California,-A Renunciation. O TROPIC land, the dream of years! How oft for thee unbidden tears Suffuse the sad and longing eyes, That scan the weary way that lies Between my feet and thee.

I span the endless reach in dreams And wander by thy sparkling streams, Or muse amid the valleys fair Slumbering in that ambient air

That wooes the dying back.

I catch in draughts of sweet delight,
The ocean's breath in landward flight;
And buoyant on the radiant hills
The fainting heart exultant thrills
With pulsing life anew.

But ah, farewell to hopes of yore!
I may not tread thy golden shore.
In dreams I'll know thy clime alone;
Far off I make my dying moan,

Amid eternal snows.

Clifford P. Thayer. EDITOR OVERLAND MONTHLY:-Among the German-American authors whose works are widely and

favorably known both in this country and in Germany, Theodore Kirchhoff, of San Francisco, stands deservedly in the front rank. Ever since the middle of the sixties, when he scored his first literary success by his articles on will far-western life, published then by the "Gartenlaube " in Leipzig, Mr. Kirchhoff has in his quiet, unass ming, and disinterested manner undertaken the self-imposed task of diffusing useful knowledge concerning the Pacific Coast, by his many excellent contributions to such leading German magazines as the "Gartenlaube," "Daheim,' 'Ausland," "Globus," "Europa," Gegenwart," and other first-class German and American publications. In consequence, no California author has been more the cause of directing a desirable element of immigration to our hospitable shores than he.

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Most of his numerous magazine articles were afterwards reprinted in book form, and thus appeared "Reisebilder und Skizzen aus Amerika," (two volumes, 1875 and 1876,) and "Californische Culturbilder" (1886), which works met with general success wherever the German language is spoken.

While Mr. Kirchhoff's prose writings rank deservedly high, he has also earned the reputation as a poet of no mean powers, as proven by the two stately volumes of poems that he has so far given us, many of which treat also of specifically Californian subjects.

His last work, "Eine Reise nach Hawaii," has all the merits of his former publications. Like its forerunners, the book is well planned, and shows that our author is a close observer, who possesses in a high degree the gift of a pleasing, spirited style. Chapters 7-10, which among other things include the really plastic description of the great lava lake on the volcano Kilauea, a scenery so familiar to us in California through the splendid canvases of the late lamented Jules Tavernier, are parts that can hardly be excelled for descriptive powers. Everywhere the author's great experience as a traveler is observable. Although the trip to the Islands was comparatively a short one, yet he has seen all worth seeing, and has seen it well. The respective chapters about the leper settlement on the island of Molokai, the political conditions of the country, and the commercial importance of the Islands to the United States, and particularly to San Francisco, are all of great interest, although the author's opinion concerning the eventual future of the Islands will hardly commend him to the favor of his countrymen in the Fatherland. Wm. Zimmermann.

1 Eine Reise nach Hawaii. By Theodor Kirchhoff. New York: E. Steiger & Co.

Cheney's The Golden Guess.1 Readers of the OVERLAND hardly need to be reminded what views Mr. John Vance Cheney holds in regard to poetry and music; for these ideas he has stated and enforced in essays published in its pages. These essays and more of like tenor make up the volume now to be considered.

Mr. Cheney strenuously maintains the exalted idea of poetry, and marshals to its support the sayings of the great of old, and the dicta of the best literary critics of all time. He insists that poetry must appeal to the whole man, to his intellect even more than to his emotions, to his sense of right as much as to his sense of beauty.

This notion of poetry is so exalted that it is difficult to find adequate example of it in current verse, and Mr. Cheney makes no attempt to do so. He goes far back to find his ideal most perfectly represented, and does not rest till he reaches the Book of Job. Nothing short of inspiration can come up to it.

It is well to hold up such ideas to the public gaze even if by so doing the minor poets and vers de société rhymers may be shamed into silence, and even some bards of greater caliber are made more chary of pen and paper, or at least of the printed page. Indeed, perhaps it is only a fancy, but since Mr. Cheney has been writing his book, his own verses have been less in number and more serious in kind. It would be hardly possible for a man to write such strenuous essays on the exalted and divine nature of poetry, and publish with them verses like some of Mr. Cheney's earlier work, though that was good of its kind. But this argumentum ad hominem is hardly fair. Because there are such things as pipe organs it does not necessarily forbid the use of violins and flutes, even though while the deep vibrations of the organ still linger in our ears the flute sounds insignificant and the violin raspy.

