For six years the Annual Record of Science and Industry, edited by Mr. Spencer Bap of the Smithsonian Institution, and published by Harpers, was most valuable com-peridium of everything worth knowing that had appeared in the scientific journals of America, England and the Continent. It was more than valuable, It was invaluable anyone who, without losing keen interest in the progress of science along its various lin Square Library," which already includes, in addition, Is he Popenjoy by Trollope, and The Russians of To-day. This new venture is an attempt to supply even the classes too poor to buy volumes out of the other series, with sound reading at a price almost. incredibly low. It is evident that unless the demand be enormous, pecuniary success cannot be attained. It is equally evident that the popularisation of literature can go no farther.
America has up to the present been almost solely dependent upon Europe, and particularly upon Enzland, for its supply of fiction, Now, however, Harpers are founding a series to which the works of Ameri-and devious paths, a vented from following its advance as was by any cause pre- (yo volumes have appeared—Kether Pennecans will alone be admitted. Already chronicled day by day. The volume for 1877 lies before us, but although it is heartily to be welcomed, it falls below its predecessors in interest, in consequence of curtailment of the original plan which we suppose was inevitable. We miss a section devoted to pure mathematics, we miss especially the abstracts hitherto given of the more important articles contained in the transactions of learned societies, and in the scientific journals. These are all now condensed into general summaries under carefully selected headings, and anybody fortunate enough to be within reach of a great public library can use this book as an index seemingly exhaustive. But the beauty of the previous issues was that they rendered the student, banished even to the ends of the earth, almost independent ofsuchalibrary. Weare thankful, however, for what we actually get, and we freely confess the impossibility of keeping pace in a moderately-sized annual volume with the accelerating velocity of scientific-memoir-production. We miss hardly anything that we expected to find, and on the other hand, we find much that we now hear of for the first time. One omission we must notice. Nothing is said of the liquefaction of oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, which was accomplished at, the close of last year by MIN. Pictet and Cailletet.
Mr. Rolfe has added As you like it to his beautifully printed and carefully annotated school edition of Shakespeare. It is fully equal to its predecessors. We have never ween necessary expurgation more judiciously performed. Not a line is sacrificed but such as we should all desire to seo cut out competent to understand the story may of the text, while boys and girls who are
safely be entrusted with Mr. Rolfe's attractive volume. Every difficulty of language and construction is smoothed away, we should say with almost too much care, were isnot that each explanation is seconded by illustrative passages from early authors with whom acquaintance is thus made.
Specimens of five of the series of volumes started by Harpers' enterprising house have lately reached us. To the "Half Hour Series" have been added The Coming Man, by Charles Reade, Reaping the Whirlwind, by Mary Cecil Hay, both of which we noticed favourably when they appeared under another form, and Rowzey's Settlement of the Constitution (1689—1784), the sixth of the group of "'Epochs of English History" edited by Creighton, to which a large meed of praise has both at home and here been accorded. The second volume of A Modern Minister, and Lockhart's Mine is Thine are among the latest volumes of "The Library of Select Novels." The author of Mine is Thine is already enrolled among successful novelists, and much of the commendation which Fair to See received from the London Press on the ground of its artistic power, its dash and the originality of its situations, is claimable by its successor.
Victor Hugo's History of a Crime is published by itself in a couple of handy volumes almost uniform with the "Library" series, and also as a three column quarto unbound pamphlet, printed with new type on excellent paper, and sold for ten cents.
forms the second number of the " Frank-father by Alice Perry, and Justine's Lovers, by an anonymous author. This is a step in the right direction. If American genius is encouraged by the enlightened assistance of publishers to struggle against the competition with European books obtained at a vile price and reproduced in popular form, the reproach of sterility which has long, with seeming justice, been levelled at American authors "will suen be inapprowrite. While publishers have thought it to their advantage to steal the products of European fancy rather than to pay native writers, they have all the time been strangling the fancy of their own country and annihilating its possibilities. Harpers seem disposed to shew a more excellent way. We could wish, however, that their choice had fallen upon persons of more robust intelligence to break ground in this new venture. Miss Perry's tale is fecbleness itself, or at least is strong only in epithets, which are scattered over every page with exasperating profusion and inappropriateness. It is made up of three or four independent stories, which seem to have been cut into fragments of suitable length for chapters, and then repieced together in such a way that the reader shall be continually floundering from the dulness of one story into the profounder dulness of the next. It hus a purpose, we believe, though we are not clear as to what that purpose is, unless it be to teach that self-sacrifice is 0 good a thing in itself, that a person is admirable who from the most ridiculous possible motives throws away reputation, social position and life itself. This is merely idiotic. Miss Perry is, we imagine, a very young lady. At least her book has every fault that may be ascribed to youth. It is very religious in a sort of way, too, and mesmerism plays a considerable part in it. Altogether it is a lamentable specimen of young-ladylike silliness. There is some little sparkle here and there about Justine's Lovers. Tt is_at least readable. But so far the "Library of American Fiction " has brought forth nothing to justify its existence.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.