of the gospodar sit beside those of plain citizens. The lake-port of Rjeka has some trade with the adjacent provinces, and is beginning to present a very modern and civilized appearance. And for the first time in the history of the country a good road is being constructed over the mountains, in spite of numerous almost insuperable difficulties. The only mode of traveling in Montenegro, heretofore, has been by means of narrow paths, winding up and down the sides of almost perpendicular cliffs, and along the brinks of terrible abysses. The new road, which is, probably, just being finished, will connect the country with the outside world, and throw it open to foreign influence.

On the whole, there is good reason for believing that if the independence of Montenegro should be acknowledged and guaranteed by the great powers of Europe, thus giving it a definite status, and putting an end to its frequent hostilities with Turkey, it would soon become a peaceful and prosperous community. And even if it should be absorbed by the Austrian or Russian Empire, the same desirable effect might be expected to ensue.

THERE can be no question of the fact that the law should be administered to the rich and the poor with equal rigor. In contrast with the course here in this matter, we are often called upon to admire the stern impartiality of British justice. In a land where rank is more reverenced and caste more rigid than in any other of the European countries, neither rank nor caste has the slightest weight in the courts of justice. But it would sometimes seem as if unnecessary pains were taken there to show that in the courts no distinction of persons exists. We have only recently been called upon to admire the stern impartiality of an Eng. lish justice in the case of a wealthy firm of London merchants charged with fraud. "When," says the account, "the heads of the firm were first brought before the magistrate, heavy bail was demanded. They were not allowed to go home while their friends hunted round for bail, but were remanded to Newgate. Their lawyer begged that they might at least be allowed to go to Newgate in a cab. The magistrate replied that if poor men were brought before him they would have to go to prison in the common van; that there was no difference in the offense with which the prisoners were charged, whether committed by rich or poor-conse. quently, he declined to grant the privilege applied for." Now, this act of the magisrate has been applauded as something very impartial, rigorous, and fine. Perhaps, howver, a little consideration will show us that

the course pursued in this case is not, after all, sanctioned by strict justice. It is sometimes required of justice that considerations for persons should wisely and rightly temper and mitigate its judgments. Previous good conduct, for instance, commonly qualifies the severity of a penalty that a court inflicts, just as the fact that the criminal is a notoriously bad character increases the severity of the sentence. If, then, it is proper to admit considerations of this kind in the case of a condemned person, assuredly it is right to give them weight in cases where the persons are accused but as yet remain unconvicted of guilt. Why should any unnecessary humiliation or suffering be inflicted upon any person in the preliminary stage of an accusation, when his criminal conduct is only assumed? The horde of vagabonds brought before a London police justice may be dispatched to Newgate in a van with no special humiliation or shame felt by any of them; it is in their case no penalty; but to men of previous respectability, who may be innocent of the charges against them, it is a most degrading experience, and one that the justice which brags of its impartiality has no right to inflict. It would be improper to distinguish between rich and poor, but it is not improper to distinguish between previous respectability and notorious dissoluteness-between old offenders with every presumption of guilt and new prisoners with fair presumption of innocence..

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disposition to mark differences between first and subsequent offenses. Between the rash youth who, in a moment of temptation, has committed his first crime, and the hardened offender, there is assuredly a tremendous gulf, and we hope in time to see these two classes of criminals brought under distinctly different kinds of penalties-one being reformatory and, as far as possible, kindly, the other relentless and even revengeful, for against such offenders society owes nothing but the fires of her indignation.

