It is to be remembered, also, that an artist is to be judged by the effect of his gift as well as by the intensity of his mood during its exercise. The rarity of the gift is to be considered. Longfellow has a certain sweet facility of touch. By a line, he calls up a pleasant image, and suffuses the mind with a soft and tender sense of beauty; no other writer quite reaches it. We remember once strolling upon a foreign coast with a friend who repeated the verse: "There all the air is balm, and the peach is the emblem of beauty." Had we been struck in the face by a wet bough of peach blossom, it could not have been sweeter. We suspect that it is not only Longfellow's gift which is uncommon; his mood is also rare. It is true that the artist does not answer his critic by challenging him to do as well. The critic's function is to judge, not to produce. But if the answer were good from anybody, it would be from the admirers of Mr. Longfellow. A poet, we have said, is to be judged as much by the rarity as by the intensity of his mood or gift. The inability of anybody else to do what seems so very easy is good ground from which to infer the rarity of the gift. So we are not so very unreasonable when we recommend the depreciating critic to try his hand at writing "Excelsior" before he despises it. Mr. Longfellow is evidently right in the modest estimation in which he holds Aftermath. All of the poems have Mr. Longfellow's agreeable facility and exhibit his wonderful mechanical talent. But with thought, sentiment or emotion, the volume is by no means highly charged. Yet as Thackeray says :— "A writer cannot always play first fiddle." Some of his work must be poorer than the rest. The question is how bad may work be and yet be fit for publication. We think Mr. Longfellow did well to print these poems. They are all readable and pleasing. The following we might call feebly airy and gently glad, but pretty: "Now was the winter gone and the snow; and Robin the Redbreast, Boasted on bush and on tree it was he, it was he and no other That had covered with leaves the Babes in the Wood, and blithely All the birds sang with him and little cared for his boasting, Little cared for his Babes in the Wood or the Cruel Uncle and only Sang for the mates they had chosen and cared for the nests they were building." That method, as old as Homer, and ever so much older, which all poets have, of choosing an out of the way fact to tell in a word the exact physiognomy of a conception in the mind, is one which Mr. Longfellow has used often and well. But this does not seem to be successful: "Hannah, the housemaid, the homely, was looking out of the attic, Laughing aloud at Joseph, then suddenly closing the casement, As the bird in a cuckoo-clock peeps out of its window, The naïveté and simplicity of this image strike us as excessive. These lines appear to be fine, dramatic and accu rate: "Then swift as a shooting star, On his forehead white and bare, The best of the poems strike us as those at the end of the volume, called Birds of Passage; some of them are tender and lovely. "CHANGED. "From the outskirts of the town, Of the dark and haunted wood. "Is it changed, or am I changed? Ah! the oaks are fresh and green, "Bright as ever flows the sea, Bright as ever shines the sun. Nor the tides that used to run." There is not much in Aftermath as good as this. The volume is made up mainly of the stories of a poet, a student, a theologian, a Spanish Jew and a Sicilian told around the hearth of an inn. There is an interlude between the tales which acts the part of chorus and critic. The stories, as we have said, are not very stirring, but they are pleasantly and often sweetly told. Mr. Longfellow's beautiful and generous culture, his gentle and refined nature and the unselfish devotion of his life to pure literature are qualities which appear upon every page and with which there is little danger nowadays that men will get too familiar. Old Rome and New Italy.* IN Italy Emilio Castelar seems to have been as much carried away as any Jean Paul Friedrich Richter. Nevertheless he is very far from a German he is not only a Spaniard,--a word which is almost a synonym for gravity,-and a fervid admirer as well of what may be called the kindred beauties of his own surprising land, but he is furthermore a statesman, to whom the world is now looking for his country's salvation. Indeed President Castelar, the Latin or Celt by race, would not be * Harper & Brothers, Publishers, New York. overpleased at an accusation of Teutonic Schwärmerei; yet in these "Italian Reminiscences" how do the outbursts of feeling on all subjects differ from that enthusiasm of sentiment for which Germans have coined a word? We smile, but cannot help admiring. Above all things Castelar possesses the orator's gift. The flow of similes, parallels, historical examples, that pour in a foaming torrent from his pen, is in danger of carrying the reader off his feet. There is a breathlessness in his style which may be convincing in a speech, but in all the calmness of print produces a certain effect of wordiness, which He does not give us annoys we know not why. time, or we may not be able to refute him, but in any case we are not ready to agree. It is quite possible that his literary characteristics may hold a hint respecting his future Presidential career. The Castelar we see in Italy is not the silent, grave type of