child hardy by cruel exposure, or to protect it from croup or pneumonia by a string of amber beads, or by shutting it up in furnace-heated houses. Lay away its muslin frills until June; put woolen stockings on its legs, flannel (not half-cotton woven vests) on its body, and velvet, silk, merino,-whatever you choose, or can afford,-on top of that; tie on a snug little hood, and turn the baby out every winter's day (unless the wind be from the north-east and the air foggy), and before spring its bright eyes and rosy cheeks will give it a different beauty from any pure robes of white. Third. Another scarcely less serious mistake is the theory that the moment ill temper, natural depravity, original sin, or whatever you choose to call it, appears in a child, it is the parent's duty to apply the rod, or moral suasion,-in short, to "begin its training." Now it is a fair rule to start withthat no child under two years, who is perfectly healthy and comfortable, will worry or cry. Colic, or a budding tooth, has much more to do with its temper than Adam, or any spiritual snake. We urge upon the young mother spearmint, coddling, unlimited patience-anything rather than force, moral or physical. Even when the child is older, it is safer to begin the treatment of all attacks of illhumor or perverseness by inquiring into the state of its digestion. When the mother rises cross and moody, she knows very well it is owing to the late supper last night, or that cup of green tea. There is, luckily, nobody to "apply the rod" in her case, or to throw the blame unjustly on her conscience. Nervousness with a child is almost always a matter of the stomach. A crust of bread will usually put an end to the most obstinate perverseness. Children, for this reason, should never be allowed to go to bed, after a fit of crying, with an empty stomach. A bit of bread and jelly, or a cup of custard, will bring back smiles and happiness when all the moral law fails, and for the soundest of reasons. Hints for Home Work. THERE is a prejudice in small towns among people who hold "style" to be the chief end of man, against book-cases in the parlor or state-room. People, however, who have plenty of books are not apt to care for style, and know how to furnish their houses with good sense and fine meaning. Yet there are, no doubt, among even this class of our readers many young couples just beginning housekeeping with little money, who have not yet learned to carry out their ideas, or to help themselves to the useful and pretty things which they cannot buy. They have the right feeling about their books; they know them as old friends, and feel that hospitality requires that they shall be bestowed with honor in the new home. If they could afford it, there would be no article of furniture on which they would spend so much money as the book-cases. Antique carving, black with age, inlaid work, bronze bass-reliefs, would be but fit housing for their grave and faithful friends; but they have no money for carving, bronze, or even solidly made cases. By all means, let them avoid VOL. XI.-38. the cheap and showy imitations offered in auctions of cabinet-ware-stately structures of glass-veneer and half-inch wood, whose joints rip open at the first touch of furnace heat, and whose rickety shelves are perpetually tumbling out of place. The spirit would evaporate from Elia, and Thackeray would utter platitudes, shut up in such a sham, just as old Mocha loses its aroma in a plated pot. Let the carpenter (or Tom himself, if he come of a family that have the use of their hands) build a case of walnut boards, fitting closely into the recesses on each side of the fire-place. The back can be made of well-seasoned pine, stained. The case should be from four to five feet high, with three shelves, the top curving slightly in the center. Strips of ogee walnut molding can be fastened on the sides and base, the top covered with cloth, and the edges of the shelves finished with either strips of scalloped leather or woolen fringe (of the same tint as the border of carpet and wall-paper) put on with silver tacks. The cost of such a case, if Tom builds it in off hours from the office, ought not to be more than six dollars; it will be large enough to hold four or five hundred octavos, and can readily be duplicated as books increase, until the cases make a dado of learning, wit, and wisdom, all around the room. No matter what the other furniture, this part of it will always appear solid, real, and artistic. These cases, of course, cannot be used where bituminous coal is burned, and the books must be protected from soot and ashes. If Amelia has also "brains in her fingers," there is no better way in which she can help Tom to make home home-like than by draping windows, mantelshelves, and door-ways. These are some of the "et cæteras" of house-furnishing from which upholsterers make their largest profit, but which, if made at home, cost not half the expenditure of