THE singular sweetness, simplicity, and purity of all Hans Christian Andersen's writings reflect the quality and give the keynote of the man himself. Of few authors can it be so emphatically said, as he himself used to say, that his works were himself. They are serene like himself, and exhibit all his delicate shades of feeling. They are ever instinct with a love of mankind, a bright way of looking upon the world (which he often called "the good world"), and, above all, a very sincere and childlike love of children. In the modern literature of Denmark, Hans Andersen is about the only name known outside of that country itself. He was one of the cosmopolitan writers, like Dickens, like Victor Hugo, like Turgeneff, like Longfellow. It is very rarely that even the greatest literary genius can impose bis works upon foreign minds; it is still more rarely that a man can write as Andersen did, so as to please at once Danish and English, German and Russian children. He must rise above nationality, be something more than the scion of a race. That dear old Hans Andersen was as welcome at the firesides of St. Petersburg and San Francisco as at those of Copenhagen, indicates that, without a very wonderful imagination, and even without the highest faculty of dramatic power, he was master of the chord of Nature which touches the universal human heart. He was kind, unselfish, cheerful, fresh, clear, and simple, a gentlest teacher of the virtues, with a light, pure, graceful fancy, which lent poetry and imparted pleasure to his thoughts, and made the few simple principles he wished to inculcate easy to receive; and the emotions he thus touched are those which civilized humanity partakes in common. To even suggest that Hans Andersen's books are free from the slightest taint of impurity, seems to be doing a sort of violence to his sweet memory. Those who knew him speak of him as a sort of typified innocence. In his daily life he seems to have been utterly guileless; he was very unwilling to believe evil of any one, and was at the farthest extreme from those who indulge in lamentations over the depravity of the world. No writer has lived of whom it could be more aptly said that he saw sermons in stones, books in

Justice may ignore distinctions of persons, but the character and antecedents of a criminal often determine whether a sentence is really light or severe. The very fact of a public arraignment is a great trial to some men, and the penalty of imprisonment, however brief, means for them endless shame and worldly ruin. To a hardened offender imprisonment is a serious inconvenience, but it gives no wound to the spirit, it is no overthrow of pride, it involves no loss of social place and esteem-it is simply a piece of bad luck, the consequences of which end with the termination of the penalty. In the case of Colonel Baker, recently condemned to a year's imprisonment for an improper assault upon a lady in the compartment of a railway-car, the punishment is no doubt justified by the crime, but the penalty is really absolute ruin, while to many men it would be comparatively a trifling matter. It is obvious that the significance and intensity of punishments vary greatly with individuals, and Justice can never be true to her high mission until her judgments are largely determined by the facts and circumstances pertaining to the offenders. This, it may be said, would not be so much a distinction between individuals as a distinction between conditions. Fortunately, there is a growing

the running brooks, and good in every thing." Perhaps the most gratifying deduction from the influence he has had, personally and in a literary sense, is that goodness of intellect is able to exercise a power often denied to intellectual greatness. Contrast such a character as Hans Andersen with the stormy, wretched, brilliant Dean of St. Patrick's! Gauge the kind of influence which each has had upon men's minds; and mark what a suggestive difference there is between the serene life of the son of the Danish shoemaker, and the tortured existence of the man who fretted his life away because he could not be a bishop! It is an honor that Hans Andersen would have been happiest to cherish that his loss will chiefly be felt by the little children of the nations.

ONCE more we hear of socialist conspiracies in Russia, of the arrest of nobles implicated in subversive plots, of sad, compulsory exoduses to the bleak steppes of Siberia, and of the alarming growth of democratic ideas among the peasants of Muscovy and the banks of the Neva. It is said that every thing in this world has its complement; and, politically speaking, it seems to be true that where there is one extreme, there is always lurking its opposite. Here is the most rígid despotism on earth-a despotism which derives greater strength from the union of spiritual with temporal puissance in a single person; with an iron system of police ramifying throughout a vast empire; with an enormous army, which a single will may at any moment assign to police duty of the severest sort; spies and detectives, paid by government, in every hamlet; the law of punishment for offenses against "the state" startlingly brief, simple, and sudden. Yet socialism has crept in, despite the argus-eyed vigilance of St. Petersburg, and ideas of equality and fraternity are interchanged alike in the metropolitan palaces of haughty Muscovite nobles and in the distant hamlets of the Black Sea and the Ural. What makes the fact more alarming is the facility with which, after all, owing to the dead level of race and thought, any idea may spread among the Russian millions. "Amid the natives of Western Europe," says an English writer, "the variety of institutions, the diversity of ranks, the division of classes, the marked ascendency of individuals, either by birth, fortune, or talent, offer so many barriers to the rapid spread of any idea, movement, or impulse. But, if it were possible to raise the waters of the Baltic by some score of feet, they would flow without let or hinderance over the vast level plains which stretch from Poland to the Ural Mountains. In much the same way any religious or political movement, which could by any possibility be in