Mr. Cheney's essay on Matthew Arnold is interesting reading, but if criticism of criticism is barred, how shall it be allowed to criticise a critique of a

critic? Arnold's poetry Mr. Cheney finds the highest result of culture, calculated to deceive even the elect sons of song by its nearness to the work of the born poet; but he finds that Mr. Arnold is in his native air only in the fields of literary criticism. Of Mr. Cheney the opposite is largely true His force is best shown in his poetry, and when he deals in criticism he speaks not as having authority, but is only

content when he can marshal the words of some greater critic to support his own.

If the estimate of Arnold gains assent, the same is not always true of his view of Browning. There are admirers of Browning everywhere that would instantly gird their loins for the fray on hearing Mr. Cheney's words. He would not be without his partisans, it is true, but they would often be among the Philistines that scoff at Browning and his obscurity, as they would scoff at Mr. Cheney's poetry also, because they don't understand poetry at all.

When we arrive at Tennyson, Mr. Cheney and scoffers, and Mr. Cheney's blows in this fight are so all lovers of song are arrayed together against the valiant that we pardon his seeming desertion to the enemy in the previous essay. Even when he attacks another poet, Swinburne, the attack is made from the poet's side of the question, and not from the Philistine side of unwillingness to put forth the amount of effort necessary to arrive at the poet's meaning.

Hawthorne, of all American men of letters, most deserves to have a poet for a critic, and Mr. Cheney's closing essays leave a pleasant taste in the mouth after finishing his volume,— a volume on the whole that is an honor to this Coast. So long as such studies are made here and such books printed by West Coast authors, so long is there evidence triumphantly to disprove any insinuation that letters are

not valued here as well as material things.

The German Emperor.1

Mr. Poultney Bigelow writes of The German Emperor as a personal friend and apologist. He begins his book with a pleasant account of the schoolboy days of Prince William, in which Mr. Bigelow was an actual sharer both in school and out Together they played in the attic of the Potsdam Palace, and climbed over the rigging of the ship's masts, set in the yard as an object lesson in naval affairs. Mr. Bigelow was called on to show the young princes how to "play Indian," though he had never seen one, and could only draw his ideas from Cooper, with whom the Prince was quite as familiar. This tracing of the Emperor through his boyhood, gymnasium, and university days is an admirable preparation for an understanding of this, the most important single figure in all Europe.

Having placed his readers thus on his own vantage ground of familiarity with the Emperor as boy and man, Mr. Bigelow is able to show the great work that William II. has aimed to accomplish and and hard working way in which the young ruler is is accomplishing, and to make clear the conscientious

entering on his serious task.

Allowing for the personal bias in favor of the Emperor, it must be conceded that the author greatly modifies the impression of his reactionism and warlike ambition made by such reports as reach this country of his public acts and utterances.

The position of affairs in Europe, as shown by this book and by all books that treat of present conditions with knowledge and candor, is not encouraging. The great crash of arms that is to convulse the continent appears to be inevitable. Like the upper and nether millstones, Russia and France threaten to grind the German Empire between them. Germany must be continually ready to dispatch one army toward Paris, another toward Moscow, and to keep another at home to overawe the socialistic discontent there. The omen of " wars and rumors of wars is not likely to fail in the last years of the nineteenth century.

The latter part of Mr. Bigelow's book is taken up with descriptions of various journeyings in Russia, Poland, and along the lower Danube. These are well told, and offer valuable touchstones of fact by which to test the truthfulness of the newspaper dispatches. He predicts a great future for the Danubian provinces, whenever the true religion of free trade shall prevail among the nations of the earth.

