Morning journal and courier., 1880-04-28
RECENT PUBLICATIONS.

powerful and entertaining story. The scene
 is laid in Washington, whither Mrs. Liqhtfoot
 Lee, rich and fascinating New York widow
 who is tired of decorative art and charities
 went to spend tho winter. ''What she wished
 to see, she thought was the clash of interests,
 the interests of forty millions of people and
 whole continent, oentsring at Washington; guided, restrained, controlled, or unrestrained
 and uncontrollabls, by men of ordinary mould; the tremendous forces of govern ment, and the machinery of society at work What she wanted was power" The story moves on through love and hate and political
 intrigue until Mrs. Lee finds herself thor oughly disgusted with the conduct of affairs in Washington, and after narrow escape from marriage with the willy leader of the Senate shakes the dust of the National Gap ital from her feet. The authors satire is very bitter and spares no one, from the President and his wife down. Among the notable pas sages in the book is the following, which the author puts into tho mouth of one of the characters 'I believe in democracy. I &C., cept it. I will faithfully serve and defend it. believe in it because it appears to me the in- evitable consequence Of what has gone before it. Democracy asserts the fact that the
 masses are now raised to higher intelligence than formerly. All our civilization aims at this mark. We want to do what we can to help 1t. myself want to sse the result. I grant it is an experiment, but it is the only di ] reotion society can take that is worth it's talk ing; the only conception of its duty large
 enough te satisfy its instincts the only result that is worth an effort or a risk. Every other possible step is backward, and I do not care
 to repeat the past am glad to see society grapple with issues in which no one can af-
 ford to be neutral" The book as whole is
 well worth reading. Published in their ''Leis
 ure Hour Series by Henry Holt & Co.,, New l York, and for sale in this city by H. H. Peck. Lippincotts "G.zctteer of the World is I ths best geographical reference book for American readers. It Is almost a5 indispensa- 1 bls dictionary. It has no rivals. has been l in for twenty five years, and will remain the principal authority until some publisher l feels like risking hundred thousand dollars to supplant it. In the beginning the Gazetteer | was incomplete of necessity, and the rapid in
 crease of geographical information, to say | nothing of the multitude of changes made in I the geography of tho world during ths twenty ! five years which have passed since tho book
 was first printed, has made it less and less sat 1 isfactory, in spite of the additions made to it
 and the frequent revision of it's text in success
 sive editions. It was good Gazstteer, how l ever, and it offered an excellent foundation l upon which to build satisfactory geographi- cal dictionary. No new work could easily | be made so good a properly revised and rewritten edition of this old one, and ac-
 cordingIy the work of revising and re writing
 this Gazetteer was undertaken. It was no longer possible to make the text satisfactory l by ordinary revision; the changes neces- sary were too many and too great for that l The work must be rewritten, with changes, additions, and omissions of obsolete matter 1 upon almost every page, and this is what the publishers have wisely ordered. A compe-,
 tent corps of editors and writers have recon
 structed the work throughout, using the old
 matter only as 8 foundation upon which to build, and the result is a Gazstteer which, if
 it is not absolutely perfect and complete, is far superior to most other works of the kind which are available for reference. It has
 taken some five years of diigent labor to pre-
 pare the new edition of the Gazetteer. In the
 performance of their task the editors have freely laid under contribution the best and most recent foreign works of like character,
 both in the English and in other tongues;
 reputable books of travel have been diligently
 consulted; official documents have been large
 ly relied upon and recourse has been had to
 what is believed to be the most extensive sys-
 tenn of private correspondence ever carried on
 in the execution of a work of this character,
 tens of thousands of communications relating
 to the matter having passed between the edi-
 tors and their correspondents, both at home
 and abroad.
 In regard to the correct spelling of the
 names of places in our own country and in
 those other portions of the globe in whose
 languages Roman letters or characters readily converted into corresponding Roman letters
 are used the aim has been to follow the best recognized authority, or, in cases where au- thorities differ, to give all the various spell ings with which the reader would be likely to
 meet, with references from the less desirable
 mode to the one under which the description
 appears. In regard to the orthography of
 the names of places in countries whose al phabets bear no resemblance to the Roman
 alphabet, such as the Russian, Turkish, Ara bic, Persian, etc., and whose geographical
 names are in consequence spelled differently | by foreign writers of various nationalities a system of spelling that as nearly as possible