troduced into Russia, would spread with a rapidity and uniformity which would never be obtained under the more complicated civilization of the Western World." There can be no doubt that the emancipation of the serfs has had not a little to do with the spread of socialism in Russia; and the trouble is that that act, like the abolition of slavery in the United States, is a thing impossible to revoke. The empire must take its consequences, or check them as it can. Perhaps its only remedy will be found in substituting a constitutional for a despotic rule. Such a policy has been able, in Austria, to take the sting out of Hungarian democracy and disaffection; one extreme having been abolished, the opposite extreme, which fed upon it, has seemingly died also. Singularly enough, the spirit of communism and the International, wellnigh extinct to all appearance in France, Spain, and Italy, finds refuge and comfort in the most rigidly governed and least intelligent population in Eu

rope.

In

OUR contributor who talks this week of "Possible Utopias" omits mention of one felicitous condition that is attainable by all of us. This is the Utopia of flowers. country places there is, it is true, considerable flower-culture, although it by no means is developed to the extent that it might be; but in towns it is quite surprising to see this graceful means of adornment so much neglected as it is. Here and there we see a town-house lighted up and beautified (we venture to use this word despite Polonius) by blossoming plants on its sills and within its windows, but these instances are rare, and somewhat surprisingly so in view of the charming examples they set. Recently some of our hotels and restaurants have been most happily illustrating the possibilities that lie in this direction. The grass inclosure before Delmonico's on Fifth Avenue has been made truly a "" thing of beauty; at the Brunswick, the Fifth Avenue, and the Windsor Hotels, similar but less successful attempts have been made to give grace and beauty to their approaches. In view of the small inclosures or court-yards that stand before almost all our New York residences, it would be practicable to convert our streets into delightful parterres that would greatly distinguish our city. Imagine the whole length of Fifth Avenue a continuation of the charming effects in Delmonico's beautiful inclosure. It would really become by this superb transformation the most enchanting public avenue in the world. And nothing could be easier. The spaces are there inclosed and unused; it only needs the very small expense of setting out the plants, and the occasional attention of watering and

who leave the city for the summer should not for this reason be indifferent to our sug. gestion; there are weeks in the spring and in the autumn in which their clustering vases and flowering shrubs would give them pleasure; and surely they might, in all charity, be glad to know that the flowers left behind them (kept fresh and trim by the care of some neighboring florist) made the streets gay and the air sweet for those compelled to abide in the city under July and August suns. The taste for flower-culture is on the increase, we think; it would advance more rapidly if people were not discouraged often by the failure of their attempts, arising from the want of a little knowledge of the requirements of flowers. There are many handbooks on this subject published, and any florist would give a purchaser hints and instructions. The art is very far from being a difficult one to learn; it would be impossible to devise any recreation that would require so little outlay of study and care in proportion to the pleasure afforded by the result. Let us by all means have the flower Utopia, and with as little delay as possible.

How many weeks is it since the news of the appalling disaster to the Schiller reached us? It is not so long but that many of us remember a good deal of what was said and written on that occasion. We can recollect the fierce indignation of some of the journals at the recklessness with which steamers are pushed across the Atlantic with the apparent sole desire of making quick time. We can recall the bitter denunciation of the foolhardiness that risks a whole ship full of lives rather than wait for a fog to lift. There were many very good homilies written upon the subject on that occasion, and no one can question the wisdom of the utterances or the soundness of the advice so liberally offered to owners, commanders, and passengers. All we have to deplore is the readiness with which those who preached have forgotten their own text and sermon. Last week, for instance, it chanced that the Germanic, of the White Star Line, made the quickest passage from Liverpool to New York on record. Whereupon great was the applause of the feat, and derisive were the taunts leveled at all the competing lines. "The rivals of the White Star Line of steamers," exclaimed a reputable journal, which had been conspicu ous in its sermons on the Schiller disaster, "must wake up, or they will find themselves

regarded much as an engine-driver regards an old stage-coach." Wake up! Never mind now about the Schiller, and the Atlantic, and the Ville de Havre. No matter for fogs, and icebergs, and winds, but wake up and don't be beaten! Our sermons a few weeks ago were written under a gloomy and pusillanimous state of mind; we were then absolutely thinking that the safety of passengers is the most important of all considerations. So contemptible a notion, we now see, is quite unworthy any whole-souled, spirited sailor. The real, plucky thing is to beat to get in first or go to the bottom! "You rivals of the White Star Line," wake up and show your spirit! Crowd on more steam, spread more sail, push on through fog and through darkness, for “beating all competitors" is the whole duty of man when on the seas!

