From Lodge's "The Story of the Revolution." Copyright, 1898, by Charles Scribner's Sons. THE MEETING OF GREENE AND GATES AT CHARLOTTE, N. C., UPON THE FORMER'S ASSUMING COMMAND. General Davidson in uniform, Kosciusko, and General Morgan in buckskins, are behind General Gates in the picture. Our conven- comings, he never could be accused of posing as a hypocrite. Mr. Fisher has added little to that already known concerning Franklin by those who go to original documents for information, but has perhaps had the courage to publish more freely the contents of these documents than many previous biographers. When all is told, Franklin remains a man of many virtues, of many beautiful and sterling quali THIS is an inconoclastic age. tional heroes and ideals of a century are gradually being destroyed one by one. Paul Leicester Ford, a few years ago, gave us a vigorous portrait of "The True George Washington," which proved this great man a real human being with all of nature's flaws and weaknesses, as well as of extraordinary strength and character, and not the lay figure his biographers had made of him. Mr. Ford's volume in no way detracted from Washington's true greatness, but left him a more lovable and attractive hero than the impossible myth time had made of him. A companion volume to Mr. Ford's work is offered in "The True Benjamin Franklin," prepared on similar lines by Sydney George Fisher, and published, as the Washington monograph is also, by the J. B. Lippincott Company. Mr. Fisher has long been a student of colonial and Revolutionary times, as is attested in his "Men, Women, and Manners in Colonial Times," "The Making of Pennsylvania," and other works. He has a frank, convincing style, and is not troubled with any false modesty in presenting undisputed facts, however they may mar the conventional figure of unnatural goodness that time and American Puritanism has constructed under the name of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin himself was ready enough to admit his human weaknesses, and if he did not admit all his short Franklin's career is given with enough detail to enable the reader to appreciate it, but "The True Benjamin Franklin " is not a conventional biography. It is a new portrait from a new point of view, and in the light of the present century's broadness and enlightenment. should find many readers. It is a book easily read in a few hours' sitting, leaving only pleas-ant impressions behind it. It ties; one of our greatest of self-made men in plain Anglo-Saxon. Every essential fact in and most distinguished Americans, dividing with Washington the interest of the Revolutionary period, and it is inspiring to dwell upon his career, from its beginning as a poor printer to its finish as a signer of the Declaration of Independence and a maker of our Constitution. Every American, man, woman, and child, should know the details of Franklin's career. He lived to the great age of eightyfour. From 1745 to 1788, during forty-odd years, he was an active politician, philosopher, man of science, author, philanthropist, reformer, and diplomat. His autobiography, covering. however, only a portion of his life, is one of the most charming volumes ever written, and seldom has a rest on the library shelves. He has had many distinguished biographers, too, whose only faults have been the glossing over of unflattering developments in his character, the result being "the impossible abstraction of idealized virtues" that Mr. Fisher very justly desires to destroy. Absolute perfection exists only in the idealist's mind. The processes through which Washington and Franklin have gone, and through which Lincoln is now going, to make them wholesome examples for good Americans have just had the reverse effects intended. To the natural human being, with all his imperfections on his head, they are most depressing effigies as they have been presented in the past. They have occupied such a height that it seemed From "The True Benjamin Franklin." Copyright, 1898, by J. B. Lippincott Co. [From an old French engraving owned by C. S. Bement.] useless to endeavor to scale it. All the beautiful lessons of their lives were obscured by their apparently cold, repulsive personality. Mr. Fisher has not failed to realize his ideal, which is a very delightful one, in spite of the frankest truth-telling. Benjamin Franklin seems to us, after reading his sketch, a more lovable and charming figure than we had ever conceived him. He makes him talk continually through his letters, written in his beautiful pellucid English, that are most forcible lessons The J. B. Lippincott Company rank this among their most desirable works. They have brought it out in a pretty octavo volume, rich in rare portraits, facsimiles, and illustrations. Mr. Fisher prepared it only after long and patient labor, and by gaining access to papers not hitherto at the service of the public. The portraits show the same research as the text. They are mostly reproductions of pictures in museums and galleries little known to the general reader, and of great interest. Ave Roma Immortalis! Beautiful, romantic, cruel, fascinating Rome! The Rome of the Cæsars, of Nero and Catullus, of Constantine and Horace! The Rome of the Borgias, the Colonna, and the Cenci, and of Rienzi, Mazzini, and Garibaldi! The background to those inspiring tales of our school days, of the brave Horatius, the fair Virginia, and the noble Lucretia! The scene of liberty and tyranny, of love and hate, of wars and idyllic peace, of luxury and want, of a civilization greater than the world has ever since known, and of a degeneracy pitiful to recall. "The story of Rome is the most splendid romance in all history," says Mr. Crawford. A long story extending over many centuries, through which runs a stream of crimson blood, paling only in these latter days of Italy's unification. To quote Mr. Crawford again: "The story of Rome is a tale of murder and sudden death, varied, changing, never repeated in the same way; there is blood on every threshold; a tragedy lies buried in every church and chapel; and we ask in vain wherein lies the magic of the city that has fed on terror and grown old in carnage, the charm that draws men to her, the power that holds, the magic that enthralls men soul and body, as Lady Venus cast her spells upon Tannhäuser in her mountain of old." Francis Marion Crawford has for years been a close student of the old Latin and Italian chronicles, in many of which there are true stories more tremendous than any writer of fiction would dare invent. These studies have been the inspiration of a work the Macmillan Company have brought out this season in true artistic style under the title "Ave Roma Immortalis." That Mr. Crawford knows his Rome well and thoroughly we have ample evidence in his Italian novels. The present work is colored by all of his most attractive literary gifts. His warm imagination, his enthusiasm, his skill as a novelist, his artistic temperament, together with his Catholic faith, his long residence in Rome, and his American inheritance, combine to invest with a rare charm a narrative as poetic and picturesque and instructive as it is modest and unpretentious. described in each as they have been in different ages and as they are now, the histories being given of the people who lived and fought and loved and died in them. The second volume is concluded with chapters on Leo the Thirteenth, the Vatican, and Saint Peter's. Mr. Crawford is a great admirer of the present Pope. He classes him with Gladstone and Bismarck and other great men who were his contemporaries. The details of the Pope's life in the Vatican, and the account of the treasures of the Vatican, with the retrospective glance we are asked to bestow upon Saint Peter's, picturing to ourselves the grand This work does not aim to be either a guide to Rome or a history. We idly wander with the delightful author, sharing his intense interest and keen appreciation through the length and breadth of old Rome, pausing now and then before some marble palace, some gloomy pile of Middle Age date, or some magnificent ruin, and recalling the history, story, or legend that has clung to it through many generations and will haunt its stones forever. The work is in two handsome volumes. The first opens with a brief historical study of the rise of Rome, with sketches of the great men who made her greatness; afterward the fourteen regions, or wards, into which the city was divided in mediæval times are taken in succession and gone through with, characteristic buildings being pageants of the past, of which it was the scene, complete a most valuable and interesting work. The beautiful style in which the Macmillan Company have issued "Ave Roma Immortalis " makes it doubly attractive. There are twentyeight full-page photogravure illustrations of rare and historic scenes, several maps and one hundred illustrations in the text. The paper and print are all that could be asked for, while the substantial binding is adorned on the front cover with a handsome cut of Saint Peter's. A large-paper edition of the work of about one hundred and fifty copies for this country is recommended to lovers of handsome books. The first proofs are in sepia, the proofs of photogravures on plate paper. The volumes are bound in rich red silk. |