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as black as we have been painted. The iteration of the proverb saps our resolutionemasculates our will. It makes us believe that any and every effort to struggle against misrepresentation is vain-is wasted exertion. We grow morose and cynical. We are disgusted with ourselves, and feel malevolent toward the world-for at that particular time we remember only the fools and scoundrels in it-and in such mood the tempter, in the shape of the proverb, finds us, and fits us to his purpose.

He who seriously quotes the maxim is dishonest at heart, feeble in principle, cowardly of nature. He may not have stained himself as yet; but you may be sure he is biding his occasion. And, when that comes, he will plunge his arms elbow-deep into the immoral dye, to be certain that ill-fame shall not color him below his desert.

"Beware of the surprises of the heart" -a sentimental caution which originated, perhaps, with Lamartine-has been made to discharge duty it was never intended for. It is employed now to suppress all generous impulses, all emotional affection, all spontaneity of action. In this age and country, the heart is too much inclined to wait upon the dictates of the mind. The intense matterof-fact latter half of the nineteenth century has so cramped and choked sensibility that its emanations are satirically labeled "Gush," and uniformly ridiculed. We need rather to try to evoke surprises of the heart, in this period of premeditation and calculation; to cultivate in that greatly-neglected organ the capacity to be amazed.

Warmth and outgo of the heart are ever beneficial while they rest under the cool shadow of the judgment. Affection never hurts reason half so much as reason burts affection; and admonitions to hold the feelings in abeyance are unnecessary, while the feelings tend to stagnation from misuse. It is the cold and over-cautious people who tell us to guard against our hearts, with vague intimations that they have suffered from the absence of sentimental vigilance. Their faces and antecedents contradict their hints, and should incline us to do the very thing they proscribe. Persons persistently complaining that their hearts get the better of them almost invariably get and keep the better of their hearts, and have withal a marvelously easy conquest.

"Guilt is always timid" is one of the phrases that must have been coined in the mint of ignorance. The student of human nature knows that guilt, and that of the deepest order, is very often so superlatively audacious that it cannot be frightened or abashed.

What is termed wickedness is very different actually from the thing it is theoretically. It is sincerely conscious of itself (the popular otion is that it is ever appalled by its own mage), and when it is conscious it sees itelf at a remarkably propitious angle. Vice 3 its own vindicator through the very perersity of judgment that allows it to exist. ts continuance lends it a hardness and firmess which neither disapproval nor denunciaion can soften or shake. Guilt can and will ɔok rebuking innocence steadily in the face,

while sensitive and suspected virtue shall be overwhelmed with confusion and mortification.

Belief in the proverb wrongs innocence incalculably by causing it to be mistaken for guilt, and at the same time acquits this of its offense. If we wish to detect guilt, we must discard the maxim, or interpret it by contrariety; for, wherever we confront indubitable, clearly-established guilt, we shall be likely to find it gazing as calmly and defiantly at us as does the Sphinx at the sands of the surrounding desert.

People like to be deceived." How often we hear this! Perhaps they do; but what kind of people are they? They must be peculiar, since they are never the people we meet. Everybody will bear witness that his or her acquaintances hate to be, and are angry at being, deceived. They that are fond of deception are plainly those unknown, abstract folk, who are sure to be punished for the sins we commit, and whom we love to regard metaphysically as the victims of vaguely-violated justice.

The trite aphorism in its truth or falsehood is of small consequence. Its mischief is in its instigation to deceive. Most of us have sufficient tendency in that direction without any verbal stimulant or honeyed sophistry. The phrase is a trick put upon us wherewith to trick our fellows. It is a cunning device to mollify our consciousness of doing wrong. Not merely this, it proclaims as a benevolence what is manifestly a meanness on our part; and we are so willing to appear duped when we are not our faults being in question—that we appeal to maxims to prove the unprovable. If the conscience smarts, a timely proverb is hunted up to draw out the sting. The sting may stick; but the prescription is paraded, and the cure is inferred.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing." Thousands echo this without remembering or knowing that it is a line of Pope, probably made with no higher intent than to fit the corresponding rhyme of the couplet. It has become an aphorism, a proverb, because it has a taking air and sounds well-reason enough for the currency of half our popular sayings. A little learning may be dangerous, but it is far better than no learning, which is danger itself. The corollary is, that ignorance is comparatively free from peril, which is ten times as false as the original proposition.

