that the secret of Gordon's success with Eastern peoples was that sense of universal justice, that intense sympathy with down-trodden races, which needed no knowledge of Chinese or Arabic to strengthen their appeal to the native heart. The hero of Kartoum proved that he had a purer love of his country than some of those who contrived to thwart him in Downing Street; yet he ranked humanity higher than patriotism, and would not have hesitated to sacrifice a whole cabinet of ministers to the interests of truth. Few will fail to admire, even where they cannot imitate, the robust independence with which he shaped his conduct according to the dictates of his conscience. It was probably this fidelity to himself and to the real England which he loved, not to the false, the time-serving England of the diplomatists, that strewed so many obstacles in his path. There is still another side to the story told by the Journals now before us. If they depict the man, they also present the soldier. And truly, all wild and perilous elements combine in the narrative of the defense of Kartoum to give it at once the picturesque interest of romance and the startling realism of tragedy. In days of myth-making this solitary warrior of the desert would by this time have disappeared from ordinary history into a vague mist not unlike that which the Skalds wove around Odin and Thor, or the poet legend-tellers contrived for the figures half divine of Lancelot and Galahad. It is the triumph of narratives and times like these that hero-worship and human interest do not exclude each other. We are sensible of both these elements as the Journals tell us by what rare combination of watchfulness, ingenuity, and effort General Gordon contrived so long to hold his Arab enemies at bay; with what courage, truthfulness, modesty, kindness of heart, and yet with how full a presentiment of the final disaster, this single-handed soldier continued to plan and work in the interests of the population under his care; and last, by what light play of fancy and satire he sought to lighten the monotony of his daily tasks, and forget, if but for a moment, the growing peril of his situation. The knowledge that it was all of no avail, and that help came too late to save the life of such a man, makes it impossible to close the book without a feeling nearly akin to that of personal bereave ment. It should be added that the Journals have been carefully edited by Mr. A. Egmont Hake, whose introduction adequately covers the whole historical period of General Gordon's work in the Soudan. Not less welcome is a statement by Sir Henry W. Gordon regarding his brother's position at Kartoum. The Journals themselves are illustrated by General Gordon's own sketches and maps. The appendices contain a number of important documents amongst them letters from the Mahdi the first time given to the public. An excellent portrait of General Gordon by far the best we have seen the title-page of the work. now for - faces MCMASTER'S SECOND VOLUME. WE owe a large debt to Mr. McMaster for the great industry which he has displayed in accumulating and sorting a mass of detail respecting the every-day life of the American people since the war for independence. The second volume of his history covers the period from 1790 to 1803, and to illustrate the time he has searched contemporary journals and pamphlets, narratives of travel, diaries, town histories, legislative journals, and other public documents. No student of our history and no general reader can quarrel with an author who has been so diligent and in the main so discriminating in this laborious task; and no matter how many histories of the country may be written, upon how many various plans, this work is likely to remain a repository of curious and suggestive facts. The comprehensiveness of Mr. McMaster's interest gives the greatest value to the work. Nothing comes amiss, from a "brass-nail-studded hair trunk" to Jay's Treaty, and the orderly manner in which kindred topics are arranged and made to slide into the next theme is of assistance to the reader's memory. The wearisome newspaper warfare, which made the Federalist and Republican contest a "kettleopotomania," has evidently been followed patiently by Mr. McMaster, who has reported it in his digest style, and so given the reader a sufficient notion of its fury without subjecting him to the nauseating details. By means of the full excerpts one is able also to follow the contemporary discussion of such public measures as Jay's Treaty, without himself hunting down the newspapers and pamphlets of the day. A full index adds to the ease with which one consults the book for the light which it sheds on our history. For, when we have recognized to the full the great value of Mr. McMaster's work, it remains that this value is rather in the illustration of history than in its interpretation. The work is a library of interesting and useful information on a multitude of points touching the life of the people, and it gathers these details into convenient groups. It fol 1 A History of the People of the United States, from the Revolution to the Civil War. By JOHN lows a careful chronological order, and it intends a consecutive narrative, but it fails to impress one as a clear exponent of the organic growth of the nation; and thus far, at any rate, one may read it without discovering that the author sees into the principles of development, or comprehends the meaning of the movement of that great mass which he describes in so many of its features. It is this absence of a strong underlying historic thought which makes the book entertaining rather than really instructive, and the reader is carried along from point to point by a certain superficial cleverness of transition in place of a real nexus of purpose. Indeed, these ingenious loops of one subject to another betray an almost whimsical eagerness of the author at times to cajole the reader into further diversion. One is tempted to think of a variety