pursues its even way; but, on the hills "The women lie in heaps about the court, and be no less a villain. This we imagine to A COUPLE OF AMERICAN, PASTORALS. Ranch Notes in Kansas, Colorado, the Indian Territory, and Northern Texas. By Only the priest, Coresus, watches. Suddenly Reginald Aldridge. (Longmans.) a Maenad starts from slumber, dreaming she has seen him slain on the altar of Bacchus. Gone to Texas: Letters from our Boys. Having calmed her fears, he sends her forth Edited by Thomas Hughes. (Macmillan.) to win new sisters to her service; and chief STOCK-GRAZING literature has of late been over all he desires Callirrhöe. But Callirrhöe rather rank in "the Row," though most freis centred in the party of order. The curtain quently what purported to be merely an rises on her quiet home. She sits and spins, innocent diary She sits and spins, innocent diary "published by request" and her very spinning song, enjoining patience proved before long to be an ingeniously disin mediocrity, is a protest against the new guised prospectus of a Ranch Company. It ideas. The door bursts open; a girl flies in is satisfactory to find that neither of the two and crouches at her feet-a wild, dishevelled books before us appears under any such false maiden who has escaped the Maenads that pretence. Mr. Aldridge seems to have made enticed her to the hills. She flees for shelter his fortune, and has nothing to sell to his to Callirrhöe's arms, and we feel that Coresus pecunious countrymen ; and though Mr. will have no easy convert here. He, how- Hughes acknowledges that his nephews wrote ever, waylays Callirrhöe at the well, and the letters which he has so skilfully pieced seeks to obtain her for the Bromian worship together, without the faintest idea that they -seeks to win not only a Maenad, but a bride. were ever to appear in print, no attempt has He gains her heart, but not her will; she been made to interpolate the usual platitudes dismisses the man she loves and scorns, "the about "boundless resources" and so forth. Bacchic priest," and, frantic with anger, No one has pressed Mr. Aldridge to give Coresus rushes to the altar of his god and his experiences to the world. He does calls down a plague on Calydon. The second not seem to have even kept a diary with act reveals the city given over to death and views anent future book-making, but simply confusion. The citizens in their despair jots down "whatever he could remember that send Emathion, the brother of Callirrhöe, seemed likely to interest the general reader to question the oracle at Dodona. In the or to assist anyone in forming an opinion as third act he returns with a dreadful message. regards the suitability of the life in connexion Callirrhöe herself, if she can find none to die with his own predilections and pocket-book." for her, must die for scorn of Bacchus' The result is an unpretentious and very priest. None steps forward to perish in her pleasant little volume. Literary grace is not stead; lovers and kinsmen stand afar off. strained after, though sometimes attained; But Coresus, having raised the knife to slay and its pages are entirely wanting in that her, plunges it instead into his own bosom affectation of humour which renders so and dies, leaving Callirrhöe his latest Maenad. depressing the maiden efforts of duller men. In so hasty a sketch we pass over much The impression these "Notes" leave is that that is crude and much that is really powerful. the author is an energetic, intelligent young We leave out the character of Machaon, the Englishman who, finding civil engineering on humane and sceptical physician, who is the the Great Western Railway not so brisk as virtual hero of the piece (it is a thousand he had hoped, embarked in a pursuit as pities that Mr. Field converts him at the widely different from that to which he had last!). We say nothing of the coarse, but been bred as it is possible for one profession pathetic, sketch of the old virgin priestess, to be to another. All he knew about Kansas with her heart of nineteen in a body of and its cattle was derived from some letters of ninety; nor of the truly charming and touch- "St. Kames" in the Field. Yet, by shrewd ing figure of the little Faun, who represents ness and indomitable pluck, or, as Mr. Aldwhatever is most innocent and fairest in the ridge prefers to put it, "good luck," he has Dionysan nature-worship. been enabled, after less than seven years, to become a substantial ranchman," whose herds graze, if not on a thousand hills, at least on a good many acres, for which he has not paid. The youth who is fired with ambition to be a "cowboy" cannot do better than read these Notes. Everything, so far as we have tested the statements, seems to be set wn honestly, without exaggeration, evoid of untoward intentions against the rse of the prom or. How much it costs to buy stock, when + sell them, and We have no space to speak of "Fair Rosamund"-a far inferior effort. But this also has passages of picturesque imagination with promise for the future, particularly in the sketch of the Quixotic, unworldly old knight, Sir Thopaz. And here, also, Mr. Field wages war against a conventional, routinist