The Scripture Club of Valley Rest, or Sketches of Everybody's Neighbors. By the author of Helen's Babies. 12mo. Pp. iv.; 188. Cloth, 50 cts. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. [Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger. Other People's Children. Illustrated. By the author of "Helen's Babies." 16mo. Pp. vii.; 303. Cloth $1.25. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. [Porter & Coates. Lectures on the History of Protection in the United States. By W. G. Sumner. 8vo. Fruit and Bread. A Scientific Diet. By Gustav Schlickeysen. Translated from the 16mo. Pp. 315. Poet and Merchant. By B. Auerbach. Leisure Hour Series. 16mo. Cloth, Pp. iv.; 460. 12mo. Pp. 315. 12mo. Pp. 305 First Love is Best. A Sentimental Sketch. By Gail Hamilton. The Physical Basis of Mind. Being the Second Series of Problems of Life and Mind. The Eighth Annual Report of the State Board of Health of Massachusetts, for 1877. With maps and plans. 8vo. Pp. xxv.: 498. Paper. Boston: Albert J. Wright, State Printer. Tangled. A Novel. By Rachel Carew. 16mo. Pp. 218. Cloth $1.00. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., Report upon the Census of Rhode Island, 1875; with the Statistics of the Population, Bulletin de L'Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Bel- THE PENN MONTHLY. SEPTEMBER.. TH THE MONTH. HOSE who expected that the march of the Russians on Constantinople would be after the fashion of 1828, had some show of reason for their belief at the opening of the month. By July 23d, the forces operating in and across the Balkans, had possession of the Shipka Pass, and had seized Kirkilissa, thus putting themselves between Adrianople and the capital. If the distance to Constantinople from Sistova-where the Danube was crossedbe measured as the bird flies, it will be seen that the Russians had thus already got over three-fifths of that distance, leaving in their rear all the mountain passes, crooked roads, and natural obstacles to their advance. It is true that the Russians held little more than a narrow pathway southward, in places narrow as a mountain pass, and secured by few strong places like Tirnova, while on each side and in their rear were considerable Turkish armies. Osman Pasha held Plevna on the west; Mehemet Ali on the east was based on Varna, Shumla and Rasgrad; while Suleiman Pasha resisted further advances on the south. But on the other hand, there were no transverse roads by which to attack the Russians. The Turks have destroyed an empire to create a capital, and all the roads lead southward for military and fiscal convenience. And in the rear of Suleiman Pasha a Russian corps occupied the Dobrudjna at the Danube's mouth, and threatened Silistria. Everything promised such a result as would enable a speedy and favorable termination of the war. But the Russian generals, perhaps very wisely, did not regard such a method of advance as prudent, and proceeded to strengthen their position in Bulgaria by attacking Osman Pasha at Plevna. An earlier assault on that post (July 19th) had been repulsed; a second in much greater force (July 30 and 31) resulted in the most important defeat of the war. The Turks fought like tigers. They had all the advantages of a position strongly entrenched. The Russians were driven back with great loss in killed and wounded. A disheartening blow was dealt, which caused a virtual cessation of all operations on a grand scale, until great reinforcements could arrive from Russia. The troops south of the Balkans were withdrawn, and all the passes except that of Shipka were abandoned, while a vast army, variously estimated at from sixty to eighty thousand men, was gathered once more around Plevna, awaiting further supplies. This repulse and cessation of operations is the more important as the winter season is approaching, and it is now certain that beyond the expulsion of the Turks from Bulgaria, Russia can accomplish nothing farther by this campaign. But it is noticeable that just at the heels of the repulse at Plevna, the Porte comes forward with the offer of negotiations for peace, on the basis of the virtual autonomy of Bulgaria, or at least on that proposed in the Andrassy Note. But Russia is too proud to negotiate after a defeat, as probably the Porte knew very well. The proposal may have been honest, or it may have been intended merely to put Russia in the wrong before Europe. THE renewal of operations in Turkish Armenia has led to nothing. Attacks on obscure posts, mutual repulses, artillery duels, fill the dispatches. Both parties have their heart in a different struggle, and the Russian forces have been too much weakened by the withdrawal of troops to the Caucasus, to allow of their taking a vigorous initiative. They do seem to have succeeded in putting down the revolt among their Moslem subjects in their mountain ranges. The Turkish troops have retreated to their fleet, and a large emigration of the people to Turkish soil has followed. The dispatches describe these emigrants as