man we are fond of thinking the best leader of a nation in a tremendous crisis. The very excellence of his talent, the slightly heroic cast of his mind, may place him in the ranks of servants too good for work. Again arises the question whether a man can be at once a talker and a worker. Most people come to the conclusion that, unless he be a very extraordinary genius, he can not. Castelar, therefore, has a chance to prove himself one of the few elect who combine statesman, man of letters, and philosopher in one great mind. "Old Rome and New Italy" can hardly be said to encourage us to expect the miracle with confidence. Essentially a talker and theorizer, a real necessity to the State, and one whose place could be with difficulty supplied,-it is contrary to the usual limits of human nature to find one man preaching a reform and taking on his shoulders the chief part of the work besides. One mind invents, another applies. cer The chapter entitled "The God of the Vatican," which treats of the Pope from personal, historical and political standpoints without either bigotry or rancor, may serve to sketch an outline of the anomalous position held in the Church by such men as Döllinger, Castelar, and Hyacinthe-whom a tain American Archbishop calls "that Loyson." No Roman Catholic can accept them as fellows. In this very chapter, certainly a powerful statement in admirable shape of his own views, he boldly states that not only is Infallibility blasphemy and folly, but that if the Church does not follow after and unite with Science, the Church is dead! The There are not wanting indications in his writings of a strong French influence, and France is treated with a silence which is undoubtedly favorable. This, however, is by no means blinding: his critic's eye remains as keen, and an amusing sketch is drawn of a garrulous and irreverent French gentlemen at St. Peter's objecting to the too literal Roman reading of the Scriptural "Sheep and Goats." Witty as well as amusing is the chapter on Naples, in which he pathetically complains of the extreme of shouting and gesticulation, the restless activity of that curious populace. Venice and the lagoons are painted as if, the author had just arrived among their Oriental scenes A certain from the bleakest Hyperborean lands. conversation he holds here with a young priest of the famous Armenian convent is an instance of wordiness which approaches flippancy, so grave are the subjects discussed. These he touches with the same lightness with which he skims over many another question of state or race, just as his gondola flitted across the golden-hued lagoon. Saturate a really clever Irish gentleman with art, and you have the man that Castelar appears in these recollections of travel. Painters may perhaps open their eyes at his confession that architecture is his favorite art: he goes even further, for in architecture he admires a mixture of styles; all the Greek Yet for this types in one building for instance. some other pages will make amends. tine Chapel his wonder boils over in a frenzy of admiration; mighty and world-wide are the subjects suggested by the wonderful Sibyls; it is only when he is steadied by the history of Michael Angelo himself that he touches earth again, and treats us to an admirable chapter on that mighty genius and the divine Rafaelle. Dr. Hake's Poems.* In the Sis WE are glad to notice that the author of "Madeline" possesses in an eminent degree the enviable and, for a poet, particularly indispensable gift of seeing himself as others see him. The bias of his talent in the direction of what he calls the parable, and what more accurately might be denominated a morality (if the technical phraseology of the medieval stage did not preclude the use of this word for a narrative poem), was indeed so evident in his first volume, that the admirers of his poetry will not be astonished to see their favorable expectations realized, and even truth is Castelar is a Protestant, who from training, surpassed, in this second work of the author. The and still more from natural antipathy, preserves a thorough distaste for such nations as once protested. Evidently Latin in tastes and education, it is possible to discover here and there among his pages a truly Latin objection to things Teutonic. Thus, Mozart stole his music from the Miserere at St. Peter's: liberty in the Western world is South American liberty: the Germans are not to be approved for their conduct of the late war. present volume consists of eight poems of an average length of from twelve to fifteen pages, four of them appearing here a second time in a partly remodeled form. Dr. Hake's position among contemporaneous poets, it seems to us, will be one quite apart from the pre With * Parables and Tales. By Thomas Gordon Hake. illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Chapman & Hall. London. vailing tendency of modern poetical production. Notwithstanding the striking differences in form and feeling amongst the leading poets of our time, we discern one most important feature common to all of them which is the essentially artistic purpose of their works. Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Swinburne, Mr. Rossetti and Mr. Morris, as of one accord, address themselves much less to the speculative than to the imaginative faculty of the human mind; and even Mr. Browning-although his readers may require the greatest exertion of their wits to follow his thoughts and guess his riddles-wishes ultimately to move rather than to teach, The vacant position of a moralist on the English Parnassus has now been filled up by Dr. Hake. He absolutely disregards the enormous change which, since Wordsworth, Byron, and Shelley, has come over the spirit of the till then emphatically moralizing tendency of English literature. There is no limit of time in the ideal realms of fiction, so we may safely say that Dr. Hake, as a poet, was born about the end of Queen Anne's reign, and that he was the intimate friend of Dr. Goldsmith, to whom the genius of our author betrays a close elective affinity. One day he went to sleep for a century or so, and has just awoke, another Rip Van Winkle, to find the scene shifted and the world changed. By this we mean in no way to imply that this author is out of place in the present century. We think, on the contrary, that he fills up a gap in the develop. ment of modern poetry, in reviving a tendency once so prominent in English literature. The fact, indeed, of a new, we will not venture to say young, poet rising up with an unmistakable faculty of saying something of his own, and saying it in his own way, is in itself highly commendable at a time when the accidental peculiarities of a few leading men are but too easily caught and, ad nauseam, reproduced by the herd of imitators. The style of Dr. Hake, as we have indicated, is entirely free from the influence, good or bad, of any modern writer. It runs along with the smooth undisturbedness of the brook that "beneath the hillside flows," and wherever an expression does not seem to issue from the immediate requirement of the poetical situation, we may be sure that it resembles the Della Cruscanism of the last century more than anything of a less remote period. morally crippled and neglected London street-arab, we always find the same broad-based sympathy with human sufferings which looks on moral shortcomings more in the light of a disease than of a punishable crime. "The Our limited space will not permit us to consider the Parables and Tales one by one. They are all excellent in their way, and show in different degrees and phases the remarkable talent of the author. The tinker in "Old Souls," who wanders about in unwearied search of "souls to mend," has a charming touch of John-Bunyanlike puritanism about it. "Mother and Child" is the only tale which contains a distinct plot, and a very impressive and beautiful story it is. Cripple" and "The Blind Boy" (first published in this magazine, December, 1871) are specimens of idyllic calm hardly surpassed, we think, by any of the great models of our literature. In the latter story we admire the deep insight into the charms of nature, and an extraordinary faculty of symbolising its phenomena on the part of our author, which, in another place, makes him call the hawthorn bush, with the whimsical formation of its branches, the "clown of the forest," and to which the gray willows near the "workhouse, bare and gaunt," appear to crouch like aged men." This poem also displays a rare faculty of diagnosis with regard to the finest psychological nuances of the disease described. The way in which the blind boy transfers the expressions of his sister, referring to light and shade, into the domain of sound, which alone is open to his mind, is wonderfully rendered in the following stanza, which we quote at the same time as a fair specimen of our author's diction: "The river's flow is bright and clear,' The blind boy said, 'and were it dark, It remains to add a few words about the beautifully invented and designed ornamental cover of the charming little volume, and the illustrations by Arthur Hughes. Some of the designs are in the best style of this fertile artist, while the impression of others suffers slightly from his tendency towards the sweet and gentle. The most perfect amongst them is the charming representation of the blind boy and his sister sitting by the sea-shore. In "Old Souls" the night watchman shows a close resemblance to the form in which this worthy appears in numerous draw Liberty, Equality and Fraternity. But let us turn to those pure and lovable sides of our author which, of course, are independent of time and custom, and belong exclusively to his own poetical individuality. We have said that his purpose is al-ings of the incomparable Richter. ways an essentially moral one, and indeed one might append to each of his stories the condensed moral purport thereof in distinct words; but never does this tendency take the form of dry lecturing. His doctrine is always the result of a kind and human perception of things, exceptionally free from the prejudices of sect or caste. Whether he depicts the sad, still life of the poor cripple by the village road-side, or the feelings of infinitely deeper misery of the Mr. Fitzjames Stephen is well known in literary circles in England as a journalist of great ability and success, and also as an experienced and learned officer of the Government in its East Indian civil service. If we are not mistaken, however, his first published volume is that made up of critical essays under the above title, and chiefly directed against the philosophical system, (so far as that system is concerned with practical morality,) of the late John Stuart Mill. Against the tendencies of Mr. Mill's teaching, Mr. Stephen