an unbeliever and a scoffer, according to that D.D.; I. Green meadow-bank with meadow-bank the same. II. And we the only living only pass; We come and go, whither and whence we know not: HERE stays the house, here stay the self-same places, A Word for the Poor. HOME AND SOCIETY. mortifying charity. Do not save pennies, and call it economy, by performing the task which, by the law of mutual help, belongs to others. It is keeping from them that which is their right. Refrain from buying luxuries, if you will, but do not take from the needy, through a mistaken idea of thrift. Furs. THE winter will be a hard one. Work will be scarce and money scarcer. Already the great manufacturing firms have discharged many of their hands, and those who have not dismissed employés have reduced wages so low that the effect of the two is not very different. To beg, to steal, or to starve seems the only solution to the problem of life for these enforced idlers. When there is scantiness of work, there is inevitably plenitude of crime. It is stated that twenty thousand men and women, dependent on their daily earnings for support, were out of employment last winter in New York; and it is feared that the number this season may be doubled. Many of these must wander into the country in search of the labor they cannot find in town. When they ask at your doors for work, try to find something for them, if it be only for a few hours. Trust them, even if their appearance be uncanny. Give them work, and pay them for it. Money that comes without labor is generally the least charitable of gifts. To live upon pecuniary aid that has had no equivalent, is to lose self-considering its intrinsic worth. Mink sacques, cut respect, and to lose self-respect is to lose the balancewheel of a healthy organization. Engage all the help this winter you can possibly afford. Have your sewing done, not by expensive modistes, but by the poor women who stitch by the day or job. Hire the chore-woman for an extra cleaning, now and then. Let the washer-woman's boy do the errands you have been in the habit of doing yourself. Compensate them for self-respecting toil, instead of making them the recipients of a THE topic of furs is certainly seasonable any time between November and March. Mooted as is the question of their healthfulness, their comfort is so great that in our changeable climate they have become necessities. The most desirable are always Russian and Hudson's Bay sable; but they are more costly than the majority can afford: the former ranging between $80 and $1,000 for a set of muff and boa, and the latter from $50 to $250. Mink, which for some years has dropped into disfavor, reappears this winter, darker and handsomer than before, and very much admired. It is one of the most useful of skins, being durable as well as beautiful, and adapted to all styles of dress. In sets it costs from $20 to $125; and the rates are moderate, in the pretty new styles, slightly shaped to the figure in the back, are valued from $200 to as many hundreds as the buyer can afford. Luxurious as fur sacques may be, they are doubtful acquisitions, since they are not always suitable, and the danger of taking cold by changing to thinner wrappings is very great. Next to mink in price, and before it in fashion, comes sealskin. When this soft, brown fur made its appearance, a few years ago, nobody imagined that popular taste would abandon old favorites in its behalf. But it is very difficult to predict anything | of the popular taste; and sealskin is now so firmly established that it is named as the most fashionable fur. In sacques, it ranges between $65 and $500, but those between $200 and $300 are most widely sold. As sealskin is always dyed, and as the dye sometimes injures the pelt, making it tender and liable to pull apart, it is wise to buy of a well established dealer, whose judgment can be fully trusted. Seal boas are not so long as boas in other furs; but as they never pass twice round the neck, their yard and a half is quite equal to two yards of something else. Sets of seal are from $20 to $75; singly the muffs cost a little more than half the price of a set, and the boas a little less; though this is true of other furs. Seal caps, unhealthy as they are becoming, may be had for from $5 to $20. Black furs, recently grown into vogue, are stylish as well as cheap. Astrachan, which led them, has passed entirely out. So low does it rank in fashion that a whole sacque may be obtained for $30; while $15 will get as nice a set as need be. Black marten, sometimes known as Alaska sable, is very desirable, and certainly economical, as it is but $12 to $40 a set. The hair is rather short, yet soft and close withal; and the disagreeable odor, once clinging to this skin, is wholly removed by an improved process of curing. Lynx is, perhaps, the most attractive of the black pelts, its long hair seeming like flossy silk; but it is dyed, and the dye is never so thoroughly absorbed as not to rub off, crocking clothes and flesh. The best furriers frankly tell this, and do not recommend the purchase of an article whose beauty and reasonableness (only $20 to $40 is asked) would otherwise be tempting. Among dress furs are silver fox, chinchilla, and blue fox; ermine and grebe not competing for favor this year. Silver