The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1898-07-02
CONCERNING BOOKS.

An attractive book, recently published
by Messrs. Houghton Il Miff1in, is
French Literature CT today" "a Study
Of the Principal Romances and Essay
ists," by Yetta Blaze de BUY. The
authors whose works are reviewed in
these pages are Lott, de Maupassant,
lola, De Goncourt, Charcot, Bourget, De
Vogue, Bournetiere, Jules Lemaitre,
Anatole France, Madame Benton, and
Paul velaire. Surely one could have no
greater variety, or more interesting types
of modern Frenoh literature than these
presented by Mademoiselle De Bury who
enters keenly into the spirit of her work
and gives US, with viyifying force, a
series OF brilliant sketches. She makes
ne special attempt at very deep analysis
or abstruse criticism, but her style is
descriptive, on-hand, sympathetic and
clever. She presents these writer's and
their works to US in a living way, and
with few skillful touches gives the men
themselves, morally and spiritually
theories and all.
Mademoiselle de Bury's name is new
one to the American public. "She be.
longs" says the New York Commercial
Advertiser, ''to family that for several
generations has been well known in the
world Of Partisan literature and art Her
father, Henri Blaze de Bury, was a
minor critic of some note; her mother
was fairly well known writer on musical
topics in the Revue DIES Deux Mondes.
the French hbretto to Rossini's Barber
dc Seville.
She evidently has most thorough and
appreoiative knowledge of the leading
French fotionists of the day; but the
most interesting study in her really
delightful volume is that Of Charcot, the
great scientist.
It seems that Charcot was an artist
before he was a physician. His father
was carriage builder of small means,
whose designs were SO wonderful that
even today great men of his caft study
his work. From him the son inherited
taste for artistic surroundings and copied
from the original, of the fifteenth century,
the splendid mantlepiece at Neuilly, dis
covered near Limoges.
Charcot was philosopher as well as a
physician, hence his wonderful skill in
the treatment of nervous diseases. He
healed the mind as we'll as the body.
To deal with such diseases, writes Made.
moiselle de Bury, the practitioner must
at the same time he a thinker and an
observer of humanity Of no mean capac-
ity. Charoot possessed both the skill of
the one, and the instinct of the other,
to remarkable degree. Indeed one may
say of some of his lectures that they
are important contributions to human
history rather than mere technical dis
sertations; for example his study entitled
"Parallele entire Ia Medicine moderne ct
le Medicine de l'Antiquite. -
1t was Charcot who discovered and es-
t.blished once for all the fundamental
distinction between hysteria and epilepsy
and 1t Is he who has worked out the
history of hum n suffering, distinctly
proving that many of the so-called
physical ills Of women are purely moral
Another Of the papers which is evident
" written con amore by the author, is
her study of Vogue, one of the most
agreeable and attractive in the collection.
His works have never been translated and
thus are not SO familiar as those of
many other French writers.
A delightful volume, and a very know
ing one is this, readable, entertaining
and worth while.
Another Houghton s. Miff1in publica-
ton is Washington VS.. jefferson, The
Case Tried by Battle in 1876: by Moses
Granger. The motto of the book is in the
words of Washington" -.
1.-The Constitution according to their
Interpretation of it would be cipher.
"Meas ures are Systematically and per-
tinsciously pursued, which must eventu-
ally dissolve the Union.'' The headings
of the chapters are as follows: ga Con-
stitutional Nation;'' Congress and the
Territory" "How Civil War Might have
been Prevented" ''Why Eleven States
Seeded; !" secession and the Army and
WAR and Reconstruction. Judge Granger
treated his subject with lucidity, strength,
and solid common sense and from
this distance 1t is advisable to look back
with him to the days of our earlier war,
in order to GET our bearings, and the tr le
values Of things which it is not possible
to dc In the midst of strife and the stress
OF partisan warfare.
The volume is a distinctly valuable ad-
d1tion to the historical literature of the
United States. Among the facts treated