The greatest fallacy of this and many maxims is in the necessary inference that is drawn. Their greatest mischief lies in their incompleteness, and in the fact that they are generally accepted as complete. Any half truth, or partial falsehood, if felicitously expressed and aptly repeated, has fivefold the weight in controversy or conversation that a whole truth awkwardly worded has. He who could make the proverbs of a nation would possess more influence than he who should write its history or frame its laws. They have been defined the wit of one and the wisdom of many. They are oftener the fallacy of one and the inability to detect it of the multitude.

Proverbs depend not for popularity upon

wisdom, but upon the art of putting them. The farther they are removed from obvious truth, if they be adroitly couched, the more likely they are to be accepted. A spice of ill-nature is prone to preserve them, and render them appetizing to the public palate. We like to repeat what we know is false when the falsehood is glossed by the embalming epigram, the consciousness that the thing has been said before freeing us from accountability for its promulgation.

Hardly a maxim or proverb exists in our own or any other language that may not be taken to pieces before its atom of truth, if any, can be found. The proverbs of the French and Spanish are the wittiest and the falsest; those of the Germans and Scandinavians the dullest and the truest. No current saying but is contradicted by another-as, "Two of a trade never agree;' ""Birds of a feather flock together;" "In a multitude of counselors there is safety;" "Too many cooks spoil the broth;" and so on through every variety of affirmation and denial, of inconsistency and contrariety.

All sorts of sustainment for all sorts of conduct, every kind of encouragement for every virtue and every vice, may be gathered from proverbs. Entirely devoid of argument, they are regarded and quoted as arguments; defiant of logic, they accomplish what logic cannot. Properly considered, they are helps to language, ornaments to conversation, delicate punctures for pretense, of inestimable value to society. But considered, as they usually are, as strengtheners of position, excusers of conduct, palliators of offense, they are inestimably pernicious. They teach the same lesson and the same truth which the declaration does-that a stoutly-maintained lie is infinitely better than a poorly-defended truth.

JUNIUS HENRI BROWNE.

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EDITOR'S TABLE.

a noble and handsome bequest to that city | bestow, but by the suitable advice they give
whose remarkable growth had been the real
force that produced his wealth. There is a

PROPERTY sometimes accumulates by library of considerable pretension founded

the strenuous exertions of the owner, and sometimes as the result of means which the owner had little share in producing. The man who opens railroads, builds steamships, establishes ferries, supplies the community with conveniences, promotes the general prosperity in promoting his own, is fairly entitled to all the rewards his sagacity and enterprise bring him. Even such a man, however, is under many obligations to the community, and should realize that his fortune has accumulated by the coöperation, consent, and support of the people. However sagaciously a man may direct the labors of others so as to secure their and his own best advantage, it is still true that his wealth is rendered possible solely by the energies he is permitted to control. No man can become rich save by the consent and as a result of the activities of the community. While it is therefore true that the most courageous leader owes a measure of indebtedness to the world about him, how large and signal is the debt from him who has looked passively on and grown rich simply by having his wealth thrust upon him!

by the Astors, but the spirit that endowed
the institution stopped half-way, and has
permitted it to drag ou in a half-starved con-
dition. Its funds have been so insufficient for
the purchase of new books, that an Amer-
ican student would find a larger collection of
the books of his own country in the British
Museum than in the leading library of New
York! The endowment by Mr. Astor's will
of two hundred thousand dollars will put it in
a little better condition; but the people had a
right to expect that a liberal portion of the
wealth, held by Mr. Astor as a little more
than a custodian, would be appropriated to
place the Astor Library in a foremost place
among the great libraries of the world.

The people of New York have long hoped
their millionaires would establish an art-gal-
lery worthy of the city. We do not hesitate
to say that it was distinctly Mr. Astor's
duty to have contributed liberally toward
this end. The Metropolitan Museum of Art
is a worthy project. A few zealous gentlemen
have given largely and labored strenuously
to establish this useful institution, but it is
still greatly in want of funds. It would
have been a graceful and easy thing for Mr.
Astor to have placed it on a footing of per-
manent prosperity.

