ers' understanding thereof. Told at Tuxedo' and Thirteen are both of this class. The five stories in Told at Tuxedo are linked together by a thread of narration about the people who tell the stories, who are at the time staying at a club house at Tuxedo Park; three of the five are Californian in subject, and written with enough knowledge of the ground to indicate that the author had not been a mere tourist here. All are told cleverly; one is intentionally somewhat cynical and flippant in matter and manner, the others in varying degree sentimental. Thirteen takes its name from the number of stories. Indeed, its full name is Thirteen Stories of the Far West. The "far West" in this case means Colorado and New Mexico chiefly, with a little of Hawaii. The author says that the stories are "reports of actual experiences, written up from his note-book, with such changes in names, places, and minor incidents as his personal safety seems to require." This may be accepted as true, with the aid of the conjecture that the author's share in the "actual experience" in several cases consisted of sitting in some social circle of the far West and putting into that note-book the "actual experiences" there narrated. He has evidently more than a cursory knowledge of the region he describes, and the stories are bright and readable, marred only by that irresistible imitation of Bret Harte that so besets writers of Western stories. Regimental Legends' is by "John Strange Winter," and therefore, it need scarcely be said, is made up chiefly of stories of the flirtations and jests of young British officers, in barracks and in India, interspersed with touches of serious love and of tragedy. They are not as good as his or herprevious stories of the sort; and the flippancy of the love affairs, the heartlessness

'Told at Tuxedo. By A. M. Emory. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

Thirteen Stories of the Far West. By Forbes Heermans. Syracuse: C. W. Bardeen. 1887.

Regimental Legends. By John Strange Winter. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1887.

of the aristocratic sentiment, and the bad taste of much of the horse play, is unpleasant. The author has undeniably much brightness and a very pretty and pathetic touch on occasion, but it is becoming evident that the promise which this once gave is not to be fulfilled.

Two more volumes of stories are translations, and each in its way something of a classic. Tales before Supper is scarcely a collection, containing only Gautier's "Avatar" and Mérimée's "Venus of Ille." The "proem" by Mr. Saltus with which the tales are "delayed," as the title-page and cover somewhat affectedly put it, is a brief critique of the two writers, ingenious, epigrammatic, rather French in its own. manner, luminous in a certain sense, but dimly luminous, bright rather than clear; it characterizes "Avatar" and "The Venus of Ille" in striking phrases, which the reader remembers, indeed- but which he does not find to have much relation to the tales themselves. The one he calls "a dream in black and white;" yet to turn to the other is "like passing from high to twilight." It was hardly worth while to delay these two powerful stories for the proem. Whether it be "in black and white" or not, "Avatar" is certainly like a vision (rather than a dream) of real love and unconquerable purity, smiting through and dissolving the illusions of passion. The weird machinery of Oriental witchcraft, which chances to fall in with the fashion of the moment, and may catch the general reader's interest more, is merely subsidiary to the central situation, the purely natural and altogether credible one of Prascovie's unconscious protection through the purity of her own love. "The Venus of Ille" goes into no such depths, but is a very strong and ingenious story unfortunately anticipated to most people who read

Tales before Supper. From Théophile Gautier and Prosper Mérimée. Told in English by Myndart Vereist and delayed with a proem by Edgar Saltus. New York: Brentanos. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by John W. Roberts & Co.

English only by Mr. Anstey's wicked burlesque, "The Tinted Venus." If Mr. Anstey informs us truly, however, both his story and Mérimée's are versions from a legend of considerable antiquity, quoted by Burton. It could scarcely be more strongly and tersely rendered than in "The Venus of Ille."

The short stories by Count Tolstoï brought together under the name of Ivan Ilyitch and other Stories' have all been written in the past few years, and may therefore, as the translator remarks, be taken as the fairest expression of the author's present philosophy of life. The first story, "The Death of Ivan Ilyitch" seems to have been written for educated readers; the others all as tracts for the instruction of the peasantry. Curious and interesting though these popular stories are, we think most readers will find a deeper impression left upon them by the one in which Tolstoï speaks from his own mind to his own class. It is probable, too, that the terrible and dramatic study of the progress of the disease, the terror of death, will be that which makes the impression, rather than the moral. Ivan Ilyitch, as death approaches amid pain and terror and intolerable isolation, makes the discovery that his whole decent, respectable, self-seeking, and shallow life has been wrong; but he resists the conviction, cannot understand it, nor see what his life should have been instead, and therefore the vague horror of conscience increases his agony and protest against death. In the very last hour of his life, he ceases to resist, gives way to repentance and humility, sees that his life should have been given to God and the service of his fellow men; and therewith his fear and struggle are gone. This is in keeping with Tolstoï's doctrine preached everywhere that humility is the first step to all rectitude and peace. Humility, non-resistance, absolute self-sac

Ivan Ilyitch and Other Stories. By Count Lyof N. Tolstoi. Translated from the Russian by Nathan Haskell Dole. New York: Thomas Y, Crowell & Co.