conception of life and duty-striving to show that morality is a personal quality, not a condition to be achieved by recipe. A saint me and still be a saint; a villain smile and 1 the figure that they bring in different markets are all detailed with minute accuracy. After studying these calculations the novice may not be quite ready to begin business as a grazier on his own account; but he will be in a position to know whether the rough life is likely to suit him, what kind of experience he may expect, and, above all, whether his exchequer will bear the experiment. Mr. Aldridge was reasonably successful. However, he warns those who might imagine his case to be a typical one, that the conditions for success in the future are by no means so favourable as they once were. Land is getting scarcer, and there are now few places where a man can drive in a herd of cattle and establish a run without asking leave of anybody as he could a few years ago. Now, he will usually have to buy out someone already in possession. There are still unoccupied ranges in Montana and perhaps in Wyoming; but south of these Territories it is hard to find a tract not already claimed by a prior occupant. A large ranch can only be got by tacking together a number of smaller holdings. Beef is not likely to diminish much in price as years advance, for the cattle exported bear a very small proportion to those consumed within the bounds of the United States, or which must in future be required for filling the mouths of the millions who by that time will swarm over the length and breadth of the great Republic, though it is scarcely possible in days when so much money is seeking investment that any business can long continue to pay at the rate of forty or fifty per cent. The "big boom" is over, and if a rancher" is not to land himself in the Kansas City representative of Queer Street, he had better calculate his profits at a half or third of that interest, and think himself fortunate if he obtains as much. On all such points, Mr. Aldridge is a safe guide. His pages are never wearisome, even to the reader whose acquaintance with cattle is on a par with what Dr. Johnson declares was the extent of Goldsmith's knowledge of natural history. The four plates help to elucidate the text; and if only the publishers had hinted to the author that a table of contents and an index are delicate attentions always appreciated by the public we should have had little except praise to bestow on one of the latest additions to the AngloAmerican library. Gone to Texas is a volume of a somewhat similar type, and equally without an index. Not many years ago, when an American desired to express in emphatic language the fact that a youth had gone to the dogs, he employed the letters "G. T. T." These were in the days when the territorial judge was shown an eighteen-inch bowie knife as a complete edition of the "Lone Star” Code, and when a traveller, after passing an agree able evening in the bar-room of a Houston hotel, was asked, in an enigmatical manner, "What mout have been your name before you left the States?" There are still a good many Texan citizens who have changed their patronymics with their sky; and only recently a public school in one of the rural districts had to be closed, the pupils being simply "walking arsenals," whose truculence endangered the community. However, we hear little of lethal weapons in these letters, though a "cowboy" did ex E American except by the United Statescse mon Sense-by which the rest of mankind press surprise at being asked whether he had paid for admission to a Mexican fandango "when he had his six-shooter on." Four nephews of the author of Tom Brown's Schooldays sought their fortune in that State as "sheep-men," and, though they have not yet found it, their enterprise, steadiness, and contagious energy bid fair to land them among the "prominent citizens" of San Antonio. In a Preface, penned with characteristic manliness, Mr. Hughes relates the circumstances under which "his boys" embarked on this enterprise, and leaves them to tell their own story in the letters written to him and to their father and sister, assuring us that, except for the connecting notes added here and there, the ISS. have been printed just as they were received. This editorial statement was scarcely requisite, for every page of the book bears the impress of a boyish hand. Whether it is "Willy," "Chico," "Doctor," or "Tim" who is writing, we have before us a highspirited, fine-principled lad, full of life and hope, and fresh from the atmosphere of Marlborough, Cheltenham, or Westminster. It is often a mistaken kindness to publish such boyish effusions, for, like the poems with There is a peculiar difficulty in dealing which so many of us began the life literary, with his work. Unless his general conception they are regarded by the time middle age is of law be accepted as true, one is excited to reached as youthful follies, which are seduopposition in every chapter, and is apt to lously hidden behind the more presentable undervalue the independent thought and the volumes on the library shelves. The young wide knowledge which it displays. There Hugheses