The value of land depends wholly upon neighborhood. An area that would be worthless in the wilderness becomes priceless when towns grow up within and around it. Α Mr. Astor, it is said, counted his buildgreat real-estate owner, like the late Mr. As-ings by the thousand. The stranger wandertor, becomes enormously rich solely by the fortuitous circumstances that surround himby the energies, industries, enterprises, and achievements, of his neighbors. It is true that no man, even under these conditions, can accumulate wealth without prudence and sagacity. It is easy to be improvident and easy to make mistakes. But where forethought and self-denial deserve their rewards, it still remains true that a man who has absorbed into himself an enormous wealth, almost wholly because of the great activities of the people about him, holds his wealth under obligations that he has no moral right to ignore. The wealth of the late Mr. Astor was not won by him; it was conferred upon him. No agrarian or communistic principles must abridge rights of possession; the safety of the community as a whole depends upon the maintenance of the sacredness of property; but we may be sure that if men of property are determined to deny public claims upon them, then the agrarian and communistic spirit will be sure to grow into formidable proportions.

The people of New York had a right to expect that one who, like the late Mr. Astor, had become enormously rich under the circumstances we have described, would leave

ing through the city, would naturally expect to
find at least a few architectural piles erected
by the taste and munificence of the wealthi-
est man in the country. With the excep-
tion of the Astor Library, there are none.
No schools, no academies, no churches, no
public pleasure - grounds, bear his name.
The wealth of this great millionaire is not
even evidenced in useful or economic things.
The best form of house for the laboring-
man is one of the problems of the day. Mr.
Astor, with all his great resources, made no
effort to solve it. No model tenements went
up under his inspiration; no pretty and
tasteful rows of cottages were devised by his
hand; no contribution whatever toward the
solution of questions in the economy of home
ever came from him. He made no experi-
ments, acquired no experience, contributed
no results, set no needed example even in the
domain of house-building, into which his ac-
cumulating wealth ever steadily went.

Some forty thousand dollars have been left
to charitable institutions. We are of those
who question the permanent good of alms-
giving, and hence have no great regret that
Mr. Astor did not distribute a portion of his
wealth in this way. But there are institu-
tions which are charitable not by what they

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and the opportunities they afford; and these all had just claims upon the millionaire's bounty. Had Mr. Astor, however, withhel every form of charity during his life and in his will, yet used his wealth with some thing of an eye to the public good and with public spirit; had he sometimes risked an investment that if successful would have redounded to the city's good; had he even indirectly promoted the welfare, comfort, or æsthetic pleasures of the people-we should now utter no word of complaint.

LAST week we suggested that Oxford and Cambridge should unite with Harvard and Yale in composing a dictionary which should be accepted as final and authoritative by the people of both countries. We have since discovered that we therein committed på giarism upon ourselves, having once before made the same suggestion, a circumstateë we had entirely forgotten. We don't know that any good or evil is likely to arise from this self-repetition, for it is tolerably certain that it is hopeless to look for the combina tion we have indicated, much as it may be is sired. Ancient Oxford and Cambridge are not fond of us enough to meet us on terms of equality. To the haughty exclusiveness England's aristocratic seats of learning, ou oldest and best colleges seem new and up

start. But if the wise heads of the Isis and the Cam could not be induced to unite in lowship with those of the Charles and the City of Elms, at least a union of America colleges for the purpose mentioned could be formed. Harvard, Yale, Cornell, the t versity of Virginia, and the University d Michigan, with such other colleges as seem desirable, might unite for the purp of forming for the American people a sys of orthography and orthoepy that would acceptable to and binding upon all sectici of the country.

If it ever chance that a dictionary is p forth under auspices such as we have in cated, we hope the learned convention boldly grapple with the corruptions in p nunciation sanctioned by the existing de tionaries. It is singular that the orthoep! certain words is permitted by authority retain a vulgarity and slovenliness whi the dictionaries and the masters so resolut contend against when exhibited in oth cases. It is asserted that the main dif ence between cultured and uncultured pers in the utterance of words is, that the form open their mouths and articulate distinct, neither clipping their words nor smothering the sounds, while the uncultured fail to ma nice distinctions, slovenly bury one so in another, and often fail to articulate fre letters altogether. But while educated pe