money, skill, or time, as does Amelia's new suit, fitted and sewed by herself. But let her eschew all the stiff, angular lambrequins, which are so popular, and still less be tempted by any paper abominations. Drapery on a wall or a woman should be soft, full, and flowing, or it loses its first significance. There is seldom any need for doors in the inside of a house. If they must be there, why not have them flush with the wall and decorated, so that they cannot be distinguished from the paper or fresco, thus preserving the unity of the room; a better plan, where practicable, is to remove them, and substitute full curtains, parted in the middle, and sliding by rings on a rod. In summer, where privacy is not necessary, a light, arched trellis may take the place of the curtains, up which ivy, or quick-growing housevines, may be trained. Busy, middle-aged fathers and mothers, with enough to do to feed and clothe the quick-growing flock, have no time for work such as this. But the young people can and should attend to it. How to Entertain. THE ideas afloat on this important subject are so vague, and so little designed to effect practical re sults, that we begin to think that it is high time that the art of entertaining should be introduced as a branch of popular education, and that, instead of being drilled in the "ologies " and the higher mathematics, our young women should be systematically trained for their business as leaders of and movers in society. That we have much to learn on this subject, no one can doubt who has been doomed to spend evenings in the fashionable world, and to witness that disregard for the minor courtesies, that careless and indifferent tone, and, above all, that lack of a combining hand, which characterize even our most select reunions. With the best elements at command, we still succeed in making society an unmitigated bore, except to the chits of sixteen, who look upon the world as one great ball-room; or to the boys of twenty, to whom flirtation and a champagne supper are the summum bonum of existence. Yet we have here all the requisite elements, and only lack the mastermind to combine and develop our social capabilities, and teach us to enjoy one another. It would probably astonish most of us to be told, that in spite of our national hospitality, we are really an unsocial people. We prefer our own fireside to our neighbor's drawing-room, and, if the truth were known, would rather eat our own dinners than his. We are totally wanting in the gregarious spirit of the Germans and French, who care enough about one another to meet without being fed, a height of civilization to which the Anglo-Saxon does not yet seem to have attained. Of conversation, as an art, we are wholly ignorant. Yet, we have naturally a capacity and an adaptability, that, rightly employed, ought to make American society the most interesting in the world. Again, even if our opportunity comes, for lack of skill in the entertainer the people who would enjoy each other are not thrown together with a careful eye to their satisfaction. The wrong man takes the wrong woman down to dinner; your hostess permits you, a man of parts, to be button-holed by a bore for an hour, and you find on leaving the party, that you have not even been informed that So-andSo was the So-and-So who wrote the last famous novel. Yet, we unquestionably possess, as a race, many fine qualities adapted to social use and enjoy ment. Most Americans are endowed with a certain readiness of perception, a genial humor, and a capacity for execution, which are almost totally lacking in foreign men. The pioneer element enters largely into our composition; we inherit faculties of promptness and energy which fit us to meet new situations, while an aptitude for varied development is inherent in us. Our men are fit for not one, but fifty things, and whatever trade or profession is required for an emergency, they seem to be able to master at will. Most of them have a definite aim in life, a wholesome center for a man's thought, even if it be nothing better than fortune-making; only the worthless drift upon the surface useless and aimless, content to spend their lives in one spot, and in never-changing routine. From these inherited qualities, and from the development given to varied tastes by our lives of change and experiment, result a race who, whatever may be their short-comings, are seldom stupid and rarely slow. Our girls, with all their superficial frivolity, are the most adaptable women in the world, and can take any tone, or fit themselves for any situation that may unexpectedly be provided for them. With such elements to combine, with such wealth of material to work with, it is a shame that the society of a modern drawing-room should exist. We need to have our women trained as carefully to the duties of a hostess, as our officers are trained to command an army, and many qualities of generalship are as necessary for the one position as the other, and