Literary.

ISS MULOCK has at length laid aside the disguise which for some time past has been getting very thin, and taken openly and avowedly to preaching. Her "Sermons out of Church" (New York: Harper & Brothers) read exactly like a collection of the moralities, comments, and "thoughts," with which her recent novels have been thickly interspersed; and we confess, for our part, that we prefer them in their present shape. True, the sermons retain a curiously distinct flavor of the novelist's art; but this does not detract in any way from their interest, and before be finishes the volume the reader will frankly concede that Miss Mulock has succeeded wonderfully well in catching the peculiar tricks of the pulpit-the calm assumption of disputed premises, the elaborate arguing in a circle, the propounding of hoary commonplaces with the air of giving utterance to newly-inspired wisdom. The effect, indeed, would be somewhat overpowering (or perhaps we should say consoling, since so many of the difficulties with which we are confronted in life are definitively settled for us) were it not that Miss Mulock herself suggests a method of evasion. She observes that one of the most trying features of listening to sermons in church is that one cannot get up and contradict the preacher when we know he is talking nonsense," thereby intimating, as we take it, that with sermons out of church we can rise and contradict as often as we disagree.

We should weary the reader's patience were we to avail ourselves fully of this concession, for, suggestive as Miss Mulock's sermons are, full as they are of sound commonsense and worldly wisdom, there are a great many points in them which, to say the least, require further discussion. In her first sermon, for instance, on "What is Self-sacrifice?" (or, more properly, "The Sin of Selfsacrifice"), she shows that she has utterly failed to comprehend the Christian conception of self-sacrifice. Her interpretation of the limits and extent of the duty would agree in all respects with the strictly utilitarian

definition of " enlightened self-interest; "her version of the command to turn the left cheek when the right is smitten would be, "Don't offer the left cheek unless you are certain that you will not thereby stimulate the pride, selfishness, and brutality of the smiter, and that the amount of good done him will overbalance the harm done to yourself." It seems never to have entered her thoughts that in the Christian morality self-sacrifice (like most of the Christian virtues) is not a social virtue but an individual one, and that the thing which most concerns us is the effect upon the person who accepts it. The moment you demand a mathematical equivalent for it, an act loses the most indispensable element of Christian self-sacrifice. Minor misconceptions of this sort abound in all the sermons, Miss Mulock's preaching, and of much other but we pass on to another characteristic of preaching, in church as well as out. It is, or ought to be, a well-known fact that physiologists are still in doubt as to whether alcohol is a stimulant only, or a food as well as a stimulant; the weight of later opinion inclining, perhaps, to the latter view, though all are agreed that more careful investigation is required before any satisfactory conclusion can be reached. This dubious state of opin. ion, however, does not suit Miss Mulock at all. Out of the abundance of her physiological knowledge she settles the question offhand and finally, and declares it to be our peremptory duty “to bring up a child from babyhood in the firm faith that wine, beer, and spirits, are only medicines," and that "that which is most valuable as a medicine is poison when taken as food." This bit of dogmatism, moreover, is an entirely superfluous intrusion upon a really excellent sermon on the importance of caring for physical health and the best methods of doing so ("Our Often Infirmities"); and, in common with other specimens of the same sort, seems to come from a sturdy determination on the part of the author to believe that whatever in her opinion is right necessarily accords with the facts.

The other sermons are: "How to train up a Parent in the Way he should go," containing some wholesome doctrine concerning the duties which parents owe to children;

(Philadelphia) republish Rev. J. G Wood's well-known work on "Bible Animals." This work was published nearly ten years ago in England, and an American edition was issued a little later by Messrs. Scribner, Armstrong & Co.; but it is good enough to pass through any number of editions, and we can fairly congratulate the public on an enterprise which promises to give it a wider circulation. The object of the book is, in general terms, to show what light zoölogy throws upon the Bible; and it contains a description of "the habits, structure, and uses of every living creature mentioned in the Scriptures, from the coral to the ape," at the same time explaining "all those passages in the Old and New Testaments in which reference is made to beast, bird, reptile, fish, or insect." Few natural historians have possessed wider general culture or greater enthusiasm for their special subjects than Mr. Wood, and, of all his numerous works, "Bible Animals " presents, probably, the most favorable example of his powers. We can acquiesce in the publishers' preface to the extent of saying that the critic will find little in the book to condemn, that the common people will read it gladly, and that it is well worthy of a place in every house beside the sacred book which it honors and expounds.

