It is a very convenient thing for a reader of history to have at hand a chart which gives in brief the synchronological events of nations. So many charts of this kind, however, are cumbersome, that the trouble of using is almost as time-taking as that of consulting books. A chart without this drawback is the “Concentric Chart of History”[P] which Dr. Ludlow has recently published. It can be held in the hand when in use, and folds up into small compass. It contains all the facts which readers ought to go to a chart for, and some interesting items on the useful arts, on sculptors, artists, and literary characters. Altogether it makes a very convenient reference table for a reader of history.
The “Common School Compendium”[Q] is a little volume, intended, the author says, “to serve several purposes—to provide graduates of high schools and colleges a quick means of reviewing the work of early school days; to give to teachers a reliable hand-book of knowledge they are expected always to have at command, and above all to provide that large class of young people who are striving in the privacy of home to master the difficulties of a systematic course of study, a work that should do away with the necessity for large numbers of text-books.” It outlines, and gives brief lessons in, geography, arithmetic, grammar, natural history and history. It will be found by all to be a valuable reference book.
Gordon in the Soudan.—“I have certainly got into a slough with the Soudan; but looking at my banker, my commander-in-chief, and my administrator, it will be wonderful if I do not get out of it. If I had not got this Almighty Power to back me in His in finite wisdom, I do not know how I could ever think of what is to be done. With terrific exertions I may in two or three years’ time, with God’s administration, make a good province, with a good army and a fair revenue and peace and an increased trade, and also have suppressed slave raids, and then I will come home and go to bed and never get up again till noon every day, and never walk more than a mile.”[R]
BOOKS RECEIVED.
Evolution and Christianity, or an Answer to the Development of Infidelity of Modern Times. By Benjamin F. Tefft, D.D., LL.D. Boston: Lee and Shepard. New York: Charles T. Dillingham. 1885.
How to Do It. By Edward Everett Hale. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1884.
Weird Tales. By E. T. W. Hoffmann. A new translation from the German. By J. P. Bealby, B.A. In two volumes. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. 1885.
Words and Ways; or, What They Said, and What Came of It. By Sarah J. Jones. New York: Phillips & Hunt. Cincinnati: Cranston & Stowe. 1885. Price, $1.00.
Edward Arnold as Poetizer and Paganizer, Containing an Examination of the Light of Asia for its Literature and for its Buddhism. By William Cleaver Wilkinson. Funk & Wagnalls. New York: 1884.