fox has a long, fine, fringe-like hair, black-brown in color, seemingly tipped with boar-frost. Its delicacy amounts to frailness, and it is difficult to make a set last two seasons. Therefore, the range of $50 to $250 renders a set very expensive. Furs should wear half a dozen years, and for persons of ordinary means to pay so much for what will not endure more than two winters' careful use, is almost a pure waste of money. Chinchilla, exceedingly handsome in its tender neutral tinting, has the faults of silver fox, and though obtainable at from $12 to $75, it is so fragile as to be considered of the costliest. Blue fox is like its relative silver fox in quality, and in color closely resembles the old stone marten. Its value is that of the fine grades of Chinchilla. These three pelts are widely employed for trimming velvet cloaks, and by the yard bring from $5 to $15. They seem especially adapted to this purpose; but are not nearly so economical as mink, for which the original outlay is less, and the capacity for continuous wear ten times as great. Fur robes are almost indispensable to people for tunate enough to own carriages and sleighs. White bear, black bear, white fox, gray fox, prairie wolf, Hudson's Bay wolf, beaver, silver bear, and many more are all made into these warm coverings. Their money value is from $12 to $500; but their comfort is inestimable. Foot muffs in similar skins, lined with fur, are extremely desirable; and at from $3.50 to $12, they are very nice holiday gifts to country friends. Book Clubs. As there will not be any surplus money for most of us to spend for books this winter, it is a matter of consequence to invest the little we have in the most judicious manner. In such straits as these no investment with which we are acquainted pays so large an intellectual dividend as a Book Club. Three dollars a year is very little to pay for one's intellectual nourishment; by itself it will not secure even a good magazine; but if forty persons will give as much for their united pleasure, it will be enough to furnish as much reading matter for the same number of persons as is easily digested in a season. A Book Club is the simplest of societies to manage; it will, in fact, almost manage itself. When the Club is formed, a president, vice-president, sec retary, and treasurer,—generally united in one,—and a committee of buyers are chosen. The secretary really does the business, the other officers being mainly nominal; he receives the books, has them neatly covered with paper, marks the length of time each person may keep the volumes, delivers them to the member entitled to the earliest perusal, and takes charge of them again when the round fhe Club has been made. For convenience's sake, it is well to have pasted inside the cover of each book a printed slip containing the names of the members in the order of their dwellings. This shows each to whom to hand the work when his time is out. Opposite the names should be two spaces-one for the date of the receipt of the volume, the other for the date of passing it on. This indicates, of course, if it be retained over the proper period; and when such is the case, it is usual to fine the delinquent two or three cents a day for the detention. A rule of this kind, however, should be fixed by a vote of the whole society, and not be optional with any officer. In the selection of material, periodical literature should not be overlooked. The leading American literary magazines are indispensable; to these should be added a scientific periodical,-good but not too abstruse,-the best juveniles, and two or three of the standard English reviews-or better, one of those admirable American publications which give us the pith of British periodical literature. In choosing the books, nice judgment and care must be exercised. Those of a purely ephemeral quality it is well to avoid, and yet works cannot be selected as if for a private library. The very best selection will always include a few of the best novels of the year, two or three volumes of clever essays, and occasionally a readable, biography; and the rest should be in accordance with the general taste of the Club. Members should feel free to suggest the purchase of any particular work, and, if such work is deemed of sufficient interest, the request should be granted by the buying committee. The books ought to be started on the circuit by different persons, that all may have equal chances, for some first perusal. At the end of the year, when all the volumes have been read, a capital custom is to hold a private auction, and sell them at low rates to the members, thus permanently disposing of the books, and obtaining small surplus fund for another year "Oldport Days." CULTURE AND PROGRESS. WHAT was once Newport is now really Oldport. Though Mr. Higginson gives its picture a flattering touch in calling it the only place in New England where ivy or traditions will grow,-for there are regions along the southward-looking and historic shore of Connecticut where both flourish quite as greenly, -yet it is one of the few American towns that lead backward steps from the present to the past through easy and picturesque paths. It invites romantic fancies by something more than common shapes and trivial events that time has mellowed. There