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but he has done this much more intelligibly in
the prose
note which accompanies his poem than
in the poem itself.

Primroses. (Griffith & Farran.) This is an elegy on the Earl of Beaconsfield. It is designed as "a tribute to the greatness of the man whose

rounded and perfected presentment which
makes a good sonnet one of the best, as it
is also one of the most difficult, forms of verse.
We do not find that Mr. Grant's later sonnets
are an advance upon his earlier ones; but the
present volume has a distinct freshness of theme

good as some of his works are, there must be few persons, even among such as are thoroughly well informed on literary subjects, who have so much as heard Mr. Brent's name.

Anima Christi. By J. S. Fletcher. (Bradford: Fletcher.) Unless we have failed to

life was of too heroic a stature to be adequately which is agreeable to the mind weary of catch the drift of this volume, it is a sort of

delineated in the cold and exact language of prose." The anonymous writer's contempt of prose for uses so exalted as his thought and theme require reminds us of the sublime contempt of all language which we sometimes find

psychological study, intended to afford a view of the workings of the author's soul in the development of faith. Beginning with what we fear is a cheap, if not vulgar, type of scepticism, the writer is landed at last, mainly devout wife, in the most_reposeful belief in the through the sorrows incident to the death of a religion of the cross. The term we apply to

in the wise folks who tell us that words are powerless to express their feelings. Just as words served Shakspere, however, for the utterance of his emotion, so the "cold and exact business as it is the business of the historian the latter condition is certainly not intended to

poem

the worn-out subjects of much modern verse.
The poems are chiefly descriptive of Canadian
life and scene, and are vigorous and graphic as
poems, as well as interesting and valuable as
We
glimpses of things that are strange to us.
trust the time is not far distant when the
younger poets will see what the older poets
have always recognised-that it is as much their
or the essayist not to begin to write until
they are quite sure that they have something to
say, of necessity better than physical or meta-
physical, psychological or even potological,
accounts of themselves. There is one poem in
Mr. Grant's book which seems to us to be no
than fine in its virile beauty of subject. It is
less touching in its simple rugged treatment
the story of an engine-driver who sees a goods
"Done his Duty-and more," and is
train coming down upon the train he drives,
to save his passengers, uncouples his
engine, charges and upsets the approaching
train, and loses his own life as a sacrifice to
duty.

entitled,

convey anything more than a just idea of the type of Christianity which Mr. Fletcher ultimately espouses. There may well be some difference of opinion as to the value of this dramatic method of working out a problem in way in which it is done. So much rough-shod psychology; but there can be none as to the metre we have not often met with even among the lesser poets.

Ilaria, and other Poems. By Ernle S. W. Johnson. (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.) This little book shows considerable feeling for beauty in external nature, but no great hold of human passion. The glamour and mystery of the world have taken hold of the writer's imaginaThe Daisy Chain. By Baroness Swift. (Venice.) tion. His way of looking upon life is what we It is not easy to express an opinion on the merits would call scenic, as distinguished from draof the poems in this little Venetian publication, matic, meaning that he sees things in the mass, which, having been privately printed, is dedicated and generally with a veil of sentiment between to the Queen of Italy. The work is composed about him and them--not individually, and with, as it equally of original lyrics and translations. The were, a bright light penetrating and surroundlatter are chiefly from Goethe, Heine, and Her-ing every object. The following sonnet is fairly der, with occasional fragments from Victor representative of the body of the book; the Hugo and from Spanish and Italian poetry. The tenth line is very weak, but the last line has a versions of "Mignon" and "The Erl King" fine ring on our ear:may be said to reproduce the substance of the original poems with accuracy and effect. The lyrics of Heine fare less well at the poetess's hands. The airy delicacy of Heine's touch can only be imitated by a hand almost equally deft. The original verses are always well meant, and often pretty as to general idea. Where they fail is perhaps in finish. The authoress might do well to put herself in training for maturer products by a study of the metrical arts. Her present volume is suffused with a cominendable poetic sentiment.

language of prose " has hitherto served the
world for all that required to be said of Lord
Beaconsfield. We much fear that the eulogy of
the author of the present elegy will not add
sensibly to the heroic stature which it is meant
to panegyrise. With the narrative part of the
that tells the story, often prosaic enough,
we fear, of the early life of the subject, are
interwoven a number of lyrical pieces entitled
"The Songs of the People." These strike us as
by no means wanting in force, fervour, pathos,
and rugged beauty. We regret to say, how-and,
ever, that in their present connexion they seem
to be open to an objection which two lines of
the "Primroses" help us to formulate-
"But these remarks, as counsel might observe,
Have no connexion with my client's case."
Onnalinda: a Romance. (New York: Putnam.)
This long poem, half-epic, half-dramatic, in form,
is intended to champion the cause of the Indian
against the policy of extermination which the
Department of the Interior in the United States
Government appears to be practising even yet,
despite the best that Fenimore Cooper and
writers of his class and of his sympathies could
do. That there is danger of the annihilation of
what remnant still remains of the Indian race is
sufficiently obvious; and, in the absence of
authentic data whereby to judge of the cruelties
attributed to the fugitive tribes, it is not easy to
form a judgment of the policy of the Govern-
ment. It is conceivable that in some blind way
the Indians feel their best instincts outraged by
the encroachments of the white man. The
sacred bones of their forefathers may be
ploughed up by the builders of cities; and this
act, and all such acts, done unwittingly by the
white races, may constitute atrocities in the eyes
of the Indians which explain and palliate, if they
do not atone for, the brutal massacres sometimes
committed by wandering tribes. Indeed, there
may be more deliberate and wanton outrage
chargeable to the intruder on the Indians'
territory. Onnalinda records the legendary
achievements of the Iroquois princess whose
adroitness baffled the French general and
whose beauty fascinated Capt. Stark in the
invasion of the Genesee Valley. Naturally the
meagre legend has undergone considerable
amplification, and now ends in the most ap-
proved fashion of a society novel, by the
pacification of the black chieftain and the dis-
covery of noble Saxon relations for the beautiful
princess. The lines of the poem run smoothly
enough, and have an occasional felicity of form.
Perhaps the gravest fault of the poem as a
whole is slowness of movement.

