adversaries, and cannot impartially examine whether I have committed any fault. I believe, and this enables me to endure so calmly all the misfortunes crowding upon me, that above both you and me there is a Supreme Judge who will decide between us. History will ultimately say who was in the right, so I will not take the trouble to justify myself before you. I will not deign to enter into the details of the purpose of my actions. My judges are incapable of understanding my conduct. I will only explain that, if I did not at first admit that I was an agent of the Execu

tive Committee, it was only to avoid the bother of numerous questions, and to be better able to speak in my own name."

He concluded by saying it was a matter of indifference to him whether they thought he concurred in the killing of Colonel Soudaikin. He morally sympathized with what had been done, and regretted that personally he had not done a great deal more. He did not ask for mercy, but hoped that he would die as bravely as he bad lived.

Jakonbovitch requested that if found guilty his name should not be associated with Terrorists' actions in manufacturing or agricultural districts. The new party did not employ terror for terror's sake, but as a temporary expedient, to obtain some concessions. Terrorism, in fact, could only be sanctioned in response to abominable cruelties. Kanachevitch also did not ask for mercy, as death was preferable to long imprisonment. He was not capable of living for years in solitary confinement, and preferred death. Only three prisoners pleaded for mercy. These were Kirsanoff, the consumptive prisoner, who wished to die at home, Popoff and Gneier.

At last, at three in the morning on the 4th of June 1887, the verdict was read. The prisoners, to judge by their general aspect, seemed quiet and fearless, as if their lives were not concerned. A deathlike silence prevailed, and the prisoners were ordered to rise.

Frenkel and Lebedenko were acquitted, Kirsanoff sentenced to four months' imprisonment, Belloussoff and Eschin to four years' hard labor, and all the others were condemned to death. But some were recommended to mercy. Subsequently Souhomlin was sentenced to fifteen years' hard labor, Cousin to twelve years, and Mdlle. Dobrouskina to eight years. Eschin, Popoff, and Livadine were transported to a part of Siberia, not so far away as at first intended, while Belloussoff had his sentence reduced from hard labor to transportation. On the 7th of June a definite verdict was read to the prisoners, which did not however modify all the original sentences, and those who were condemned to death bid a final farewell to each other on quitting the Court. They were then conveyed to the fortress prison of Peter and Paul, where for a fortnight they daily expected to be hung. Mdlle. Salova was not put to death, but is now undergoing sentence of twenty years' penal servitude. Jakonbovitch escaped with seventeen years' penal servitude. Lopatine, Starodvorsky, Konachevitch, Ivanoff and Antonoff had their death sentence commuted to perpetual confinement in the prison of Schlissenbourg.

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Thas ended this great trial, which had taken three years to prepare, and which, in respect to Colonel Soudaikin, revealed so dishonorable a state of affairs that the Government shrank from the scandal the publication of the proceedings would create. The principal culprits, if we limit the guilt to the Nihilist side, are now in the new model prison of Schlissenbourg, from whence escape is well nigh impossible.

The

But the struggle is not yet over. feeling that the Nihilists are not alone to blame is so strong that the time may come when we shall again hear of Lopatine and his friends.-- Contemporary Review.

A GOOD HISTORICAL NOVEL. THE CANADIANS OF OLD. An Historical Romance. (Appleton's Town and Country Library.) By Philippe Aubert de Gaspé. Translated by Charles G. D. Roberts. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

In a day when all subjects are criticised as old, it is pleasant now and then to stumble on a field which is fresh and unworn in literature. Such is the novel before us, which Ideals with that old Canada of the time of Wolfe and Montcalm, a people and period so curiously interesting. Simply as history, there are few themes more fascinating. It did not need the genius of Parkman to evoke from old Canadian life such tints of romance that we find its records suffused with some

thing of the same charm that lies in a great epic. The history of France in the new world, in her attempts at colonization, is a story of which people will never tire. Mr. Aubert de Gaspé, whose romance lies before us, is the work of a distinguished French Canadian, born in 1786, who died less than twenty years ago. His father was contemporary with the closing days of French dominion, so that the writer could almost touch the events which enter into his book. Mr. de Gaspé belonged to the flower of the Canadian aristocracy, and there is a touch of benignant high breeding in the atmosphere of what he has written which is more than ordinarily at

tractive aside from the literary merit of the book. It is to be understood that much of the incident and portraiture in "Les Anciens Canadiens" veils but thinly veritable facts and people, and this historical genuineness, while in no sense essential to literary charm, will, for many people, add a more enduring worth to the romance. A few years before his death, the author published "Mémoires," which was really a conclusion of the romance. The translator, in his preface, tells us that as 'The Canadians of Old" sketches vividly life at the seigneuries and manor-houses, and among the habitants of a century and a half ago, so the later book, which perhaps we shall have by and by, reproduces the society of the viceregal court at Quebec under early English' domination, when the French Canadian noblesse made a picturesque element of life distinctly different from the English social stream which ran side by side with it.

