Chap - Wsfroin aWe. By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. (j. Clarice and Co:)—Miss
Phelps tells us that she has never learnt anything from critics. This may be so. She may not be teachable. Among her, many high qualities this may be wanting. •. She further tells us that she never reads what is written about' her books. The
ublic:, however, le probably otherwise minded, and desires to know what experte in books—and 'surely there must be experti in beoks as in other things—say about the volumes which it is invited to read. Miss Phelps writes about the experiences of her early days at Andover, where her father was a Professor of Theology in the Andover Seminary (Andover was a stronghold of New England Calvinism), and about her literary ventures and successes. " The Gates Ajar " is the book by which Miss Phelps is best known. She has written much that is of considerable value since, but never anything that has met with 'so largo a measure of public acceptance. This book was written under difficulties. The author was the eldest of a considerable family, not too affluent, and when this primacy falls to a girl it means more work than privi- lege. She had no place of her own for work, and, as she puts it in a very characteristic passage, " When one went down on a cold day to the register, to write one's chapter on the nature of amusements in the life to come, and found the dining- room neatly laid out in the form of a church congregation to which a certain proportion of brothers were enthusiastically performing the duties of an active pastor and parish, the environment was a distinct check to inspiration." That it was a great success need not be said, and not without substantial rewards, which might have been far greater but for the steady refusal in which Miss Phelps's country persisted for many years more, to consent to in- ternational copyright. We must frankly say that an American author, however great his private loss, ought to be silent on the topic of "foreign publishers and home talent." The balance of dis- honest gain is enormously large in favour of the United States. 7..ven their Government did not scruple to rob English authors. Some of Miss Phelps's most pleasant recollections relate to American authors, notably Oliver Wendell Holmes and Whittier.
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