Prairie Pictures. By John Cameron Grant. Longmans.) We did not greatly care for Mr. Grant's last book, A Year of Life, chiefly, perhaps, because its Preface seemed to exhibit a good deal of pretentiousness that was scarcely justified by the work itself. But the sonnets contained in that volume were much better than the critical disquisition which accompanied them; and we were able to commend them for some grasp of style, some fluency and force, if not for that special excellence of

"In the ripe heyday of the summer's height

A blighting sadness falls from cloudless skies,
And souls which inward peer with curious
eyes

Find fairest dreams the prey of foulest night.
Allurement cheats, and like a bubble breaks,

Unstable even in memory, though in sight
How far out-matching absent fancy's might
To paint the contour of her roseate cheeks.
What broken work is this, which breaks the
hearts

Of poets in their early manhood? Doom
For generous breath how hard, to leave the
bloom

Of fond enticing charm ere youth departs,
From Juliet's garden through sad Elsinore
Driven to Cordelia's tomb on the lone moor."

The Poetical Works of John Brent. In 2 vols. (Kent.) It would appear that Mr. Brent himself prepared these two luxurious volumes for the press, but that, as he died before their publication, his executors have carried out his wishes Six Pieces for Recitation. By Harding Cox. in respect of them. It is always an ungracious (Griffith & Farran.) The poems appear to be thing to disparage a writer who is newly taken well adapted for public recitation. They are from us, and, indeed, in this instance, we feel dramatic, and they are written with cumulano desire to do so. The poems are for the most tive effect of incident ending sensationally, as part greatly in advance of the average verse a rule, and leaving the emotion at its highest which falls to the lot of the present critic to pitch. Quite the best in the little collection is review. They have a smooth fluency, an easy the piece entitled "The Murder," in which a grace, a certain excellence of directness and costermonger tells in the language of Whitecharm of simplicity. We do not find that the chapel the story of how he came to murder his author's materials had ever mastered him, nor do wife. The theme looks unpromising, but the we find that he had mistaken ideas of the sub-sympathy is skilfully managed in the murderer's jects proper to poetry, or an exaggerated sense of his own powers to deal with the themes which he had proposed to himself. "Atalanta " is no unworthy production; "Winnie" is a sweet little idyll; and some of the shorter lyrics have qualities of beauty. We should be disposed to say that, as a minor singer, Mr. Brent deserves to stand well with the public. Verse of the same merit made considerable reputations for men and women sixty to eighty years ago. The number of reasonably good writers has increased enormously since then, and what strikes us as curious is that there is thought to remain any place in literature for Mr. Brent's "Poetical Works." We fear that,

favour, and the pathos is of that rude and simple kind which usually proves contagious among an audience.

Windows of the Church, Echoes from Theocritus, Cytisus and Galingale. By Edward C. Lefroy. (Blackheath: Burnside.) The three booklets of sonnets bearing severally the above names seem to us of very remarkable merit. Rarely indeed do we meet with so much knowledge and love of nature as some of the sonnets in the first of the three exhibit, and rarely has the great pastoral poet been so freely transmuted without loss of his spell. It is Mr. Lefroy's distinction that his material never masters him, and of the difficulties of the form of art he has

chosen he hides away almost every trace. His

sonnets are about as little laboured as Mrs. Browning's, to whose Portuguese series a few of the best bear a fine affinity. A breezy healthfulness of thought and feeling plays around a poem like this:

"Here is the hill-top. Look! Not moor or fen,
Not wood or pastures, circles round the steep;
But houses upon houses, thousand-deep,
The merchant's palace and the pauper's den.
We are alone,-beyond all human ken;

Only the birds are with us and the sheep.
We are alone; and yet one giant's-leap
Would land us in the flood of hurrying men.
If e'er I step from out that turbid stream

To spend an hour in thought, I pass it here:
For good it is across our idlest dream

To see the light of manhood shining clear;
And solitude is sweetest, as I deem,

When half-a-million hearts are beating near." Mr. Lefroy's sonnets ought to be better known. In substance they resemble those of Charles Tennyson Turner.

Poems. By Patty Honeywood. (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.) The best that we can say of this little book is that it exhibits a measure of taste, and shows that the author has a certain susceptibility to sentiment of the humbler kind. Possibly there are vast numbers of young ladies in the world who have this susceptibility moderately developed. That every young lady so endowed does not appear as a poet is perhaps due in equal parts to the susceptibility to humour which saves so many from treacherous pitfalls and to the sheer inability of others to overcome technical difficulties-in short, to rhyme. Miss Patty Honeywood's volume is much simpler and less pretentious, and fully as pleasant and quite as valuable, as some of the bardic productions of most of the poets of the other sex. Her book is dedicated to Lord Wolseley, to whom she offers a poetic address.