demand a like faithful apprenticeship to develop them to their full perfection. To command drawing-room forces requires promptness of action, skill in combination, thorough familiarity with the details of the profession, quickness to effect a diversion, an eye to compass all parts of the field and to bring aid to bear at the right moment on a weak position, a power to select lieutenants who will be competent to carry out a great strategic design, and a happy art in the disposition of forces. Above all, theoretical knowledge must be supported by a practical familiarity with every branch of the business, and a gentle and gracious manner must clothe as with a velvet glove the iron hand of authority. Where Magazines can be Burned. MESSRS. SCRIBNER & Co.: I read a very interesting item in your magazine, the November number, about "Burning Magazines." I send herewith a copy of the "Presbyterian" of October 9th, containing an appeal for books and magazines, etc., for the use of the miners. I will be happy to burn any number of your valuable "Monthly" in that manner. One person of Clayton, N. J., sent me it from November, 1874, to September, 1875, a year up to the very date of sending. I am about to open a Reading Room for the miners here, and have constant opportunities of sending reading matter into the mines, and shall have for months to come. Will you be se kind as to ask your subscribers to help me? ALEX. M. Darley, December 12, 1875. Presbyterian Missionary, Del Norte, Rio Grande Co., Colorado. Any of our city readers who want to have their old magazines burned in this fashion, can send them to Mrs. Francis A. Barlow, State Charities Aid Association, No. 52 East Twentieth street, New York. CULTURE AND PROGRESS. Viollet-le-Duc's "Discourses on Architecture." CONTEMPORARY France is fortunate in having at least two living writers who bring to the department of critical and æsthetical literature the thoroughly modern scientific spirit. We refer to M. Taine and M. Viollet-le-Duc,-the latter recently made known to the American public through his admirable "Story of a House," and "Annals of a Fortress," and now fairly placed before it in Mr. Van Brunt's translation of his "Discourses on Architecture." (James R. Osgood & Co.) The two men seem singularly alike in fiber and quality, and in their clear, inductive methods. Both are naturalists, in the strict sense of the term, and seek always to discover, or to come at, the vital formative principal of the question, or phase of art, under consideration. We recognize in neither a single vestige of that peculiar attitude of mind, or style of expression, that have come to be regarded and described as "Frenchy," and that make the works of such a master as Victor Hugo, even, so distasteful to the typical Anglo-Saxon mind. M. Viollet-le-Duc is not merely an art critic like Mr. Ruskin, who hangs his many-colored intellectual lamps upon the old architectural monuments, but a skilled and practical architect, equally ready in detecting false art and false principles of construction. He does, indeed, in his thorough scientific manner preach the same gospel as Mr. Ruskin, the need in architecture of absolute fidelity to truth; or rather he does not preach it at all, but presents it as a scientific necessity. The idea that runs through the whole work and crops out in every chapter, almost on every page, is, that there is no absolute architectural form that can claim a monopoly of the beautiful, and that is applicable to all cases. Change the conditions, the programmes, the needs, the material, the climate, and the architectural form must change also. That is the best and highest art in this field that most thoroughly and completely addresses itself to the problem in hand, and successfully meets all the conditions. The architect must find his inspiration and his order of architecture in the programme presented to him to fulfill, and archæology can be of service to him only in the splendid examples it affords of men who have done this very thing. He is to borrow from the past, no more than the poet, or the painter, or the writer is to borrow from the past. If he employ the antique forms, he must make them his own, and be as logical and consistent in the use of them as were the artists with whom they originated. "Art does not consist in this or that form, but in a principle, a logical method." If a Greek temple is to be built like the Parthenon, the Greek Doric architecture exactly meets the conditions; if a Roman monument like the Pantheon, or the Baths of Antonius Caracalla, then the concrete vaults and massive piers employed or invented by these architects satisfy the static requirements; if a Christian cathedral is called for, then the Gothic style of architecture is alone applicable; if a modern edifice of state is to be erected, or a public building expressive of our enlarged industrial resources, and political and material progress, etc., then the architect