rifice, and labor, are the texts of all his peasant stories. It is curious to see our critics gravely discussing these teachings as a novelty, when they are as old as the history of religions. The novel thing is to see them in unfamiliar, Russian garb; and seeing, as the reader of Tolstoi must, that his creed has been developed for himself from his own observations of life, we cannot but find something awe-inspiring in this rebirth on new soil of the same old doctrines preached in so many languages by so many apostles. To his moral doctrines, he adds the economic one of the uselessness of money and the superiority of barter as a means of interchange. In substance, several of the moral tales are not so very different from those that English and American children are brought up on as the Tolstoï enthusiasts would have us believe (what a curiously familiar sound, e. g., have the tales called "If you Neglect the Fire you don't Put it Out," "Where Love is, there God is also," and "Little Girls Wiser than Old Men "): but the quaint vigor of these, and a sort of inherent originality, an unconscious re-originating of what others had long done, make them unique.

Besides these French and Russian short stories, we have some half dozen novels translated from other languages. Two of these are from the German the second volume of The Buchholz Family3, and The Monk's Wedding. As the first volume of The Buchholz Family has already been reviewed in these pages, it is hardly necessary to repeat our comments for the second. We confess to finding them dull — and yet curiously readable; entertainingly dull, one might say. The impression of Berlin burgher life they give provokes an ennui of the profoundest sort, and we can hardly tell whether it is toward the book or the life that this is

felt. The Monk's Wedding is at the other extreme in manner, eminently of the romantic school. It is a German imitation of the mediæval Italian love-story, Boccaccio probably being its model. With considerable audacity, it is put into the mouth of Dante. To us, the imitation seems a little clumsy, the passion impalpably artificial, and the impression left behind not pleasant. It might be said that tragedy is not designed to leave a pleasant impression; but the sadness it leaves in the reader's mind should be of a noble - even, to some extent, an inspiring - sort. The weakling, tossed about by passion, and bringing catastrophe to himself and others, scarcely rises to the tragic height. The monk in this case is granted by the pope a dispensation to marry in order to prevent the extinction of a powerful family; he consents against his own desire (for he is a monk by vocation and choice) as a matter of filial piety. But having once freed himself from his vows, allowed himself to think of love, he becomes the veriest captive of an overwhelming passion, regardless of honor or duty, and reckless of consequence. Whether altogether well carried out or not, this modern venture into the region of the romantic tale is interesting.

Sigrid' likewise is an old-fashioned lovestory; but a perfectly spontaneous and simple one. It comes from Iceland; and the translator assures us in a brief introduction that it is only a sample of an abundant literary product, which has continued to flow forth in that wonderful island uninterruptedly since its earliest appearance in the sagas. The Icelanders seem to be indeed a race of poets and story-tellers in Sigrid a favorite game among the peasant children is to sit and tell each other folk-tales and compete in rhyming by a sort of "capping verses" sys

late little properties, and respect themselves very sincerely. They come in contact with no nobility; the Danish merchants at Reykjavik are at the top of their social scale, and these merchants are by no means outside the matrimonial possibilities of a handsome peasant girl. Indeed, the simplification of social life seems to be about as complete in Iceland as can be imagined: merchant and peasant, mistress and maid, go to picnics together in as complete amity and equality as in an old-fashioned New England village. The lovestory of Indride and Sigrid is pleasant and natural; but the clear picture of this fresh life with its pastoral simplicity is that in the book which interests us most.

The latest numbers of Roberts Brothers' edition of Balzac are The Two Brothers and The Alkahest. The Two Brothers is one of the "Scenes from Provincial Life." It is not entirely a story of the provincial city of Issoudun, however, for the scene of its action is partly Paris, and the two brothers are Parisians born and bred, though their mother is a provincial. Each novel that is added to this series from Balzac unfolds to the reader a little more the marvelous range of the artist's vision, the universality and fidelity of his insight. Saint and sinner alike are comprehensible to him; love such as has given human hearts the material for their saintliest dreams of the relationships of Heaven, no less than love "in his coarsest satyr shape." Maternal love is the theme of The Two Brothers- but it is, as presented here, less noble than the typical maternal love, because the mother is herself a weak, dull woman. Strong and unselfish as is her maternal passion, sweet and upright and loyal as is her character, Agathe is not an impressive enough figure to suffice for the story, and it is largely occupied with the drama of Philippe's contest with an inter

The Two Brothers. By Honoré de Balzac. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson and Company

The Alkahest: or The House of Claes. By Honoré de Balzac. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson and Company.