and their cousin have, however, no are, indeed, some resting-places where he reason to be ashamed of their bookish cocomes from the clouds; and to many readers, partnery. It is not a high-class work; but it dazed by the law of nature, these will seem is not intended to be anything more than a the best parts of the book. After a chapter description of how they fared in first facing on treaties, in which we are told "that there the world, and is not unworthy of the name is no such thing as a purely conventional law, they bear. It is just such a book as those and a treaty can no more create a right than situated as they were six years ago will it can create a man," there is a sense of relief gladly welcome, for there are no after-thoughts in coming to an interesting account of the in it. Everything is set down as it occurred; literature of legation and of the history of the and, though we might have been better consular office. Some amusing extracts from pleased had they been less chary of the Callière's Manière de négocier avec les Soufamily feelings by concealing some of their verains give the reader fresh strength to face failures, the motive is so good that one canProf. Lorimer's contemptuous treatment of not but admire the cheery disposition which jurists who view the extradition of criminals runs through this narrative of how four as a matter of comity, not of right, and who English boys carved out independence for do not treat private international law as a themselves with the aid of less capital than branch of the science of nature. A certain a year at Oxford is supposed to demand. vehemence which characterises his style gives Like Mr. Aldridge, they were graziers on a refreshing colour to what would otherwise be ranch—with a final e-but, unlike him, they a dreary picture, but leads him to speak of devoted themselves to the humbler speciality his opponents in terms neither discriminating of sheep, and, on the whole, were fairly prosnor tolerant. It is hard to believe that he Their book is indeed the evolution 1 as understood them when he tells us that of a ranchman. Beginning with letters their refusal to treat State recognition as a home in which everything is new to the matter of absolute right and duty is a proof inexperienced travellers, and when their of deficiency in scientific insight or in prevocabulary smacks of the public school boy, cision of thought or language. Such are the it is amusing to notice how gradually the hard words used by one who speaks of the argot of Marlborough and Westminster is general scheme of the universe. Some years replaced by that of the region in which they ago Prof. Lorimer regretted that an Adam are settled. Fowls become "chickens," Smith had not appeared to place politics and treacle "molasses," aristocratic "high toned," jurisprudence on a scientific basis. But had and by Jove " great Scott." The young he appeared he would have discussed with ranchmen cease to think-they "guess; the temperate reason of the great economist "mighty" is the favourite adjective; and the opinions of those from whom he differed. instead of getting the advantage in a "trade" incumbent on the a priori jurist, seeing that Is not the duty of forbearance peculiarly they congratulate themselves on having "the bulge" on the other party to the bargain. They do not shoot, but "lead" an animal; "that a generation of jurists who have had the he cannot be met with argument? To show do not meet with luck, but "strike" it; and tio between law and equity will find their useless, for it claims a deeper foundation than courage to abandon the long-cherished distinc- that his theory is unreasonable would be though Cousin Willie does talk of "learning way by the ordinary means of subjective and reason itself. Belief in the law of nature is Mexican" by which, of course, he means objective induction back to the path of ethical really a matter of temperament. Prof. Spanish-he scorns to refer to the Hispano-consciousness-what we in Scotland call 'Com-Lorimer himself, both here and in his former perous. I spend all my spare time now looking out of the windows in the new house. It gives the country quite a new aspect, somehow, looking at it through a window, and makes one feel respectable, not to say grand. I must really invest in a top hat now, to be in keeping with the ranche." Another stage of respectability is marked by ROBERT BROWN. The Institutes of the Law of Nations: a Trea- "I CANNOT doubt," says Prof. Lorimer, giving work, treats the basis of law as a thing which is also confessedly "at variance both after fact, with no critical observation, and Of particular topics there is not room to speak. Suffice it to say that the author repudiates, as he has done ever since he wrote his Constitutionalism of the Future, the doctrine of the equality of States-a repudiation perfectly just, if to suggest new law be part of the jurist's business; that he accepts the principle of exterritoriality, and applies it even to merchant vessels; that he holds, confessedly in defiance both of authority and usage, that war can be jurally waged only between States in their corporate capacity; and that he reconciles this