has a new problem before him, and must make use of new combinations, and it may be of new material like iron, and, if he would be strictly and truly Greek, must reject every form not inspired by his structure, though the whole Greek trinity of orders go by the board. With the Greek, the construction was the architecture. Every part of his building was a necessary part, and had a functional importance, and his matchless good taste appears in his knowing how so gracefully to confess the truth imposed upon him by his material and his programme. His art was structure refined into beautiful forms, not beautiful forms superimposed upon structure, as with the Roman. The Romans were a cosmopolitan people, great in politics, in administration, and in civil and military government, and great in building, in construct tion; but they were not great artists. Their architecture consisted of massive construction, surrounded by an architectural envelope. They built their monuments, and then decorated them with the Greek orders, and, in most cases, the architecture, the ornamentation, could be removed without materially impairing the structure, the osseous frame-work. But the Romans were the first to invent and apply the arch and vault, forms far more valuable to the modern world than any purely Greek types. In view of this fact, it seems to us that M. Viollet-le-Duc undervalues the Roman contribution to architecture, and places too high an estimate upon the absolute purity and refinement of Greek lines. Is there not fully as much artistic suggestiveness, and much more stimulus to the imagination, in the Roman arch and vault than in the Greek post and lintel, though, no doubt, the Greek showed himself the more consummate artist in identifying his ornament with his structure, and making one inseparable from the other? This is always the problem presented to the literary artist, or perhaps to any artist; but if the Roman architect falls short of this test, yet it can be said of his work that, strip away its ornament, its artificial envelope, and there is unmistakable grandeur and artistic value in the bare construction. He attained to the sublime by naked boldness and force. The seals of empire and mastery over brute forces and vast masses are stamped upon the very bones of his edifices. The lay school of architects that arose in Western Europe at the close of the twelfth century, and became the founders of Gothic architecture, carried the span and the vault to the last degree of perfection. The Roman had met and neutralized the thrust of his arch by the sheer weight of a vast pier; the Gothic architect met it by a counter-thrust. "Every thrust of an arch found another thrust to cancel it. Walls disappeared and became only screens, not supports. The whole system became a frame which maintained itself, not by its mass, but by a combination of oblique forces reciprocally destroying each other. The vault was no longer a concrete crust, a hollow shell in a single piece, but an intelligent combination of pressures always in action, and referring themselves to certain points of support disposed to receive them and to transmit them to the ground." This analysis of the ruling | feature of Gothic architecture is so masterly that we give it in the words of the architect and the translator, that the reader may have a taste of the quality of both. Our author makes no allusion to the form or ground plan that was imposed upon the Cathedral architect, namely, the cross, and that after this restriction was made, the pointed arch was not so much a matter of choice or invention as it was an inevitable result. It became, indeed, a structural necessity. Thus necessity is the mother of invention in architecture, as well as in other things; and as long as the modern architect is under no compelling reason, the tyranny of no prescribed form, etc., what grounds have we to hope that he will break away from the captivating models of antiquity and develop a new order of architecture? The work before us is a critical review of architecture, from the Greek temple down to the medieval cathedral, having direct and pointed reference to the condition and prospects of the art at the present time in France. The author examines into the grounds of the success of the antique architects, and deduces the conclusion that the only hope of the architect to-day is in the same reliance upon his own resources, the same appeal to reason and to common sense. This is the value and significance his work has to us in this country. We are to forget the past, and dare to build exactly to suit our climate, our needs, our resources, our material, and let architecture look out for itself-let academical symmetries and approved geometrical proportions prevail or not, just as the fundamental necessity shall determine. But if the author's position be well taken, that the arts never have flourished in the midst of a highly refined and civilized community, possessing