ple are careful not to clip final consonants such as uttering singing as singin', or and as an', and not to confuse unaccented vowelsounds, such as pronouncing innocent, innosint, they are not permitted only, but required, to obscure and corrupt the sounds of both vowels and consonants, in other words, being distinctly instructed to say agen for again, agenst for against, enny for any, wimen for women, gallus for gallows, bellus for bellows, extr'ordinary for extraordinary, off'n for often, cas'l for castle, Wooster for Worcester, and so on. We make no pretensions to philological learning, but we believe we may venture to say that the accepted pronunciation of the words we have enumerated has no support but that of custom, and if we are right in this we should be glad to know why custom is sanctioned in slovenly looseness in one set of words and condemned for it in others! As the matter now stands, the man who carelessly talks about an "innocent person" is sneered at as being vulgarly careless, and if he should endeavor to be exact in the next word he uses, and utter often as it is spelled, he would once more encounter the sneers of the critic as being inelegantly precise. We hope our hypothetical convention will condemn all these sanctioned corruptions of the dictionaries, and establish the broad principle that culture and good taste exact distinct articulation in all cases, no words being entitled to privileges that all do not enjoy.

THE selections that we gave last week from a somewhat fantastic article in Blackwood on "Weather" showed that the writer possesses not a little poetic sympathy with some of the aspects of the sky and the atmosphere. But he does great injustice to fog, which he calls the second-born child of the clouds. Rain has charming and snow superb qualities, but fog has nothing to redeem it, according to this writer: "It is stagnant, sulky, and silent;" it is "hopelessly objectionable, ugly, useless, stupid, and dirty." It is amazing how a writer who fairly delights "in richly-endowed but widely wayward Nature" should utter this wholly wrongful judgment upon one of "the family of weather" that to the observant eye has, not less than its kindred, its strange surprises, its picturesque aspects, its manifold beauties. Fog may be dirty in the cities when mixed with and stained by smoke, and at times it is undoubtedly stagnant, if not stupid; but no one who has watched the movements of fog, who has seen the endless number of dissolving views it forms, who has noted the striking and picturesque ways in which the artis use it, but must resent the unhandsome epithets the Blackwood writer bestows upon it. Who that has passed a summer vacation on the sea-shore has not at times stretched himself

upon a headland of the shore, and watched the vagaries and fantastic sports of the soft, subtile, and undulating fog; has not seen it now come rolling in from the sea with swift and steady course, first obscuring the hori zon, then swallowing up sail after sail that dot the watery expause; next seizing upon jutting points of land, sweeping along the sides of the cliffs, until suddenly it takes possession of and blots out the whole surface of sea and land? But presently a blue space breaks overhead; all at once a shadowy sail looms through the mist; the fog lifts and shows a stretch of calm sea; then as suddenly again, as if some prompter regulated the rise and fall of this strange curtain, down falls the drapery of mist, and every thing is hidden! These shiftings and changes make some striking pictures. At one moment the watchful student of the spectacle sees a sail without a hull, dark, shadowy, and mystic in its body, but with its upper line catching the sunlight and glittering white like the wing of some huge bird of the sea; in an instant more the fog has seized upon the sail, and enveloped it wholly, but the mantle is lifted beneath so as to reveal the dark form of the hull. If there are points of wooded headland jutting into the sea, one looks and sees them wholly obscured, but even while he looks a long line of trees appears above a mass of drifting mist, looking like forests hung in the heavens. Pictures like these, forming and dissolving continually before our gaze, we have often watched from our shores; and hence we are forced to say that he must be strangely ignorant of the mystic sprite called Fog who heaps upon it such epithets as those we have quoted. There is no better scenic artist on sea or land than the fog on a summer day when the winds unsteadily come and go.

