passed too deeply into the popular heart to be affected for good or ill by criticism, and we have only to express our love of it. Simple, pathetic, and real, it early made the poet a reputation and friends in every home visited by the newspapers, in which it has been printed over and over again. It is but one of various poems by Mr. Aldrich which enjoy a sort of perennial fame, and for which we have come to look in the papers, as we do for certain flowers in the fields, at their proper season. In the middle of June, when the beauty of earth and sky drives one to despair, we know that it is time to find the delicately sensuous and pensive little poem "Nameless Pain" in all our exchanges; and later, when the summer is subject to sudden thunderstorms, we look out for "Before the Rain," and "After the Rain." It is very high praise of these charming lyrics, that they have thus associated themselves with a common feeling for certain aspects of nature, and we confess that we recur to them with greater pleasure than we find in some of our poet's more ambitious efforts. Indeed, we think Mr. Aldrich's fame destined to gain very little from his recent poems, "Judith," "Garnaut Hall," and "Pythagoras"; for when it comes to be decided what is his and what is his period's, these poems cannot be justly awarded to him. To borrow a figure from the polygamic usages of our Mormon brethren, they are sealed to Mr. Aldrich for time and to Mr. Tennyson for eternity. They contain many fine and original passages: the "Judith " contains some very grand ones, but they must bear the penalty of the error common to all our younger poets, — the error of an imitation more or less unconscious. It is to the example of the dangerous poet named that Mr. Aldrich evidently owes, among other minor blemishes, a mouse which does some mischief in his verses. It is a wainscot mouse, and a blood-relation, we believe, to the very mouse that shrieked behind the mouldering wainscot in the lonely moated grange. This mouse of Mr. Aldrich's appears twice in a brief lyric called "December "; in “Garnaut Hall," she makes

"A lodging for her glossy young In dead Sir Egbort's empty coat of mail," and immediately afterwards drags the poet over the precipice of anti-climax :

"T was a haunted spot. A legend killed it for a kindly home,

A grim estate, which every heir in turn Left to the orgies of the wind and rain, The newt, the toad, the spider, and the mouse.' A little of Costar's well-known exterminator would rid Mr. Aldrich of this rascal rodent. Perhaps, when the mouse is disposed of, the poet will use some other word than torso to describe a headless, but not limbless body, and will relieve Agnes Vail of either her shield or her buckler, since she can hardly need both.

66

We have always thought Mr. Aldrich's "Palabras Cariñosas" among the most delicious and winning that he has spoken, and nearly all of his earlier poems please us; but on the whole it seems to us that his finest is his latest poem, 'Friar Jerome's Beautiful Book"; for it is original in conception and expression, and noble and elevated in feeling, with all our poet's wonted artistic grace and felicity of diction. We think it also a visible growth from what was strong and individual in his style, before he allowed himself to be so deeply influenced by study of one whose flower indeed becomes a weed in the garden of another.

The United States during the War. By AUGUST LAUGEL. New York: Baillière Brothers. Paris: Germer Baillière. The Civil War in America. An Address read at the last Meeting of the Manchester Union and Emancipation Society. By GOLDWIN SMITH. London: Simpkin, Marshall, & Co. Manchester: A. Ireland & Co.

As a people, we are so used to policeman-like severity or snobbish ridicule from European criticism, that we hardly know what to make of the attentions of a Frenchman who is not an Inspector Javert, or of an Englishman who is not a Commercial Traveller. M. Laugel eulogizes us without the least patronage in his manner; Mr. Goldwin Smith praises us with those reserves which enhance the value of applause. We are ourselves accustomed to deal generously and approvingly with the facts of our civilization, but our pride in them falls short of M. Laugel's; and our most sanguine faith in the national future is not more cordial than Mr. Goldwin Smith's.

The diverse methods in which these writers discuss the same aspects and events of our history are characteristic and interesting, and the difference in spirit

-

is even greater than that of form, — greater than the difference between a book, which, made from articles in the Revue de Deux Mondes, recounts the political, military, and financial occurrences of the last four years, sketches popular scenes and characters, and deals with the wonders of our statistics, and a slender pamphlet address, in which the author concerns himself rather with the results than the events of our recent war. This is always Mr. Smith's manner of dealing with the past; but in considering a period known in all its particulars to his audience, he has been able to philosophize history more purely and thoroughly than usual. He arrives directly and clearly at the moral of the Ilias Americana, and sees that Christianity is the life of our political system, and that this principle, without which democracy is a passing dream, and equality an idle fallacy, triumphed forever in the downfall of slavery. He has been the first of our commentators to discern that the heroism displayed in the war could only come from that principle which made our social life decent and orderly, built the school - house and the church, and filled city and country with prosperous and religious homes. He has seen this principle at work under changing names and passing creeds, and has recognized that here, for the first time in the history of the world, a whole nation strives to govern itself according to the Example and the Word that govern good men everywhere.

