pursues its even way; but, on the hills "The women lie in heaps about the court, Only the priest, Coresus, watches. Suddenly a Maenad starts from slumber, dreaming she has seen him slain on the altar of Bacchus. Having calmed her fears, he sends her forth to win new sisters to her service; and chief over all he desires Callirrhöe. But Callirrhöe is centred in the party of order. The curtain rises on her quiet home. She sits and spins, and her very spinning song, enjoining patience in mediocrity, is a protest against the new ideas. The door bursts open; a girl flies in and crouches at her feet-a wild, dishevelled maiden who has escaped the Maenads that enticed her to the hills. She flees for shelter to Callirrhöe's arms, and we feel that Coresus will have no easy convert here. He, however, waylays Callirrhöe at the well, and seeks to obtain her for the Bromian worship -seeks to win not only a Maenad, but a bride. He gains her heart, but not her will; she dismisses the man she loves and scorns, "the Bacchic priest," and, frantic with anger, Coresus rushes to the altar of his god and calls down a plague on Calydon. The second act reveals the city given over to death and confusion. The citizens in their despair send Emathion, the brother of Callirrhöe, to question the oracle at Dodona. In the third act he returns with a dreadful message. Callirrhöe herself, if she can find none to die for her, must die for scorn of Bacchus' priest. None steps forward to perish in her stead; lovers and kinsmen stand afar off. But Coresus, having raised the knife to slay her, plunges it instead into his own bosom and dies, leaving Callirrhöe his latest Maenad. In so hasty a sketch we pass over much that is crude and much that is really powerful. We leave out the character of Machaon, the humane and sceptical physician, who is the virtual hero of the piece (it is a thousand pities that Mr. Field converts him at the last!). We say nothing of the coarse, but pathetic, sketch of the old virgin priestess, with her heart of nineteen in a body of ninety; nor of the truly charming and touching figure of the little Faun, who represents whatever is most innocent and fairest in the Dionysan nature-worship. 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 mar and still be a saint; a villain smile and and be no less a villain. This we imagine to be the motive of "Fair Rosamund." It will be seen that here is a young writer with plenty of convictions and plenty of courage. In addition, we may credit him with a fresh gift of song, a picturesque and vivid style, as yet without distinction or reserve. But it is rather the firm design than the technical merits of his book which denote it as a work of promise. A. MARY F. ROBINSON. A COUPLE OF AMERICAN, PASTORALS. 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 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. Ranch Notes in Kansas, Colorado, the Indian Territory, and Northern Texas. By Reginald Aldridge. (Longmans.) Gone to Texas: Letters from our Boys. Edited by Thomas Hughes. (Macmillan.) STOCK-GRAZING literature has of late been rather rank in "the Row," though most frequently what purported to be merely an innocent diary "published by request" proved before long to be an ingeniously disguised prospectus of a Ranch Company. It is satisfactory to find that neither of the two books before us appears under any such false pretence. Mr. Aldridge seems to have made his fortune, and has nothing to sell to his pecunious countrymen; and though Mr. Hughes acknowledges that his nephews wrote the letters which he has so skilfully pieced together, without the faintest idea that they were ever to appear in print, no attempt has been made to interpolate the usual platitudes about "boundless resources" and so forth. No one has pressed Mr. Aldridge to give his experiences to the world. He docs not seem to have even kept a diary with views anent future book-making, but simply jots down "whatever he could remember that seemed likely to interest the general reader or to assist anyone in forming an opinion as regards the suitability of the life in connexion with his own predilections and pocket-book." The result is an unpretentious and very pleasant little volume. Literary grace is not strained after, though sometimes attained; and its pages are entirely wanting in that affectation of humour which renders so depressing the maiden efforts of duller men. The impression these "Notes" leave is that the author is an energetic, intelligent young Englishman who, finding civil engineering on Gone to Texas is a volume of a somewhat the Great Western Railway not so brisk as similar type, and equally without an index. he had hoped, embarked in a pursuit as Not many years ago, when an American widely different from that to which he had desired to express in emphatic language the been bred as it is possible for one profession fact that a youth had gone to the dogs, he to be to another. All he knew about Kansas employed the letters "G. T. T." These were and its cattle was derived from some letters of in the days when the territorial judge was "St. Kames" in the Field. Yet, by shrewd-shown an eighteen-inch bowie knife as a ness and indomitable pluck, or, as Mr. Ald- complete edition of the "Lone Star" Code, ridge prefers to put it, "good luck," he has and when a traveller, after passing an agreebeen enabled, after less than seven years, to able evening in the bar-room of a Houston become a substantial "ranchman," whose hotel, was asked, in an enigmatical manner, herds graze, if not on a thousand hills, at "What mout have been your name before you least on a good many acres, for which he left the States?" There are still a good many has not paid. The youth who is fired Texan citizens who have changed their patrowith ambition to be a "cowboy" cannot do nymics with their sky; and only recently a better than read these Notes. Everything, public school in one of the rural districts had so far as we have tested the statements, seems to to be closed, the pupils being simply "walkbe set. wn honestly, without exaggeration, ing arsenals," whose truculence endangered ก evoid of untoward intentions against the the community. rse of the prom or. How much it costs to buy stock, when ✦o sell them, and However, we hear little of lethal weapons in these letters, though a "cowboy" did ex at press surprise at being asked whether he had American except by the United Statesese bread out of the cold soil of a Tennesseean the ranche." 