By

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The Lily of the Lyn, and other Poems. H. J. Skinner. (Kegan Paul, Trench, & Co.) The longest poem in this book is a tive called "A Song of the Sea." a sort of combination of "Enoch Arden " and "Dora," with the intermixture of some original treachery. We fear we must say that the story does not carry us along as we read it. When the poet's aim is story-telling, his first business is to avoid everything that impedes the action. Mr. Skinner had probably not quite made up his mind as to whether it was his function to tell a story or to use a story. The difference between these two will at once appear when Scott's poetic romances are placed side by side with Keats's " Endymion." Our young poets can hardly hope for success in narrative verse until they see clearly what it is that they are doing. Mr. Skinner gives us some "Stanzas to Maud" which are full of passion. "The Lily of the Lyn" has more of the spirit of Heathcliff in Emily Brontë's weird and unreal, but powerful, romance than commends itself to our sympathy. This may be best described as female Byronism. There is a good deal too much of it in modern minor poetry.

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Two Gallian Laments. Brenon. (Reeves & Turner.) This author is By E. St. Johnnot under the reproach of a vague female Byronism. There is no lack of shrill vehemence of speech in these "Laments." The first of them is a "Lament on Republican France," intended as a reply to Mr. Swinburne's 66 Ode on Republican France; the second is a "Lament on the Death of Napoleon III.," which, though printed in 1873, is now " for the first time given to the world." It must be said that "the world" to which such poems are given has a bad trick of looking the gift horses in the mouth. The lament on the degeneracy of France consequent upon the

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proclamation of the Republic is prefaced by an extract from a speech by the author to the electors of Gloucester. Shall we have a Republic ?" it asks, and then replies: "No, gentlemen, revolution is poison. lutionism standing on the precipice of that abyss which yawns for the annihilation of the State of England, and the archangel of our British Constitution shrieking out, in his might and in his power to our hearts-Beware, ye men of England.' We are sorry to observe that the author has himself usurped the office of the archangel in question, for listen to "shrieking out" like

this:

:

"An Emperor smitten, not slain,

Smitten sore by the treason of knaves, Thou shalt rise, O Napoleon, to crush,

'Neath thy heel those abortions of slaves; 'Neath thy heel shalt thou crush them to death, Them who have poisoned with pestilent breath The good thou hast done for thy beautiful France In the days of thy might and magnificence." It is hardly wonderful that the poor man It is nothing to the author, evidently, that his deserved a "Lament" after a dose like this. silly prophecy was falsified.

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Later Life Jottings. (Manchester: Tubbs, Brook, & Chrystal.) This By R. R. Bealey. is an unambitious volume of verse, partly rustic, chiefly homely. Mr. Bealey is in the fortunate position of having no and belonging to no " message sorry to disparage either messages or schools 'school." We would be in the abstract; but in the concrete they are sometimes dread things to encounter. A series of "Short Thoughts grams in prose and verse close the book. of the nature of epibest " The short thought" we can find is this:"As dew is to rain,

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So poetry to prose,—

Both water, but 'twere vain
The difference to disclose.
Who sees it, sees it plain,

Who sees not, blindness shows."

NOTES AND NEWS.

MR. SWINBURNE, we hear, is likely before long to bring out a new volume of critical essays.

MESSRS. MACMILLAN & Co. will publish on June 1 the first volume of a new library edition pleted in seven volumes, issued monthly, at five shillings each. A limited edition on hand-made paper will be issued, in sets only, at the rate of half-a-guinea a volume.

of the works of the Poet Laureate, to be com

THE announcement made some weeks ago of the title of Mr. Browning's new volume, Seriora, has led some of his readers to believe that it is in the press. But this is not the case. MS. has not yet left the author's hands. It will The probably not be finished much before the end of the season, and may not be ready even then.

many of his poems in the forthcoming new MR. BROWNING has made slight revisions in cheap edition of his two volumes of Selections. Mr. Grant White has set Mr. Furnivall and his fellows of the Browning Society a good exchange in "Bishop Blougram," where the old ample by collating at least one former happy line,

66

'While the great bishop rolled him out his mind,"

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Ethel Harraden's musical setting of his "Wilt thou change too?" the first section of 'James Lee's Wife," which we mentioned last week, that he has given her leave to set any others of his poems that she likes. But why does not Mr. Browning set his own poems to music? His powers in that known since his youth. He must have his own way have been tune for every poem he has written. Why will he not give them to the world? Who will get them out of him for us, as Lady Cowper got "Balaustion's Adventure," as his pretty, flattering dedication to that poem says?

WE hear that Mr. J. A. Symonds is engaged upon a new work, which will shortly be completed. It consists of a treatise upon Latin Mediaeval Student Songs, the Goliardic literature of the twelfth century, also known as Carmina Burana or Carmina Vagorum. Mr. songs into rhyming metres corresponding closely Symonds has translated a large portion of these with the originals. Hitherto none of these of his work is intended to be a study of the poems, with one exception, he believes, have found their way into English verse. The whole

earliest Renaissance.

Newman's book on the origin of Christianity
WE understand that the MS. of Prof. F. W.
has been sent to the printer.

"A ROMAN SINGER," by Mr. F. Marion
Macmillan & Co. on May 20.
Crawford, which has been running through the
Atlantic Monthly, will be published by Messrs.

MESSRS. ISBISTER will published next week a work on Contemporary Socialism, by Mr. John Rae. It contains an exposition and criticism of scientific socialism, as taught by Lassalle and Marx, of what is called "Socialism of the Chair," of Christian Socialism, and of Nihilism; and a special chapter is devoted to Mr. Henry George.

PROF. HALES' forthcoming volume of reprinted papers will be entitled Essays and Notes on Shakespeare. It will appear this month.

