The "Handbook" discusses several questions of economy, but seeks, especially in its rules and formulas, to avoid those risks by which economy has often been turned into the most ruinous extravagance. On the question of fuel, our author advocates the use of coke as the most economical and convenient, and every way preferable where it can be readily obtained. He also urges, on economical grounds, a more moderate rate of speed in railroad travel; thus showing that we may save our forests, our lives, and a considerable expense all at the same time.
The style is clear, and, for a work not professing to be a complete treatise, but only a manual of useful facts, the arrangement is admirable. The book is thoroughly practical, and touches upon such matters, and for the most part upon such matters only, as are likely to be of service to the practical man; yet it is quite elementary in its character, and free from unnecessary technicalities.
The book has, however, one great fault. It is full of errata. No carefully prepared table of corrections can make amends for such a fault in a book in which typographical correctness is of the greatest importance. To insert in their places with a pen more than two hundred published corrections is a labor which no reader would willingly undertake. We hope, therefore, that a new and correct edition will soon be published.
_The Life of Handel_. By VICTOR SCHOELCHER. Reprinted from the London Edition. New York: Mason, Brothers.
It is a remarkable fact, and one not very creditable to the musical public of England, that the works of Mainwaring, Hawkins, Barney, and Coxe should remain for almost an entire century after the death of Handel our main sources of information concerning his career, and that the first attempt to write a complete biography of that great composer, correcting the errors, reconciling the contradictions, and supplying the deficiencies of those authors, should be from the pen of a French exile. And yet during all this time materials have been accumulating, the fame of the composer has been extending, the demand for such a work increasing, and the number of intelligent and elegant English writers upon music growing greater.
M. Schoelcher's work, though perhaps the most valuable contribution to musical historical literature which has for many years appeared from the English press, leaves much to be desired. Excepting a correction of the chronology of Handel's visit to Italy, very little, if anything, of importance is added to what we already possessed in regard to the early history of the composer. We look in vain for the means of tracing the development of his genius. The impression left upon the mind of the reader is, that his powers showed themselves suddenly in full splendor, and that at a single bound he placed himself at the head of the dramatic composers of his age. This was not true of Hasse, Mozart, Gluck, Cherubini, Weber, in dramatic composition; nor of Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, in other branches of the musical art. However great a man's genius may be, he must live and learn. To attain the highest excellence, long continued study is necessary; and Handel, as we believe, was no exception to the general law.