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

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.

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 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 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

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
The poems are chiefly descriptive of Canadian
the worn-out subjects of much modern verse.
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
business as it is the business of the historian
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-
even potological,
physical, psychological or
accounts of themselves. There is one poem in

Mr. Grant's book which seems to us to be no

Anima Christi. By J. S. Fletcher. (Bradford: Fletcher.) Unless we have failed to of the workings of the author's soul in the psychological study, intended to afford a view development of faith. Beginning with what we fear is a cheap, if not vulgar, type of scepticism, the writer is landed at last, mainly through the sorrows incident to the death of a devout wife, in the most reposeful belief in the religion of the cross. The term we apply to the latter condition is certainly not intended to 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

to panegyrise. With the narrative part of the less touching in its simple rugged treatment psychology; but there can be none as to the

poem 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-
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
nough, 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

than fine in its virile beauty of subject. It is
entitled, "Done his Duty-and more," and is
the story of an engine-driver who sees a goods
train coming down upon the train he drives,
and, to save his passengers, uncouples his
engine, charges and upsets the approaching
train, and loses his own life as a sacrifice to
duty.

The Daisy Chain. By Baroness Swift. (Venice.)
It is not easy to express an opinion on the merits
of the poems in this little Venetian publication,
which, having been privately printed, is dedicated
to the Queen of Italy. The work is composed about
equally of original lyrics and translations. The
latter are chiefly from Goethe, Heine, and Her-
der, with occasional fragments from Victor
Hugo and from Spanish and Italian poetry. The
versions of " 'Mignon" and "The Erl King
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.
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 com-
inendable poetic sentiment.

The authoress

way in which it is done. So much rough-shod

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 imagination. His way of looking upon life is what we would call scenic, as distinguished from dramatic, meaning that he sees things in the mass, and generally with a veil of sentiment between him and them-not individually, and with, as it were, a bright light penetrating and surrounding every object. The following sonnet is fairly representative of the body of the book; the tenth line is very weak, but the last line has a fine ring on our ear :—

"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

The Poetical Works of John Brent. In 2 vols. (Kent.) It would appear that Mr. Brent himOf fond enticing charm ere youth departs, self prepared these two luxurious volumes for the From Juliet's garden through sad Elsinore Driven to Cordelia's tomb on the lone moor.' 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 favour, and the pathos is of that rude and of his own powers to deal with the themes which simple kind which usually proves contagious he had proposed to himself. "Atalanta" is no among an audience. 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,

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 Rarely into us of very remarkable merit. deed 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

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

THE New York Publishers' Weekly has taken
a sort of plébiscite of American publishers on
Out of
the subject of international copyright.
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 unanimously favour international copyright; that twothirds do not require manufacture in this country as a condition, though there is a strong feeling in Philadelphia 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 would be welcomed by a large majority of the two less important modifications would receive trade, and with a manufacturing clause and one or almost unanimous support.'

THE Literarisches Centralblatt of March 29 of 1875.

contains reviews of several English books-Dr. Murray's New English Dictionary, Dr. Martineau's Study of Spinoza, Mr. W. Ross's Early History of Land-holding among the Germans, and Mr. Wharton's Etyma Graeca.

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 [Mara] 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 Bud dhist 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 a 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."

SELECTED FOREIGN BOOKS. GENERAL LITERATURE. DAUDET, E. Mademoiselle Vestris. Paris: Plon. 3 fr. 50 c. DIETRICHSON, L. Antinoos. Eine kunst-archäolog. Untersuchg. Christiania: Aschehoug. 7 M. FRIEDRICH, C. Die altdeutschen Gläser. Beitrag zur Terminologie u. Geschichte d. Glases. Nürnberg: Bieling. 6 M. HIPPEAU, U. L'Instruction publique en France perdant la Révolution: Débats législatifs. Paris: Lidier. 3 fr. 50 c. LAMI, S. Dictionnaire des Sculpteurs de l'Antiquité jusqu'au VI Siècle de notre Ere. Paris: Didier. LAUBE, H. Franz Grillparzers Lebengeschichte. Stuttgart: Cotta. 4 M. LIEBHABER-BIBLIOTHEK alter Illustratoren in Facsimile-Reproduction. 7. Bdchn. München: Hirth, 7 M. 50 PI.

4 fr.

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 ladrózsák (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 SzékelyUdvarhely, in Transylvania, on the day named. If a young couple who belong to the place get married, or if a married couple from 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. The first six verses are sung in the courtyard, after which the singers (who are called regesek) go close up to the house door and there finish their ditty; nor do they leave till they have been well feasted. The following will give a fair idea of the "Song