The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-01-11

Some posthumous notes, by Sainte Beuve, on
the men of his time, said to be very severe and
very indiscreet, are shortly to be published.
A London letter to the Boston Advertiser
says: Mr.. Longfellow's last volume, on the
other hand, has received a hearty welcome.
Seldom are our critics so!unanimous in their ap-
probation Some prefer one part of the work
entitled The Mosque Of Pandora, to another, but
all fnd much to praise. The Saturday Review
is the most laudatory of them all, and this is no
ordinary compliment. Old and New England
disagree in several things, but.they are united
In their admiration of Mr. LongfelOw.
Geo. z. Putnam's Sons have lately had sew
eral letters in pleasant recognition of American
publishing from English authors, whose books
they had reprinted under voluntary royalty.
DR.. Fothergill speaks of the American edition
of his Maintenance of Health" as Zone of the
prettiest books have ever seen, leaving moth
ing to be desired; and he concludes: az am
afraid in the present vexed condition of no in
ternational copyright, American publishers
and English authors can scarcely be expected
TO be profuse in their expressions of amity; and
intend to publish in America, to start with,
for the future" Mr.. Andrew Wilson, author
of THE Aboude of Snow" writing in the same
vein, adds: II hardly regret that your proposal
for an American preface did not reach me in
time, when see how delicately, how consid.
erately, and at how much risk to the sale of
your edition, the circumstances of the republic
cation have been explained in the note which
you have prefxed to that beautiful edition"
Cuncerning Mrs. Fanny Kemble's "Old Wo.
mans Gossip" now running in the Atlantic,
the London Academy says SIT is understood
that she offered the manuscript at first to a
well known English magazine the managers
of which let it slip through their fingers, and
only when it had been already accepted in Bos-
ton found out what mistake they mad made''
Prof. Morse defends himself valiantly for
having omitted from his "Fiist Book in Zoolo-
gy" all technical names of the species of which
he treats. He says the technical names are
changing go rapidly as to be practically useless
except to specialists AS an extreme instance
he gives the changes in the name of the COM
mon sea-urchin, which was named by Agassz,
ten years ago, eclinus granulatas. Since that
time it has been successfully called echinus
grdnaldtus, euryechinus granulatus, toxopneus.
tes drobachiensis, euryechinus drobachiensis,
name was the approved one when Prof. Morse's
book went to press; but he says this little ami
NAL will he known by the name of sea-urchin
long after the time when the system atists and
their distracting nomenclature shall have been
forgotten.
Two of Mr.. Francis Parkman's historical
works, "The Pioneer" and THE Old Regime
in Canada" are heing translated into German
under the supervision Of DR.. Frederick Kopp,
well known in this country. No doubt these
books are regarded as valuable materiel for the
war against Ultramontanism.
The London Athenaum says: San apnro-
pirate supplement to the fual edition of De-
Balzac, which contains his euores de ieunesse
and other writings long unknown, will be the
correspondence of the great novelist. An ap-
peal is now made, through NM. Michel Levy
Freres, to all possessors foreign as well as
French, of letters or interesting documents
written by De Balzac, requesting them to for
ward either the originals or authentic copies of
them, in order that the collec tion may be as
complete as possible
correspondent of the New York Post
writes of the new French book on America.
"a noteworthy book, with still more nota-
BILE preface, is The United States To-day lust |
published by Pion. The volume is written by 1
Mr.. Claudio Jannet, and is very careful |
analysis of American nstitutions-poltica |
social and religious. The author, who has i
long been living in America, takes a very /
friendly, cordial and hopeful view of it; but Il
he recognizes that in the immense forces /
which are at work in the United State there
al uh iDfu 10 for
those which are working out good; and he has /
classified them thus in his book. The chapters /
which he devotes to Social Forces in America |
to Real Liberties and to The Organization of |
the Family are worthy of reproduction en- /
tire. The preface, written by the distinguished |
M. de la Play, who has been so thorough |
student of social science and of the movement /
of great peoples, has almost the value of an his
torical document. 1t endeavors to analyze the |
sentiments which led Alexis de Tocqueville to |
write his work on Democracy in America |
asserting that only by understanding those /
sentiments can one arrive at an appreciation of /
De Tocqueville's work. M. de la Play also de- |
votes part of the preface to consideration of i
the men who have endeavored to make the /
American Republic understood in Europe, and |
to defend and sustain its credit"
A correspondent of the London Athenaum /
writes as follows concerning the use of the /
word rather: Some critics object to such /
phrases as That's rather a droll remark and |
would have us say That is rather droll re- |
mark" They are wrong. In the above SEN |
tence rather is not attached (adverbially) to
the adjective droll but to the verb is. Rather |
OF course means sooner, and such sentence
as I am rather tired means, in point of fact, |
L am rather tired than not tired that is, Il |
am in such state that one would sooner say |
that am tired than that am not tired;' lust |
as That book is rather stupid than mischiev-
GUS means That book is such that one would |
sooner say that it is stupid than that it is mis-
chievous.' 1t is easy to see. therefore, that |
That is rather droll remark is correct and |
that the expanded meaning of the elliptical |
sentence is, One would sooner say that that |
is droll remark than that it is not a droll re-
mark |
"The Love and Other Papers," collection |
of the ungathered papers of Richard Steele, a
work upon which the lamented j. E. Babson
was occupied at the time of his death, will not
be issued until spring, although in the pub.
fishers list of fall announcements.
Magazine Notices.