MR. FISHER UNWIN has in the press a new will be published under the title of Measured volume of verse by Mr. Ernest Radford, which Steps.

the eighth edition of Tischendorff's New TestaTHE long-expected volume of Prolegomena to Williams & Norgate. It has been written by ment will be published this month by Messrs. Dr. Caspar René Gregory, of Leipzig, with the assistance of the late Prof. Ezra Abbot, of Harvard, who died only last March. Prefixed is a short Life of Tischendorf, and the history of the text includes a collation of the two recent editions of Tregelles and of Westcott and Hort. the cursives, with the early versions and the This volume deals only with the uncial MSS.; ecclesiastical writers, are reserved for another volume.

ledge will publish during May the following THE Society for Promoting Christian Knowworks:-In the series entitled European Literature," Anglo-Saxon Literature, "Dawn of by Prof. Earle; in the series "Early Britain," Norman Britain, by the Rev. W. Hunt; in "Non-Christian Religious Systems," Buddhism in China, by Prof. S. Beal; in "The Home Library," Thoughts and Character: being Selec tions from the Writings of the Author of the Schönberg-Cotta Family; in "The People's Library," Biographies of Working-men, by Mr. Grant Allen; also The Guild of Good Life: & Narrative of Domestic Health and Economy, by ex-by the Rev. W. Lewery Blackley; and, among a very Dr. B. W. Richardson; Thrift and Independence, other miscellaneous books, John Wiclif, his Life and Times, by Canon Pennington; Life of John the late Lady Martin; Lettice, by Mrs. MolesWycliffe, by F. D. Matthew; Our Maories, by

appeared in 1880 as
"While the great bishop rolled him out a mind,
Long rumpled, till creased consciousness lay smooth."
which Mr. Grant White well calls
fine example of that concentrated form of
pression, and that bold mastery of metaphor, in
which Browning alone of all poets approaches,
and frequently approaches, Shakspere."

MR. BROWNING is so well pleased with Miss

worth; Modern Egypt: its Witness to Christ, by the Rev. H. B. Ottley; Types and Antitypes of Our Lord, with illuminations from thirteenthcentury missals and other sources; and Christianity Judged by its Fruits, by the Rev. Dr. C. Croslegh.

A CONTRIBUTION to the literature of criminal trials is about to be published by Mr. Thos. D. Morison, of Glasgow. The work gives a general view of the resurrectionists in Scotland, with a special account of the Burke and Hare tragedies in Edinburgh, bringing out the social, legal, nd medical bearings of the case. The writer is Mr. George MacGregor, author of The History of Glasgow, and editor of the Collected Writings of Dougal Graham.

MESSRS. CASSELL & Co. have made arrange

ments with the directors of the Great Western Railway Company for the production of an official illustrated Guide to that railway, which will be published next month at one shilling. It will be illustrated with engravings, a complete series of route maps, and "bird's-eye view" maps printed in colours.

the Black Hole, which was excavated not long
ago for a short time, and of which the actual
floor and walls were exposed, has now been
filled in and paved over with stone slabs. A
tablet of white marble, bearing the following
inscription, is ready to be fixed in the imme-
diate neighbourhood:-"The stone pavement
near this marks the position and size of the
prison cell in Old Fort William, known to
history as the Black Hole of Calcutta.”

the Judengasse of Frankfort, where the founder
THE famous house "zum rothen Schilde" in
of the Rothschild family was born in 1743, is
about to be demolished for the sake of public
improvements. The Judengasse has for some
piety of the Rothschilds has hitherto preserved
time lost its old picturesqueness, though the
their "Stammhaus" untouched. Even now
they have attempted to restrain by legal pro-
ceedings the action of the Frankfort munici-
pality, but in vain.

THE Literarisches Centralblatt of March 29 contains reviews of several English books-Dr. MESSRS. HAMILTON, ADAMS, & Co. will pub-eau's Study of Spinoza, Mr. W. Ross's Early Murray's New English Dictionary, Dr. Martinlish at an early date a Wordsworth Birthday History of Land-holding among the Germans, Book, compiled by Mr. J. R. Tutin, of Hull, which and Mr. Wharton's Etyma Graeca. has been in the press for some time. It will have a portrait of the poet in his twenty-eighth

year.

MESSRS. GRIFFITH & FARRAN have in the press a narrative of a walking-tour in France, entitled Through Auvergne on Foot, by Mr.

Edward Barker.

MESSRS. S. W. SILVER & Co. will shortly publish, at the office of the Colonies and India, a Handbook to Canada, compiled by Mr. E. Hepple Hall.

A CORRESPONDENT writes:"In the ACADEMY of April 26, writing of the Edinburgh tercentenary, you speak of the strictly academical aspect of the gathering, removed equally from politics and from ecclesiasticism.' This statement by no means conveys the universal impression, and is hardly, I think, consistent with the facts of the case. absent, but the doings of the week were ushered in 'Politics' were, happily, by a solemn religious service, attended, with every circumstance of pomp and dignity, by the univerWe understand that the article on "The of the most important functions of the meeting, sity authorities and their distinguished guests; one Censorship of the Stage" in the current number again, the conferring of degrees, was opened in of the Westminster Review is written by Mr. Scottish fashion with prayer. William Archer. It gives a history of the sub-foreign visitors were greatly struck by this practical Several of the ject, with special reference to the Report of blending of sound learning and religious knowthe Select Committee of 1866, and concludes ledge.' Count Saffi alluded to it publicly, and a with a strong appeal in favour of freedom. distinguished Belgian professor remarked with reWe may also mention that the article in the religion, by such an assembly, would have been gret that such express and united homage to current number of the Quarterly on "Lauder-impossible in any other country in Europe." dale and the Restoration in Scotland" is written by Mr. Osmund Airy, who, as our readers know, is editing a valuable collection of Lauderdale papers for the Camden Society. MISS M. E. CHRISTIE is contributing to the Journal of Education a series of novelettes on subjects of school and university life, the first instalment of which, "Monsieur du Beau: a Lesson in Deportment," appears in the current number.