EVERY American should be gratified at the honor paid to Edouard Laboulaye in his election as a life-member of the newly-created French Senate. As long as he lives, we shall have a friend always ready to defend and praise us in that to-be august body. If there is a sufficient leaven of such men in it, the Senate will be a very different assembly from that of the Empire, for it will be the arena of independent and scholarly thought and enlightened statesmanship, instead of a mere military and sacerdotal echo of an imperial will. It is well that we should not forget or lose sight of those earnest and courageous men who, whether in France or England, were our stout champions in days when the weight of authority as well as of numbers in those countries was distinctly against us. There were many, even among the French republicans, who sympathized with the purpose to break up the Union. The au

thor of "Paris en Amérique" and "Prince Caniche" was not one of them. In the lecture-room and in society he ceaselessly pleaded the cause of our republic. He has always been foremost in any opportunity that has arisen to testify his friendship. He is one of the most enthusiastic of those who desire to honor the old friendship between France and America by erecting the colossal statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. In a private letter to an American he once wrote: "It is no great merit of mine to have defended the cause of the Union during the civil war. I have followed the French tradition, and I remember having, in my youth, heard General Lafayette talk of Washington and of the brave insurgents who have left heirs worthy of them. If there are people in France who have forgotten those noble memories, they are to be pitied; for it is the finest page in our history." M. Laboulaye is one of those moderate republicans who constitute the soundest and best type of contemporary French statesmanship. He is no more visionary than to desire to see his country learn the political lessons derived from our example; and in Europe there is no more intelligent and appreciative student of our Constitution and history. If republicanism in France at last endures, it will be in no small degree owing to the purity and wisdom of such men as Laboulaye.

WE are glad to see that a movement is on foot, organized by a number of ladies, designed to ameliorate the condition of shopgirls and sales-women, who are commonly required to remain standing during the long ten or twelve hours of their daily service. We have more than once pointed out the cruelty of this requirement, and have insisted that, if the health of these young women is to be maintained, a change in the policy of their employers is indispensable. It is strange that so obvious and necessary a thing has to be enforced by organization, and that shopowners can be brought to a just and considerate conduct in this matter by the means only of formulated public opinion. It would have been better, perhaps, had the movement originated among the sales-women themselves; but, as this was not done, it is gratifying to know that some of our ladies have discovered the evil and are endeavoring to remedy it.

A similar movement has been organized in England, where, according to the London journals, sales-women are subjected to a cruel thoughtlessness and exposed to a danger that we believe to be unknown here. "It is really painful," says the Pall Mall Gazette, "to witness the thoughtlessness of some ladies. who, in inclement weather, being themselves well wrapped up, summon to the doors of

their carriages young women from the shops they honor with their patronage, and keep them standing in the cold, regardless of the consequences. The seeds of consumption and other fatal illnesses are probably often sown in this manner, and much misery might be averted by the exercise of a very little consideration and common sense." If American ladies are accustomed to summon saleswomen to their carriage-doors, regardless of the inclemency of the weather, the fact has not fallen under our observation.

PRO

Literary.

ROFESSOR BONAMY PRICE'S "Currency and Banking" (New York: D. Appleton & Co.) forms an admirable complement to Professor Jevons's "Money and the Mechanism of Exchange," reviewed in the JOURNAL a few weeks back. Taking up the subject where Professor Jevons leaves off, Professor Price gives an admirably clear explanation of the theory or philosophy of currency, the nature and function of money, the conditions with which it must comply in order to constitute good currency, the relative advantages and disadvantages of coin and paper currency, and the difference between convertible and inconvertible paper. Though the questions discussed are necessarily abstruse and complicated, the aim has been to reduce them to their simple elementary principles, and by his mere statement of these the author brushes aside most of the difficulties and incongruities which confuse the subject in the popular mind. His definition of money, for example, once thoroughly grasped, will clear the mind at once of nearly all those delusions which have wrought so much mischief in the world:

"Coin, metallic coin, alone is true money, and nothing else is, unless it be a commodity, as an ox, or a cow, or a piece of salt. There is a very decisive reason for this assertion. Every kind of paper styled money carries on its face an order or promise to pay money; and without that order or promise it would be a worthless piece of paper, and nothing more. An order or promise to give a thing is not the thing itself; the thing is absent. This settles the matter absolutely: paper is not money. It is idle to reply that the distinction is unimportant that the bank-note does the same work as money, and that practically there is no harm in calling it money. I answer that the harm is immense for the understanding of currency. The vital fact is obscured that the man who takes a gold-coin for his goods receives an actual piece of property, a metal as valuable as the thing he sells. He acquires not a particle of substance with a check or a bank-note. If the check is dishonored or the bank breaks, he finds nothing in his hand against the wealth that he gave away. checks and bank-notes are true money, then so are spoken words, for they can purchase property, and bind the buyer at law just as strongly as a check. To tell a bookseller to put five pounds' worth of books to his account