The chief difference between the present and previous editions lies in the addition of an essay "On Evolution," by Dr. McCosh, hostile, but on the whole not unfair, and of an article on "Research and Travel in Bible Lands," by Rev. Daniel March, D. D., treating more particularly of the relation between recent archæological discoveries and Biblical history. The pertinency of these articles is not evident, but they rise above the level of ordinary padding, and will doubtless be read with interest.

The illustrations are a very valuable feature of the book, being numerous and for the most part excellent.

GUHL AND KONER'S "Life of the Greeks and Romans" is a work of very great value to students of ancient history. It does not touch upon the events, incidents, policies, and institutions, which ordinarily engage the attention of historians; but it reveals to us the daily or domestic life of the two great nations of antiquity, describing with extreme minuteness of detail and abundance of illustration their architecture, furniture, arts, dress, education, manners, habits, amusements, marriage and burial customs, industries, music, games, and religion. In read

UNDER the title of "Scripture Natural History," Messrs. Bradley, Garrettson & Co.

which separates us from the Greeks and Romans seems to vanish, and we come to know their life almost as intimately and familiarly as we know contemporary life in England. The antique monuments furnish the principal sources from which Messrs. Guhl and Koner have drawn their information, and their work is a sort of summary of the results of modern archæological research in the field which

*The Life of the Greeks and Romans, described from Antique Monuments. By E. Guhl and W. Koner. Translated from the third German edition by F. Hueffer. With 548 Woodcuts. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

they cover. Of course, the private life of any people being so intimately associated with their public life, the book throws a great deal of light upon the history of Greece and Rome, supplying a natural background for many things which heretofore have seemed phenomenal and obscure. Herein lies its principal value, and for this reason it should find a place on the library-shelf along with Grote, Curtius, Mommsen, Gibbon, Merivale, and the rest.

The illustrations, of which there are more than five hundred, are finely engraved, and materially assist the reader in grasping the full meaning of the text.

WE suppose that Mr. George A. Baker's "Point-Lace and Diamonds" (New York: F. B. Patterson) must be classified as vers de société, on the principle that, if not vers de société, they are nothing; yet his work scarcely complies in a single particular with Mr. Locker's definition of that dainty species of poetry. "Genuine vers de société," says Mr. Locker in the preface to his "Lyra Elegantiarum," "should be short, elegant, refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful. The tone should not be pitched high; it should be idiomatic, and rather in the conversational key; the rhythm should be crisp and sparkling, and the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness; for, however trivial the subject-matter may be, indeed rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition and perfection of execution should be strictly enforced." Now Mr. Baker's verse is neither elegant, refined, nor fanciful; its sentiment is not chastened or playful; the rhythm is seldom crisp or sparkling; and it would be difficult to find a poem in the collection which is marked by tasteful moderation or high finish. Just two items of Mr. Locker's requirements it may perhaps be said to satisfy: the tone is low enough to suit the most exacting taste in that regard, and the language is idiomatic to the point of slang. We are aware that Mr. Baker's efforts have received high praise from persons who ought to know better; but, with a keen relish for true vers de société, we have been unable to find a stanza in "Point-Lace and Diamonds" which is notably distinguished by refinement of fancy, delicacy of sentiment, or grace of composition.

sic value, not as a mere appendage to Latin and Greek, or as the price to be paid for the ability to read text-books of chemistry and physiology." He may have the satisfaction of feeling certain that the industry and intelligence which he has bestowed upon the preparation of this series can hardly fail to contribute materially to the fulfillment of this wish—at least in the case of German.

