Nothing could more clearly illustrate the exceeding ignorance which prevails in some parts of rural France than this incident. We once heard of an American being arrested in Brittany by a too-zealous official, who refused to believe he was an American, simply on the ground that he was white; the official was very positive that all Americans were negroes. The ability to read English is a quite unknown science in many of those parts, nor could any thing less than a peremptory order from the prefect secure our unfortunate countryman's release.

M

Literary.

R. E. C. GARDNER'S very decided literary talent, though it renders his books entertaining, and sugars the pill of instruction which it is his main object to administer, is not altogether an advantage to his work. It constantly leads him off into digressions which are often the merest vagaries, having the slightest possible relevance to the subject under discussion; it incessantly

of the alumnus, even of ten or twelve years, how far away he has strayed from the sensations, influences, ay, and the ambitions of his college-days! It is given to very few to shape their own destinies; yet most college seniors, when they have put aside their last examination-paper, and made their last "oration," have already laid out a scheme of life, and it never occurs to them to doubt that it is the reflection of a certain future. It is often said that a college is “ a little world in itself;" and truly enough it has resemblances to the greater world, such as its struggles, its ambitions, its gains and losses, and its schooling to manliness and self-dependence and self-assertion not a little severe and stringent. Yet many a student has been deluded to ruin, or at least to failure, by too completely mistaking the college-world for a lesser counterpart and epitome of that wherein lies his life-work; nor are the effects of such a delusion always the same or similar. One, + flushed with the ready triumphs of the society and the class-room, flattered by conceded leadership, exalted by praises of professors and college-mates, rates his future success at too low a standard of effort; he thinks he will win as easily at the bar or in commercial pursuits as in class-meeting and on the exhibition platform; and, when he gets into the downright, serious hurly-burly, is amazed, and inconceivably disappointed to find greater powers rising hopelessly above him. Anoth er, working till brain is overtaxed, and ill health is invited, in order to achieve college success, goes forth to plunge desperately into exhausting labors, plodding with shaken nerves far into the nights, comfortlessly and anxiously seeking fortune, and preying ruthlessly upon the faculties which alone can render fortune enjoyable when attained. Few and wise are those who learn to advance with deliberation, and vigor, and patience upon the path of life; eschewing neither lusty labor nor manly recreation, each in its proper time and place; remembering that “ every thing comes in time to him who waits." One cannot but envy the cheery spirit of those youths who are having their last college merrymakings in these lovely summer months; that spirit is an excellent commodity to begin

the world with.

'Prussian spies," far down in the depths of Brittany. The mayor of the village demandred their passports; and, on being told that tspassports were long ago abolished, doggedly

refused to believe it, and had them taken off in a cart to the capital of the department. The wonder is that this worthy mayor, who, by-the-way, wore a blue blouse, and was fresh from the field, had ever heard of Prusssian spies, such personages being much more

be

modern than the abolition of passports.

sketches of character furnish very amusing reading; our criticism is directed simply to the fact that he has greatly injured by his manner of executing it a plan which, in its original conception, was admirable.

