Q. What is the difference between the majority and the plurality of votes?
A. When a candidate receives more than any other candidate, he has a plurality of votes. When more than all others, a majority.
Q. Are the Goths, Scandinavians and Norsemen, the same people?
A. They are not. Scandinavians or Norsemen were the names given to the inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland. The Goths lived south of the Scandinavians. Although probably of the same origin, they are a distinct people.
[TALK ABOUT BOOKS.]
The first essential in a popular work of any kind is clearness. A glance at the contents of Prof. Welsh’s new history of English literature[E] shows that the work is so systematically arranged that one can not fail to understand it. The life of the nation which shaped the literature of each period is graphically and simply described. Each political, national, and social law which helped to form the thoughts and customs of the people, is noticed. The leading writers are discussed under the different heads of biography, writing, style, rank, character, and influence. This tabular method has, by no means, degraded the book into simply a school text-book. It has made it suitable for that and more valuable to the general reader. The style is fresh, never tiresome. The illustrations are so woven into the narrative that an idea of the plan of the book is readily seen, and besides the quotations are admirably chosen. The work has been wrought enthusiastically and conscientiously by a man thoroughly interested in what he was doing. Its reception has been his reward.
The Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle,[F] have completed Mr. Froude’s task of reminiscence editing, and given the curious public ample information about the private life and character of Thomas Carlyle. The task has not been a pleasant one for Mr. Froude, but it has been faithfully and modestly performed. These letters are curiously interesting for many reasons. They are vivacious and sparkling, full of lively character sketches, and reveal the private life of one of the most discussed men of the age. Better than all of these, they introduce us to a woman to whom Arthur Helps once candidly said: “Well, really, you are a model wife,” to whom poor Mazzini could go whenever “in a state of crisis” (as he put it); whom Mills, Jeffrey, Tennyson, and many others, honored for her wit and womanliness. She was a clever woman, and a brave one. None but a clever woman could have written these charming letters, none but a brave one could have endured a husband like Carlyle. She was too loyal to cease loving him, too strong to complain, though many a letter shows her sense of his weakness. Jane Welsh Carlyle will find a permanent place among the famous women of the century for wifely devotion, as well as for being a brilliant letter-writer.