New Publications [pp. 137-144]

NEw PUBLICA TIONs.
than " kind words." Mr. Froude says the most complimentary
things of the colonies. He appears to be afraid that any word of
his may provoke disunion-indeed, his anxiety to show that the
very thought of disruption with the mother-country is " treason"
makes one suspect that there is great disaffection in the colonies.
One of the most flattering things he tries to say is this:
"If English farmers and farm-laborers could but see what I saw that
day (and I am informed that other parts of the colony [Victoria] were as
much richer than this as this was richer than my own Devonshire), there
would be swift transfers over the seas of our heavy-laden'agricultural population.' The landed interest itself-gentry and all-will perhaps one day
migrate en masse to a country where they can live in their own way without
fear of socialism or graduated income-tax, and leave England and English
progress to blacken in its own smoke."
The book is not worth buying; it is as the "crackling of
thorns."
NEW PUBLICATIONS.
OUTLINES OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY. Designed as a text-book and for pri vate reading. By George Park Fisher, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Yale
College. New York and Chicago: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor & Co.,
publishers.
The mechanical arrangement, form, typography, series of maps, etc., so
specially important in a text-book, strike the eye and commend themselves
to the taste at a single glance, showing careful editing and publishing, in
Dr. Fisher's Universal History. The finest of the fine print is rather trying
to the eyes, and we have noticed a couple of typographical errors. These
will be, of course,.observed and corrected. But we suppose the fine print
is made necessary by the convenience of size and shape in a volume fitted
for the use of students.
Every kind of compendium is a difficult work, and a historical compendium has its special difficulties. It is difficult to decide what to include and
what to exclude in respect to real or supposed facts and events, explanations of facts, and theories concerning their relations and significance;
perspective is difficult, and style, or the art of so relating what is to be told
that conciseness and brevity may be united with clearness and distinctness;
and the reading of that which is necessarily so condensed and epitomized
may be made as easy and agreeable as the nature of the subject will permit.
The present compendium is excellent in all these respects. Dr. Fisher is
master in a high degree of the rhetorical art, and his style is specially
adapted to historical writing. Some beautiful passages are intercalated
here and there which are not merely ornamental, but really useful and important portions of the solid structure of the work.
In selecting from the vast mass of materials contained in the extensive
universal histories of the standard authors, and in the great library of his
I886.]
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