stage, where each successive entertainment is hurried forward as the last scene slips out of the spectator's sight. The very abundance of illustration employed by the author serves to defeat his purpose, by presenting the reader with all the instances, and leaving him to find for himself the principle, and to pass judgment. He cannot see the forest for the trees. This effect is heightened by the rotundity of expression in which the author indulges. The style is the man, and we regret to say that the multitude of words which flow from Mr. McMaster's ready pen bear testimony to the exuberance and fertility of his mind rather than to his power of seeing into his subject, and saving the reader's time by concentrating his attention upon the really fateful historic passages. When a historian, wishing to tell us of Cobbett's early life, begins by informing us that he "first saw the light of day" in a farmhouse in the town of Farnham, Surrey; or heralds an account of a launch with the words, "After three BACH MCMASTER. In five volumes. Volume II. New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1885. years of unavoidable detention the first naval vessel built by the United States under the Constitution was to be committed to the waves;" or prefaces a description of the jerks by the extravagant assertion, "On a sudden this community, which the preachers had often called Satan's stronghold, underwent a moral awakening such as this world had never beheld," we cannot help wishing that he had adopted some model of style less florid, and more than that we wish that he were not so rich in indifferent material. It is a fine thing to value our own history, but if, when we come to display its riches, we dwell endlessly upon petty squabbles and ignoble details, the mere fullness of our chronicle does not save it from meanness. It is this which disappoints us in Mr. McMaster's treatment. To use a homely phrase, he is trying very hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. To take, for example, the chapters which relate the complications of national policy and the contentions of party arising from the state of affairs in Europe. A mighty conflict was going on in the Old World, full of meaning and epochal in its significance. The incidents to which it gave birth were of a kind to tax the powers of the greatest of modern picturesque writers. Our own country, independent in name of Europe, and really independent in its destiny, was yet unavoidably entangled with European affairs. What was going on in France and England and Spain was of the greatest interest in Philadelphia and New York and Boston, while these places were apparently indifferent to the silent, unheroic march of American life to the westward. To trace the real influence of Europe on America at this period, and not to lose sight of the native forces at work, would be one of the most exacting pieces of work to which an historian could put his hand. Our complaint is that Mr. McMaster has confused the theme by his wearisome elaboration of the newspaper and pamphlet war which was waging on this side of the Atlantic. The significance of such men as John Butler and Matthew Lyon, and of such a fracas as that between Lyon and Griswold, is lifted out of all proportion to real importance, and for page after page we seem to be reveling in the affairs of Little Peddlington. It seems to us that Mr. McMaster is misled by his authorities, and that a too industrious reading of the Aurora and other redoubtable papers has made him not a partisan, but a chameleon. His method of digesting speeches or newspaper articles, and giving the gist of them to the reader, seems to have made him at times scarcely more than a skillful digester. What is the use of retailing at length, even in the form of a report, the scandal concerning Adams and Jefferson which filled the papers of the day? We do not want to read those papers. Mr. McMaster is kind enough to do it for us, and we beg of him not to read so many extracts aloud, but to give us his own judgment of the rights and wrongs in the cases in dispute. We expect him to go through the disagreeable task of making himself acquainted with all the rubbish which political and partisan newspapers contain, but not for the purpose of laying it before us and leaving us to form our conclusions. It may be said that the author shows his judicial mind by such a course. Not at all. A judge is bound to sum up the evidence, and not merely to read us the pleas on both sides. Mr. McMaster's mind is rather that of a reporter than of a judge, and as he passes to one side or the other, in the tiresome battledore and shuttlecock style, we are ready to cry out, But what was the truth, after all? or, Have you not made up your mind yourself? In all this rhetorical enumeration of endless detail, the real proportions of history become confused, and unless the reader brings to the book a tolerably distinct notion of the historical development, he is likely to get lost in the woods, and be almost as helpless as if he were to try to pick out the history of a year from the file of a newspaper. In his desire to make a fluent narrative, Mr. McMaster sometimes disregards the needs of the humble reader, and talks about his subject in an allusive way which does not always afford to analysis a distinct and usable fact. Such is his treatment of the Embargo, which never, we think, is sharply defined, but presumes upon the reader's previous knowledge. An illustration of this indirect style is in the reference to Washington's recall to the head of the army in 1798. "To command them" (the regiments), Mr. McMaster says, "two major-generals, an inspector-general, and four brigadiers were provided. The chief command was given to a lieutenant-general, and for this post the whole country agreed that but one man was fit." Singularly enough, our author is entirely silent regarding the quarrel over the second place, and omits wholly any reference to Hamilton's schemes for the