BOOK NOTICES. 597 



Life; Leopold Damrosch, How to Succeed as a Musician; Hon. Geo. B. Loring, 

 as a Farmer; Thomas A, Edison, as an Inventor; Rev. E. P. Roe, in Litera- 

 ture; while Rev. Lyman Abbott gives his views upon the Christian conditions 

 of success. 



Nearly all occupations are thus touched upon by men who have had practi- 

 cal experience and who are living examples of the practice they preach, and 

 these essays, whether read by the young or by those interested in their welfare, 

 must have a beneficial effect. 



Easy Star Lessons. By R. A. Proctor. Crown octavo, pp. 239, illustrated. 

 G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1882. $2.50. 



The popularizing of knowledge seems to have been the special work of 

 scientific men within the past twenty years, and of the many contributors in this 

 direction none has done more or done it better than Mr. Proctor. Though but a 

 comparatively young man he has achieved a world-wide reputation as profoundly 

 skilled in more branches of science than one, although he is mainly regarded as 

 an astronomer. 



The above named book is his latest production, and his publishers have evi- 

 dently striven by the exercise of the best taste and the use of the choicest materials 

 in the book-maker's art to make it worthy. Paper, print and binding are superb, 

 and the illustrations, including forty-eight star-maps and thirty other engravings, 

 are admirable in execution and thoroughly practical. To the stars of each month 

 in the year is devoted a chapter and four maps showing the proper position of each 

 constellation and the prominent stars in the northern, southern, eastern and west- 

 ern skies for that month So interesting and so unusually plain and practical are 

 these descriptions, even without the maps, that we give on page 586 the whole 

 chapter on ''The -Stars for February." By a careful use of it, the reader may 

 pick out the constellations with little trouble, while by the additional use of the 

 maps the whole sky may be read like a printed book. • 



The Odyssey of Homer. Done into English prose by S. H. Butcher, M. A., 

 and A. Lang M. A. i2mo., pp. 427. Macmillan & Co., New York, 1882. 

 Price $1.00. 



The translators in the preface to this work, claim that there can be no final 

 English translation of Homer from the fact that the taste of each successive gen- 

 eration differs regarding poetical style, whether versified or not, from all preced- 

 ing periods. Thus, in the Elizabethan age Chapman modified the antique sim- 

 plicity of Homer to suit its peculiar requirements, and rendered the poem in high 

 sounding and luxurious conceits which would in no respect satisfy the more fas- 

 tidious tastes catered to by the elegant Pope in Queen Anne's time. Later, 

 when the ballad collectors of Europe were forming the tastes of the people, Homer 

 was regarded a ballad minstrel, and his poems rendered by Maginn, Gladstone, 