latter doctrine with the right of capture of private property. There are some curious omissions in the book. No account is given of how a State may acquire rights of property over territory; yet in colonisation important territorial questions are constantly being raised. The law of blockade is only casually referred to; and as to contraband, there is only the statement, Still, when all deductions are made, Prof. Lorimer's work is welcome. If it has not the scientific character which it claims, it is, at any rate, an interesting treatise on international conduct, from the pen of an able writer, who has wide interests, decided opinions, and a command of vigorous language. He regrets that men of first-rate ability have not applied themselves consistently to international law; and his readers will regret that, led away by an old and barren verbal philosophy, he himself has served it less well than he could have done. G. P. MACDONELL. Italian and other Studies. By Francis DR. HUEFFER's new volume is another example Dr. Hueffer is essentially a clever journalist, Unfortunately, this is not the case; and it strikes an Italian as the work of a man who is not thoroughly acquainted with the language (or else he could not find Praga's verse less harmonious than Carducci's), and who is badly informed about the relative merit and position of our contemporary poets. Thus he has not understood the real importance of Emilio Praga's poems, and seems to consider him as a fellow-worker, and not as the precursor, of Stecchetti. Praga belonged to that literary bohéme in Milan which, about the sixties, proposed to present the new nation with a new poetry-not only modernly realistic in thought, but also in form. He and Boito and Cammerana and others wrote serious lyrics in popular language-viz., as it is spoken-in opposition to the conventional style which has been for centuries one of the banes of Italian poetry. Now, Stecchetti, belonging to the same school, found the way paved before him; and, appearing about fifteen years later with a finer lyrical flow and a greater perfection of form, received not only more attention, but also much of the applause due to that earlier Milanese movement which is partly misunderstood by Dr. Hueffer. Again, he has not in the least understood Carducci's importance, and says he does not "in any way differ from the style of Monti and Manzoni." This shows how the author merely considers their common use of classical subjects, without observing the great difference which lies between the pseudo-classic feeling of all Italian poetry from the Renaissance till our day and the new poetry of Carducci, where the true classical spirit and a clever imitation of the real Latin form are blended with much modern thought and artistic realism-a difference parallel to the one which separates Rossetti from Walter Scott, or any mediaevalist of to-day from any romanticist of the first quarter of the century, with regard to the real spirit and form of the poetry of the Middle Ages. Dr. Hueffer seems astonished at the feeling for nature which fills Praga's poems. "He is a real lover of nature," he declares, "which is not saying little of an Italian poet, for the resplendent scenery of the South has curiously enough left slight traces in the poetry of Southern nations; the Troubadours of Pro the most conventional manner, and the great vence refer to blue skies and spring blossoms in Italian poets of the Middle Ages were not, at least par excellence, lovers of nature, any more than Raphael and Leonardo were landscape painters." But whoever expected to find the very modern sentiment of nature for nature's sake in any poetry of the Middle Ages? And, by remarking its absence in Southern verse, does Dr. Hueffer mean to imply that it is to be found in the mediaeval poetry of other nations, or that it is superior to those exquisite pictures of which the Canzoniere and the Divina Commedia are full? But we are led to suspect that he is not very familiar with our mediaeval poetry by reading the second article, on the literary friendship of Petrarch and Boccaccio, in which, speaking of Petrarch's "intentional ignorance of Dante's chief work through fear of unconsciously becoming an imitator," he forgets to mention the Trionfi, where our great sonneteer proved the contrary, not only by imitating the Divine Comedy, but by naming Dante first among all the modern poets he meets in his “Vision of Love." The two next contributions are reproductions of passing articles from the Times, unluckily not on musical topics. As to the one on Rossetti's pictures, which could only have an interest at the time of the exhibition, we cannot see the necessity of its being republished when we have such a satisfying account from the pen of Mr. Sharp, unless it be to impress upon us a view (which is not new) on the development of Rossetti from a dramatic painter to a painter of beauty. In "Music and Musicians" Dr. Hueffer finds himself more at home; and, as this is a review of Grove's Dictionary of Music, he is not obliged to stick to one particular subject, and can ramble pleasantly from one part to the other of the Dictionary, and indulge in many