is the still life of its decayed commerce, which once made it familiar with a larger world. There are interiors where signs of French courtliness linger. The sunlight, bright as two centuries ago, and the unceasing roll of waves have not effaced the ancient stain of a cruel wrong. No one of these influences, slowly molding the aspects of the place, and subtly shaping the character of its residents, escapes our author. His first two essays, "Oldport in Winter," and "Oldport Wharves," are full of color and mood. Their close, careful descriptions of nature shimmer with a fancy that sometimes melts into the fantastic, and their nice play of change in air, and light, and water, seems to shadow the delicate differences traced between the people, and the ways of the old time and those of the new. The newest time, with its bright swarm of summer accidents, adds nothing real to what is Oldport's own. Only in noting it the author, unfortunately, turns aside to fall into the old rut, and exalt Boston and Philadelphia lineage above New York glitter. Just the same right to coats of arms, whatever that may be worth, just the same possession of all that is supposed to follow upon it, exists in all the three cities, in one no more than in the others. New York has the ostentation of new wealth besides; but real New York does not honor that any more than her sisters do. They will understand this in half a century, when all three have grown alike The finest part of the substance of these essays, however, is not wasted upon the traces of the past that still live in Oldport. For any habitation of *Oldport Days. By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. men set in beautiful surroundings of nature its inheritance from the dead world is of less worth than its communion with the living one. Peculiarities derived from stock and descent afford a narrow theme, soon exhausted. They serve our author only as suggestions for relations to a larger family, and a wider home. He strays naturally into what George Eliot describes as the tempting range of relevancies called the universe." Taken singly, his studies of the face of nature, and his notes of human sentiments are distinct and charming; but there is a sense of connection with a whole running through them all, and binding them all together, that makes them doubly beautiful. The various aspects of land and sea are colors in one picture, and all movements pulses in one life. Of the essays the one entitled "In a Wherry" is most pervaded and most smoothly knit together by this sense of unity. Elsewhere it strives for expression till it expresses itself in extravagance, endowing everything with sentience, giving emotion and will to the tides, the lighthouse, the charging and retreating clouds, the cavalry escort of winds and waves. There is no attempt to analyze and formulate this idea of universal common life-it eludes analysis, and can only be illustrated by figures. Nor is there any distinction made between this ether of existence, inspiring all being. and individual human will. There is the same indefiniteness of thought that is characteristic of Shelley, shown in imputing consciousness to inanimate things, as thoroughly poetic as it is thoroughly unphilosophical. Sometimes it lends itself to the comic, as in the likening of planks springing from the hold of a sinking ship to liberated men, and of tossing casks to bewildered beasts. Sometimes analogy wanders into a fantastic sense of sym. metry and fitness, as in the conceit of a narrowcove prescribing the limits of a sonnet, giving room. within its projecting wall for fourteen lines of ripple. One passage is fanciful just to the verge of compre. hension, which speaks of the joyous life of the animal rising through childhood into man. most finished picture of the many that convey intimations of this unity of all things is the delicate description of the dragon-fly, flitting and hovering over some forest pool, which reads like a lovelier prose. rendering of the lines in Shelley's "Alastor," "A The well, dark, gleaming, and of most translucent wave." It is the only one that gives distinct shape to such meaning, in the words, "Whence came the correspondence between this beautiful shy creature and the moist, dark nook, shot through with stray and transitory sunlight where it dwells? The analogy is as unmistakable as that between the scorching heats of summer and the shrill cry of the cicada. They suggest questions that no savant can answer, mysteries that wait, like Goethe's secret of morphology, till a sufficient poet can be born." Here is a glimpse of the thought that the very words which the author uses in saying that "sky and sea show but gradations of the same color, and afford but modifications of the same element," would describe the universe. Does any timid reader start, as if all this were admirable poetry, but, as religion, no better than pantheism? We are unable to see how the dream of identity and unity of mere life in all living things excludes the idea of a Maker of Life, or how it follows, if the web of creation is one, that there is no Creator. But the essayist may be safely left to defend himself against any such criticism. The author sees, then, much more than the eye notes, and observes for the sake of generalizing. His faculty