The art of sculpture is commanding the interest of a steadily growing class outside the practical workers with the chisel, or the professional critics. Clara Erskine Clement's new book[J] is on the plan of her "Outline History of Painting." For beginners in the sculptor's art, it is an admirable text-book, which must be welcomed by all in that class, while to the amateur, or the mere admirer of the art, it is a very pleasing and instructive book. It presents the salient facts about sculptors and their works from the earliest times, and the reader is given a large amount of help in the illustrations, which represent specimens of the art in every age and of every school.
Mr. Hamerton's Paris[K] is a work which is sure to attract attention, to be read, and to be highly prized. The author's long residence in the great French metropolis has given him rare opportunities for this work, and he has given us the result of painstaking research in every quarter of the city. The author has made special reference to changes in the architecture and topography of Paris, and the book contains a large amount of matter of antiquarian value. The illustrations, of which there are many, are mostly simple outline sketches, or in the etching style, relating to architectural forms, and well serve their purpose.
Lovers of the quaint and curious in art, science, and literature have formed a pleasing acquaintance with Notes and Queries,[L] which has reached its forty-second number. The latest issue (December, 1885), which closes the second volume, contains a full and carefully prepared index to the entire work, which was begun in July, 1882. This magazine abounds in information concerning matters not usually treated of in more formal and pretentious works, and well deserves a cordial support from an inquiring public.
For the best quality of American humor it is pretty well settled that the popular weekly paper Life is not equalled by any of its contemporaries. From the fifty-two numbers of the last twelve months the best of the humorous designs have been selected and bound into a handsome quarto volume.[M] Pen and pencil combine in making its pages laughable, and there are many incisive thrusts at the weak spots in society, but without coarseness or vulgarity.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] King Lear and Cordelia. Roger Groups of Statuary. New York: John Rogers.
[G] The Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains. By Charles Egbert Craddock, Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.