Circassians, but then everybody in the Caucasus-Abkhasians, Lesghians, Daghesians, even Schamyl-are Circassians with the newspaper and telegraph people. THE dispositions with which the neighboring, and otherwise related nations, view the struggle in European Turkey, is undergoing some noticeable changes. Servia is clearly bent on preserving her neutrality. The defeat at Plevna occurred before the Servian Legislature adjourned, and doubtless helped the peace party in carrying the vote to continue the payment of the annual tribute to Turkey. But the war party are strong and noisy; they hope to see the country carried into the struggle indirectly by effecting an alliance with Roumania, and the anti-Russian papers in Austria seek to excite alarm by reporting that such an alliance is already effected, and though not proclaimed, is recognized by mutual salutes Montenegro has resumed the offensive, and is besieging the fortress of Nicsics. Greece is in the chills and fever, warlike and peaceable fits succeeding each other with great rapidity, and exhibiting in their sequence a close relation to the military movements on either side of the Balkans. The English Government excited some alarm at the opening of the month, by the announcement that the garrisons at Malta and other points of the Mediterranean must be reinforced at once. At the same time, it was proposed that the English should occupy Gallipoli, the old town at the Western end of the Sea of Marmora, where the Turks first landed in Europe, and which the English and French fortified in 1855. This place is about a hundred and ten miles from Constantinople. The excitement which followed led to pretty full explanations in Parliament-so full indeed, and so satisfactory, that the session was allowed to close without any further questions being put to the Government. The Liberals seem to be satisfied that the Administration are honest in their professions of neutrality; that is, that the anti-Disraeli party are too strong in the cabinet to be overborne. ANOTHER European nation has had about enough of free trade. The theorists and speech makers who succeeded to Prim in the control of Spanish affairs, and who managed to wreck the ship of state on half a dozen rocks at once, were, of course, grandly cosmopolitan. They got rid of the Spanish tariff, and managed during their brief term of office to heap up such a burden of public debt as absorbed the whole revenue of the kingdom in paying the interest, thus forcing a partial repudiation. They met with some opposition, indeed. The Catalans who occupy the North-eastern corner of the Peninsula, and who are the most industrious and business-like people imaginable, voted steadily for protection. They are quite different from the ordinary Spaniards; they speak a language in which short words are nearly as abundant as in English, and which, though derived from the Latin stock, differs nearly as much from Castilian as from Tuscan. They are proud of their country, their speech, their history, their literature, and their industries. Under the new sovereign they are again trusted advisers, being confessedly the best financiers in Spain, and the ministerial reports as well as the addresses from the throne talk of protection of national industry, of the duty of Spain to take care of her own interests. A law to increase all the duties leveled upon foreign goods. has been prepared by the ministry, and its passage by the Cortes is conceded to be certain. Thus from end to end of Europe, the principle of nationality is becoming the ruling force in the industrial as well as the political sphere, and the shallow cosmopolitanism of thirty years ago is losing its hold. On the other hand, Switzerland, a country most favorably situated for commercial intercourse with the centre and south of Europe, and fond of boasting that her industries owed nothing to protection, is beginning to suffer terribly from the competition of our American watch-makers. Attention was first called to this by the report of her Commissioner to our International Exhibition. Since then, attempts have been made to introduce American methods and machinery in bootmaking, but they have failed utterly. The capitalist who undertook the experiment visited an American establishment, learned all its processes with great care, and taught these to his countrymen. But the results were utterly disappointing, and he was obliged to confess that the dearer labor of America was in reality far cheaper than that of his Swiss employees. The intelligence, the mental alertness, the adaptability of the American workmen, were things he could not ship to Lausanne, and without them he could not obtain American results. THE general termination of the railroad strike, by the workmen. resuming work at the reduced wages, and the speedy suppression of violent resistance by the national and state troops, closes one of the most painful chapters of our recent history. The civil and the military authorities behaved exceedingly well, except at Pittsburgh, |