The

loper for the inheritance of his uncle's property. Money, and struggle and intrigue for money, fill the pages. In The Alkahest more picturesque and noble figures appear. wife and the daughter of Claës are among the finest portraits in story; and rarely indeed has love at its most spiritual, its most intellectual, and yet its most passionate height, been better analyzed than in that of Joséphine for her husband. Marguerite is more of a heroine, but she is less human, less real, than her mother. For the alchemist himself we are less able to feel admiration or sympathy than the author would have us, because we believe less than the author would have us, because we believe less than Balzac probably did in the scientific basis of his mad search. There may be a certain grandeur in the passion for scientific discovery that is willing to sacrifice not only self, wife and children, the respect of men, the honor of a family, upon

the shrine; yet if to the moral weakness that accompanies this vast passion be added such intellectual defect as to make in the nineteenth century, a semi-alchemist instead of a sober man of science, it is a poor shred of grandeur after all. Probably the scientific chemist of our day, as of Balzac's, would say that there was nothing intrinsically impossible in the substance of Claës's theories; but that as stated by him, and as investigated, they were from the outset so vitiated either by madness or ignorance that their victim has no more claim to our sympathies as a martyr of Science than any other victim of an illusion. The picturesqueness and vividness of Balzac in all the "properties" of his tale was never better than in the surroundings of this: the House of Claës is a Flemish picture to remain fixed in the mind, not only by its external features, but by its expression, so to speak, its significance as the embodiment of a race and a history.

THE readers of the OVERLAND may be interested to know how the diary of H. W. Bigler, printed in this number, fell into the magazine's possession. Its existence came to light by an incident related in Mr. John S. Hittell's "Reminiscences of the Plains and Mines in '49 and '50", printed in the OVERLAND for February of the present year. At the annual celebration of the Society of California Pioneers of September, 1885, Mr. Hittell had delivered an address upon Marshall's discovery of gold, speaking of the date as the 19th of January, 1848. This date had always been the one accepted, upon Marshall's authority. Mr. Hittell sent copies of his address to the surviving members of the group of men who were present at the time of the discovery, asking them to correct any errors therein. Among the workmen at the mill in January, 1848, as related in the diary, was Henry Bigler, who was only temporarily in the State, awaiting a suitable time to join those of his own religion in

Utah. This he did soon after, and still lives at Garden City, Utah.. In response to Mr. Hittell's request, Mr. Bigler wrote that, according to his diary, gold was found on the 24th of January. Investigation, as related by Mr. Hittell in the OVERLAND article above referred to, established Bigler's diary as the conclusive authority on this point. Meanwhile, much interested to learn of the existence of this diary, covering a period of such importance in the history of the State, Mr. Hittell wrote to ask, in the name of the Society of Pioneers, that it should be given for preservation in their archives. Mr. Bigler, however, declined to send it, because it contained many personal and private entries. He was then asked to send a copy of those parts of the diary relating to California. For a long time he was reluctant to do even this. Finally however, after farther correspondence, he consented, with the proviso that Mr. Hittell should revise his manuscript. It was sent in small installments, from time

to time, accompanied by Mr. Bigler's notes thereon the last of these arriving a few weeks ago; and through Mr. Hittell's kindness is now given to our readers.

A PECULIARLY simple and happy solution of one of the worst defects in the schools' of San Francisco has just been found. Those who have paid attention to the matter have long known that the girls of this city were only nominally given the same High School opportunities as the boys, the grade of the Girls' High School being kept lower in several respects. In especial, the means of preparation for college have been steadily refused. Some years ago, one or two girls in the school did achieve there college preparation, even that in Latin and Greek, by voluntary lessons at recess, under the tuition of a teacher who sympathized with their ambition; but since his departure, the achievement has not been repeated. We believe the rating of this school among those entitled to matriculate recommended graduates at the University without examination, has never even been considered. It has been answered to all protest that there were not girls enough in San Francisco who wished college preparation to justify

raising the grade to the level of the Boys' High School, or employing a classical teacher. At the opening of this school year, however, the Boys' High School-we understand at the suggestion of Mr. Wilson, its principal, - was quietly opened to girls desiring Latin and Greek instruction; and no less than forty-five girls immediately availed themselves of the opportunity. We understand that Mr. Wilson's suggestion was suggested to himself by parents who desired equal instruction for their sons and daughters. The step is an exceedingly commendable one: the girls who wish to, obtain improved advantages; another feeder to the University is practically established, and San Francisco ceases to stand in this respect behind the smaller cities of the State; the principle of co-education is introduced into the Boys' High School - which thus becomes the Boys' and Girls' High School, or, briefly,the High School;-and all without additional expense, or alteration in the school system. It is perhaps apropos to add that we just now hear, from the leading Teacher's Bureau of the State, that the demand for women to teach Latin and mathematics cannot be met from the present college graduates on the coast, but others must be sought from the East.

Richardson's American Literature.1 This book is so intelligently written, and with so excellent a purpose that we are not disposed to be very critical in estimating the result of the author's performance. But we cannot help thinking, in reviewing the field over which he has carefully gone, that he has written overmuch to demonstrate that his theme was not nearly so great

1American Literature, 1607-1885. Vol. I. The Development of American Thought. By Charles F. Richardson. New York and London: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

as this only partial accomplishment of his work would, from its size, seem to show. In this volume of 528 quarto pages, the author reviews only a part of the field of American prose, for he has left the work of the novelists to be narrated with that of the poets in a second volume. It may be a matter of pride to the literary ovice that the history of his countrymen's literary accomplishments should require such weight of volumes; but it is questionable whether as a fact this particular workman has not brought up in his bucket something more than