WHAT SHALL WE
READ?
This column is devoted to brief notices of recent pub lications. H'e /tope to make it a ready-reference column for those of our readers who desire to in form themselves as to the latest and best new books. (Legal publications are noticed elsewhere.) THF. general impression concerning the Constitu tion of the United States is that it was the invention of the Convention which framed it, but Mr. Sydney George Fisher, in his very interesting work on the Evolution of the Constitution,' traces back through previous American documents in Colonial times every material clause of it. These documents consist of twenty-nine Colonial charters and Constitutions, seventeen Revolutionary Constitutions, and twentythree plans of union, — in all sixty-nine different forms of government which were either in actual or attempted operation in America during a period of about two hundred years, from 1584 to 1787. The author traces back the several clauses of the Consti tution through all the previous documents, with quo tations from each document, showing the gradual development, the experience that was acquired, or the experiments that were made. The book is one oí great interest. Siain on the Meina»i,s by Maxwell Sommerville, is the result of the author's trip to the jungle of Ayuthia, and was called forth by the fact that Mr. Sommer ville found on asking for a book on Siam, when he arrived at Bangkok, that no such book existed. His account of the manners and customs of the Siamese is interestingly and succinctly given, and the romances also embody many strange ceremonials and laws. The book is beautifully and lavishly illustrated. The frontispiece is a map of Siam. Mr. Dobson, in his Eighteenth Century 1'igneties? has given us a most delightful and entertaining book. One wonders as he reads how the author could possi bly have become possessed of such a number of facts concerning the dead and gone of a hundred and more years ago. He brings back a host of most in teresting individuals from the misty past and intro duces them with a familiarity that makes one feel that they must have been his lifelong friends. Altogether,
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the book is one which cannot fail to charm and de light the reader. There is so much destroying of the beliefs of our childhood in the heroes of the world by the light thrown on them in the present day, that it is a relief to find that The True George ll'asfiin^lon,* in spite of the fact that he is presented to the reader as he really was, as ¡s shown from his own letters and the opinions and letters of his friends and contemporaries, can still be thought of as a great man, a human one, to be sure, but still a man who conquered himself, who served his country for his country's good and not for his own, and who was upright and sincere. The book is pleasantly written, well put together, and makes an attractive and valuable addition to the vast amount of material concerning the Father of his country, with which we have been favored of late. Among the forthcoming works to be published by Little, lirown & Co. is a new historical romance by George R. К. Rivers, author of "The Governor's Garden," entitled Captain Shays, a Populist of 1786. The scenes of the story are chiefly laid in lioston and Petersham, Massachusetts, and the motive is the dis content of the farmers, and the noted " Shays' Re bellion " which arose from it. The first volume of the new illustrated edition of Francis Parkman's Histories will be published byLittle, Brown & Co., in May. The edition is to be a limited one, and will be printed from entirely new type. It will be in twenty medium 8vo volumes, and will be superbly illustrated with one hundred and twenty photogravure plates, consisting chiefly of au thentic portraits and contemporary prints. A story which will attract much attention, from the fact that it is written quite out of the ordinary style of novelists, is The J>ay ofhis Youth,* by Alice Brown. A young boy, whose mother is dead, is taken by his father to the woods and there brought up in solitude. He develops into a noble manhood through the strong influence of love, the suffering produced by treachery in love, and by unselfish devotion to humanity. The story is told by the means of a series of letters, and the narration is wonderfully graphic. The book will surely become very popular.
¡THE EVOLUTION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, showing that it is a development of progressive history and not an isolated document, struck off at a given time, or an imitation of English or Dutch forms of government. By Syd ney George Fisher. J. B. Lippincott Co.. Philadelphia, 1897. Cloth, 51.50.
- SiAM ON THE MEINAM, from the gulf to Ayuthia, together
with three romances, illustrative of Siamese life and customs. By Maxwell Sommerville. J. U. I.ippincott Co.. Philadelphia, 1897. Cloth. $3.00.
- EIGHTEENTH CENTURY VIGNETTES. By Austin Dobson.
Dodd, Mead & Co., New York, 1897. Cloth.
NEW LAW-BOOKS.
A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF DEEDS, their form, requisites, execution, acknowledgment, regis tration, construction and effect. Covering the alienation of title to real property by voluntary 4 THE TRUE GEORGE WASHINGTON. By Paul Leicester Ford. J. B. Lippincott Co., Philadelphia. Cloth. Î2.OO. 'THE DAY OF HIS YOUTH. By Alice Brown. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston and New York, 1897. Cloth. $1.25.
