Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-02-17
THE CRITICS. REVIEW

in Duty Free-LOrd ClancnrIy, With a
Plot Laid In the DAYS of William oi
Ornnge-COnversnIio on Minea-AncieBl
Literature and Other Books.
a PILE of paper-covered novels claims The
Critics first attention. There are six books
in the pile, bound in various tints, white gray,
yellow, and terra-eotta, aud of the authors
three are English, one is French, and two are
German. Our interesting international copy.
right conditions allow these books to be sold at
about 30 cents apiece. Foreign art must pay an
enormous duty to get into this country, but for
eign literature can get in for nothing.
Sytvfd Arden Drank F. Lowell & Coz is dec
Grated on the cover with the figures Of three
hungry vultures, swooping down into a very
steep cleft which opens In the midst of wilder
ness of bare and precipitous mountain tops.
Evidently, judging from the cover, Sylvia
Arden is a murder story. Those vul-
lures are after somebody. We look with
in with some interest to find out who
it is, and how it came abont. We find ourselves
in the wild regions of Scarfell Chace. There
have been gold mines there in the long past,
and the rocks are SCARED. and rent and fur
rowed, and tunneled with the pick axes of
miners. There is q solitary mansion in this
desolate region. and here lives Gregory Nor
son. Morson has shut himself in from the
civilized world. His servants are Greeks and
Italians. The approaches are all closely
guarded. Sylvia Arden and her brother are on
a visit to this wild and mysterious place. Here
too comes Bancroft the hero to visit Morson,
his old friend Morson is betrothed to Sylvia
Arden. The very first day of Bearcroft's visit,
indeed before he got to the house, Sylvia is shot
at as she is riding along the hills, by some
unknown'a assassin, thus the story begins 1t is
one of the queerest stories in the language.
Poison, madness, mystery, burial alive, monks,
Williams and underground passages figure in iti
the reader is in perplexity from beginning to
end. Finally the hero gets great treasure OF
hidden gold and marries Sylvia Arden. Oswald
Crawford is the author.
The Mynns Mystery another book from the
same publishing house. promises to 60 well
with Sylvia Arden" The mystery begins on the
very first page, where George Manvile Fem, the
author, declares in his own writing that Messrs.
Lowell & Co. are authorized to print this book.
Mr.. Fenn's penmanship is a mystery in itself.
Everything, however, which Mr.. Fem writes
is interesting, and The Mynns' Mystery" is no
exception. There is a genuine cold
blooded murder in this book. A
young lady and large fortune
are at stake, and Saul Harrington is willing to
play as high as hOmocide. The murder is done;
the tracks are all covered up NEST ingeniously;
the fortune, at least is in the murderer's grasp,
when-well, it would be unkind to tell the plot,
for there is not much else but plot in the book.
The telling of the story is the main thing. And
the story is really too good to be told in any
other than the authors way.
Rxs
7 ADY CLAFoARTY (Rand, McNally & Coz is
not nearly so sensational a story as its sub
title, welded and Wooed," might seem to in
dicate. 1t is capital story, set out against
good, solid, and well-drawn background of his
tory. The time is in the days of William of
Orange, and the plot turns upon con'
spiracy to kill the new King, set
agoing, of course, by Jacobites, and prevented
by the timely disclosures of Lord Clancarty.
The author is A. D. Hall. The story is we'll
written; the historical characters are accurately
and graphically pictured; fact is not made SO
obtrusive as to hinder fictioni there plenty of
lovemaking, and no end of fine lords and fair
ladies'
The bombshells are bursting most formidably
about a beleaguered fort on the cover of Jules
Verne's Il Family Without a Name. Uovell &
co., Jules Verne has here deserted science,
which has given him the foundation of SO many
good stories, and resorted to history. The scene
of the book is Canada. Canada is being discov-
cred by Frenchmen, it seems, as well as by
Americans. There is a fitness in the fact,
for the romantic element in Canadian
history is mainly in the French part
of it. NJ. Verne has not gone back
so far as Mrs. Catherwood. but has taken Incl
dents from history which are within the MEM
DRY of living men, After long series of strug-
giles and jealousies and troubles, coming some.
times to the crisis of bloodshed, and settling
ivf fH. Tofa Ia inf Tod nd
disaffected peace, the French in Canada in the
year 1897 rose in insurrection. The plot of the
story is intertwisted with the exciting events
Of that hopeless uprising. The hero is Jean
Sans-Nom. There is a heroine as brave as the
hero. AT the end the cause is lost, hero and
heroine in burning boat go over the fatal
cataract of Niagara. and the story closes not
unlike "The Romance Of Dolland." Every
year." writes the author, summing up the lesson
of the book, every year an affecting ceremony
unites the patriots of Montreal at the foot of
column erected to the memory of the polit-
icaI victims of 1887 and 1888. On the day of its
an address was given by NJ.
Euclide Roy, President of the Institute, and
his last words fifty embody the moral Of this
history, and that is: "To glorify sef-sacrifce is
to make heroes"
The new interest with which people in these
days are reading the Bible insures welcome
to books about the Bible. It is said that when
the presses of Harper & Bros. have nothing
else to do they work off more copies of 'Ben
Hur" And the sale of that book has certainly
been remarkable. We noticed a short time
ago new book on the same lines, EN-
story of Christ's time. The story,
Come Forth" which Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
is just now contributing to this paper,
and which is read with interest
by a very wide constituency, is another evil
ience of the desire on the part of people to know
more about the Bible. The pioneer in this re-
cent movement is DR.. Georg Ebers, the great
German Egyptologist. His long series of his
,orical novels. of which "Uarda" is perhaps the
pest known, have brought the discoveries of
explorers and the conclusions of scholars with
n reach of the ordinary reader and have made |
,he Pharaohs and the Caesars very real people. |
Dr. Ebers' last book, Joshua, is before u.s.
John w. Lowell & Co. publish this edition. |
Everybody who has read ben Hur," and who |
wants to read another book like it, written by |
nan who is both scholar and genius, should |
-ead Joshua" Readers of The DISPATCH
will not need to be instructed in its merits nor
as to its interest.
Rx~
THE PASTORS DAUGHTER (Worthington |
Co, ]. R. Weldin & co., is by W. Heimburg, |
whom plcLutel WHICH lutr0uuces Lue Dook, /
hows to be an intelligent-looking lady. and |
whose name indicates her nationality The |
book is illustrated with pictures, which for |
ome reason the publishers call ''photograv-
Tres" Some of them, however, are quite |
PRETTY. The heroine is an old maid, the first |
,age tells US, who is found putting flowers on
he grave of some one who had evidently been
lear to her, in quiet little churoh-yard. She
ellis her story, and touching story it is, though
little drawn out, of love and grief and happi-
less and death. ''Vive la joie" was written on
he frescoed ceiling at the old baronial castle,
nd tho littla ohildran Who amuaad than,s ,saIvaa |