Ar the sale in Bath last Tuesday of the library of Mr. Sheppard, of Keyford House, Frome, the British Museum acquired for £14 14s. an illuminated MS. of Bracton's De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae which is dated 1260, and therefore contemporary with the author. At the same sale a volume of English Chronicles, printed at Antwerp in 1493, was sold for £32 11s.; Barker's royal folio edition of the Bible (1583), in the original binding, £4 12s.; and several County Histories also fetched good prices.

on

PROF. W. ROBERTSON SMITH will give a discourse on "Mohammedan Mahdis Friday next, May 9, at the Royal Institution. Ar the meeting of the Clifton Shakspere Society held on April 26, the following papers were read:-"A Defence of the Historical Inaccuracies' of Henry VIII.," by Miss Florence W. Herapath; "The Burning of the Globe Theatre, 1613," by the Rev. H. P. Stokes; and "Buckingham and Shakspere," by Mr. John Taylor.

WE learn from the Calcutta Englishman that

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We print the above out of consideration for our
he has mistaken our meaning. The absence of
correspondent, though we need hardly say that
what is understood-at least in England-by
"ecclesiasticism" is quite consistent with all
that he writes.

AMERICAN JOTTINGS.

313

Parsons Lathrop, 36; W. W. Story, 36;
Francis Parkman, 34.

the subject of international copyright. Out of
THE New York Publishers' Weekly has taken
a sort of plébiscite of American publishers on
fifty-five replies, only three are opposed to any
concession, and thirty-one support the Dors-
heimer Bill. In short,

"It is safe to say that the trade almost unanias a condition, though there is a strong feeling in thirds do not require manufacture in this country mously favour international copyright; that twoPhiladelphia and among some other houses in favour of such a clause as either a sine qua non or desirable; that the passage of the Dorsheimer Bill two less important modifications would receive would be welcomed by a large majority of the trade, and with a manufacturing clause and one or almost unanimous support."

THE most recent édition de luxe announced in America is one of Pepys's Diary, in ten volumes, of 1875. The number of copies is limited to printed from Mr. Mynor Bright's transcription 165.

|
Lang has been appointed
tative" of Harper's Monthly in England.
THE American papers state that Mr. Andrew
"editorial represen-

ACCORDING to Rowell's American Newspaper Directory, the total number of newspapers and periodicals of all kinds at present issued in the United States and Canada amounts to 13,402, being an increase of 1,600 in the last twelve months.

A SECOND series is announced of "Johns

Political Science," specially devoted to InstiHopkins University Studies in Historical and tutions, Economics, and Politics. The series will appear, like the first, at monthly intervals, and the first will be entitled New Methods of at the price of three dollars (12s.) for the whole; Studying History, by the editor-in-chief, Prof. Herbert B. Adams. The publishers in England are Messrs. Trübner.

A CORRESPONDENT writes to us from Boston that a handsome square in that city has recently painter John Singleton Copley, who was a been named Copley Square in honour of the native of Boston. He adds that some difference of opinion exists as to the right pronunof "Copley," but it is suggested that it is ciation of the name. Local opinion is in favour usually "Copley" in England. We can assure him that English usage here follows American.

THE Nation of April 17, in a first review of Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary, thus concludes::

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ORIGINAL VERSE.

LOVE'S TUTOR

It is an act of simple justice to say that, if this THE following is the result of the competi- been begun, it will take equal rank as regards its lexicon is completed on the plan on which it has tion instituted by the Critic for admission into intrinsic excellence with the two great works puban imaginary Academy of "native Americanlished or publishing in French and German, and authors of the sterner sex" :-Oliver Wendell in many matters of detail will be superior to them Holmes, 130 votes; James Russell Lowell, 128; John Greenleaf Whittier, 125; George Bancroft, 121; William Dean Howells, 119; George William Curtis, 118; Thomas Bailey Aldrich, 111; Francis Bret Harte, 105; Edmund Clarence Stedman, 104; Richard Grant White, 102; Edward Everett Hale, 100; George W. Cable, 87; Henry James, 86; S. L. Clemens ("Mark Twain "), 84; Charles Dudley Warner, 84; Henry Ward Beecher, 83; James Freeman Clarke, 82; Richard Henry Stoddard, 82; 76; Asa Gray, 69; Noah Porter, 66; John William Dwight Whitney, 77; Walt Whitman, Fiske, 62; Theodore D. Woolsey, 57; A. BronBurroughs, 52; Mark Hopkins, 52; Thomas son Alcott, 55; Julian Hawthorne, 55; John Wentworth Higginson, 49; John G. Saxe, 49; Octavius Brooks Frothingham, 48; George P. Fisher, 47; Moses Coit Tyler, 45; Charles A. Dana, 44; Donald G. Mitchell, 41; Alexander Winchell, 38; Edwin P. Whipple, 37; George

(Being the third idyll of Bion). GREAT Cypris stood by me still slumbering. Love like a child by her fair hand she led drowsy to earth, and just this word she said, and so departed. Many a pastoral thing "Dear shepherd, take and teach my Love to sing,"

I

(ah child!) as though he cared to learn I taught; Hermes the lyre, Apollo his sweet string. how Pan his pipe, the flute Athene wrought,

taught, but of my words he took no heed, and taught me all men long for passionately but himself sang such songs as lovers wot, and Gods, and of his mother many a deed,

And all that I taught Love I clean forgot, but got by heart the lesson Love taught me. H. C. BEECHING.

MAX MÜLLER ON BUDDHIST CHARITY. THE following is a summary of a lecture on "Buddhist Charity," delivered by Prof. Max Müller at the Kensington Town Hall on Thursday last, April 25, M. Clermont-Ganneau in the chair. It was the first of a series upon "The Charities of the World," undertaken on behalf of the Metropolitan Society for Befriending Young Servants.

