Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1882-07-01
BOOK REVIEWS.
VICTOR HUso AND HIS TINE. By Alfred Barbou.
New York Harper Bros. San Francisco A.
L. Bancroft & Co.

sire dispassionate and philosophical estimate
Of Victor Huge. 1t is from the hand Of one
of his worshipers, and is in the enthusiastic,
hypsrbolical vein. The hero is great immense,
magnificent, from the first page to the last.
TIE splendor of his genius is go flashed in ones
eyes as to be quite binding. There is no
criticism worthy Of the name, and the nara
tive is so blemished by its extravaganza as to
be unreliable. Victor Hugo is certainly u
great writer, but he is also good deal of o
charlatan. In his politics and in his political
economy he is often absolutely ridiculous.
His pathos not infrequently degenerates into
bathos. He is full of misty, unreal, fan
tastic burlesaue of passion which cannot be
compreheuded, much less be appreciated, by
any other than a Frenchman. In Les
NIisefables he has written one of the most
powerful stories in all literature yet even
that masterpiece is deformed by extravaganza
and tedious harangues which weary the
reader completely. His work is also too full
of nail-marks, to speak mechanically. One
is permitted to see too much of his methods
OF obstruction. He empties his memoranda
into his psges sometimes without sitting or
arranging them. Noticeably is this the case
in parts of "L'Homme qui Rit." Victor
Hugo has no Ineligible philosophy. He
seems to belong to that fabby school which is
all tenderness to the human race, and which
through the catholicity of its sympathies
OF oil oil -s11r.
gents, rebels and breakers. a: enmity to
all forms of government. He was for the
Commune at one time. He was for the Re-
public as long as it was without consistency,
but when it became consolidated he almost
ceased to sympsthize with it. His literary
works, and especially his novels, have all
been moral in their design, and free from the
bane of French fiction, the erotic mania. He
has also shown how to combine realism with
decency in way which should have taught
lola something. And it must be confessed
that if Victor Hugo is an egotist, he has been
sorely tempted, for surely no literary man
has ever been so spoiled by his contempora-
riss. That he possesses an originally sweet
aRd sound nature is obvious, and even in his
old age its fundamental sanity is not i'm
paired. But it is scarcely to be doubted that
the verdict of posterity upon his literary
rank will be very different from that of his
contemporaries in the French republic Of
letters, and that the place now claimed for
him, as at the head OF the literature of the
nineteenth century, will be disallowed.
THE FORMATION or VEGETABLE MoLD THROUGH THE
ACTION OF WORMS. By Charles Darwin New
York: Appleton * Co San Francisco: j. T.
White & Co.
This is Mr.. Darwin's last contribution to
science and it Is not less interesting than the
volumes which have preceded it. Certainly
the world has until now had very little idea
of the Importance of the part played by the
humble earth.worm in mundane affairs. Yet
Mr.. Darwin has ascertained from personal
observation that these little unobtrusive crea-
lures are among the most active agents in
producing changes in the earth's surface. BY
their borrowings they gradually change
the entire surface of fields. They accelerate
the erosion of hillsidss by loosening and ex.
posing the soil. They cause stones and
rocks, and even ruins, to sink gradually into
the earth, by undermining them first, and
then by covering them up. They even
triturate stones and pebbles, by passing
them through their intestinal canals, and
they prepare the soil for the growth of
plants. 1t has been calculated that there are
on an average IS. 767 worms to sn acre of
land. This would give weight of $50
pounds in worms. Mr.. Darwin estimates
that the worms on one of his fields must
have passed the earth through their bodies, in
the course of a year, at the rate of
over eighteen tons per acre. It will be
perceived from these figures that the earth
worms may easily play very important part
in producing charges of the earth's sur
face. and that in billy regions the operation
of the worms must hasten the denudation of
the Ill very greatly. The influence of earth
worms in sending debris into the rivers of this
State was not considered in the late Gold
Run Mine case, though Mr.. Darwins treatise
on the subject might have given the defense
several suggestive points.
1760 TO 1860 By Charles Duke Yonge NJ A.
New York Earper & Bros. San Francisco: A
l.. Bancroft & Co.
The author of this volume wrote very bad
biography of Marie Antoinette few years
ago. We are inclined to think it was the
worst story Of her life ever given to the press.
He has now prepared condensed coustitu-
tional history, and as he has not had much op.
portunity for exhibiting his own idiosyncrasies
ia it, the result is more satisfactory. The
century treated of is one of the most import
ant and interesting in modern history. 1t IN
cludes the War of Independence, the French
Revolution, the Reform Movement, the Abo-
lition of the Corn Laws, the Crimean War,
and many other epechal events. 1t includes
the change from medieval to modern life, re-
sultine from the invention of the railway,
the telegraph, and the steamboat. It is
therefore most necessary that every student
should be familiar with this period, and in
the absence of more elaborate histories by
men of larger regulations, this compendium
by Mr.. Younge may be useful enough. He
follows Hallam, but, curiously enough, he
makes no mention of May. Many of the
events recorded here have been much more
graphically described by Justin Mccarthy,
but tie latter does not go 30 far back, and
the seventy years from the beginning of this
history to where Mccarthy takes it up are
far too important to be skipped or slurred.
ATLANTIS; The ANTEDnuvIAs WORLD By Igna-
titus Donnelly. New York: Harper Bros San
Francisco A. l.. Bancroft & Co.
This is an ingenious and laborious effort to
demonstrate that the tradition of a buried
continent called Atlantis rests upon fact !;
that such an island did formerly exist in the
Atlantic Ocean, opposite the mouth of the
Mediterranean Sea; and that this buried
Atlantis was the fountain and source of that
civilization which overlooked frem it to
Pho aicis, Greece, America, and go on down
to modern times. As matter of course the
best that can be done with the scanty ma.