is not successfully employed when, reversing the process, he attempts to imagine human beings, or to devise situations. The persons in "An Artist's Creation " are unreal, like shadows of some single trait clothed with names, and the incidents of "The Haunted Window" make it an ordinary plece of story-telling. On the other hand, in the discursiveness of "A Drift-wood Fire," and "Footpaths," he finds scope for the subtlest fancies, that shoot out from his theme like needles in crystallization. "A Shadow," too, is another wayward elaboration of a chance thought into associations with human tenderness-a contradiction that borrows the most fleeting of all things as the basis for realities. This caprice might be fixed upon as the key to his treatment of all subjects—as if to say, it is not the particular human beings, but humanity, that attracts him-not the sounds or colors of the moment for themselves that he cares to describe, but their part in the general harmony. As philanthropy can be cultivated at the expense of more homely virtues, so such a passion in literature for the universal may be quite consistent with imperfect conception of subordinate parts. This preference of broad effects to details fixes a blemish upon the translations of the sonnets from Petrarch, almost faultless as they are in other respects. Their setting is perfect: the fanciful introduction to each, while most artistic, avoids being artificial: the expression of the change in their spirit after the death of Laura, under the image of a vessel sweeping on with snowy sails in full sunlight, then suddenly altering her course into shadow, is especially beautiful. Of the threefold quality for which these poems are famous, nobleness in form, sentiment, and thought, the translator preserves the first two elements at the sacrifice of the last. It is true, feeling is dominant in them, and it is right to maintain its pervading tone, but not to the exclusion of the intellectual fancies and contrasts, deeper than verbal ones, that make so large a part of their excellence. They are not mere melodious gushes of passion, nor is their passion all clarified from sensuousness. Many of them are carefully constructed with antithesis and balance of thoughts, which are not conceits, and expressed in direct images that have the force of simplicity. Moreover, Petrarch could love as a man, for he loved others besides Laura, and the speech of his love is sometimes very plain, not coarse, but natural amid all its elevation. Perhaps it is impossible to preserve just this threefold combination in an English rendering: if memory serves us, Archdeacon Wrangham, who, of all men, might have succeeded in doing so, as his translations from Horace prove, was obliged to yield the graces of form. Some of Rossetti's renderings from the sonnets of Dante and his contemporaries bring the vigor and heart of the best English to the expression of strong passion. The third of his selections from Guido Cavalcanti, and all of the Vita Nuova as he gives it betray a finer sympathy with the love and sorrow of the original than Mr. Higginson seems to have gained. These are not modern paraphrases,' but clear copies of simple thoughts in bold and quaint forms. Perhaps our author has conquered the difficulties of formal construction in these sonnets as thoroughly as the genius of our language permits; and his rendering conveys all their lofty fervor, their reverent, almost worshipful, ascriptions of praise and honor, and the mournful cadences that give to the later ones the grave sweetness of elegy. It would be unjust not to quote a few instances, such as our limited space permits, of lines in which the point and vigor are refined away into vague effusions of sentiment, and the intended thought is lost. For example, we can hardly err in thinking that the simple elegance of salutation in “ "Madonna belongs to a range of thought very different from the associations called up by the words, "my queen," as they are affectedly used in the most modera verse. In the same sonnet, the 129th, the line apostrophizing a meadow, “and hold'st her memory in thy leafy bowers," wanders quite away from the simple, concrete image literally presented thus, “ and keep'st some imprint of her lovely footstep." In the 123d, something might have been attempted more closely answering to the strength of " that all I see seems shadows, smoke, and dreams," than "but all things else bewilders and effaces." So, in the same sonnet, the line, "whose spell might once have taught the hills their places," overlooks the artful contrast of the original, "that might make mountains move, and streams stand still." Some of the most delicate points are missed in the 314th, or the 87th, as it is numbered in Buttura's edition, which places in a second series those written after Laura's death. "This sweet completeness" merely eludes the rendering of "that lovely frequent change "—and the opposition in the thoughts, "with perfect kindness, perfect purity," is quite neglected in the translated line beginning, "held sweet restraints." The close of the 191st is spoiled by the introduction of the author's favorite false note. Petrarch lends no consciousness to the stream, which he calls simply "clear and rushing." To render this "stream too clear and bright