⁂ In “Changing Russia,” Mr. Stephen Graham describes a journey from Rostof-on-the-Don to Batum and a summer spent on the Ural Mountains. The author has traversed all the region which is to be developed by the new railway from Novo-rossisk to Poti. It is a tramping diary with notes and reflections. The book deals more with the commercial life of Russia than with that of the peasantry, and there are chapters on the Russia of the hour, the Russian town, life among the gold miners of the Urals, the bourgeois, Russian journalism, the intelligentsia, the election of the fourth Duma. An account is given of Russia at the seaside, and each of the watering places of the Black Sea shore is described in detail.
ROBERT FULTON ENGINEER AND ARTIST: HIS LIFE AND WORK. By H. W. Dickinson, A.M.I.Mech.E. Demy 8vo. 10s 6d. net.
⁂ No Biography dealing as a whole with the life-work of the celebrated Robert Fulton has appeared of late years, in spite of the fact that the introduction of steam navigation on a commercial scale, which was his greatest achievement has recently celebrated its centenary.
The author has been instrumental in bringing to light a mass of documentary matter relative to Fulton, and has thus been able to present the facts about him in an entirely new light. The interesting but little known episode of his career as an artist is for the first time fully dealt with. His stay in France and his experiments under the Directory and the Empire with the submarine and with the steamboat are elucidated with the aid of documents preserved in the Archives Nationales at Paris. His subsequent withdrawal from France and his employment by the British Cabinet to destroy the Boulogne flotilla that Napoleon had prepared in 1804 to invade England are gone into fully. The latter part of his career in the United States, spent in the introduction of steam navigation and in the construction of the first steam-propelled warship, is of the greatest interest. With the lapse of time facts assume naturally their true perspective. Fulton, instead of being represented, according to the English point of view, as a charlatan and even as a traitor, or from the Americans as a universal genius, is cleared from these charges, and his pretensions critically examined, with the result that he appears as a cosmopolitan, an earnest student, a painstaking experimenter and an enterprising engineer.
It is believed that practically nothing of moment in Fulton’s career has been omitted. The illustrations, which are numerous, are drawn in nearly every case from the original sources. It may confidently be expected, therefore, that this book will take its place as the authoritative biography which everyone interested in the subjects enumerated above will require to possess.
A STAINED GLASS TOUR IN ITALY. By Charles H. Sherrill. Author of “Stained Glass Tours in England,” “Stained Glass Tours in France,” etc. With 33 Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 7s. 6d. net.
⁂ Mr. Sherrill has already achieved success with his two previous books on the subject of stained glass. In Italy he finds a new field, which offers considerable scope for his researches. His present work will appeal not only to tourists, but to the craftsmen, because of the writer’s sympathy with the craft. Mr. Sherrill is not only an authority whose writing is clear in style and full of understanding for the requirements of the reader, but one whose accuracy and reliability are unquestionable. This is the most important book published on the subject with which it deals, and readers will find it worthy to occupy the position.
SCENES AND MEMORIES OF THE PAST. By the Honble. Stephen Coleridge. With numerous Illustrations. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
⁂ Mr. Stephen Coleridge has seen much of the world in two hemispheres and has been able to count among his intimate personal friends many of those whose names have made the Victorian age illustrious.
Mr. Coleridge fortunately kept a diary for some years of his life and has religiously preserved the letters of his distinguished friends; and in this book the public are permitted to enjoy the perusal of much vitally interesting correspondence.
With a loving and appreciative hand the author sketches the characters of many great men as they were known to their intimate associates. Cardinals Manning and Newman, G. F. Watts, James Russell Lowell, Matthew Arnold, Sir Henry Irving, Goldwin Smith, Lewis Morris, Sir Stafford Northcote, Whistler, Oscar Wilde, Ruskin, and many others famous in the nineteenth century will be found sympathetically dealt with in this book.
During his visit to America as the guest of the American Bar in 1883, Lord Coleridge, the Chief Justice, and the author’s father wrote a series of letters, which have been carefully preserved, recounting his impressions of the United States and of the leading citizens whom he met.
Mr. Coleridge has incorporated portions of these letters from his father in the volume, and they will prove deeply interesting on both sides of the Atlantic.
Among the illustrations are many masterly portraits never before published.
From the chapter on the author’s library, which is full of priceless literary treasures, the reader can appreciate the appropriate surroundings amid which this book was compiled.
ANTHONY TROLLOPE: HIS WORK, ASSOCIATES AND ORIGINALS. By T. H. S. Escott. Demy 8vo. 12s. 6d. net.
⁂ The author of this book has not solely relied for his materials on a personal intimacy with its subject, during the most active years of Trollope’s life, but from an equal intimacy with Trollope’s contemporaries and from those who had seen his early life. He has derived, and here sets forth, in chronological order, a series of personal incidents and experiences that could not be gained but for the author’s exceptional opportunities. These incidents have never before appeared in print, but that are absolutely essential for a right understanding of the opinions—social, political, and religious—of which Trollope’s writings became the medium, as well as of the chief personages in his stories, from the “Macdermots of Ballycloran” (1847) to the posthumous “Land Leaguers” (1883). All lifelike pictures, whether of place, individual, character of incident, are painted from life. The entirely fresh light now thrown on the intellectual and spiritual forces, chiefly felt by the novelist during his childhood, youth and early manhood, helped to place within his reach the originals of his long portrait gallery, and had their further result in the opinions, as well as the estimates of events and men in which his writings abound, and which, whether they cause agreement or dissent, always reveal life, nature, and stimulate thought. The man, who had for his Harrow schoolfellows Sidney Herbert and Sir William Gregory, was subsequently brought into the closest relations with the first State officials of his time, was himself one of the most active agents in making penny postage a national and imperial success, and when he planted the first pillar-box in the Channel Islands, accomplished on his own initiative a great postal reform. A life so active, varied and full, gave him a greater diversity of friends throughout the British Isles than belonged to any other nineteenth century worker, literary or official. Hence the unique interest of Trollope’s course, and therefore this, its record.
THE HISTORY OF ENGLISH PATRIOTISM. By Esmé C Wingfield Stratford, Fellow King’s College, Cambridge. In 2 vols. Demy 8vo. With a Frontispiece to each volume, (1,300 pages). 25s. net.