The romance before us interweaves within the framework of a pleasing romance a vivid sketch of old French Canadian life in its higher and lower social grades. Archibald Cameron, of Lochiel, the scion of a Scotch Jacobite family, is sent to Canada as a youth, where he is educated in a Jesuit college at Quebec. Here he forms intimacies, and his youthful affiliations, the strongest that the man of warm and genial nature ever knows, grow into the tenderest ties with the families of his college friends. The descriptions of the manners and customs of the Canadian noblesse, imported from old France, are exceedingly interesting, and we do not wonder that the young Scotchman become enamoured of the sister of one of his classmates. As time goes on, Archibald Cameron is called back home by the news that his family have been released from the taint of rebellion by a general amnesty. He returns to Scotland, and, in obedience to his taste for the profession of arms, he enters the British service. When the war breaks out which was to end in the destruction of French dominion in North America, young Cameron returns to the land of his youthful pleasures and friendships as an officer in General Wolfe's expeditionary force. Here at once may be anticipated by the reader the possibilities of exciting dramatic complications growing out of the conflict between military and patriotic duty and the tenderest predilections of the young soldier's heart. These are treated with great ingenuity by the French author, and the outcome, though somewhat sad, in that it parts lovers worthy of each other, has a compensating charm far from sorrowful. But the thoughtful reader will care fur less for the mere story than for the vivid presentment of a social order, which is in many ways unique. Mr. de Gaspé writes with a certain frank ingenuousness which would make his literary methods enjoyable if he had far less sense of style. The romance is fresh and entertaining, and the note of novelty in it is such as to provoke jaded appetites.

MEMORIES OF A GREAT SPORTSMAN. WILD BEASTS AND THEIR WAYS. Reminiscences of Europe, Asia, Africa, and America. By Sir Samuel W. Baker, F.R.S., F.R.G.S., etc. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. The passion for hunting big game is a na tional characteristic of our British cousins

and has carried them to every portion of the wide, wild world in their war against those savage and dangerous brutes to pursue which means something less than personal safety Among the celebrated Nimrods whose reputation is cosmopolitan, the name of Sir Samuel Baker stands primus inter pares. His passion for big game shooting began while he was yet a youth, and his early books describe adventures which befell him while yet scarcely out of his teens. His enthusiasm has carried him everywhere, and his experiences cover the shooting of all the larger animals from the royal tiger of India and the lion and elephant of Africa to grizzly bear and wapiti hunting in our own Rockies. Probably no living man can show so large a record in the slaughter of the monarchs of the wilderness and jungle. Sir Samuel Baker, unlike many ardent sportsmen with whom hunting adventure is indisoriminate and reckless slaughter, has brought to his enthusiasm as a sportsman something more than the killing instinct and pride in his pluck and accuracy as a marksman. The tastes of the scientist and student of natural history are as strong in him as the passion of sport, and his investigations of the habits and characteristics of the large wild animals have produced results fully as interesting as the dramatic and perilous incidents with which his narrative is so profusely interwoven. In reading the present work, one can scarcely decide whether the tastes of the naturalist or of the hunter are uppermost. Sir Samuel, it will be remembered, was the first Governor-General of the Soudan, after northeastern equatorial Africa was annexed by the Khedive Ismäil. He was also the discoverer of the Albert Nyanza, and one of the first among modern explorers to lead the way in that magnificent succession of geographical discoveries which has finally found a climax in the work of Stanley, and annexed Africa to Europe. Baker Pasha, too, was one of the first to deal hard and heavy blows at the horrible slave-trade carried on by the Arabs. Mounteney-Jephson, Stanley's companion, tells us that Baker's name is to-day more revered among the negroes and Arabs of the Soudan than any other, on account of the beneficence, justice, and moderation with which he exercised rule as representative of the Khedive. While living in the Soudan, a period of about five years, he pursued his avocation as a sportsman with no less zeal than he exercised the functions of Government, and much of the matter in the book before us belongs to this period of ad

venture. The author emphasizes his own tastes in the following remarks of his preface : "It should be distinctly understood that a vast gulf separates the true sportsman from the merciless gunner. The former studies nature with keen enjoyment, and shoots his game with judgment and forbearance upon the principle of fair play, sparing the lives of all females, should the animals be harmless; he never seeks the vainglory of a heavy game list. The gunner is the curse of the nineteenth century; his one idea is to use his gun, his love is slaughter indiscriminate and boundless, to swell the long account which is his boast and pride. Such a man may be expert as a gunner, but he is not a sportsman, and should be universally condemned."