"I come in obedience to a promise which I had given because I always sympathise with those who have the courage to do small things. The work of the Society for Befriending Young Servants was such hopeless and yet such hopeful work. The spirit in which it must be undertaken is that of the child who tried to pick up all the pebbles on the sea beach, and when carried home by her nurse, dropping her treasures as she went along, still proudly showed one she retained, and said, Mother, I have saved one.' And so to save even one young girl in the ebb and flow of modern London life would be a work to which I felt that if I could contribute I must not say No.

"The subject of Buddhist charity is a very attractive one. It was the late Dean of Westminster who said, 'In former times Gautama was unknown to us, and now he is second to one only.' There was a time when you could not be a true believer in your own religion without believing all the others to be false-one a voice from heaven, and all others voices from the very opposite. Each religion was held to the exclusion of all the rest. But now we have learned to treat all dialects of faith, or all religions, with perfect equality. The more belief we have in our own, the more we are inclined to regard others with tenderness, and even indulgence. An ever-increasing interest is taken in the sacred books of the East. Formerly the theological student never read more than his Old and New Testaments, and perhaps, if learned, the Korán. Now the Clarendon Press has published in twenty-four volumes translations of the most important among the canonical books of the ancient religions of the world.

"By Buddhism I mean no fashionable fancy religion, esoteric or exoteric, but the genuine historical Buddhism founded about 500 B.C. There is no doubt about its date. The inscriptions of King Asoka in the third century B.C. are scattered all over Northern India, from Afghanistan to Orissa, and are as clear as the inscriptions of the Scipios. Secondly, we have the canonical books. These are the Northern books in Sanskrit, and the Southern in Pâli. We have, in the latter, the accounts of the first council after Buddha, 477 B.C., and the second, 377 B.C. The title of the Buddhist canon is Tripitaka, the Three Baskets. The Southern Buddhist Church comprises Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam ; the Northern, India, Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan. No doubt Buddhism has greatly changed, and its supporters differ very much. The metaphysical Hindu and the Chinaman differ as much as Bishop Berkeley differs from a plough-boy, but historical Buddhism is really that of the received historical records. It seems to me, after a study of the Vedas, that Buddhism is really the natural development of the Indian mind in all its aspects-religious, political, and social. It is of this last side I am to speak. Buddhism is here the full bloom, while the Vedas were the bud. We wonder what room there can be for charity in so bountiful a land as India, where man is so easily satisfied. The woods, rivers, and plains bring forth abundantly. Even now a man lives on one shilling a week, a woman on even less, and a married couple on £5 a year. Yet in Buddha's time men came and begged for a few rags or a handful of rice. The Hindus have always complained of being poor. Contrast the modern English beggar and the ancient Buddhist. Now we punish the beggar by law; then the man who did not give was considered impious, and a heretic, and the beggar was regularly protected and honoured. Look at Brahmanism and its ideal life. True, we only see the ideal, but a man's ideals often give a truer self than his miserable failures. There were four stages in the life of an orthodox Hindu-(1) The youth at the age of eight years was apprenticed to a master sage, and learned studiously the Vedas. Every day he begged bread for himself and his teacher. This was

less charity than an educational rate on the whole
community. (2) At the age of twenty he was to
marry and found a family, to perform sacrifices,
give alms, and show hospitality. (3) When he got
gray and his sons grew up, he was to retire into
the forest to mortify the flesh, to give up all
sacrifices, to live as an ascetic, entitled, if need be,
to receive alms, but commanded also to show
hospitality and to meditate on the mysteries of
the world. (4) He was to become a Bhikshu, or
beggar, a homeless hermit, with his head shaven,
and dependent upon charity for his very life,
regarding God as his own highest life. This is
the ideal life in Vedic times. The first and
second periods of life are entirely priestly, but at
last all ceremonies and books are regarded as vain;
polytheism is given up; the devotee believes in one
God, and then finds that one God to be Brahman,
or his own highest self. All Buddhism came
from this. Young and old began to ask why
all this preliminary preparation was necessary;
why not proceed at once to the third and fourth
stages? and at last the Brahmanic dikes gave way
before the flood of Buddhism. Sacrifices were
forbidden; the Vedas were to be treated as ordinary
books; futile penances were abolished. If the
solitary life is better, why not be at once homeless?'
it was asked, and so Buddha named his disciples
the homeless.' The Buddhist Church was founded.
The new society was a refuge for the poor, the
destitute, and the weary. No one outside it was
upbraided, if only he gave alms. Within it no
one owned any personal property. Such was the
misery of this country, seemingly an earthly
Paradise, that many thronged to get in. Once
admitted (and there were restrictions), the neo-
phyte is shaved, wears a yellow cloak, and is
supported on alms. Twice daily did the brothers
collect alms. Some gave rice, some gave lands;
and so the communities became rich. This was
Buddha's solution of the question of poverty.
His attempt to found a new state of society
deserves our whole attention. The regulations of
the brotherhood will be found translated in 'The
Sacred Books of the East,' Clarendon Press, Oxford,
vols. xiii., xvii., and xx. Buddhism and charity
are synonymous. The brothers lived on the
alms of the lay supporters. Charity is the very
soul of Buddhism. Charity, courtesy, and un-
selfishness are to the world what the lynch pin is
to the rolling chariot,' say the Pitakas. The six
virtues or Paramitâs are charity, morality, earnest-
ness, concentration, wisdom, and prudence.