a settled government and good laws, etc., but have achieved their greatest triumphs in crude and barbarous, and unsettled times,-then it seems to us there is not much hope left for the architect, either in this country or in Europe. Is it not rather true that the arts of a people have attained their greatest perfection during the greatest moral and intellectual enlightenment of that people, and during the heyday of their material and political prosperity, though, relatively to modern civilization, the people may have been barbarous and superstitious? This is undoubtedly true of ancient Egypt, and of Greece and Rome. The history of the modern European nationalities is not yet closed, and whether the principle is true, as applied to them, can neither be affirmed nor denied. The two great facts of the modern world, as distinguished from the ancient, are its science and its humanity, and if these are inadequate to beget an art of their own, then, indeed, we may despair. Not the least valuable part of this volume is Mr. Van Brunt's "Introduction," in which he reviews the condition of architecture in France at the present time, amid which this eloquent polemic of M. Viollet-le-Duc had its rise, and in which he also glances briefly at our wants and prospects in this field in the United States. It is to be regretted that he did not discuss this last phase more at length, and with reference to our national and industrial edifices, because, if we are ever to have a correct taste upon the subject of architecture in this country, the professional architect must let no opportunity pass to expose the shams and follies we have been, and still are, guilty of. In brilliancy, in clearness and purity, our climate is perhaps more like that of Greece than that of any of the great European nationalities; but it is subject to extremes of heat and cold, and is marked by a certain violence and destructiveness throughout the year that are found in none of the old classic countries. Is not this an important factor in our architectural problem, and, in consequence of it, ought not certain features of our buildings, like the roof and the openings, to be treated with especial boldness and originality? Certainly so in our domestic architecture, and why not in our public? We want wide projections and plenty of shields and foils to defend us, not only against the fury of the storms and the heat and the cold, but also against the excess of light. The volume is superbly illustrated. James's "Roderick Hudson." * LESS than a year ago, Mr. James, long known as a writer of brilliant magazine stories, published his first volume, a collection of the same. We now have his first novel before us. The interval is too short to warrant us in looking for any new growth in this book, by which to measure more accurately the merits and place of "The Passionate Pilgrim;"> and, indeed, we find it to be very much the same in substance and quality with the shorter tales. They were rich samples: this is a sort of extended Bayeux tapestry. We must accord to it the same excellences which we noted in the former volume, and we find ourselves also assigning to it the same limitations which we pronounced upon that. us, for a moment, put ourselves in the situation of a semi-disappointed admirer of Mr. James. Such a person, we think, might make some curious comments on the work. He would ask, for instance, "Is it a novel at all, in the common acceptance of that word? Instead of being a dramatic and diverting tale to take the reader captive by the strange charm of improvisation, and instruct or elevate him while under the influence of that spell, is it not rather a biography, a curious psychological study based on types, more convenient when thus arbitrarily Let * Roderick Hudson. By Henry James, Jr. Boston: James R. Osgood & Company. adopted than if fettered by the facts which limit any description or study of an actual life? To be sure, this is the primary condition of all novel-writing, that the novelist arranges types and conditions to suit himself; but there is something about Mr. James's book which gives this motive an undue prominence. One cannot say it is because the story seems unreal, for, in fact, it has a vigorous reality. Perhaps it is the excessive elaboration of details, which oppresses one with a sense of its determination to be very life-like, in order to counteract the rather abstract nature of the interests involved. Whatever the cause, it seems written too much for the sake of writing a novel of some sort; too little generated by some strong, untamable artistic impulse. The main interest is certainly remote from the ordinary scope of most readers' cares and hopes and susceptibilities. A tremendous young genius in sculpture is thrown on our hands, and we are tacitly required to feel a sufficient suspense respecting the success or failure of his artistic development, to carry us through some four hundred and eighty ample pages. One