MORE than two years ago Messrs. Appleton & Co. began preparing for the publication of a work in serial numbers, to be entitled "Picturesque Europe," which was designed

to be a companion-issue to the famous "Picturesque America." Mr. Fenn, the most successful of the illustrators to the latter book, was sent abroad for the purpose; and he, in cooperation with other artists, has since that time been actively engaged in making sketches and drawings for the work. It was thought that the publication would have begun ere this; but the task is a heavy one, and it was found impossible to proceed as rapidly as was at first expected, and yet do entire justice to the enterprise. This delay has been unfairly taken advantage of by another house, which has gathered together a great number of old steel-plates, illustrating European places, and issued them in parts under a title that suggests that of the Messrs. Appleton's. Some of the canvassers of this work have, with great effrontery, declared to those whom they have approached that Appleton & Co. have abandoned their design, and that the work offered is substituted therefor, under which plausible but altogether false representation they have secured many subscribers. It is, therefore, necessary to inform the public that "Picturesque Europe" is in as rapid preparation as is consistent with the thorough excellence of the steel-plates and the wood-engravings, and that its publication will probably begin within a few months. We may add that no labor is or has been spared to render this publication not only trustworthy, but really the best pictorial delineation of European places that has ever been given to the world.

made it a rule not to go into society lest his acquaintance with authors should hamper his independence, or embarrass him in the exercise of his editorial functions. He was to the last degree punctilious in not allowing any one to criticise a book who had the smallest motive to deviate from impartiality, being thoroughly resolved that the malice of envy and rivalry, the adulation of friendship, and the puffs of mercenaries, should never with his connivance find a vent in the Athenæum. A member of his staff, Mr. J. H. Reynolds, wished to review a particular work, and Mr. Dilke asked him whether he was not acquainted with author or bookseller. 'I, alas! know author and

THE "Sketch" prefixed to the Papers of the late Charles Wentworth Dilke gives an interesting glimpse of the character of one who, as editor of the Athenæum, will always be connected with the history of English literature, and who was one of the best critics of the last generation. Mr. Dilke became sole owner of the Athenæum in 1830. "He was just turned forty, with his judgment matured, and his physical powers unimpaired. His official life in the Naval Pay-Office had made him an excellent financier, and methodically exact in all his arrangements and correspondence. He had the diversified tastes and sympathies which are essential to the hearty countenance in due proportion of the multifarious branches of knowledge to be discussed. He had a mind which could only be satisfied with scrupulous accuracy, and by his vigilance he enforced it upon all his contributors. He had unbounded industry, and a capacity for sustaining prolonged toil-a capacity tasked to the utmost by the circumstance that the journal did not pay when he took it in hand, and that, with comparatively slender resources, he had to effect by his personal exertions the improvements which converted it from a loss into a revenue. But rarer and more important than all was the judicial equity which he resolved should distinguish the criticisms of his jourWhen he assumed the editorship he

bookseller,' replied Mr. Reynolds, who sent back the work, that Mr. Dilke, as he said, pettishly, 'might consign it to some independent hand, according to his religious custom.' Every thing which could be construed into a favor was declined. He would not accept any book which an author sent to him personally, nor a duplicate copy sent to the office of the Athenæum, nor would he ask for a book which had not been sent, and was too important to be left unnoticed. 'Favor and independence are incompatible,' he wrote in 1842 to his Paris correspondent, who had obtained from French publishers some early sheets of new books for review. Mr. Dilke pointed out to him that, having accepted the advance-sheets, he could not condemn the works, and added the decisive comment, 'What, then, is the value of your criticism?' Integrity, courage, and firmness were never carried further by any editor."