One other point, and we will have done with fault-finding. Mr. Gardner's main dogma, if we may apply such a term to teaching which is singularly free from dogmatism, is that a house is designed primarily for use, and that every house, therefore, should, in its arrangement, size, finish, etc., represent the needs of the particular person or family for whom it is built. The one customer that he cannot endure is the person whose notions of what he wants are based on an ideal conception of beauty, on what is "stylish," or on what somebody else has. In season and out of season he urges the principle that a house should be the expression of individual wants and individual tastes. Now, this is wholesome doctrine, doubtless, but it is somewhat odd that Mr. Gardner should be so evidently disposed to limit its application to details of interior arrangement. He is so afraid that the primary idea of use will be subordinated to a desire for show, that he persistently discourages all discussion of the distracts his own and the reader's attention exterior appearance of the house, and finally from the matter properly before them; and says, plumply, that if a man "is wise he will the somewhat truculent vivacity, which is its leave questions of outside effect to the archichief characteristic, becomes a trifle tedious tect." No doubt it would be better for the when indulged too liberally. His latest book, average man, when he comes to build, if he "Illustrated Homes," is an example of all should simply show a competent architect his this. Its plan is excellent, and it contains plot of ground, tell him the size of his family much that is really instructive and useful; and the extent of his means, and leave all but it has been almost spoiled by the exquestions, both of outside effect and of inside tent to which the literary feature of the work is permitted to dominate and overshadow arrangement, to the architect's own jndgevery thing else. Mr. Gardner's intention, scarcely less than degrading to leave the ment. But, if he is to be taught that it is as explained in a sort of prefatory post- number, size, and arrangement of the rooms script, was to take a dozen or more actual to any one else, even an architect, why is his houses which he had helped to build, each obligation to consult his individual prefer. one typical of a certain class or condition, ences not coextensive with the house itself, and by giving the plans and a brief account in all its parts? In point of fact, a house is of each one, and using it as the text of such not built merely for use. Its outside, espearchitectural discussion as seemed approcially, is more conspicuous and more looked priate, to make the book helpful to all who at than any thing in its owner's possession, propose to build themselves homes. The and if it be known that it was built for or plans were to be accompanied with specifiunder the direction of the owner, it is inevications and estimates, general certainly, but tably regarded as a more or less accurate exsufficiently minute to indicate the finish and pression of his ideas of architectural beauty; approximate cost of each house. The bringhis taste is judged by it. Moreover, Mr. ing in of the people for whom the houses Gardner's own plans show that by slight were built was, of course, a subordinate part changes and transpositions, which do not afof the plan, and could only be done legiti-fect in the remotest degree the convenience.of mately in order to give reality and, so to say, individuality to the different homes; yet, from the very beginning, these people (about whom the reader cares nothing) receive more attention than the houses (about which the reader probably cares a great deal); while toward the latter part of the book the plans are relegated to an entirely insignificant place, and specifications and estimates are entirely omitted. No mention is made even of the material of which several of the most attractive houses were built or of their costthe very points which, to us at least, seem of most importance. Now, Mr. Gardner is a keen observer and a humorist withal, and his

*Illustrated Homes: A Series of Papers describing Real Houses and Real People. By E. C. Gardner. Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.

the inner arrangements, the whole appearance of the exterior can be changed, and that rendered picturesque and pleasing which otherwise would have been utterly without expression. We think, indeed, that it would be very easy to maintain the exact converse of Mr. Gardner's proposition, and to give plausible reasons why a man should select the general style and effects which he desired in his house, and (with certain reservations, of course, as to number and size of rooms) leave the details of the interior entirely to his architect.

It

With these qualifications, "Illustrated Homes "" can be heartily recommended. inculcates sound principles of architecture and taste; proves, by examples, that picturesque, convenient, and durable houses can be built with very moderate sums of money, and

that cheapness and ugliness do not necessarily go hand in hand; and points out with great distinctness the difference between a "house" aud a "home." There are very few Americans who would not build more intelligently after giving it a perusal.

THE interest in the Bunker Hill centennial finds appropriate expression in literature as well as in orations, pageants, fireworks, and the like, and we find several pamphlets bearing upon the famous event on our table. Osgood's "Bunker Hill Memorial" is the best of these. Its leading feature is a poem of thirty-seven stanzas, by Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, "written expressly for this memorial," and giving a grandmother's story of the battle as she saw it from the belfry. The poem is written in the swinging rhythm of the old ballad measure, is spirited and vigorous, and illustrates very forcibly the patriotic enthusiasm of the colonists, which was shared even by the women and children, and the trepidation of the citizens who, for the first time, looked upon the bloody scenes of war. The poem is accompanied throughout with marginal illustrations, and is followed by an account of the battle in prose, by James M. Bugbee. This latter is also illustrated, and is the best brief narrative of the battle with which we are acquainted.

"the

Another and rather curious memorial is "Bunker Hill: The Story told in Letters from the Battle-field by British Officers engaged; with an Introduction and Sketch of the Battle by Samuel Adams Drake" (Boston: Nichols & Hall). The materials of which the book is composed have, as Mr. Drake explains, "hitherto slumbered in the archives of British regiments engaged on the field of Bunker Hill," having escaped heretofore the research of historians of the battle. Inasmuch as the British officers, without exception, claim a brilliant victory over provincials," their letters are hardly calculated to add to the enthusiasm of centennial time, but the patriotic fire of Mr. Drake's description of the battle readjusts the balance, and enables us to accept them with good grace as additional materials for the historian. The volume is embellished with a heliotype reproduction of a very rare English print, published in London in 1781, and giv. ing a spirited view of the actual battle.-The description of the battle to be found in Mr. Frothingham's History of the Siege of Boston" (Little, Brown & Co.) remains the most complete yet written.