If

commits the buyer to payment as completely as a check. Coin is the substance, the reality covenanted to be given for goods bought; consequently coin alone is payment. The coin

at last may never be touched, because it may be put down in an account against which setoffs appear on the debtor and creditor sides; coin then is not asked for, because its equivalent in property has been received. Every thing else spoken words, shop accounts, bank - notes, checks, warrants-are nothing but title-deeds, evidence good at law to compel the stipulated payments in coin, if not voluntarily given. Without a court of law in the background, they are only acknowledgments resting on honor, and may at any moment prove to be empty writing. Coin pays, no form of paper does till what is written upon it is fulfilled."

The practical evils of an inconvertible paper currency are pointed out with great force and clearness; and we have never seen so satisfactory an analysis of the famous Bank Charter Act of 1844, which created the modern Bank of England, as that contained in Professor Price's second chapter. Nearly half the volume is devoted to a consideration of the question, "What is a Bank?" and, though many of the propositions of the author on this subject differ widely from those commonly current, he seems to us to make them good. His position is that a banker deals not in money but in debts; that his function is that of "a broker between two principals." A farmer, for instance, sells his corn, and deposits the proceeds, in the shape of checks and other acknowledgments of debt, with his banker. He draws against this deposit for his current payments, but a considerable time elapses before he draws it all out, and in the mean time the banker lends the balance to a tea-merchant who wants to buy teas, and gives deferred bills to the banker at a discount for the right to draw currency at once. In this transaction it is plain that the corn was simply exchanged for the tea; what the banker did was to furnish the conditions or medium through which the exchange could be effected: "Thus the cardinal and final truth comes out, that one set of goods has been exchanged for anotherthat goods have bought goods that the banker has acted precisely like a sovereign [or dollar], has been a tool, an instrument of exchange. He transfers purchasing power, which he received in the form of a debt to collect, and passes it on in the form of a debt he creates.

That purchasing power resides in the goods sold, directly or indirectly, by the banker's depositor. It is because the depositor has sold corn that the banker is enabled to authorize the merchant to buy tea."

One feature of the book which renders it especially valuable to American readers is that the various questions are discussed with particular reference to the present monetary condition of the United States. Professor Price thinks that every consideration of honor and expediency requires that specie payments shall be resumed at the earliest possible moment, and that resumption necessarily involves some form of contraction, as the currency of the country to-day is plainly greater than its requirements. He is not insensible to the difficulties of the situation,

though he thinks the inconvenience would come, not from a deficiency of currency, but from the fact that contraction would bear hard upon debtors. This inconvenience,

however, would be comparatively slight if contraction were gradual; and in any case the hardship could scarcely be greater than that which inflation inflicted upon creditors. Moreover, men, whether collected in nations or as individuals, cannot do wrong without suffering, and that suffering must be endured if the wrong is to be made to cease.

IT would be difficult to find an exact literary prototype for Mr. Stuart-Glennie's "Pilgrim Memories." It makes a threefold claim upon the reader's attention-as a record of travel, a summary of discussion with the late Henry Thomas Buckle, and a philosophical disquisition; and, through a single chapter, perhaps, one is in some doubt whether the author is going to turn out a tourist, a biographer, or a metaphysician. It does not take long to discover, however, that Mr. Stuart-Glennie cares little for the travel-element in his book. He is but slightly interested in sight-seeing, his faculty of observation and powers of description are small, and he is interested in places and events only in so far as they supply food for his subjective mental processes. Just as many persons go to the Holy Land to refresh their faith and stimu late religious feeling, so he went there to fortify his skepticism by seeing for himself that in the very birthplace of three great religious Nature looks with her usual calm indifference upon the faiths, illusions, and delusions of mankind. His travels are truly described as a pilgrimage; but the pilgrim is in search, not of the shrine and footsteps of the Master, but of the great landmarks in the history of what he considers delusions.

