Richmond dispatch. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1884-1903, 1888-06-03

and alarming. But in spite OF many
hard words which have seen written re-
earding "Tristrem Vsrick," l cannot by
any means rank myself among its detrac-
tors, and / believe there lisa hundredfold
less harm in its pages as the summer
reading OF tho most sensible girl discover
able than exists in the ordinary paper
covered thrash that you see littering ho-
tel piazzaA Most OF that, | am sorry to
state. ia English reprint; and for pure,
uumixed immortality commend me to the
third aud fonrth-rate modern English
novel Here the truth is necessarily not
told. but falsified, gorbled. voluptaously
and viciously embellished. In "Tris-
trem Vnrick il is told with the candor
of police-report, and with a literary
art that reminds ono OF Gautier. Mr..
Sstus has style as simple, flexible, and
glistening as that of Miss Riyes is pom
derons, precarious, and detective. You
see that no loves words and caresses
them, Just as Gautier did, for their own
sake: but he also loves ideas, and
sharply dramatic ones as well. lie pos
sesses the keenest sense OF beauty, and
many OF his sentences are equalled IN
their musical rise and fall only by the
extreme vividness of the pictures they
paint. His subjects are now and thea
dislked by those TO whom the terrible
or painful in fiction is held unworthy OF
treatment, but this aversion does not
make the treatment which Mr.. Saltus be-
slows on them any the less capable and
striking. l regard him as perhaps the
most brilliantly equipped by nature OF
ell our younger American novelists, and
he certainly is, thus far, the most fear
less and original. His future teams with
promise, just as his present teens with
a most artistic and productive energy.
Queen Money" is a novel full OF
brightness and excellence. Its author
manages TO mingle good sense and senti-
ment in a surprising degree, and few
books have appeared for long time at
once so interesting and so wholesome. 1t
covers a larger canvas than did MAR
garet Kent" and its lines, for this rea-
son, are often more skotchy and less pro-
nounced but for all that it is so filed
with good groupings and so dominated
by health and purity Of feeling that it is
just the novel for young men and women
10 read while their summer leisure grants
the opportunity.
OF course | might speak Of
NUMEROUS OTHER BOOKS
which would admirably occupy the re-
pose Of the warmer months but space
will not allow me to mention more than
one, and this is Cooking Backward, "
by Mr.. Edward Bellamy. 1t is TO-
nance of surprising merit and noble
purpose. The plan on which it is based
eau by no means be called a new one.
A human intelligence regarding our
earth years hence, in condition Of
finer aud richer development, has
more than once before been made
the subject OF romance. 1t was
done in that clever book "Erewhon,
and it was done in the first Lord Lyt-
tons Coming Race; still later was it
done in a most extraordinary tale called
1.-THE Diothas, published by the Messrs.
Putnam some eight years ago. | could
never succeed in finding ont the author
ship of 1.-The Diothas," its publishers
themselves having informed me that the
manuscript had come to them in the
most mysterious way, and that the COM
plete failure of the book as n financial
venture had followed its appearance.
But 1.-the Diothas" deserved to be a
great success, just as l both hope and
suspect that Looking Backward has
been. The latter reveals close thought
at one moment and provokes it at the
next. its moral tone satisfies and its
imaginative reach delights. There is
no book among those to which | have
referred that would more gladly
hear bad been sought after and devoured
during the summer holidays. think
that it is quite profound enough to please
even the Boston and Chicago Browning
societies for. while they admired its
depth and subtlety. they would not. as
in the case OF their revered favorite, feel
certain quotation from Gas You Like
1t at all applicable / end by giving
this quotation, with apologies for any
apparent intent to insinuate that Shak
speare is a greater author than he who
wrote Fifne at the Fair -:
" When mans UerseS cannot be IN
derstood, nor mans good wit Sc
conded ,oih the torward child, Under
standing, il strikes a man more dead
than q great reckoning in little
ram EDGIR EAwCFTr