to grieve," confuses and weakens the personal sentiment of the poem. In the 253d, (or 26th), the image of "love stripped and empty of its light" is not easy to present in a form conveying the idea of loss of both inward and outward radiance, but not even an attempt is made to present it in the words "whose light no more on earth finds room."” And in the last triplet, "desire is blind and brief," loses half the sense conveyed by the “blind and over-eager" of the original. The 302d is an instance of diffuseness and inaccuracy suffered for the sake of rhyme. "Abito adorno" may, perhaps, bear the meaning of "stately mien" as well as "splendid dress," but certainly not that of "queen." And the misplacing of the epithet “errante," which belongs to "the world," and expresses a contrast between it and the fixed abode of heaven, compels the addition of "darkened" which neither thought nor term in the original permits. That so difficult a task as the translation of any of Petrarch's sonnets should have been less than supremely well performed is no discredit to the author, who has come so near perfection in it as to need only a little more faithful labor to attain greater closeness and spirit, without loss of tenderness or melody in frequent instances like those we have cited. Stedman's Complete "Poetical Works.✈ It is not easy to estimate the powers of a poet, young or old, until all his poems have been brought together. There are poets of whom we should think very highly, if we were acquainted with only one or two of their best poems, and there are other poets of whom we should think very meanly, if only their worst poems were known to us. Our standard of judgment would necessarily be an incorrect one, in either case, and we could not well adjust it without the assistance of the poets themselves, which could come in no better form than a collected edition of their poems. It is a risky proceeding, we admit, for a poet to put himself whole in the hands of his readers and critics, and few young poets can afford to do it. Of all the younger American poets Mr. E. C. Stedman could afford it best. We have read carefully the beautiful edition of his Poetical Works, which Messrs. J. R. Osgood & Co. have lately published, and we can say in all sincerity, that it has not only not disappointed us, but that it has surprised us. There are poems in it that are worthy of any living poet. Such an one is " Pen elope," a charming companion-piece to Tennyson's "Ulysses:" such an one is "Alectryon," which recalls Keats at his richest ; and such an one is "Spoken at Sea," of which the least that can be said is, that it is worthy of Campbell. The "Dartmouth Ode," which our readers will remember, is better than any poem of the kind ever written in England, and only equaled here by Mr. Lowell's masterly Harvard Ode. Mr. Stedman gives us in this volume the substance of his three previous volumes, besides what he has written since the latest was published; in other words, the pith and marrow of his poetic life, from 1860 to 1874,-thirteen years of honest, manly work. Read chronologically, as it should be, we cannot but see that he has grown steadily,-not, of course, in every poem, which would be too much to expect, but grown steadily all the time, and in the right direction, which in his case was that of strength both of thought and language. He started in the best path, and he has never left it. He has one quality which no other American poet possesses in the same degree, and which may be defined as a felicitous interblending of the serious and comic elements of verse. Praed had it eminently; Dr. Holmes had a touch of it when he wrote The Last Leaf;" Mr. Saxe is entirely destitute of it. Its best examples in Mr. Stedman's first volume are. 'Bohemia," and "The Ballad of Lager Bier;" in his second volume, "Peter Stuyvesant's New Year's Call;" and in his third, "Fuit Ilium," "Pan in Wall Street," and "The Doorstep." He is never more happy than in poems like these, but he is larger in others that we have named. Running our eyes over the pages of this triplicate volume of Mr. Stedman's, we linger at that rollicking, saucy brochure, "The Diamond Wedding," at "Heliotrope," "Apollo," "The Freshet," and "How Old Brown took Harper's Ferry." What reception the little volume which contained these met with when it was first published, we have forgotten, if we ever knew, and it does not matter. It is clear now that it introduced a new poet to the world,-a poet of varied powers, and positive origi nality,-an originality which even the influence of Tennyson's manner in "The Freshet" did not disturb. "Alice of Monmouth," we think as we go on, is defective as “Maud" is, i. e., the thread of story is too slight to sustain the poems which are strung upon it, and, upon the whole, is no advance on his earlier volume, although two or three of the shorter poems of which it is composed are finenotably so the section commencing, "Wear no armor, timid heart," which reads like a dirge out of Webster's "Duchess of Malfy." The minor poems grow better and better, the best being "The Test," "The Old Love and the New," "Estelle," and the romantic ballad of "Montagu." The story of "The Blameless Prince," which we suppose is Mr. Stedman's own, is psychologically interesting, and carefully |