Our Great Benefactors. Short Biographies of the Men and Women most Eminent in Literature, Science, Philosophy, Philanthropy, Art, etc. Edited by Samuel Adams Drake, Author of “New England Legends and Folk-Lore,” etc. With Nearly One Hundred Portraits Emblematically Embellished. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
This volume of something over five hundred pages, is very briefly, but yet truthfully, summed up in its title. The biographies are short and well written, and the author knows how to be graphic and picturesque without being in the least diffuse. He has selected the great leading personages in the arts of peace, who have exemplified human progress among the English speaking races, and given short sketches of them in chronological order. Boys will be specially interested in such a volume, and find in it both amusement and benefit. History has been defined as “philosophy teaching by example.” If this is the case with history, it is still more true of biography, for the concrete flesh and blood facts are brought much nearer home to the imagination than can be possible in history. The sketches vary from five to fifteen pages long, and are completely given, omitting no essential fact in the career, or essential trait in the character of those treated. The book is beautifully embellished with portraits.
Life of Mary Woolstonecraft. By Elizabeth Robins Pennell. Boston: Roberts Brothers.
This last volume in the “Famous Women” Series is one of much interest. The wife of William Godwin (the author of “Political Justice,” “Caleb Williams,” “St. Leon,” and other books distinguished in their day) and the mother of the wife of the poet Shelley, her life was one of singular intellectual significance and full of pathetic personal romance. Mary Woolstonecraft was born and bred under conditions which fostered great mental and moral independence. She chafed under the restraints of her sex, and was one of the first to embody in her life and theories that protest against the position of comparative inequality in her sex, which has of recent years been the battle-cry of a very considerable body of both men and women. It is only just to say, however, that very few of her successors have carried the doctrine of personal rights so far as she did; for it is a fact beyond dispute that she lived openly as the mistress of two men successively, Gilbert Imlay an American, and William Godwin. The latter she married only to legalize the birth of the child which she expected soon to bring into the world, and whose birth was at the price of the mother’s life. While her social errors are to be deplored, even those most downright in condemning such departures from the established order of things, when they look into all the circumstances of her life are disposed to palliate them. Certainly it must be admitted that, in spite of her deviation from that path which society so rigidly and properly exacts from woman, Mary Woolstonecraft was a person of singularly noble and pure instincts. We cannot go into the full explanation of this paradox, and only hope that many will read the full account of her life, if for no other reason, to find an illustration of the fact that a sinner may sometimes be as noble and upright as the saint, and that doctrinarianism in morals as well as in politics, finds many an exception to the truth of its logic. Mary Woolstonecraft worked enthusiastically for the elevation of her sex, nor did she ever seek to enforce as a rule to be followed, that freedom of action which she conceived to be justified by her own case. The earlier part of her life was singularly stormy and tragic, and when her lover, Imlay, whom she looked on as her husband, deserted her, she attempted to commit suicide. When, at last, she met Godwin, her spirit had recovered from the shock she had received, she was recognized as an intellectual force in England, and her society was sought for and valued by many of the worthiest and most distinguished people in England. Her connection with Godwin, which was finally consecrated by marriage, was one of great personal and intellectual happiness. Her labors for the rights of woman, her fine appeals for national education, and her many tractates on not a few social, political, and moral questions, are marked by acuteness, breadth, and eloquence of statement. The author, Mrs. Pennell, has performed her labor with a nice and discriminating touch. While she does not pass lightly over the errors of her heroine, she recognizes what was peculiar in her position, and how a woman of her views could deliberately act in such a manner without essentially falling from her high pedestal as a pure woman. The author has given the world an interesting book not unworthy of the series, and one that happily illustrates the fact that two and two may make five and not four, though it would not do for the world to figure out its arithmetic on this principle.
Principles of Political Economy. By John Stuart Mill. Arranged with Critical, Bibliographical and Explanatory Notes, and A Sketch of the History of Political Economy, by J. Laurence McLaughlin, Ph.D., Ass’t. Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University. A Text-Book for Colleges. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
The views of John Stuart Mill, one of the clearest and strongest thinkers on this and kindred subjects, of our century, on political economy, have been so often discussed in all manner of forms, from elaborate disquisitions to newspaper articles, that it is not needed now to enter into any explanation of the differences which distinguished him from the rest of his brother philosophers. The object of the present edition is to add to the body of Mill’s opinion the results of later thinking, which do not militate against his views; with such illustrations as fit the Mill system better for American students, by turning their attention to the facts peculiar to this country. Mill’s two volumes have been abridged into one, and while their lucidity is not impaired, the system is put into a much more compact and readable form, care being taken to avoid technicality and abstractness. Prof. McLaughlin’s own notes and additions (inserted into the body of the text in smaller type) are printed in smaller type so as to be readily distinguished. This compact arrangement of Mill’s economical philosophy will attract many readers, who were frightened by the large and complete edition.