or two guys, of course, are thrown out-to assist us in walking this extended tight-rope in the shape of Roderick's engagement to the simple and sweet Miss Garland, of Northampton, and his friend and patron Rowland's suppressed affection for her; also of Roderick's infatuation for Christina Light, in Rome. This latter proves to be inwoven pretty closely with the central fiber of the story (which, however, remains always the sculptor's æsthetic progress), and at length gives way, letting us down into the gulf of tragedy at the end. But, in the main, the subject is too cold and hard, and the treatment, brilliant as it is, is saturated with a sophistication that at times becomes almost repellent." Such objections as these of the semi-disappointed admirer we do not sympathize with entirely, yet we can see that they have some ground to rest on. They do not do justice to the splendid workmanship of the author, or the sinewy and elastic movement of his characters, who are made of real flesh and blood. Every one of them is distinct, and the intensity of passion in some of them is huge. We have our doubts whether they are quite worth learning to know so thoroughly. Mrs. Light is too pitiable; the Cavaliere and the Prince are sad, faded, wearisome figures; Rowland is exceedingly monotonous; none of these are remunerative, they result in no clear gain to author or reader, so far as we discern. Mary Garland is a reverent study which comes nearer to beauty than Mr. James's studies commonly do. The other figures of Americans are treated with a barren sneer, though they are sketched in a way that would otherwise be amusing. Some of the author's little habits also, such as putting the obsolete "nay" into the mouths of characters in common talk, the excessive use of "prodigious" and "inordinate," and a recurrence of scratching the head or wiping the forehead, on the part of Roderick and Rowland when embarrassed, seriously blemish his rich style. Still, with all that we have hinted in derogation, it must be said that few novels of the season can, on the whole, take higher rank than "Roderick Hudson." Mr. James is an artist, and has it in his power to give us admirable compositions. MacDonald's "St. George and St. Michael." THERE has been a painful impression among some of George MacDonald's lovers-other men may have admirers, but his are always lovers-that his later novels have not done justice to the author of "Alec Forbes," "David Elginbrod," and "The Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood," certainly not to the creator of that noble and Christ-like hero, Robert Falconer, the Evangelist of Petticoat Lane. He has seemed to be overworked, his friends have said, and while there shone out here and there in "Wilfrid Cumbermede," and the rest, fire-flashes of his own peculiar genius, he has still, seemed depressed, and not at harmony with himself. We do not think overwork the main cause of this. There has seemed to us a disturbing force which we take to be a theory inconsistent with the limitations of the novel-writing art. MacDonald is, beyond all, aspiring, and he has failed by his endeavor to lift up his art to what, from its very nature, it could not be. Even in "Robert Falconer," this disturbing influence is felt in the plot, and still more so in "Wilfrid Cumbermede." But in his latest story of all ("St. George and St. Michael," A Novel; By George MacDonald; New York: J. B. Ford & Co.), he is himself again, telling his story according to the sweet instincts of the true artist, and not upon any theory previously wrought by the critic. The story might more truly be called a romance; there are in it those improbabilities and marvels in which Walter Scott delighted, and over which Hawthorne brooded; the characters are idealized and spiritualized, but they never lose their hold upon real life. We wish some of the happenings were less wonderful; but the noble characters seem so real that we never lose the sense of verisimilitude-the verisimilitude of a tale of enchantment. The story relates to the civil war of Cromwell's and Charles's time, and many of the characters are real historic personages-the Marquis of Worcester, his son, the Earl of Glamorgan, the King himself, and Dr. Bayly, are all carefully pictured from the life. MacDonald, being good and noble in every fiber, excels in describing noble people. The pure friendship of good Lord Herbert, the Catholic royalist, for his cousin Dorothy, the Protestant royalist, is as delightful as the love of sturdy Richard Heywood, the Roundhead, for this same Tory girl. We do not know in literature so sweet a picture of the friendship of a middle-aged married man for a congenial young girl as we have here. The meeting of Lord Herbert with his cousin after her time of trial is full of exquisite tenderness, as is the scene at the death of little Molly, and at the final denouement of the love-story. But there are here the faults of MacDonald alongside his |