The herald., 1893-01-29


Then comes Camps, Sieges aud Ballis-
tics. The latter part ID given TO the
civil war, after the breaking up OF the
triumvirate by the death of Crassus in
the Parthian campaign and the ending
of this friendship of Cnsa and Pompey,
who were competing Tor the sole con-
troll, resulting in q war being forced upon
Cesar. Space is given to the eventful
crossing OF the Rubicon. Pompey's clever
fight, C@ssf's return to Rome, the pur-
suit OF Pompey, the clever engineering
of the forces, the Pompeians' surrender,
in which Pompey not only lost Spain,
but his Oldest and best legons. Then
follows the pursuit of Pompey by Caesar
into Greece and his CALLING defeat by
Pompey; then the skillful planning of
Caesar, in which his long experience and
wonderful generalship was evidenced
in the great battle of Pharsalus,
in which the Pompeians gave
way at Caesars third attack, Caesar
capturing the entire force and Pompey
fees to Asia Minor, thence to Egypt,
where he WAS assassinated. The closing
chapters are devoted to Caesar following
Pompey to Alexandria. his fight with
the Egyptians, the burning of the Egyp-
tlan fieet, Scipio's opposition to him
the siege of Utica, the battle of Thapsus
and the annihilation of Scipio's entire
army. The last chapter is indeed a
tribute to the greatest man in antiquity !;
the comparison between the peerless,
Hannibal; the Homeric, Alexander; the
unvanquished Caesar. In this chapter
great attention 10 given to the sum-
ming up OF C@sar's appearance, his
manner, his realism, his hOlocausts, his
honors, his projects, his errors, his over
hastiness, his method, his objectives,
his tactics, his cavalry, his growth, his
opponents, his discipline, his power of
work and influence over men, and last
of all the fact that the man lacks the
one touch of nature. One can truth
fully say Thousand admirable things
about him. Quite apart from
his greatness-his reGsonablenese,
his own warm friendships, his
generosity, the fine qualities Of his
mind, the many noble traits to which all
testify, commend him to our admira-
ton, to our regard. And yet there ia to
Caesar, as there is to Napoleon, an arti-
ficiality which one never can forget.
He weare an armor we cannot penetrate
We say much to praise him, but the
epithets lack an inward meaning And
so we close the book, a wonderful tribute
to wonderful man. clear, concise, &C
curate; well worthy students consid-
Grafton and study.
x*x
Playthings and Psrodies, by Barry
Pain, is one OF the Csssell Publishing
company's newest booke. Mr.. Pain has
collected in this book large number of
sketches. contributed by him to the diff
ferent Eng!ish papers; principally
sketches Of life in and about London,
bits of verse, imaginative skits and what
nots, agreeably put together. Notably
among these is The Sincerest Form of
Flattery, which consists of excellent
parodies on Kipiing, Ruskii, Blackmore
w. Pater and Tolstoi, a series of clever
studies of Scenes in London and Home
Pets, incluoing Boys, Girls, Reciters,
Personal Friends, Piano Tuners, Babies,
Curetes, etc. The humor of the book
is, on the whole pleasant and original.
Probably the best satire, and in fact the
best chapter, is the one devoted
to A Dream of Bad Books, entitled
The Hundred Gates, in which
a reader OF light novels falls
asleep and dreams of great field sur
TOulQCQ ny u icICc Ill WulCu lE SltudLtQ
hundred gates on each of which is
seated parsonage; who upon interro-
CATION by the dreamer, informs him
that he or she is a certain stock charac-
ter, out Of books, only waiting to be
used by some ambitions author. The
dreamer recognizes in turn many fsmil-
lar characters, such as A Hero, the Ideal
Man as Imagined by the Idealess Woman !;
the leading character of English comic
verse whose name is Jenkins; the i'm
possible rustic, scratching his head and
talking that mixture of Devonshire,
Cumberland, and the imagination which
is the recognized village dialect; the
lady in the riding habit who glances in
disapprobation at you and tells you
there is a kind of stretcher which
prevents the male garment from
becoming baggy at the fet-locks !;
the family lawyer, who was wrinkling
his brow, rubbing his white hands and
giving his dry and deprecatory cough
alternately. And so the characters
went by each in turn and all admirably
described. The writer's character
sketches are not 80 we'll writ, as the
remainder of the book, although his
sketches of lower-middle- class life are at
times pithy and graphic, still they have
q humor about them that is intolerably
dull and which makes the book at tim es
hard reading.
x*x
More than hundred years have
passed since Mary, the mother of George
Washington, passed from this life, up
held by unfaltering faith in the promises
of the Bible, and by full belief in the
communion of the saints" 1t seems
somewhat strange that she should have
waited SO long for biographsr, and
were she alive and interested in the
literature of the revolutionary period,
might with propriety ask "Where do l
come in ?" Not only because that with
her rested nearly all the responsibility
and care of the education and train
ing of her illustrious son, but
because of her own striking
personality. Nothing seems truer
than that Washington was what his
mother made him. Lafayette said of
her in 1874, 81 have seen the only
Roman matron living at this day p and
the reverence with which Washington
alwaya raoardpd his mnthar had more