army in the West. plan to make little of leaders and much of plain people, yet we think it is unfortunate that he should, by the proportion which he follows, give but little hint of the significance of the great men in our early history. The American people was not a headless mob, and the shaping of history which resulted from such leadership as that of Hamilton has not yet ceased to be operative. The picturesque elements in our history are by no means wanting, but they are scarcely to be found in the thin colonialism which waited on European movements. The real points to be emphasized in the early years of the republic are rather the personal and human forces which were at work, and were to justify the promise of democracy. The few men who grasped the political situation are worth the historian's attention far more than the curs who barked at their heels, and the rising tide of democracy was not, we are convinced, so much the result of party conflict as the action of that undercurrent of American life which is only partly revealed in this volume, - a current which had its most notable disclosure in the formation of It may be a part of Mr. McMaster's, Western and Southwestern society. CENTRAL ASIA. WITHOUT detracting in the least from the merits of Dr. Lansdell's book on Central Asia,' it may be said that it is a curious as well as interesting work. The author, an English clergyman, animated by the desire of visiting prisons and hospitals and of placing there copies of the Bible, had no previous preparation for his journey except a similar one which he had taken through Siberia a year or two before. 1 Russian Central Asia, including Kuldja, Bokhara, Khiva, and Merv. By HENRY LANSDELL, He evidently made copious notes during his journey, and, on his return to England, studied up his subject as he had not done before, and submitted his manuscript to many persons well qualified to assist him. The scientific parts have been revised by competent authorities. The later chapters of the books were submitted to Mr. Lessar, who is for the moment the great authority on Turkmania, and it is easy for those acquaintD. D. 2 vols. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1885. ed with the subject to trace the influence of others equally well posted in different branches. Dr. Lansdell caters to many different tastes, for each of which he has a special index, but with the result of making his work seem rather fragmentary. There are chapters on the history and statistics of the various parts of Central Asia; there are lists of the beasts, birds, and insects as well as of the plants found there; there is a very excellent catalogue of books on Central Asia from the earliest times to the present; and there is also a list of the various texts of Scripture which the author thinks have been illustrated by what he has seen. These are all arranged in such a way, together with an index to the actual journey, that it is possible to read any of these parts separately without touching on the others. His indices are as good as a card catalogue to a library. To recur to the Scripture texts, it is impossible for any one acquainted with the Old Testament to travel in Central Asia without noticing what a very oriental book it is, and how little Eastern life has changed since the time it was written. On re-reading the Old Testament one sees many passages in a very different light from that which was thrown on them previously, and many of them are more intelligible than they would be to one who had simply journeyed in the Holy Land, where from circumstances there has been more change. Owing to the reasons which prompted his journey, the author has, either consciously or unconsciously, imitated to a great extent one of his predecessors, Dr. Joseph Wolff, whose travels are exceedingly curious and interesting. This gentleman was a converted Jew, who visited the greater portion of the known and unknown world in both hemispheres for the purpose of carrying the light of the gospel to those of his race. In so doing he had once visited Bokhara and Afghanistan; and subsequently, after the murders of Connolly and Stoddart, he went again to Bokhara, in order to ascertain their real fate. We may remark parenthetically that Dr. Wolff, owing to the singularity of his adventures, captivated and married Lady Georgiana Walpole, the daughter of the Earl of Orford, and became the father of the present Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, a now wellknown member of the conservative party. Dr. Lansdell constantly refers to Dr. Wolff's journeys, and remembers that when that reverend gentleman went to Khiva and Bokhara on his self-imposed mission he dressed himself in a white surplice, if it were white after a journey of so long a time, and carried an English Prayer-Book open before him. Perhaps this to some extent accounted for the immunities which were accorded to him, for the Orientals have always a respect for men whom they believe to be idiotic or demented. In similar wise, when he was to be received by the Amir of Bokhara, Dr. Lansdell, wishing to appear as gorgeous as possible, wore a cassock, which, as he says, had previ ously done duty at a levee at St. James; over that a gorgeous, gold-embroidered Serbian jacket; and over that his scarlet university hood, various Masonic collars and jewels, and his college cap. Feeling that his presents to the Amir were not sufficient, and on the ground that the Amir as well as himself was a Mullah, he graciously presented him with his hood, cap, and Masonic jewels, which were as graciously returned to him the next day by the Amir, who found no use for them. A similar odd vanity appears in the desire which has taken the author to intersperse among the excellent engravings which adorn his book pictures of himself in Khokand armor, in Bokharan robes, and in other curious Oriental attire. But such reflections really do injustice to the merits of Dr. Lansdell, who made a long and interesting journey, |