THE Saturday Review finds in "Three Northern Love Stories, and Other Tales," translated from the Icelandic by Eirekr Magnússon and William Morris, a book which for once it can heartily praise: "Fresh and bracing as seabreezes, and bright and clear as the waters beneath them on a sunny day, are the lovestories of Gunnlaug the Worm-tongue' and 'Frithiof the Bold.' As we read them we are carried backward many a year and northward many a mile, and we become familiarly acquainted with the manner of life led of old by those wondrous Northmen, among whom such dauntless souls animated bodies so marvelous for strength and endurance." The "Last Leaves from the Journal of the Rev. Julian Charles Young" contains some hitherto unpublished letters from the Rev. Frederick W. Robertson. In one of them, he speaks of his own profession as follows: "It certainly is the most quarrelsome of all professions in the matter of a blue or green window, prevenient moonshine, or a bishop's nightcap, and the most cowardly when once it comes to a matter of right and wrong-of what they saw and what they did not see. Unless clergy, of the type I am alluding to, are forced to serve in the army for five years previous to ordination, to make them men, 'let alone' gentlemen, I think the Church, as an establishment, had better be snuffed out." . . . The usually calm Spectator fairly loses its temper over a recent novel entitled "The Wheel of Fortune." This is the way it begins a review of it: "On a careful estimate, we believe we have read five-sixths of this book-we have read it, and survive. But we did not do it all at once-it would have proved too much for us. It was only by taking it in small doses, and distributing the exertion over the best part of a week, that we managed to get well toward the end of the third volume. And there we stuck, the excitement rising to a pitch that threatened to be beyond our control. Perpetual amazement is not a pleasant frame of mind, constant blushing for the folly of our kind not a com

fortable sensation. Yet, throughout the nine hundred and sixty-odd pages or twenty-five thousand lines which we compute this book to consist of, these were about the only sensations that stirred us. It is three days since we left off reading, but the effect is still upon us, and we doubt seriously whether we shall ever have courage again to open a novel by a writer whose name is unknown to us. Three such books on end ought to produce softening of the brain in any one who tried to read them."

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in 1875." Of the late Emperor Napoleon's "Vie de César," it is said that only one hundred and fifty copies were sold out of an edition of twenty-two thousand. The publishers brought a suit against the empress for one hundred and sixty-seven thousand francs damages, on the ground that the work was not finished owing to the emperor's death, but the suit was dismissed with costs. . . Novels being few last week, the Athenæum filled a portion of its space with some brief hints on the art of novel-writing, from which we quote a paragraph: "While rules have been laid down in convenient hand-books for almost every art and every handicraft under the sun, and while ladies can get for a shilling books of directions for knitting and crochet which might furnish them with occupation for the rest of their lives, no guide-book has, as far as we know, yet been published, in a cheap form, to the popular amusement of novel - writing. We shall, therefore, be poaching on nobody's preserve in stating that the List rule of the craft is-select your characters from the class of people with which you associate. If you are a school-girl, write about school-girls, and not about duchesses; if you are a lady, do not describe blackguards." The new edition

of the "Encyclopædia Britannica" is selling remarkably well in England. The publishers have already found it necessary to reprint the first volume. Cardinal Silvestri has made a present to the municipality of Padua of Petrarch's house at Arquà. . . . The Academy "has an opinion" of Mr. Joaquin Miller's novel, "First Families in the Sierras," which it expresses in the following concise way: "It bears a strong family likeness to 'The Luck of Roaring Camp,' but cannot be compared with it in point of merit. The civilizing influence is here a woman, not a child, and the interest, instead of being concentrated, is a good deal frittered away. When one has once been clearly informed that, in order to be the noblest work of God, it is chiefly necessary to have a good growth of hair on one's chest, to divide one's time between gold-digging and drinking poisonous whiskey, and to indulge in oaths which would doubtless be blasphemous if they possessed the antecedent qualification of meaning-subsequent repetitions of the dogma lose much of their value. It is interesting to know that Mr. Miller thinks nothing of any man or woman who has not a large nose. But, from the elaborate manner in which he announces the opinion, it would seem that Rabelais, Erasmus, and Sterne, were strange to him." The London Times thinks that there passes away with Dr. Thirwall the only mind that could survey all schools and forms of English religious thought with equal knowledge and justice, and that his memory will always survive as the most conspicuous proof that there is no true learning and no genuine piety which may not be harmoniously combined in the English Church.

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ures is Corot's "Dante and Virgil,"

bought by Mr. Quincy A. Shaw, of Boston, by whom it has been presented to the Museum of Fine Arts in that city. This picture is one of the best known and most important works of Corot, and for many years it has had a great reputation in Europe. It was exhibited in Paris, in the Salon, in 1859. It is an upright oblong, eight or ten feet high, and represents the opening scene of the first canto of the "Inferno," showing Dante and Virgil as they enter the wild wood, the silva silvaggia, that conducts to the infernal regions. At the feet of the two are the wolf, the leopard, and the lion, who meet them on their way, and over their heads tower lofty and thunderriven trees-"ghostly forms seen at noonday." A twilight mystery haunts the wood, and through the twisted boughs glimmers the light from the far-off region whence the poets have come. Like all other of Corot's works, it is not absolutely realistic. Its style is particularly adapted for a poetical rendering of one of the phases of Nature of which it is desired to make a strong impression on the mind of the beholder.