The biographical element of the book is similarly slighted. One naturally expects that a friend of Mr. Buckle's, who shared his travels during several months of that last fatal journey in the East, would add some thing to our singularly meagre knowledge of the author of "The History of Civilization;" but a newspaper obituary of average length would contain every thing in the book relating to Mr. Buckle personally, and even this contributes scarcely any thing to what was already known. Indeed, the author carefully guards himself against revealing any thing new. Whatever he learned of the life, character, and opinions, of Mr. Buckle during those months of intimate association, he regards as acquired in the confidence of friendship, and he thinks it would be a betrayal of that confidence "to report any opinion whatever not found in published writings, or not of such a nature as to have been expressed freely, and without reserve, to others." Even the lengthy discussions, in which Mr. Buckle figures as interlocutor to the author, shed no light, for the part he plays is quite obviously that usually assigned to the other person of a dialogue in which the author conducts the argument on both sides. The few pages of reminiscences in the appendix, reprinted from the Atlantic Monthly, are of more real biographical value than all the rest of the book.

*Pilgrim Memories; or. Travel and Discussion in the Birth-Countries of Christianity with the Late Henry Thomas Buckle. By J. S. Stuart-Glennie, M. A. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

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The explanation of all this is that "Pilgrim Memories" is not really either a record of travel or a biography of Buckle, but a philosophical treatise in disguise. Mr. StuartGlennie has conceived a new system of philosophy, the central point of which is a discovery he believes himself to have made of the "Ultimate Law of History," which, by explaining Nature and history and furnishing a New Ideal, shall supersede Christianity, and bring the period of transition, which began with the Reformation, to a close. For the exposition and verification of this law he has planned a series of works, of which "Pilgrim Memories" constitutes the proœmium or preface-being designed to show the line of thought and discussion which led up to the discovery of the law. The book, therefore, is to be regarded as a contribution to metaphysics (or science, as the author would claim); and, as it would be manifestly unfair to base criticism upon a preface, we will simply say that, while Mr. Stuart - Glennie proves himself an ingenious thinker who has grasped one or two salient ideas with great clearness, he does not succeed in the present work in arousing much enthusiasm for, or confidence in, his new philosophy. In fact, the raw material and preliminary processes of thought can have but slight interest save for the thinker himself, and we find that the leading impression which " Pilgrim Mem

ories" leaves on our mind is that the author manifests a rather unphilosophical and not clearly accounted - for spirit of aggression toward what he calls "Christianism."

IN "The Children's Treasury of English Song" (New York: Macmillan & Co.), Mr. Francis Turner Palgrave has made a collection of poetry for the young as much superior to any previous collection as his “Golden Treasury" is superior to the ordinary English anthologies. The selection is planned for children between nine or ten and fifteen or sixteen years of age, and, by thus excluding from the constituency aimed at, infancy on the one hand and nearly-grown readers on the other, Mr. Palgrave has avoided the incongruous mingling of nursery rhymes and passionate or reflective poetry, and rendered it possible to apply a consistent standard of choice. Of the standard here applied suitability to childhood is, of course, the principal feature, but, this quality secured, nothing has been admitted which, in the editor's opinion, does not reach a high rank of poetical merit. "The standard of merit as poetry,' as Mr. Palgrave observes in his preface, “has excluded a certain number of popular favorites. But the standard of suitability to childhood,' as here understood, has excluded many more pieces: pictures of life as it seems to middle age-poems colored by sentimentalism or morbid melancholy, however attractive to readers no longer children-love | as personal passion or regret (not love as the groundwork of action)-artificial or highlyallusive language-have, as a rule, been held unfit. The aim has been to shun scenes and sentiments alien to the temper of average healthy childhood, and hence of greater intrinsic difficulty than poems containing unusual words." The somewhat rigid applica

tion of rules of choice gives the collection a rather unfamiliar air as compared with most of its predecessors. At least half the poems which have been included, as a matter of course, in all such collections are omitted; and many new ones are introduced which have never before been regarded as especially adapted to children. The name of William Blake, for example, has probably never found its way into any previous collection of children's poetry, whereas Mr. Palgrave draws upon him more frequently than upon any other single writer. It cannot be doubted that most children under fifteen will find study requisite to the understanding of many of the pieces included in the “Treasury;' but then this is true of all similar collections, and those who trust themselves to Mr. Palgrave's guidance will have the satisfaction of knowing that they will be introduced only to poetry of real merit and permanent value.