Philadelphia Magazines.1

MR. SMYTH has done good work in his book on The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors, in calling to mind the days when most of the literary activity of this country centered in that city. From the time when Benjamin Franklin set up his establishment to the end of the period that this book covers, 1850, a surprisingly complete list of men of note in American letters can be made from the names prominently connected with Philadelphia magazines. To quote in proof from Mr. Smyth: "Washington Irving edited the Analectic Magazine; James Russell Lowell, Edgar Allan Poe, and Bayard Taylor, were editorial writers on Graham's Magazine, and John Greenleaf

It is hard to cast up the advantages and disadvantages of this centralizing tendency, and to form a just judgment as to whether it is good or bad. Perhaps it is useless to try to do it, as it may be best to submit to the unavoidable. Certain it is that all the great nations of the earth that have had periods of intellectual splendor have centered their literary life in one great capital. Of New York it must be admitted that she uses her power well, that her greatest magazines are those that seek most persistently to represent the whole country with impartiality.

Another point should be made from Mr. Smyth's studies. It is to call attention to the number of failures before a strong and enduring magazine was planted, a point that may be made wherever a great magazine exists in America. Truly, Californians have reason to be proud of their record in this respect.

Two School Books.

THE search for perpetual motion and for the philosopher's stone has been given up by most people, but the hope of finding the royal road to learning seems to have a far greater vitality. The direction in which this is sought nowadays is in making school books that by their attractiveness and convenience shall lessen the distaste that unwilling scholars have for hard work.

The American Book Company's series of classics are good examples of this tendency. The particular issue in hand is Harper and Miller's Eneid1 The volume contains in itself nearly all the reference

work necessary to its study. Grammar, lexicon, clas sical dictionary, all these, so far as they pertain to the Æneid, are embodied in this volume, and beside these are more helps a list of all words used ten times or more, references to book and line in the vocabulary, and a figure to show the number of times it appears in the text, notes at the bottom of the page, and numerous cuts and fine page engravings of famous statues and paintings that illustrate the Æneid. It is hard to see how Virgil can be made easier, short of the verbal translation, and it looks very attractive

ant, and Cooper, and Longfellow, and Hawthorne, and a hundred lesser men were constant contributors to the Philadelphia journals."

And Mr. Smyth claims that the earlier magazines were more scholarly in their tone than those of today. It is interesting, and to most people surprising, to recall the ancient prestige of Philadelphia, for since the decay of her supremacy Boston has had her rise and fall in literary hegemony, and now New York has a sway that is daily growing more complete. It is safe to say that two thirds of the literary publica tions of the country are now printed in New York. Even the Atlantic Monthly is dated from both Boston and New York, and every year witnesses the migration to Manhattan of some of the old publications of other cities.

1 The Philadelphia Magazines and Their Contributors. By Albert H. Smyth. Philadelphia: Robert M. Lindsay: 1892.

and bulky lexicons they had to use.

The notes are largely taken up with quotations under discussion, and the effort is to cause even the from classic and other poets, paralleling the passage

dullest student to remember that in the Æneid he

is reading not so many lines of hard Latin, but so much of one of the most enjoyable poems the world has known.

In another series of the same company's publicaof a good selection of examples of the writings of tions is Cathcart's Literary Reader. It is made up the great authors from Shakspere to the present, arranged chronologically. There are portraits, bio

1Six Books of the Eneid of Virgil. Edited by William R. Harper and Frank J. Miller. New York: American Book Company: 1892.

Cathcart's Literary Reader: a Manual of English Literature. By George R. Cathcart. American Book Company: New York: 1892.

graphical notes, and summarizing chapters at the beginning of each group of writers.

Books Received.

Six Books of the Æneid of Virgil. Edited by Wm. R. Harper, Ph.D. and Frank J. Miller. American Book Co.: New York: 1892.

High School Algebra. By Wm. J. Milne, Ph.D., L.L.D. American Book Co.: New York: 1892.

A History of Peru. By Clement R. Markham. Charles H. Segel & Co.: Chicago: 1892.

The Discovery of America by Christopher Columbus. By Harry Hakes, M. D. Robert Baur & Son : Wilkesbarre, Pa.: 1892.

The Tariff-What it Is and What it Does. By Samuel E. Moffett. Potomac Publishing Co.: Washington: 1892.

Kate Kennedy. By Mrs. C. J. Newby. T. B. Peterson Bros. : Philadelphia: 1892.

A Maiden of Mars. By Gen. F. M. Clarke. Charles H. Sergel & Co.: Chicago: 1892.

The Song Patriot. Compiled by C. W. Bardeen. C. W. Bardeen: Syracuse, N. Y.: 1892.