After the preceding was written, we received another contribution to the literature of the subject, by Mr. Drake, "General Israel Putnam, the Commander at Bunker Hill." This is not a biography of General Putnam, as its title would seem to imply, but a controversial pamphlet on the quæstio vexata as to who commanded in chief at Bunker Hill. It is an able and exhaustive analysis of all the known facts bearing upon the matter, and Mr. Drake evidently convinces himself fully; but of actual evidence there is very little, and the argument is scarcely more than an elaboration of the proposition that, because Putnam was a general and Prescott only a colonel, the former must have com

manded when the two were present on the same field. The question has always seemed to us of the slightest importance, since it was the fighting of the men and not the general. ship of the leaders that rendered the battle famous; and, as General Sherman said in his speech at the centennial, "after Prescott has received all the glory, there is enough left for General Putnam, too."

Ir is difficult to find a term exactly descriptive of Miss Lucy Larcom's "Idyl of Work" (Boston: J. R. Osgood & Co.). To call it a "novel in verse" would be more accurate than its present title, and a 'tract in verse would be truer still; but it is too slight for a novel, even though its lack of plot and incident is disguised under the forms of poetry, and it is too good (or perhaps we should say not "goody" enough) for a tract. An idyl of work it certainly is not, for, with a most idealistic definition of work, Miss Larcom finds herself compelled, in order to secure even the semblance of the idyllic, to ignore entirely the routine of daily labor, and carry her characters off to scenes and circumstances about as foreign to the experience of factory-girls as a jaunt up the Nile would be to laborers in a coal-mine. Thirty years ago the work in the Lowell mills was done almost entirely by young girls from various parts of New England, many of whom had comfortable homes, yet chose this method of winning for themselves a degree of pecuniary independence; and it is no wonder that Miss Larcom, recalling the memory of those days when magazines, of some literary merit, in which she herself made her first attempts at authorship, were both written and edited by the mill-girls, should throw over them the glamour of romance, and fancy that she sees in them ideal conditions of work. But all the same, as she confesses in her preface, the routine of such a life is essentially prosaic; and, though workers may find idyllic experiences during a summer-vacation among the mountains, work itself catches nothing of poetry therefrom.

It is plain, however, that the book was written with the object of proving by illustration that even the most exhaustive and monotonous labor cannot of itself deprive one of all opportunity for high mental culture and noble living, and also to protest against the tendency of the change which has come over the conditions and character of milllabor since the period indicated. The increasing degradation of certain forms of labor, the rapidly-widening rift between the interests of employer and employed, fill her with alarm, and she sees in them forerunners of national decay:

"Like the sea Must the work-populations ebb and flow, So only fresh with healthful New-World life. If high rewards no longer stimulate toil, And mill-folk settle to a stagnant class, As in old civilizations, then farewell To the Republic's hope! What differ we From other feudalisms? Like ocean-waves, Work-populations change. No rich, no poor, No learned, and no ignorant class or caste The true republic tolerates; interfused, Like the sea's salt, the life of each through all."

Of course the story in such a book is entirely subordinate, being of no use, in fact,

except as a thread to hang the didactic portions on; and no one of the characters has more than the faintest shadow of personality. It is the descriptive parts, together with the lyrics with which the narrative is frequently interspersed, that redeem the work, and render it enjoyable to the reader. Miss Larcom has written no poems more graceful, tender, and finished, than three or four of those scattered through the present volume, and her enthusiasm for natural scenery, and her skill in painting it, throw a genuine charm around the entire episode of the summer-vacation. The following song of the mill-children at their play would compensate the reader for whole pages of duller didactic poetry than Miss Larcom inflicts upon us in her most serious mood:

"Will the fairy-folk come back,
Such as haunt old stories,
Sliding down the moonbeam's track
Hid in morning-glories?

Air is warp, and sun is weft;
Is a rainbow-spinner left?

No; not one. They never will!
Streams they loved are busy
Turning spindles in the mill;
Turning mill-folk dizzy.
Toil is warp, and money weft;
Not a fairy-loom is left.
"Noise has frightened them away

From their greenwood places;
Never would they spend a day
Among care-worn faces.
Gather up the warp and weft:
See if any thing is left!
"Merry days go dancing by ;

Hard work comes, and tarries.
Why, for that, wind sigh through sigh?
Children, we'll be fairies!

