598 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



and others with the simplicity and baldness of the verses of the minnesingers. 

 Still later the romantic vein was discovered and worked with marked success by 

 Mr. VVorsley, who made an admirable translation of the Odyssey, in which "the 

 liquid lapses of the verse, the wonderful closeness to the original, reproduce all of 

 Homer in music and in meaning that can be rendered in English verse." 



The object of this prose translation is to supply a demand now existing for 

 simple descriptive or historical documents, without modern ornament and with 

 nothing added or omitted, a thing with which poetry, or, at least verse, is almost 

 incompatible. 



The work of the translators, looked at from this standpoint, seems well done, 

 and the prose form certainly gives a better opportunity than verse for a close ad- 

 herence to the Homeric language and style. To those readers who want a strictly 

 reliable, scholarly rendering of the story in " unadorned English," nothing can be 

 more satisfactory. 



Frontier Army Sketches. By James W. Steele. i2mo., pp. 329. Jansen, 

 McClurg & Co., Chicago, 1883. $1.50. 



That these " Sketches" are the work of an observant, sympathetic, cultured 

 man who has actual and practical experience of the pleasures, hardships, excite- 

 ments and inexpressible tedium of Irontier military life is self-evident. His cor- 

 rect and just appreciation of the West Point graduate, whom he portrays under the 

 title of Captain Jinks, his abhorrent and overpowering disgust for and detestation 

 of the cruel and treacherous Indian of the plains, his perfect delineations of west- 

 ern character, good and bad; his skillful command of language, his expressive 

 grouping of words and his forcible and graceful sentences, all betray an excellent 

 education and cultivated tastes, as well as a military training. 



Every one of these sketches is a model of good literary, style, and most of 

 them are exceedingly real, piquant, lifelike, and dramatic. 1 hey remind one 

 of Theodore Winthrop in many respects, and are far superior in all respects to 

 Bret Hart. 



The Court and Cross. By W. J. Henry. Octavo, pp. 568. Methodist Book 

 Concern, Cincinnati, 1882. 



The object of this work, whose author is a lawyer of this city, is set forth in 

 the preface as being to present the principal events of Christ's wonderful career in 

 their relation to the Sanhedrin or great court of the Jews; also to portray his life 

 as it was affected by the views, actions and deliberations of that influential body, 

 as well as to bring vividly before the mind the times, places and conditions of the 

 Jewish nation ; also a description of the principal, political, judicial and ecclesias- 

 tical tribunal, the council or great court of the Jews, into which the author has 

 attempted to carry the reader in imagination and give him a probable statement 

 of the arguments and views of its members upon the case before them. 