In the Introduction to his book, M. Laugel declares as the reasons for his admiration of the United States, that they "have shown that men can found a government on reason, where equality does not stifle liberty, and democracy does not yield to despotism; they have shown that a people can be religious when the State neither pays the Church nor regulates belief; they have given to woman the place that is her due in a Christian and civilized society." It is this Introduction, indeed, that will most interest the American reader, for here also the author presents the result of his study of our national character in a sketch that the nation may well glass itself in when low-spirited. The truth is, that we looked our very best to the friendly eyes of M. Laugel, and we cannot but be gratified with the portrait he has made of us. An American would hardly have ventured to draw so flattering a picture, but he cannot help exulting that an alien should see us

poetic in our realism, curious of truth and wisdom as well as of the stranger's personal history, cordial in our friendships, and not ignoble even in our pursuit of wealth, but having the Republic's greatness at heart as well as our own gain.

In the chapters which succeed this Introduction, M. Laugel discusses, in a spirit of generous admiration, the facts of our civilization as they present themselves in nearly all the States of the North and West; and while he does not pretend to see polished society everywhere, but very often an elemental ferment, he finds also that the material of national goodness and greatness is sound and of unquestionable strength. He falls into marvellously few errors, and even his figures have not that bad habit of lying to which the figures of travellers so often fall victims.

The books of M. Laugel and Mr. Goldwin Smith come to us, as we hinted, after infinite stupid and dishonest censure from their countrymen; but the intelligent friendship of such writers is not the less welcome to us because we have ceased to care for the misrepresentations of the French and English tourists.

Hospital Life in the Army of the Potomac. By WILLIAM HOWELL REED. Boston: William V. Spencer.

THE advice of friends, so often mistaken, and so productive of mischief in goading reluctant authorship to the publication of unwise, immature, or feeble literature, prevailed upon Mr. Reed to give the world the present book; and we have a real pleasure in saying that for once this affectionate counsel has done the world a favor and a service. We have read the volume through with great interest, and with a lively impression of the author's good sense and modesty. In great part it is a personal narrative; but Mr. Reed, in recounting the story of the unwearied vigilance and tenderness and dauntless courage with which the corps of the Sanitary Commission discharged their high duties, contrives to present his individual acts as representative of those of the whole body, and to withdraw himself from the reader's notice. With the same spirit, in describing scenes of misery and suffering, he has more directly celebrated the patience and heroism of the soldiers who bore the pain than the indefatigable goodness that ministered to them, though

he does full justice to this also. The book is a record of every variety of wretchedness; yet one comes from its perusal strengthened and elevated rather than depressed, and with new feelings of honor for the humanity that could do and endure so much. Mr. Reed does not fail to draw from the scenes and experiences of hospital life their religious lesson, and throughout his work are scattered pictures of anguish heroically borne, and of Christian resignation to death, which are all the more touching because the example of courage through simple and perfect faith is enforced without cant or sentimentality.

The history of the great Christian aspect of our war cannot be too minutely written nor too often read. There is some danger, now the occasion of mercy is past, that we may forget how wonderfully complete the organization of the Sanitary Commission was, and how unfailingly it gave to the wounded and disabled of our hosts all the succor that human foresight could afford, how, beginning with the establishment of depots convenient for the requisitions of the surgeons, it came to send out its own corps of nurses and watchers, until its lines of mercy were stretched everywhere almost in sight of the lines of battle, and its healing began almost at the hour the hurt was given. Mr. Reed devotes a chapter to this history, in which he briefly and clearly describes the practical operation of the system of national charity, accrediting to Mr. Frank B. Fay the organization of the auxiliary corps, and speaking with just praise of its members who perished in the service, or clung to it, till, overtaken by contagion or malaria, they returned home to die. The subject is dealt with very frankly; and Mr. Reed, while striving to keep in view the consoling and self-recompensing character of their work, does not conceal that, though they were rewarded by patience and thankfulness in far the greater number of cases, their charities were sometimes met by disheartening selfishness and ingratitude. But they bore up under all, and gave the world such an illustration of practical Christianity as it had never seen before.

Mr. Reed's little book is so earnestly and unambitiously written, that its graphic power may escape notice. Yet it is full of picturesque touches; and in the line of rapidly succeeding anecdote there is nothing of repetition.

A History of the Gypsies: with Specimens of the Gypsy Language. By WALTER SIMPSON. Edited, with Preface, Introduction, and Notes, and a Disquisition on the Past, Present, and Future of Gypsydom, by JAMES SIMPSON. New York: M. Doolady.