66 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 "that a generation of jurists who have had the mon Sense-by which the rest of mankind have been led to the fountain of nature." He has himself laboured hard to bring us back to nature. Rather more than ten years ago he wrote his Institutes of Law to demonstrate the inseparable relation between jurisprudence and ethics. The principles then laid down he now applies to the law of nations, which he defines and expounds as the law of nature realised in the relations of separate nations. In his opinion, jurists since the time of Vattel have, with a few recent exceptions, been drifting farther and farther away from truth. They have divorced law from ethics. They have abandoned all absolute and necessary standards. They even speak with disrespect of the general scheme of the universe. While recognising that the empirical method (by which he means the historical method) has a legitimate function in helping us to discover natural laws, Prof. Lorimer seeks to restore to his science something of its ancient dignity, and, by finding for it a deeper foundation than comity or convention, to place it once more in advance of, instead of behind, the age. There is a peculiar difficulty in dealing with his work. Unless his general conception of law be accepted as true, one is excited to opposition in every chapter, and is apt to undervalue the independent thought and the wide knowledge which it displays. There are, indeed, some resting-places where he comes from the clouds; and to many readers, dazed by the law of nature, these will seem the best parts of the book. After a chapter on treaties, in which we are told "that there is no such thing as a purely conventional law, and a treaty can no more create a right than it can create a man," there is a sense of relief in coming to an interesting account of the literature of legation and of the history of the consular office. Some amusing extracts from Callière's Manière de négocier avec les Souverains give the reader fresh strength to face Prof. Lorimer's contemptuous treatment of jurists who view the extradition of criminals as a matter of comity, not of right, and who do not treat private international law as a branch of the science of nature. A certain vehemence which characterises his style gives refreshing colour to what would otherwise be a dreary picture, but leads him to speak of his opponents in terms neither discriminating nor tolerant. It is hard to believe that he Las understood them when he tells us that their refusal to treat State recognition as a matter of absolute right and duty is a proof of deficiency in scientific insight or in precision of thought or language. Such are the hard words used by one who speaks of the general scheme of the universe. Some years ago Prof. Lorimer regretted that an Adam Smith had not appeared to place politics and jurisprudence on a scientific basis. But had he appeared he would have discussed with the temperate reason of the great economist the opinions of those from whom he differed. Is not the duty of forbearance peculiarly incumbent on the a priori jurist, seeing that he cannot be met with argument? To show that his theory is unreasonable would be useless, for it claims a deeper foundation than reason itself. Belief in the law of nature is really a matter of temperament. Prof. Lorimer himself, both here and in his former 66 work, treats the basis of law as a thing which is also confessedly "at variance both after fact, with no critical observation, and 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 rarer in our literature, and collections of 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, 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 Dr. Hueffer is essentially a clever journalist, usage, that war can be jurally waged only especially pleasant and almost instructive between States in their corporate capacity; when treating of music-as, for instance, in and that he reconciles this latter doctrine his excellent accounts of concerts and of with the right of capture of private property. operas in the Times, which are often equal There are some curious omissions in the book. to Herr Hanslick's delightful feuilletons in No account is given of how a State may acquire the Neue Freie Presse. But when he transfers rights of property over territory; yet in to the pages of a serious Review or of a colonisation important territorial questions volume the same journalistic style, we have are constantly being raised. The law of the right to demand of him something better, blockade is only casually referred to; and as more serious, and deeper. We cannot be satis-or any mediaevalist of to-day from any romanfied with his habit of merely stating fact ticist of the first quarter of the century, to contraband, there is only the statement, 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 vence refer to blue skies and spring blossoms in the most conventional manner, and the great 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." flavour to Heine's and Börne's prose. The of the time. The closing article is especially As we close the book, the impression left CARLO PLACCI. THE PROLEGOMENA TO TISCHENDORF'S NEW Novum Testamentum Graece ad antiquissimos The volume concludes with a descriptive catalogue of the uncial MSS., under which 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 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, NEW TESTAMENT students will welcome the we cannot see the necessity of its being reProlegomena to Tischendorf's eighth edition, published when we have such a satisfying the first part of which is now published; and, account from the pen of Mr. Sharp, unless it though the whole work is well worthy of be to impress upon us a view (which is not careful study, they will, no doubt, turn with new) on the development of Rossetti from a dramatic painter to a painter of beauty. In special interest, in the first place, to any "Music and Musicians" Dr. Hueffer finds passages