Life is warp, and love is weft;

Children's hearts and hands are left."

In justification of what we have said in praise of the descriptive poetry, we quote the following sonnet:

"The pioneer of a great company

That wait behind him, gazing toward the east

Mighty ones all, down to the nameless leastThough after him none dares to press, where he With bent head listens to the minstrelsy

of far waves chanting to the moon, their priest.

What phantom rises up from winds deceased! What whiteness of the unapproachable sea!

Hoary Chocorua guards his mystery well: He pushes back his fellows, lest they hear

The haunting secret he apart must tell To his lone self, in the sky-silence clear. A shadowy, cloud-cloaked wraith, with shouldert

bowed,

He steals, conspicuous, from the mountain

crowd."

2=

T

Ir we may venture such a suggestion con cerning one who is possessed of so genuine literary faculty, we should say that Mr. Hjal mar Hjorth Boyesen's new story, "A Norse man's Pilgrimage" (New York: Sheldon & Co.), was written mainly to prove how thor oughly Americanized the author has become and how completely he has mastered the dep tails of American habits and character. The hero of the story is a Norseman, it is true but a Norseman so Americanized that h feels like a stranger when he returns to hi own people. The heroine is evidently in tended to be a typical American woman; and

acquainted. The more ambitious novelists who aim at something far higher than this, and who would describe the great world of which they know next to nothing, are like those artists who take a great width of canvas and some heroic subject, and produce a work vast indeed, but as uninteresting as it is unnatural." Mrs. Lynn Lynton is writing a new novel, entitled "The Atonement of Leam Dundas," for the Cornhill Magazine.

...

Professor Max Müller recommends young men before all things to study the original documents of the great literatures. "It is better," he says, to read Homer than to read a dozen commentaries upon him." The Spectator, after remarking that "justice must be done all the more rigorously on favorites," says "the truth is that Mr. Black has made a sad step backward" in his "Three Feathers."... Messrs. Cussell, the London publishers, have arranged with M. Gustave Doré to illustrate a complete edition of Shakespeare's works. Doré is to be paid fifty thousand dollars for his work. . . . Mr. Allingham, the successor of Mr. Froude in the editorship of Fraser, is said to be engaged in the work undertaken by that gentleman of putting Mr. Carlyle's manuscripts in order. . . . The correspondence of Mr. John Stuart Mill, which, as we stated in our last issue, will shortly be published, contains many letters more theological in tone than philosophical. It is generally rumored that the book will contain passages, especially on religious topics, which are far more uncompromising than the boldest in the "Autobiography," and that they will in any case throw considerable light on various developments of the beliefs entertained at successive periods by Mr. Mill. . . . Messrs. H. S. King & Co., the London publishers, are about to publish a series of "Introductory Hand-books," to study which may be, at the same time, useful to those who desire to have a general outline of the subjects treated therein. They will not be, in any sense,. (6 cram" books, and are intended to be strictly what their name implies. The series will comprise introductions to the study of philosophy, music, art, English, classical, and foreign literature, history, aneient and modern, etc. "Clever people," says the Academy, "seldom write novels, they know the difficulties too well. People of genius, whose works deserve the most careful criticism, and people with a notion that they are great observers, and can tell a story well, have the field of fiction to themselves. With the works of the former class, which ranges from George Eliot to Mr. Black, the reviewer seldom meets; the productions of the latter are before him every week, the crude endeavors of young and old ladies, of gentlemen of leisure, these he gives his daily dreadful line to." " The Athenæum thinks "Ouida's" new novel dull. . . . The same paper speaks of Low's "English Catalogue of Books for 1874" as a work indispensable to reviewers, but an awful proof of the amount of misdirected energy that finds a vent in print.... The Saturday Review makes the following suggestion, which we recommend to novel-writers: "Our story-writers seldom do better than when they take some out-ofthe-way spot as the scene of their tale, and with the fortunes of their hero and heroine work up the every-day incidents of a life with which their readers are likely to be but little

...

The Arts.

