biography, etc. There is something of everything, and a careful reader of these volumes will learn much about Wagner."-The Academy. We "An important and a welcome addition to Wagner literature. cordially recommend Mr. Finck's book to all readers of the literature of music."Boston Transcript. "Mr. Finck's work is, perhaps, the most exhaustive and appreciative account of the great composer that has appeared in the English language."-London Times. Chopin, and Other Musical Second Edition. 12mo. $1.50 CONTENTS: Chopin, the Greatest Genius of the Pianoforte-How Composers WorkSchumann, as Mirrored in his Letters-Music and Morals-Italian and German Vocal Styles-German Opera in New York. “Half a dozen delightful essays, the two most important of which are respectively devoted to the Polish and German composers (Chopin and Schumann) above named. Of the author's technical qualifications for a discussion of musical topics the papers themselves are vouchers, and as to the literary treatment of them we need only say that every page recalls the writer's charming and diverting book entitled, Romantic Love and Personal Beauty.'"-New York Sun. "Mr. Finck has a direct style that not only commands attention at the start, but retains it as well. . . . The essay on Schumann is altogether admirable as a literary effort and valuable as an epitome of the letters which many may not find time to read. In the essay Music and Morals' there is much sound philosophy. The moral influence of music on large or small circles and on the individual is logically and forcibly stated."-Boston Transcript. "The essay, 'Italian and German Vocal Styles,' is one of great interest. Mr. Finck is an intense admirer of Wagner, yet he can do justice to Italian composers and Italian singers."-The Academy. CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, PUBLISHERS 153-157 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK In "Northern Sunrise" Conflicts NORTHERN SUNRISE. From the Norwegian of Haakon Mahrt. New In the emotions of everyday life no theme is more charged with secret violence and pathos than that of adultery as complicated by the torments of sexual guilt. At the same time, since the situation is so egocentric that it borders on the ridiculous, nothing is harder to put into words. Bearing this in mind I can say, with admiration, that enough novelistic skill has gone into Haakon Mahrt's "Northern Sunrise" to animate an historical romance of the Hundred Years War, genealogical chart on page 2345. When this subject is treated by the American novelist or playwright it very often tapers off into a glissando that groans its way ominously into the What a depths of unrelieved melancholy realistic; it is poetry, indeed. I and there stops. Perhaps the thought of Hauptmann's "WinterAmerican novelist is not so com- ballade." pletely disembarrassed of the happy idea for Mahrt to have singularly of primitive morality as his adulterer land in the remote he thinks. The persons involved, regions of Norway in the winquite disregarding the classic tertime! model of Paolo and Francesca, The story is bare, and told in who are always on the move, the first person. Apropos of this end up by sitting around star latter point, it struck me as ing at each other like two green autobiographical, so intimate and persimmons dangling idly on a sure was the disregard for nonfoggy day. Or they blow their essentials. The "I" of the novel brains out. Since death is rap is a wireless operator on a govidly becoming another stale- ernment plane carrying mail inmate, this resolution is equally to the sub-Arctic country, far unsatisfactory. Life Is Different over the Loppa Sea. This man has been having an affair with Now, in real life, I remark, the the wife of the pilot of the characters weather the storm plane. He is a familiar enough, surprisingly often. They resort yet complicated, personality. He to a kind of instinctive homoe- craves action, and yet is too inopathy, that is, they find an- tellectual and critical to perother woman with whom they form successfully. The friend can have normal, socially neu- whom he betrays is at one with tral relations. Thus once again himself. Steadily he marches on they get a grip on the bright to recognition and success in his and busy outer world. Why work. The wife, like her lover, should they not! The root of is a creature of compromise, a their suffering, in cold fact, is dweller in the middle realm, an the loss of the outer sphere, un- ignoble one. Even the affair is happy disequilibrium. They are a matter of convenience for disoriented, therefore they gasp both, a pleasure to be enjoyed |