In order to smooth the way of the childish reader as much as possible, Mr. Palgrave has provided copious foot-notes, explaining every unusual word, and all involved or obscure phrases and allusions. Critical and historical notes at the end furnish all the additional information and guidance needed; and an index of writers, with one of first lines, renders the book easy to consult. As to the arrangement of the pieces, no regular plan seems to have been followed, but different pieces are grouped together in such a way that by their mere juxtaposition they serve to explain each other, and to set off the special merits of each. Finally, the collection is not so large but that an intimate companionship can be established between the young reader and all its contents.

THE title is the prettiest thing about Theo. Gift's "Pretty Miss Bellew" (Holt's "Leisure Hour Series "). It is not without cleverness of a certain kind, and is free from the most glaring faults of current fiction; but, for a story which is not dull, or vulgar, or commonplace, it comes nearer being tedious than any we have recently encountered. For one thing, the author, who is the most conspicuous personage in the book, does not win our allegiance. We take Mr. Gift to be a man (or is it a woman?) who prides himself upon seeing further into a millstone than most people; on detecting pride where humility was supposed to grovel, affectation in the very midst of frankness and unconventionality, and sham in the very detestation of sham. He is perpetually discovering some hitherto hidden phenomenon in an ordinary character or situation; and on such occasions button-holes the reader confidentially, talks to him in the first person, and generally in parenthesis, and condescendingly helps forward his lagging perceptions. Following his cue, the reader feels continually as if he were on the verge of some new revelation in human nature; and yet, after all, Mr. Gift's " "characters are but the ordinary people of fiction, and his book an ordinary story about them. Lady Margaret, the weak, self-sacrificing mother, is a familiar acquaintance; Dick is a type of scapegrace far better drawn in Trollope's "Way of the

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World; " Clive is the conventional version of Rochester, whose stern exterior and boorish manners cover a warm heart and the most chivalrous instincts; and even pretty Miss Bellew is the familiar ingenué whose imperfections are more charming than other women's perfections. As to the plot, he must be but a novice in novel-reading who, when he reads in the first chapter that Clive sneers at Miss Bellew's "gushing ways," and that she thinks him a "stuck-up pig," does not hear the predestinate wedding-bells.

It would probably surprise the author if it were told him, but the children are the most successful people in his book. These are really natural and pleasing, and are so simply because he has not conceived it necessary to apply to them his over-elaborate method. They brighten the story whenever they enter it, and, if the other characters were drawn as simply and unaffectedly, "Pretty Miss Bellew" would be a book as satisfactory as it is clever. We say little about the plot and other features of the story, though Mr. Gift might well be praised for his skill in a sort of cumulative preRaphaelite word-painting. "Pretty Miss Bellew" is essentially a novel of character, and will accept judgment on no other or subordinate grounds.

THE tenth volume of the "Bric-a-Brac Series" (New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.) contains "Personal Reminiscences by Constable and Gillies," being extracts from the recently-published "Life and Literary Correspondence of Archibald Constable," and from the "Memoirs of a Literary Veteran," published in 1851. Constable was a great publisher in the early years of the century, and has become more widely known than most publishers of his time by reason of his intimate connection with Sir Walter Scott. Gillies was an obscure author, long since forgotten, who wrote some verse and did a good deal of miscellaneous literary work, attaining a kind of reputation by means of some translations from the German and Danish, whose literary treasures he was one of the first to discover. Both of them were Scotchmen, they lived about the same time, and each had a rather extensive acquaintance among contemporary men of letters. Such of their reminiscences as Mr. Stoddard has brought together deal almost exclusively with authors, and the present volume, consequently, has a more distinctly literary flavor than any other in the series.

We cannot say, however, that we have been either amused or edified by it in any considerable degree. Constable's reminiscences, naturally enough, refer almost exclusively to his business dealings with authors, and the commercial aspect of authorship has never been a fascinating or agreeable one. The correspondence with William Godwin, and a letter or two of Jeffrey's, are the only portions of Constable's contributions that are either fresh or suggestive. Gillies's reminiscences are better; but, even here, the selection resembles most other collections of bric-a-brac, in consisting of a few really choice bits mingled with a good deal of what plain-spoken people would call trash.

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