biographical sketches and in much telling of anecdotes. "The Literary Aspects of Schopenhauer's Work" is a rather novel subject, and shows us Dr. Hueffer in his popularising mood when preparing for the common palate some abstruse or not easily accessible works, such as Oper und Drama or Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, or simply poems of Troubadours and Latin letters of Petrarch. In this article he discloses to us a less-known side of the philosopher of Frankfort. To many who judge Schopenhauer only by his reputation, and class him with Kant, Hegel, or any other great thinker of abstruse questions in abstruse form, the well picked out bits which Dr. Hueffer translates from the Parerga und Paralipomena will be a revelation, as they show Schopenhauer in a comparatively new light-viz., that of an original causeura sort of combination of the last-century English essay with that Parisian wit and clever paradox which, intermixed with German gravity, gives such a delicious flavour to Heine's and Börne's prose. The lecture on "Musical Criticism" is the best thing in the book, by far the most thought out and complete-interesting, too, because it gives us the opinions of one of the leading musical critics of the day on his own profession, and amusing for the brilliant way in which he speaks of modern singers, audiences, critics, and all that is concerned with the musical life interesting to a foreigner on account of the of the time. The closing article is especially glimpses of the history of English music, while the general reader is attracted by the pleasing figure of Mr. Pepys as a musician. As we close the book, the impression left is that of having been chatting with a clever friend who thought us too dull to understand thoroughly the subject he was talking about, and who contented himself with giving us a superficial account of it, mingled with much talk about private episodes of great artists, in order to amuse us just the sort of companion that a fashionable woman likes to have to tea in order to obtain from him a smattering on some serious question of the day, while the last number of the World or the last new society novel lies on her lap. CARLO PLACCI. THE PROLEGOMENA TO TISCHENDORF'S NEW Novum Testamentum Graece ad antiquissimos testes denuo recensuit apparatum criticum apposuit Constantinus Tischendorf. Editio octava critica major. Volumen III. Prolegomena scripsit Casparus Renatus Gregory. Additis curis Ezrae Abbot. Pars prior. (Leipzig: Hinrichs; London: Williams & Norgate.) NEW TESTAMENT students will welcome the Prolegomena to Tischendorf's eighth edition, the first part of which is now published; and, though the whole work is well worthy of careful study, they will, no doubt, turn with special interest, in the first place, to any passages bearing on points which may still be considered as, to some extent, under discussion. The principles followed by Tischendorf in the construction of his text, or the successive editions of his text, are pretty generally understood. They are here set forth in considerable detail, partly in his own words, with many instructive examples; and the result, I think, must be to establish their general soundness. No doubt the best critical texts still present numerous variations, as is evident from the collation here given of Tischendorf with Tregelles, and with Westcott and Hort. But these are of little importance compared with the points on which they agree; and the reader will have no difficulty in assenting to the judgment of Dr. Gregory as to the frequent agreement of the text of Westcott and Hort with that of Tischendorf-an agreement which, he remarks, would be greater had the latter given his marginal readings. Nearly have passed since Tischendorf's death, and in the meantime New Testament criticism has not stood still. It would certainly be interesting to know how the eminent critic would regard the labours in his own field of our English scholars were he still alive; but, if Dr. Gregory may be understood to speak for him, there can be no doubt that his recognition would be ample. That this ten years catalogue of the uncial MSS., under which The volume concludes with a descriptive head Dr. Gregory does not fail to notice the suspicions of the Sinaitic suggested by Prof. Donaldson in an article in the Theological Review for January 1877. What further evidence, he asks, could Tischendorf have given of the genuineness of his discovery? He gave a minute account of all the particulars connected with the finding and removal of the MS., with the names of the persons concerned; and as to its history from 1844 to 1859, there is none to tell, seeing it lay quietly during those years, as it had lain for so many years previously, in a monk's bed-chamber. In short, Dr. Gregory is able to say that, having had the most ample opportunities of examining Tischendorf's letters and papers, he never found the slightest trace of bad faith. What, however, about the relative age of the Sinaitic as compared with the Vatican? It must suffice to say here that this writer considers the attempt of Dean Burgon to prove that the Sinaitic is fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred years later has been demonstrated by the late Prof. Abbot to rest on no foundation. That Dr. Gregory is well qualified to act as Tischendorf's successor and representative, this work is sufficient to prove; his knowledge of MSS. is understood to be extensive and minute, and the present work has been broken off in order to give him the opportunity of examining some more of the cursives. The volume now printed begins with a short sketch of the critic's life, and a list of his works occupying more than fourteen pages, and showing an enormous amount of labour. Then follows the dissertation, in which Tischendorf's words are used when they are available; otherwise, his sense and spirit are adhered to. A note at the beginning explains that pp. 33-68 give Tischendorf's very words; but here seems to be some mistake, since, though Tischendorf's words can be recognised, he is spoken of throughout these pages in the third person. In a work containing so many minute references some errata may be well excused; but that there should be a necessity for more than two closely printed pages of "addenda et emendanda" is a circumstance to be regretted. ROBERT B. DRUMMOND. NEW NOVELS. The Wizard's Son. By Mrs. Oliphant. In 3 vols. (Macmillan.) Keep Troth. By Walter L. Bicknell. In 3 vols. (Hurst & Blackett.) Viola Fanshawe. By Mabel Collins. In 2 vols. (White.) Goddess Fortune. By Thomas Sinclair. In 3 vols. (Trübner.) Three Sisters. By Anon. In 2 vols. Three Sisters. By Anon. In 2 vols. son Low.) Mrs. Willoughby's Octave. By Emma Marshall. (Seeley.) writing, much less in the publication, of she is a failure. Of the female characters aristocracy, democracy, and Horace's Dea Julia Herbert, the clever Sloebury adven- Fortuna, not to speak of fate, free-will, (Samp-turess, is the best. She is quite a worldling, foreknowledge absolute, put into the mouths (Samp- indeed; whereas Oona Forrester, whom of various persons, especially of one Brend, Walter Methven ultimately marries, is all member of Parliament and (without knowing magnanimity. But then Oona, like Miss it) heir to an earldom. If Brend was as Milnathort, the lawyer's invalid sister, has much of a bore and a retailer of political and come under the spell of that nuisance of a philosophical crudities in the House of wizard, and, like him, is somewhat of a Commons as he certainly shows himself to phantom. Julia is delightfully real, and, in be in private houses, how delighted his spite of her scheming, which circumstances colleagues must have been at his removal to have forced her into, not absolutely selfish. the Upper Chamber! The plot of Goddes One is positively grateful to Mrs. Oliphant for Fortune-such plot as it can be said to giving her a "jolly" husband at the end of possess-turns, as in Keep Troth, on the the third volume in Major Antrobus. exchanging of children at their birth. But Plot is the strong point, satire run to farci- the story drags sadly; and there is no cality is the pervading weakness, of Keep Troth. adequate reason for the pseudo Lord Ralford The central incident of the story, the stealing committing suicide and for Miss Maude Grey of the child of well-to-do parents, is, indeed, going mad. Bicknell shows no little skill in devising new as commonplace as it well can be. But Mr. situations for both the stolen and the substituted child, and in bringing them together at last under tragic circumstances. Stanton, whose real name is Arnold, and Jean, whose real name is Stanton, make very good foils and rivals; and so do Dora Betterton, who loves the true and marries the false Stanton, and Molly Magaire, who loves both, is "under the protection" of both, and yet, in her own expressive rather than elegant language, "keeps straight." Were Mrs. Marshall has given an affected title it not, too, for Mr. Bicknell's unfortunate to her new "tale," for "Mrs. Willoughby's tendency to caricature, his Neoptolemus octave" simply means Mrs. Willoughby's Tudge, the kindly proprietor of a travelling family. It is, in reality, a rather pleasant Diorama, would have been very effective story of domestic life. Devoid of passion, as a kind of male Mrs. Jarley. But this ten- and almost devoid of plot, it has been dency spoils the whole book. Mr. Bicknell written with a purpose, and a religious is plainly under the impression that he has a purpose; but that is not thrust upon the satirical vein, and gives pictures of missionary reader. Each member of the "octave" is enterprise in London, of a fashionable school, carefully sketched. David Willoughby the and of a sensational trial which are not of the unselfish, George Burnley the self-indulgent, nature of comedy, but only of burlesque. There and Frieda, who unites and holds the balance is far too much coarse and unpleasant dialogue between the two, stand out from the characters unnecessarily coarse and unpleasant-in around them as good portraits. Mrs. Marshall Keep Troth. Thus it is bad enough that, when indicates in Lady Katherine, Frieda's wellJean meets Molly Magaire, whom he knew in intentioned tyrant, that she might achieve the days when, as a boy, he sold matches and some success as a quiet humorist