As we

HILE the public is kept pretty well informed through the press of the erection of fine edifices in the large cities, comparatively little attention is given to the gradual change for the better in the architecture of the smaller places. Within the last ten years, probably nowhere, in proportion to its size, have there been so many interesting new edifices built as in the little city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. have before had occasion to remark in the JOURNAL, the peculiarities of fashion in buildings lend them a charm when the ideas that led to these peculiarities have passed by, and Elizabethan roofs, with their scalloped and pointed gable-ends, the gambrel roofs so frequently met with in the old towns of this country, and even the square farm-houses, with their big "stoops" overhung by elmtrees-each has a real charm and picturesque interest of its own, apart from any reference to the rules of pure taste; and these crystallized forms of old thought and old necessities appeal to us in a way different from any thing that is new, however fine the new thing may be.

which might be worn away, and takes the real brunt off the low walls, overlapped as they are by deep eaves. The large windows with granite facings, where the stone might otherwise be much exposed, prevent too much surface of this charmingly-colored material from coming into contact with the weather. This church is not of better shape than is often seen in buildings erected within a few years; but in this, and in several other new structures, that variety of material we have so much advocated in the pages of the JOURNAL has been employed, and with even better effect than our imagination had pictured; for, though the general aspect is somewhat sombre, the gray granite which is so disagreeable in combination with brick imparts to this bluish building a cool and per fectly harmonious appearance, which the woodbine and ivy that are already quite well grown serve to enhance.

Beyond the college-grounds and near the old Washington elm, another church occupies a pretty corner, and in this case also there is a pleasantness in the material which i makes the person who has seen it once desire to see it again. This building, like the other, is a Gothic church, and more elaborate in form. Two or three cloistered passages break the surface of its walls. The stone of which it is constructed is one of the commonest sorts of conglomerate, popularly called pud ding-stone, and is found in great quantities close at hand in Roxbury. Each block

of it is full of the finest colors. Buffs of every shade, to the deepest dyes of ironore that stain the rocky coast of Massachusetts, are variegated by pink and flesh color, and they marble with their complicated network an under-color of purple-gray. Examining the blocks of stone piece by piece it seemed impossible for us to decide which of them might be the more beautiful.

A few rods farther on, off at another corner of the same steet, are the Memorial Church and two other college-buildings of the Episcopal Theological School. This institution, which has been founded within a dozen years, has purchased a plot of ground of about a couple of acres around the lately. built St. John's Church. It would be diffi

In Cambridge, specimens of nearly every kind of building may be observed. The old college-buildings of red brick, plain and angular as the bricks themselves, without an external adornment, had, till a few years ago, when thrift destroyed the picturesque, tender tones of their old weather-beaten red walls, a great charm of color. The bricks were worn, and the sunshine flecked their unequal surfaces into broken lights and shadows. The natural color, which paint can seldom equal, had been broken down and streaked and faded by rain and weather till these old lodging-cult to find anywhere a group of three or houses of the students were nearly as pleasant to look at, and of as varied a hue, as the red and yellow and purple rocks that abound along the sea-coast of New England. But a few years ago a general renovation did away with all this, and solid Indian-red, called brick-color, replaced these slight pleasant tintings. But Nature is again doing its work, and "Old Massachusetts" and "Holden Chapel" are beginning to tone with the trees and the sky.

As you come into Cambridge by the horse-cars, the first new building which meets the eye is a Gothic church, built of blocks of blue-and-yellow mottled slate-stone. This church covers a large area, and its numerous porches and gables are edged by granite, this latter stone also being built in horizontal lines to the top of the tall stone spire. The chief material used is rather soft, but the granite guards all portions that are exposed to the weather or the corners

four edifices more pleasant to look upon than these. Sitting low to the ground and sur rounded by fine greensward, the church, which stands on the corner, is a small, low roofed, many-gabled building, full of pictu resque niches and corners, a many-sided apsis filled with stained glass, and with its facing and trimmings of Nova-Scotia stone, wit here and there bits of dark color and fin carvings. The irregular-sized blocks of th Roxbury pudding-stone make a sunshine in shady place with their warm tones; old Eng lish stained-glass windows with pointed tops break the surfaces of the light walls int sombre tones almost as deep as shadow.

A little on one side of the church, and sur rounded by heavy, close-cropped turf the fills the entire inclosure, another gable-roofed building of the same material varies from the church in effect of color by being bande and ornamented with red, rich lines an decorations, while the oblique lines that sup