writes in vigorous English which it is pleasant to read, and with strenuous argumentation which for the most part it is not easy to gainsay. To us in America, the discussion is at least as interesting and important as to the people of Great Britain. The tendencies of our democracy are not yet so unmistakable that we can afford to neglect the criticisms of any strong and honest thinker, even if those criticisms seem to us (as in one or two allusions to ourselves they do seem,) somewhat unintelligent and even somewhat ill-natured. That the book is a good one, as against Mr. Mill, and the extremfe notions which the motto taken for its title commonly suggests, is not to be denied. Whether it is so undeniably good in itself, and in the doubts and negations to which it naturally leads, we are not ready to assert. But as a contribution to the discussion of subjects which are profoundly and practically important and which are every day assuming larger proportions and growing more urgent and perilous, it is a book which no thinker can afford to overlook. Sunday School Commentaries. say, that any earnest layman will find, in these scholarly and evangelical commentaries, the explanations and suggestions which he will need, to furnish him thoroughly for the work of interpreting the Gospel to his class or to himself. "Bed-Time Stories." THE children of the new generation may well be children of light, in view of all that is done for their enjoyment and profit. Some of us can remember when eight o'clock was bed-time for boys and girls, and small enough was the round of stories, written or unwritten, for us to read or hear! But now our piazzas and parlor-corners are given up to the idyls of Paul and Virginia; while for their younger brothers and sisters our cleverest artizans devise a thousand toys, our daintiest artists draw, and our most graceful and talented authors prepare, the books which give to authorship its surest wages. This year the children have the good fortune to enlist in their service the genius and womanly tact of Mrs. Louise Chandler Moulton, whose Boston such an interest for older readers. Of the juvenile literary correspondence in the Tribune possesses books issued in October few, we fancy, will meet a heartier appproval from those unerring critics-the little folks-than her Bed-Time Stories. Their title happily describes them; they are each just the length Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co, have recently to listen to in the charmed half-hour between canissued with special reference to the wants of Sunday dle-light and dream-light, are most sweetly told, School teachers, new editions in compact and con- and tender with purity and goodness. The gracevenient forms, of Lange, Alexander, and Owen on ful dedicatory verses "To my daughter Florence' the Gospel of Matthew. It is a gratifying proof of ❘ will make other children envious of the girl privithe increasing thoroughness of Sunday School in-leged to hear these stories from their author's lips. struction that such helps as these volumes furnish should be in demand. The characteristics of each volume are well enough known to make a detailed and extended notice unnecessary. It is sufficient to Mrs. Moulton's volume is tastefully brought out by Roberts Brothers, and adorned with the winsome, dimpled faces of picture-children, from the pencil of Addie Ledyard. NATURE AND SCIENCE. An Order of Intellectual Merit. teaching. This profession, it is well known, is one demanding for the thorough performance of its duties, a very large expenditure of the highest energy as well as of time, so that men of science of the class we are speaking of, who are compelled to adopt it, have but a small amount of energy and little time left to devote to that pursuit on which their heart is set, for which their whole training has EARL Stanhope has proposed in the House of Lords that an order of merit should be created, and dispensed as a reward to those who aid in the advancement of Literature, Art, or Science. In discussing the merits of this proposition, the Editor of Nature says; "Most of those who, not being rich men, have done most to advance scientific knowledge | qualified them, and in which they have shown themhave done so in moments snatched from the duties imposed upon them by the necessity of procuring | the wherewithal to support life. Many who do the most valuable work in science, which is generally not the work that's most volubly brought before fashionable audiences, are compelled, for bare life, to adopt some profession, and almost the only profession open to men who have qualified themselves for thorough scientific research, is the profession of selves competent to attain the highest results. Is it not shameful, then, nay, does it not argue the greatest blindness on the part of Government to the best interests of the country, that these men should be compelled to expend the very best of their valuable and well-skilled energies in the drudgery of a profession for which they may by no means be peculiarly fitted, merely to keep the life in their bodies, while but a very moderate expenditure on the part of the State tion of a cold douche. When great muscular exertion has to be sustained, as in swimming or rowing, it is always necessary to have the clothes very thin and it is felt during the time that it is necessary for the continuance of the effort that the surface of