"The East is the home of parables; most
of ours come from Buddhist sources; and I
will relate one or two in illustration of charity.
First, however, I must explain to you the char-
acter of the stories of former lives called
Gâtakas. No Hindu is silly enough to believe
that his life begins with his existence here.
The perpetual puzzle of virtue not being co-
extensive with happiness, which some solve by a
future life, and rewards and punishments there, the
Buddhist solves by a former life. Is a man un-
happy? he is so because of his former misdeeds.
Let him beware of repeating them. Is he happy?
let him continue the virtue which has such a result.
No one is exempt from this law of cause and effect,
not even Buddha himself; for before he reached
Buddhahood (which is far above the gods), he went
through many preparatory stages. In one of these,
when he was fighting Mara (or spirit of evil),
Buddha asks his opponent, Canst thou witness
to thy charity Mara calls to his many fol-
lowers, who shout unanimous testimony for him.
'And thou, Buddha?' Buddha replies, 'I am
all alone, but I will call on the earth to witness
that I have performed 700 acts of charity,' and,
taking his hand from under his cloak, he calls on
the earth. Immediately in thunderous tones the
earth bears witness, and the followers of Mara
are smitten to the ground, and a voice exclaims
'Death [Mâra] is conquered; Prince Buddha is
victor.'

"Here is a very early Gâtaka story, and one of
the most popular. King Sanda had a son named
Vessantara (Visvam-tara, all-giving), who, from
his birth, was full of charity. When he grew up,
he married, and begat two children. One day he
was riding upon the white elephant (this was a real
white elephant, and could cause rain to fall).
Eight Brahmans arrived from a neighbouring State
and begged the elephant as an alms, saying

that their State was suffering from a drought. The prince at once gives them the elephant, regretting that they had asked nothing more. The enraged people, however, ask the king to punish Vessantara, who is therefore banished to the rock Vankagiri, with his wife and children. All his treasures are given away by the prince before he sets out, and 1,000 waggons sent by the queenmother are distributed in alms. Two beggars ask for the horses of the chariot, and are given them. Indra, chief of the gods, replaces them by four divine horses, but Vessantara soon gives away the chariot, and the little family go forth living on the fruits and drinking pond water. For seven days they stay in the kingdom of the wife's father, and then proceed to their place of exile. When they arrive at the rock, they live as ascetics in separate huts. At last comes an old Brahman, grim as an executioner, and asks for the two children as slaves. Even this the father grants, but the poor mother swoons when she hears it. When she recovers, however, she exclaims, 'Better is the Buddhahood than 100 children, if only we may share the reward with all the world.' Indra comes disguised as a Brahman and asks for the wife After a moment's pause she, too, is given up, but Indra reveals himself, and bids them never more part. Finally, the old Brahman dies, the children return, the royal family come in state to reclaim Vessantara, who reigns, and is born only once more, as Gautama, the Buddha.

"Such is the Buddhist solution of poverty by charity. To give not only alms out of our abund ance, but all that is dearest to us in the world, life, wife, children, and thus to save the world from ignorance, sin, and transmigration-this is Buddhist charity. One more Buddha is expected to appear on earth, under the name of Maitreya,

a

name derived from maitri, love. Love is more than the law, more than charity. Buddha says: 'As a mother at the risk

of her own life protects her child, so let love prevail.' Then the saying will be fulfilled, Even in this world holiness has appeared.' Has that Maitreya, that Buddha of Love, been manifested? Will Buddhists ever learn it? Or has he not yet appeared? and are we, like Gautama, still five hundred years before Christ? No doubt Buddhist charity has its metaphysical side. We are to love our neighbours as ourselves, because they are as ourselves. We are all rays of one light, glances of one mind; and in loving our neighbours we love our true and larger selves. Then, as now, poverty and misery had reached & climax. Absurd wealth was face to face with hopeless penury. One man who would buy land for the Buddhists could cover it with gold coin, another begged a pitiful handful of rice. Buddha recommended no workhouses or parish relief. He did not say to the poor, Might is right. He turned to the rich and said, 'Give; give all that is wanted; give, because nothing belongs to you; give, because life is a shadow; give to all, because what you leave to your own children only may become a curse rather than a blessing.' We have our clubs and our slums, our St. James' and St. Giles', and social economy stands helpless at the bedside of the dying man. One of the names of Buddha was the Great Physician. He mixed a grain of faith, a grain of pity, a grain of wisdom, and offered it. Buddha saw, as Christ saw, that charity, true charity, is the only remedy. Living seeds are small. Buddha began with only five followers, but now he is second to one only.""

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esteem as to silently appropriate my facts, my
conclusions, and even my very words.

on

So

The first two pages of Prof. Jebb's contribution on early Greek history to the new edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica are largely borrowed, without acknowledgment, from two articles of mine-one a letter in the ACADEMY of January 25, 1879, and the other an article 66 The Phoenicians in Greece" in the Contemporary Review for December 1878. closely has Prof. Jebb followed his text that he has even reproduced a misprint of such an obvious nature to anyone in the slightest degree acquainted with comparative philology that I did not think it necessary to have it corrected in a subsequent number of the ACADEMY. I little imagined that it would be appropriated by another writer. Prof. Jebb has further adopted and endorsed a theory of mine which I have since seen reason to abandon, and so late as last year has allowed Dr. Isaac Taylor in his admirable and conscientious work arrived at it independently (I. ix., x., II. 24). on The Alphabet to refer to him as if he had But I will now willingly make him a present of

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CORRESPONDENCE.

THE ART OF COMPOSITION ACCORDING TO
PROF. JEBB.