Our author devotes three chapters to the elephant, three to the tiger, one to the lion, two to the bear, one to the hippopotamus, one to the crocodile, one to the buffalo (the true buffalo of the old world), one to the bison, or so-called buffalo of America, one to the rhinoceros, one to the wild boar, one to the hyena, one to the giraffe, two to the antelope, and seven to creatures of the deer tribes, or corvidæ, including the common deer and wapiti, or elk of North America, and the sambur and other species characteristic of Asia and Africa. The noblest of them all, however, the moose, is omitted, as the writer confines himself strictly to those kinds of game where he has had personal experience. All these chapters are of great interest, full of the most detailed observation as to the habits of animals and of animated description; but those in which the general reader will find most pleasure are the chapters devoted to the elephant, tiger, and lion. As a result of his wide experience, we are told by the author, that the creatures which uniformly show the most fearless and savage courage, animals which never decline an encounter at any odds, are the Eastern or true buffalo, and the wild boar. Spasms of cowardice never attack these desperate brutes, and the hunter need never fear that he will not get his fill of danger and excitement. The buffalo, indeed, whenever he sees a possible antagonist, does not wait for attack, but at once begins the duel by a headlong charge. This fearless beast often gets the best of the tiger and impales the mighty cat on his long, sharp horns. Baker Pasha gives us a vast deal of most interesting knowledge about the creatures of which he writes, and their relations to man and to each other, as also the va rious ways of hunting them among the savages

and Arabs of Africa. Some of the Arab tribes and the Abyssinians attack the elephant and lion with nothing but a long, sharp sword, trusting to personal activity and the chance of ham-stringing the prey by a lucky cut. We are told, among other things, that the notion of man's control over savage creatures by the power of his eye is a fallacy. It is far safer for one who comes unawares and unarmed on the lion, for example, to pretend not to see him and to avoid the brute's eye altogether. "Wild Beasts and Their Ways" is a fascinating volume either for young or old, and of its kind no better book has been written in recent years, though the press teems with work of this kind. Its scientific value gives substance to stories of adventure which are admirably told. Sportsmen, too, will be in. terested in the first chapter, which discusses the rifles and ammunition best suited for different game, and the evolution of the rifle from its cruder form up to the highly perfected weapon of to-day.

LIFE IN OLD GEORGIA.

WIDOW GUTHRIE. A Novel. By Richard Mal. colm Johnson. Illustrated by E. W. Kemble. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

Mr. Johnson, though not as widely known as he ought to be among novel readers, is known to his own craft and to critics as a man of original and unique genius. We have nowhere' more graphic and realistic sketches of Southern life and people than those which stand out in his short stories and novels. In no way is his artistic sense more manifest than in the skill with which he manages dialect. He uses this sparingly and always without exaggeration. There is enough of it for characteristic and local color, and it never wearies the attention in the vain attempt to unravel gross etymological perversions. Many a clever writer would do well to profit by his example of restraint and good taste.

The story of "Widow Guthrie," though not without fulness of comedy effect, does not turn so much on this feature of life as much of the other work by which he has become well known to the reading world. It involves tragedy as well as comedy, tragedy of a spiritual kind as well as that of a grosser order. The figure of Widow Guthrie, a hard, cold, fierce hearted woman, scrupling at nothing for her ends, yet retaining something of the womanly in her passionate, unreasoning love for her son Malcolm, is very powerful; and it is elaborated with the skill of an artist.

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similar keen sense of individuality in character drawing may be noted even in many of the minor personages of the book. Mr. Malcolm knows human nature well, and he knows Georgia well, and his pictures of people and of manners in his native State are quite masterly. A very clever piece of delineation may be noted in Peter Braddy, small, prim, pomp. ous, homicidal in his possibilities, full of the old traditional Southern chivalry, thoroughly good in instinct and feeling, and never with. out a loaded derringer in his coat tail to enforce his notions of right and wrong, devoted to his friends and dangerous to his foes. It is a type peculiar to the old South, and Mr. Johnson, in spite of something grotesque in this product of his skill, makes him thoroughly lovable and worthy of respect. Several love stories cross each other in the narrative, and the tangle is very pleasantly unravelled at the close, after a duel and the shooting of the aristocratic villain of the story at the hands of Peter Braddy, who seems to be a sort of deus ex machina. Those interested in fast disappearing types of American social life will find some of them pleasantly embalmed in Mr. Johnson's very readable novel.

A GREAT PAINTER.