if she were newspapers, he should ask her if she is "living to allow her powers free play. in sin," but it is still worse that she should reply that she "is in clover." Mr. Bicknell has much to learn; possibly also some capacity for learning. No contemporary writer of fiction has such a command over the supernatural and the weirdly spiritual (which is separated from the supernatural by the thinnest of partitions) as Mrs. Oliphant; and there is an abundance of both in The Wizard's Son. As a matter of fact, however, the story would have been all the better without its mysterious "warlock lord," a compound of the ancient alchemist and the Goethean Mephistopheles, who gives sinister advice, dabbles in chemicals, and in the end causes a great conflagration, with no worse result than that of throwing Oona Forrester and Lord Erradeen into each other's arms in the very jaws of death. Mrs. Oliphant's wizard is neither one thing nor another; he should have been more, or he should have been less, of a man. Even at the end of the third volume one cannot be certain that he is not a nightmare-the product of the excited brain or the disorganised digestion of Lord Erradeen. Besides, Mrs. Oliphant had to hand a quite earthly and sufficiently resolute evil genius in Capt. Underwood, the young peer's familiar in the days when he was plain Walter Methven, doing no good, and indeed nothing in particular, in Sloebury. Had she given Underwood rope enough, we might have had a very interesting conflict, of the kind Mrs. Oliphant delights in describing with all her subtlety of detail, between him and Oona Forrester, or, in other words, between the worse and the better elements in Walter Methven's nature. If the reader can shut his eyes to the unrealities in The Wizard's Son, he will find it very enjoyable. It has no elaborate plot; and, in consequence, the characters that figure in it are, if possible, more at Mrs. Oliphant's command than the beings of her creation usually are. odious. Even she has never given us anything better than her picture of the society of the little town of Sloebury, agitated by the news that the good-for-nothing Walter Methven has suddenly been transformed into a peer. The transitions from Sloebury, all matter-of-fact and gossip, to the Highlands, steeped in simplicity and superstition-from Julia Herbert to Viola Fanshawe is an atrociously vulgar Oona Forrester—are managed with great skill. story-valgar in sentiment, vulgar in lanWalter Methven, as Saxon sense brought face guage. It would be difficult to say which to face with Celtic witchcraft, is a very diffi- of the persons who figure in it is the most cult subject to treat, and, but for the power slang and champagne, and talks about A Mrs. Vane, who indulges in of the artist, would have been a blurred and unsatisfactory portrait. As usual, Mrs. "fellers" and "being mashed," and "playOliphant's Scotch folk are perfect-Hamish, ing propriety," and "lugging volumes of McAlister, the Highland minister, the EdinZola," is not worse than Viola Fanshawe burgh lawyer (is not Mr. Milnathort's devo- herself, an adulteress in intent, who is tion to a Scotch breakfast that winds up with ready to desert her child and her "star" marmalade rather antiquated?), and, above actor husband for a selfish scoundrel, and whom all, Symington the retainer of the Erradeens, that scoundrel finds " at the dinner table, her who fastens upon Walter as his property the liqueur glass held in her lovely hand, her moment he sees him, and is not to be imposed mouth fragrant with sweetmeats, his diamonds upon by his master's impatient attempt to get gleaming on her neck." The less said about rid of him by the fiction of a "man" whom he such a book as this the better. professes to have engaged to attend upon him. In Mrs. Oliphant's portrait-gallery there are so many anxious and excellent mothers that when we say Mrs. Methven is rather disappointing we are very far from hinting that Mr. Thomas Sinclair should have termed his Goddess Fortune a new way to reproduce old essays and addresses. These three volumes are really a collection of fearful and wonderful treatises on such subjects as WILLIAM WALLACE. CURRENT LITERATURE. THOUGH the works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning are neither so voluminous nor so expensive as those of her husband, yet they have never been collected into a cheap edition. It is now was formed by Mr. Browning, which was nearly twenty years since a selection from them followed later by a second; but the price of each series was fixed as high as 78. 6d. At last Messrs. Smith, Elder, & Co. have issued at the price of 3s. 6d. each, uniform with Mr. Browning's selections from himself. As we said in noticing those, if anyone must be content with one of the volumes only, let him take the first, even though it does not contain the "Vision of Poets." "Aurora Leigh" must, of course, be sought in a volume by itself; but otherwise these two volumes will probably be as an adequate representation of Mrs. Brownaccepted-by all except students of literatureing's genius. a new edition of these two volumes of selections Quotations, from the Earliest Ages to the |