Queen's College, Oxford: April 26, 1884.
Prof. Jebb has done me the honour to devote
an article in the current Edinburgh Review-
the authorship of which is an open secret-to
my recently published work on the Oriental
History of Herodotos. About this article I do
not intend to say anything.
Most of the
arguments advanced in it have been urged be-
fore, and are answered in the new volume
of Hermathena; while in criticising my Egypt-
logy, Prof. Jebb has evidently ventured upon un-
familiar ground, and through misunderstanding
his authorities has himself fallen into mistakes.
But it has been pointed out to me that this is
not the first occasion on which Prof. Jebb has
brought what I have written before the notice
of the world.
Whereas, now, however, he
writes anonymously and makes my name public,
on the previous occasion he suppressed my name
and published only his own. His opinion of
the value of my writings, moreover, has
changed a good deal between the two occasions.
In 1884 he considers my authority to be worth-
less; four years ago he held it in such high

I will not waste the space of the ACADEMY
by giving my original text and Prof. Jebb's re-
production of it in parallel columns, unless
Prof. Jebb desires it. It is enough to say that
he has not only appropriated the facts I had
got together from different quarters-some of
which had only an indirect bearing on questions
of Greek archaeology-as
-as well as the opinions
and theories I had quoted from other scholars,
which I may claim to have been the first to
but he has also laid hands upon conclusions
draw as well as upon the phrases I used and
the translations I suggested for one or two
Greek names. Yet my name is never mentioned
either in the body or at the end of the article.
I know that I ought not to complain of this,
but, on the contrary, to be gratified that my
labours have been so highly approved of by a
critic who claims almost universal knowledge.
share the same fate which befell certain eminent
I cannot but feel proud that I should now
writers at his hands on a former occasion. It
is only a pity that he should have considered a
letter and a magazine article sufficient to ex-
haust the main questions connected with early
Greek archaeology.

I have observed other curious statements and
misstatements in Prof. Jebb's writings which
throw light on his mode of working and his
qualifications for passing judgment on the
work of other scholars; for the present, how-
ever, I refrain from pointing any of them out.
A. H. SAYCE.

A MAGYAR SONG ON ST. STEPHEN'S DAY.
Thornton Lodge, Goxhill, Hull.
My friend and fellow-worker, Mr. L. L.
Kropf, has pointed out to me a very curious
old song that is sung on December 26 in certain
parts of Hungary. Kriza, in his Vadrózsák
(Kolozsvár, 1863), mentions, in a note to one of
the folk-songs, No. 268, that a peculiar custom
is observed in the village of Kénos, near Székely-
Udvarhely, in Transylvania, on the day named.
If a young couple who belong to the place get
married, or if a married couple front some other
place settle in the village during the year, groups
of villagers gather together on the following St.
Stephen's Day and sing the appended song
outside of the house inhabited by the new
couple in the following manner:-First come
the old folks, and sing; next the middle-aged;
and lastly the young ones.
are sung in the courtyard, after which the
singers (who are called regesek) go
the house door and there finish their ditty; nor
close up to
do they leave till they have been well feasted.
The following will give a fair idea of the "Song |

The first six verses

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go

into the village :

Into the courtyard of "So-and-So":
There we find an inhabited house:
In it we see a made bed:

In it lies the good-natured master :
By his side his gentle lady :

Between the two is a ruddy-faced child :
Who cheers thus his father and mother:
Get up, my father! get up, my mother!
Because the regesek have come !

It is an old custom: a big red bullock!
Half belongs to the regesek!
On its back are sixty sausages!
Half belongs to the regesek!

His horns are full of baked cakes!
Half belongs to the regesek!

On the tuft of his tail is a pot of beer!
Half belongs to the regesek!

His ears are full of small coins!
They shall be left for the master!
In his navel a bushel of hops!
These shall be left for the master!
His buttocks are full of hazel-nuts!
These shall be left for the child!
Will you let us in, good master?
If you don't we don't care!
We shall lock you in!

Benn pisilel, benn kakálol: de hó reme róma. further information concerning the custom, and Kriza asked a minister living in Kénos for village to the effect that, in olden times, the was informed that a tradition existed in the wooden figure of a red bullock used to be carried to the house of the newly married, or newly arrived, couple on Christmas night, and was by them dressed in the following way:On the horns was hung a kind of cake; † the brewed ale swung on his tail; cavities in the ears were filled with coins; a pot of homebuttocks were charged with hazel-nuts; and a Next day the singers arrived, and, as the song long sprig of hops stuck out of his navel (). went on, the various things were taken from the carved figure and handed round as they were mentioned in the verses.

As already stated, this part of the ceremony testimony of the above-mentioned minister, exists but in tradition, and, according to the they only know it as such. It is also very even people of eighty years of age say that remarkable that the above song is not used anywhere else in Hungary save at Kénos and in the county of Zala (where a variant is found), two places at a considerable distance from each other, and separated by two large rivers-the Danube and Theiss-a plain, and the chain of high mountains dividing Hungary Proper from Transylvania. But at one timeabout the middle of the sixteenth century-the custom appears to have been more general, and is mentioned in a work written (in Hungarian) by Kaspar Heltay, wherein the author states that "after the day of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ commences the great feast of the Devil: the regelö' week. . . . The heavy drinking and 'regelés' have no end."

reges) in Kénos, and regösök (plural of regös) The singers are still called regesek (plural of in Zala,§ words whose meaning appears to be but little understood by the present generation.

*Every line ends with this refrain, the meaning of which is entirely lost.

heraldry as "Stafford's knot."
+ Rolls twisted in the shape of a knot known in

and Revelling (1552).
Conversation on the Dangerous Habit of Drinking

German); e.g., a native of Szegedin would say,
E is often changed into ö (pronounced as in
kenyeret megygyel."
"Öttem könyeret mögygyel," instead of “ettem

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