Unlike the delineations, so emphasized as to be impossibilities, in Doré's pictures of similar subjects, this really grand and noble landscape exhibits nothing incompatible with an absolute following of Nature, only it is the Nature we see in a gloomy twilight, with lofty trees and vague woodland reaches that appear in outline in the dimness and mist. Cobweb-like tangles of branches and their foliage shut out the sky, and close in the way behind the wanderers, but present none of the fantastic forms of faces and lean hands with which Doré in similar subjects endeavors to strengthen a witch-like impression. These tangles are such as appear in reality, but the artist, with a true poetical instinct, has introduced them in this place to enhance the value of his main theme. Corot is a land

scape-painter, and it is Nature as seen by Dante and Virgil, and not the two poets themselves, or the symbolical animals that accompany them, that is presented prominently to the thought of the spectator. The living forms are gray and indistinct in the twilight, but it is the dreary sky, and still drearier woodland, which entrance our imagination, as the thought of them enchained Dante six hundred years ago.

We have many pictures by Corot in this country, both in public exhibitions and in private houses.

To understand his works,

which are at once those of an artist and a poet, requires more than superficial sight or thought. To comprehend how truthful they are, an effort and a feeling are necessary, which educate the beholder while he is ex

amining their beauties. On this account signal benefit to

Mr. Shaw has rendered

art by giving to a public gallery the finest work of this master that has yet been brought to America.

WILLIAM M. HUNT has lately completed a half-length portrait of Rev. James Freeman

occur.

the characteristic, shrewd, and kindly markings of his high-arched forehead, and the fine lines about his nose, mouth, and eyes. He has the face of a man tranquil through philosophical conviction, and taking an easy and humorous view of the events of life as they Mr. Hunt thoroughly appreciates the capabilities for art of such a head. He makes the light strike sideways on the forehead, then graduate down the delicately - ridged cheeks, touching, as it descends, the elastic nostrils. He then makes it glance against eyelid and eyebrow, and shadow the mouth, and skim across the heavy, long beard. Lastly, he leaves it palest and weakest where it strikes upon and is lost against the stronglymodeled hands. Mr. Hunt has adopted in this picture such an arrangement of light and shadow as Rembrandt delighted in to bring out the peculiarities of face of his old burgomasters, picturesque from the markings rather than the form of their features. In the carrying out of this idea of light and shade, Mr. Hunt has been very happy, and this management of his subject is rather unusual with him, as he is accustomed to flat tints and equal values rather than to a strong focus of light and shade gradually losing its force.

But, while Mr. Hunt has most decidedly succeeded in getting a characteristic likeness of his sitter through this arrangement of light and shade, viewed as a painting, it seems to us that, living so long in this country without opportunity of toning his mind and eye by reference to the best models in art, the flesh tint and flesh quality of his pictures lose rather than gain in excellence, and that especially in this painting there is an impression of labor and lack of freshness which a man of Mr. Hunt's great natural power should never betray. Comparing this really artistic painting with the halflearned attempts of young Duveneck, now on exhibition and about which the press has said so much of late, the former work is decidedly a sufferer beside the crisp, fresh touches laid on so roughly by the young student of Munich.

Literary men every

where have the advantage that they may always compare their writings with the highest standard; but this opportunity for the painter, which is even more necessary for him than it is for the author, can only be obtained at present by occasional visits to Europe. Of the necessity of such a standard, we may cite the example of one of our best artists, who brought home with him a most careful and elaborate copy which he had made of Titian's " Bella," and no offer has ever tempted him to part with it, since it is his chief means in America, he says, of keeping up the standard of his own work here. Mr. Hunt's late portraits show, we think, the absence of such standards, to which he can refer to note the failure or success of the new experiments and effects he introduces into his pictures. Much as we admire certain qualities in Mr. Hunt's paintings, we can but regret when we see them in any degree fall below his earlier work.