THE history of the Gypsies, according to the editor of the present work, is best presented in a series of desultory anecdotes which relate chiefly to the Egyptian usages of murder, pocket-picking, and horse-stealing, and the behavior of the rogues when they come to be hanged for their crimes. Incidentally, a good deal of interesting character is developed, and both author and editor show a very intimate acquaintance with the life and customs and speech of an inexplicable people. But here the value of their book ends; and we imagine that the earlier Simpson, who contributed the greater part of it in articles to Blackwood's Magazine, scarcely supposed himself to be writing anything more than sketches of the Scotch Gypsies whom he found in the different shires, and of the Continental and English Gypsies of whom he had read. The later Simpson thought it, as we have seen, a history of the Gypsies, and he has furnished it with an Introduction and a Disquisition of amusingly pompous and inconsequent nature. His subject has been too much for him, and his mental vision, disordered by too ardent contemplation of Gypsies, reproduces them wherever he turns his thought. If he values any one of his illusions above the rest, for they all seem equally pleasant to him, it is his persuasion that John Bunyan was a Gypsy. "He was a tinker," says our editor. "And who were the tinkers?" "Why, Gypsies, without a doubt," answers the reader, and makes no struggle to escape the conclusion thus skilfully sprung upon him. Will it be credited that the inventor of this theory was denied admittance to the columns of the religious newspapers in this country, on the flimsy pretext that the editors could not afford the space for a disquisition on John Bunyan's Gypsy origin?

The comparison of the Gypsy language in this book with a dialect of the Hindostanee is interesting and useful, and the accounts of Gypsy habits and usages are novel and curious; and otherwise the work is a mass of rather entertaining rubbish.

Eros. A Series of connected Poems. By LORENZO SOMERVILLE. London: Trübner & Co.

Patriotic Poems. By FRANCIS DE HAES JANVIER. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

The Contest: a Poem, By G. P. CARR. Chicago: P. L. Hanscom.

Poems. By ANNIE E. CLARK. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co.

ALL these little books are very prettily printed and very pleasingly bound. Each has its little index and its little dedication, and each its hundred pages of rhymes, and so each flutters forth into the world.

"Dove vai, povera foglia frale?"

To oblivion, by the briefest route, we think ; and we find a pensive satisfaction in speculating upon the incidents of the journey. Shall any one challenge the wanderers in their flight, and seek to stay them? Shall they all reach an utter forgetfulness, and be resolved again into elemental milk and water, or shall one of them lodge in a dusty library, here and there, and, having ceased to be literature, lead the idle life of a curiosity? We imagine another as finding a moment's pause upon the centretable of a country parlor. Perhaps a third, hastily bought at a railway station as the train started, and abandoned by the purchaser, may at this hour have entered upon a series of railway journeys in company with the brakeman's lamps and oil-bottles, with a fair prospect of surviving many generations of short-lived railway travellers. We figure to ourselves the heartbreaking desolation of a village-tavern, where, on the bureau under the mirror, to which the public comb and brush are chained, a fourth might linger for a while.

But in all the world shall anybody read one of these books? We fancy not even a critic; for the race so vigilantly malign in other days has lost its bitterness, or has been broken of its courage by the myriad numbers of the versifiers once so exultingly destroyed. Indeed, that cruel slaughter was but a combat with Nature,

--

"So careful of the type she seems,
So careless of the single life";

and from the exanimate dust of one crushed poetaster she bade a thousand rhymesters rise. Yet one cannot help thinking with a shudder of the hideous spectacle of

"Eros" in the jaws of Blackwood or the mortal Quarterly, thirty years ago; or of how ruthlessly our own Raven would have plucked the poor trembling life from the "Patriotic Poems," or "The Contest," or the "Poems."

The world grows wiser and better-natured every day, and the tender statistician has long since stayed the hand of the critic. "Why strike," says the gentle sage, "when figures will do your work so much more effectually, and leave you the repose of a compassionate soul? Do you not know that but one book in a thousand survives the year of its publication?" etc., etc., etc. "And then as to the infinite reproduction of the species," adds Science, "is Nature,

"So careful of the single type?' But no,
From scarped cliff and quarried stone

She cries, A thousand types are gone."' Patience! the glyptodon and the dodo have been dead for ages. Perhaps in a million years the poetaster also shall pass.

Thirty Years of Army Life on the Border. By COLONEL R. B. MARCY, U. S. A. With Numerous Illustrations. New York: Harper and Brothers.

THERE is not much variety in frontier life, it must be confessed, though there is abundant adventure. A family likeness runs through nearly all histories of bear-fights, and one Indian-fight might readily be mistaken for another. So also bear-fighters and Indian-fighters are akin in character, and the pioneers who appear in literature leave a sense of sameness upon the reader's mind. Nevertheless, one continues to read of them with considerable patience, and likes the stories because he liked their ancestral legends when a boy.

Colonel Marcy's book offers something more than the usual attractions of the class to which it belongs; for it contains the history of his own famous passage of the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter, and notices of many frontiersmen of original and striking character (like the immortal Captain Scott), as well as much shrewd observation of Indian nature and other wildbeast nature. All topics are treated with perfect common-sense; if our soldierly author sometimes philosophizes rather narrowly, he never sentimentalizes, though he is not without poetry; and he is thoroughly