THE LIFE OF AN ARTIST. An Autobiography. By Jules Breton. Translated by Mary J. Serrano. New York: D. Appleton & Co. It need hardly be said to any reader of this magazine that among the distinguished artists of the modern French school the name of Jules Breton ranks among the very highest. Probably the consensus of opinion would place him in conjunction with Corot and Millet as the three most original and gifted painters giv. en to the world by modern France. Like other greatest men, Breton has gone home to nature, in her homely and simple aspects, to find the material of his art, and his success fully justifies the theory of that kind of realism which does not, at the same time, disdain the ideal. Jules Breton, though, of course, best known as painter, is honored in France also for his literary talent. Several volumes of poems attest that his sense of creative art is not confined to brush and palette. The autobiography before us, the translation of which we are informed is approved by the author, is charmingly done, and will be accepted as good cause for the admiration which Breton's pen has won for him among his countrymen.

The conditions under which the genius of a great artist has been developed from the be

ginning up to the full consummation of his fame and greatness, if fairly presented, cannot be less than interesting. It is the history of a great life in its essential features, and tends to show us what a man is as well as what he does. When such a history takes the form of an autobiography, the revelation, if frankly made, is vastly more complete, and the flavor of individuality and truth give it a finer quality. This might be so in the case of the untrained writer. But in Jules Breton's case the naïvelé of confession is marked by a high degree of skill and taste which come of the habit of composition. M. Breton begins with his earliest recollections, and describes the first awakening of his art passion, and the influences of nature and social life which blew it into a flame that was to be undying. The sketch of his student life, of his early struggles and final success, is of the greatest interest. The freshness and simplicity of the story seems an honest voucher of its truth, though, of course, it is impossible to prevent something of the arrière pensée from entering into what are, in the main, genuine revelations of the Fast.

Readers will be very much interested in Breton's relations with his fellow-artists and his opinions of them. He had all of an artist's camaraderie, and there seems to have been absent from this frank and genial spirit, conscious, too, of its own greatness, unrivalled in a way, any spirit of envy or jealousy. The frankest sympathy and appreciation of the other gifted painters, and, indeed, of some who were unsuccessful, shine through his lines, and both purse and the finer kind of spiritual help appear to have been always at the command of his less fortunate brethren of the brush.

The author-painter indulges in many delightful passages of poetical description of the influence of nature on the development of his powers, and he tells his pretty little love story with charming grace and modesty. Take it all in all this autobiography is one to be read with the keenest pleasure. It is a cordial full of tonic quality, and one leaves it with the sense of having become acquainted with a rich, sweet and wholesome personality, whose genius is mated with other qualities no less marked.

HISTORIC COUNTRY SEATS.

GLIMPSES OF OLD ENGLISH HOMES. By Elizabeth Balch. With fifty-one illustrations. London and New York: Macmillan & Co. The most delightful country houses in the

world are those of England, and they have become noted in history, song, and art, especially such as are associated with the traditions of the English past. The delightful book before us, a gem as a holiday publication, both in its illustrations and letter-press, is worthy of its theme. England has innumerable beautiful, stately castles and manor-houses, but those selected for treatment in the volume before us are well worthy of being selected from the rest, Penshurst, Arundel Castle, Hinchingbrooke, Eridge Castle, Chiswick House, Berkeley Castle, Highclerc Castle and Osterley Park. All of these magnificent places belong to English history in some important sense, and the greatest names in the stately procession of events of the past are associated with them. The beauty of park and architecture makes a lovely framework for heroic or romantic story. The letterpress describes in a very interesting way the associations of each place, and the pictures are admirably done. The book is one to appeal to all interested in history as an attractive holiday book.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

THE German novelist Frau Helene von Hülsen will shortly publish a diary of an ancestor of hers who served under Frederick the Great. It will be entitled, "Unter Friedrich dem Gros sen Aus den Memoiren des Aeltervaters, 1752-1773."

IN Bombay, in 1889, 1440 books and 560 periodicals were registered, compared with 1398 books and 526 periodicals in the previous year. Of the books, 583 were original works and 203 translations, the remaining 654 being new editions or republications; 93 of the total number were English, 365 Marathi, and 445 Gujarati. It is stated in the official report that the tone of the vernacular literature appears to be, on the whole, inproving year by year.

THE Concluding part of the publication of the Tell Amarna tablets in the Berlin Museum is ready for issue. When will the British Museum make accessible its share of these tablets?

THE Duke of Cumberland has displayed great munificence in the production at Vienna of a splendid work illustrative of the ancestral treasures of the house of Guelph. The learned and laborious text by Professor W. A. Neumann fills a handsome folio volume, and is ac