graces or sacrifices to the passion for 

 new sensations in the realm of taste, but by the 

 conscientious working out of ideals worthy of 

 elaboration, he seems to be building up a repu- 

 tation that may become fame. 



LONG, CHARLES CHAILLE. Colonel Long, 

 late of the Egyptian army, who has distin- 

 guished himself by daring military expeditions 

 in the service of the Khedive, and still more 

 by important geographical investigations in 

 equatorial Africa, was born in the town of 

 Princess Anne, in Maryland, in the year 1842. 

 Destined for the legal profession, he was called 

 away from his studies by the outbreak of the 

 war of secession. Enlisting as a common sol- 

 dier, he won successive promotion up to the 

 rank of captain, serving in the llth Maryland 

 regiment and subsequently on the staff of a 

 brigade commander. At the close of the 

 American war, although recommended for a 