the body must be kept cool." Change in Habits of the Chickaree. would enable them to devote, without dread of coming to want, the whole of their power to the pursuit of that research from which the country already has reaped the highest benefit? No man, whose opinion is of any value, not even any member of Her Majesty's Government, we believe, doubts the emihently practical utility of scientific research, and the dependence of our country for its foremost place among the nations of the world, that it should have at its disposal the highest and latest results of such MR. THOMAS G. GENTRY states that during the research. Instead, then, of devising new and empty | early part of last autumn, his attention was called to honors wherewith to reward men who, amid a life, the fact that the birds in a certain designated locality passed in the worry and struggle for existence, have been able to push forward scientific knowledge a short stage, let the Government bestow upon these men the means to do their work thoroughly. It will thus do greater honor to the pioneers of science, and make an investment which in a short time will be repaid a hundred fold." Origin of Nerve Force. IN a paper by Dr. A. H. Garrod, the following ingenious hypothesis regarding the production of Nerve Force is advanced. Admitting that the force in question is either identical with, or closely allied to, electricity in its properties, he then asks, where does it originate? The existence of special organs for its development in the torpedo and other creatures which exhibit external electrial phenomena, and the absence of any such organ in man and the higher animals, would seem to indicate that the production of electricity in animals requires some other form of apparatus than the nervous ganglia. In answer to this, the Doctor seeks to show that in the difference of temperature between the interior and surface of the living body, a source of energy is presented which, on thermo-electric principles, is capable of producing all the force required. The brain and minor ganglia, he adds, would then act as offices for the reception and transmission of currents in the required directions, being in fact the commutators of the system. of Mount Airy, during the hours of the night, were undergoing a system of wholesale destruction, the work of small animals which were supposed to belong to some species of Carnivora. Laboring under this impression, and being desirous of securing a specimen or two, he started for the scene of slaughter, bent upon discovering the name and character of the animal; when within a few rods of the place, the almost deafening noise that greeted his ears from the tall trees, led him to suspect that all was not right. After reaching the spot, a few moments of anxious waiting suf ficed to reveal to him the cause of the noise and the origin of the sacrifice alluded to, for sitting upon a twig just over his head, he observed a chickaree holding in its paws a bird which it had captured and from which it was very contentedly sucking the life current. It is a well-established fact, he further remarked, as far as he had been able to verify it, that the most numerous species of Rodents, with but two exceptions table matter, especially the hard parts of plants, such at the most, subsist principally or entirely upon vege as nuts, bark, and roots. This habit of imitating the propensities of the Mustelidæ, or weazles, he thought might have arisen from the habit which some squirrels possess, possibly the one under consideration, of sucking the eggs of birds; the blood-sucking habit he assumed to be an outgrowth from the other. (Proceedings of Academy of | Sciences, Philadelphia). Steam in Vessels. In support of this, the Doctor says: "There are several of the most important phenomena exhibited THE increased price of coal in England is causing by the nervous system which are very satisfactorily the reagitation of the question of the use of steam as an explained on the above hypothesis. For instance, auxilliary power in ships. A writer in Iron says: in cold weather the impulse to action is much more | A vessel for a long voyage should be of the following powerfully felt than in summer, when the air is hot; dimensions:-Length, 300 feet; breadth, 40 feet; and therefore, the temperature of the surface is depth of hold, 24 feet, with accommodations for pashigher. It is well known that it is impossible to sengers, officers and crew on deck, and a pair of direct remain for more than a very short time in a hot-acting engines placed in the after part of the vessel, water bath of which the temperature is as high as, below the main deck, capable of working to about 150 or a little higher than, that of the body, on account horse power, with boilers to maintain a steam presof the faintness which is sure to come on, and this sure of 60 pounds per square inch. The consumption may be reasonably supposed to be the result of the of coal would be about 72 cwt. per diem, and the cessation of the nerve-current, which is consequent speed, with a folding screw propeller, about six knots on the temperature of the surface of the body be- in a calm. In a sailing vessel built from my design, coming the same as that of the interior. This faint- the best day's work was from 330 to 360 miles for ness is immediately recovered from by the applica- | nine days. It appears to be a great pity to dispense |