bearing on points which may still be considered as, to some extent, under discushimself more at home; and, as this is a sion. The principles followed by Tischendorf review of Grove's Dictionary of Music, he is in the construction of his text, or the succesnot obliged to stick to one particular subject, sive editions of his text, are pretty generally and can ramble pleasantly from one part understood. They are here set forth in conto the other of the Dictionary, and indulge siderable detail, partly in his own words, with in many biographical sketches and in much many instructive examples; and the result, telling of anecdotes. "The Literary Aspects I think, must be to establish their general of Schopenhauer's Work" is a rather novel soundness. No doubt the best critical texts subject, and shows us Dr. Hueffer in his still present numerous variations, as is evident popularising mood when preparing for the from the collation here given of Tischendorf common palate some abstruse or not easily with Tregelles, and with Westcott and Hort. accessible works, such as Oper und Drama But these are of little importance compared or Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, with the points on which they agree; and the or simply poems of Troubadours and Latin reader will have no difficulty in assenting to letters of Petrarch. In this article he discloses the judgment of Dr. Gregory as to the frequent to us a less-known side of the philosopher of agreement of the text of Westcott and Hort Frankfort. To many who judge Schopenhauer with that of Tischendorf - an agreement only by his reputation, and class him with which, he remarks, would be greater had the Kant, Hegel, or any other great thinker of latter given his marginal readings. Nearly abstruse questions in abstruse form, the well ten years have passed since Tischendorf's picked out bits which Dr. Hueffer translates death, and in the meantime New Testament from the Parerga und Paralipomena will be a criticism has not stood still. It would cerrevelation, as they show Schopenhauer in a tainly be interesting to know how the eminent comparatively new light-viz, that of an critic would regard the labours in his own original causeur-a sort of combination of the field of our Euglish scholars were he still last-century English essay with that Parisian alive; but, if Dr. Gregory may be understood Iwit and clever paradox which, intermixed to speak for him, there can be no doubt that Viola Fanshawe. By Mabel Collins. In 2 with German gravity, gives such a delicious his recognition would be ample. That this "addenda et emendanda is a circumstance to be regretted. ROBERT B. DRUMMOND. NEW NOVELS. In 3 The Wizard's Son. By Mrs. Oliphant. vols. (White.) Goddess Fortune. By Thomas Sinclair. In 3 she is a failure. Of the female characters Mrs. Willoughby's Octave. By Emma Marshall. (Seeley.) 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. 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. 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 Oona Forrester-are managed with great skill. Walter Methven, as Saxon sense brought face to face with Celtic witchcraft, is a very difficult subject to treat, and, but for the power of the artist, would have been a blurred and unsatisfactory portrait. As usual, Mrs. Oliphant's Scotch folk are perfect-Hamish, McAlister, the Highland minister, the Edin burgh lawyer (is not Mr. Milnathort's devotion to a Scotch breakfast that winds up with marmalade rather antiquated?), and, above all, Symington the retainer of the Erradeens, who fastens upon Walter as his property the moment he sees him, and is not to be imposed upon by his master's impatient attempt to get rid of him by the fiction of a "man" whom he 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 aristocracy, democracy, and Horace's Dea Fortuna, not to speak of fate, free-will, of various persons, especially of one Brend, foreknowledge absolute, put into the mouths 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 Goddess 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 the story drags sadly; and there is no adequate reason for the pseudo Lord Ralford committing suicide and for Miss Maude Grey going mad. writing, much less in the publication, of Plot is the strong point, satire run to farcicality is the pervading weakness, of Keep Troth. The central incident of the story, the stealing of the child of well-to-do parents, is, indeed, as commonplace as it well can be. But Mr. Bicknell shows no little skill in devising new 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 tendency spoils the whole book. Mr. Bicknell is plainly under the impression that he has a satirical vein, and gives pictures of missionary enterprise in London, of a fashionable school, and of a sensational trial which are not of the nature of comedy, but only of burlesque. There is far too much coarse and unpleasant dialogue -unnecessarily coarse and unpleasant-in Keep Troth. Thus it is bad enough that, when Jean meets Molly Magaire, whom he knew in the days when, as a boy, he sold matches and newspapers, he should ask her if she is "living 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. Viola Fanshawe is an atrociously vulgar story-valgar in sentiment, vulgar in language. It would be difficult to say which of the persons who figure in it is the most odious. A Mrs. Vane, who indulges in slang and champagne, and talks about "fellers" and "being mashed," and "playing propriety," and "lugging volumes of Zola," is not worse than Viola Fanshawe herself, an adulteress in intent, who is ready to desert her child and her "star" actor husband for a selfish scoundrel, and whom that scoundrel finds " at the dinner table, her liqueur glass held in her lovely hand, her mouth fragrant with sweetmeats, his diamonds gleaming on her neck." The less said about such a book as this the better. 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 and almost devoid of plot, it has been written with a purpose, and a religious purpose; but that is not thrust upon the reader. Each member of the "octave" is carefully sketched. David Willoughby the unselfish, George Burnley the self-indulgent, and Frieda, who unites and holds the balance between the two, stand out from the characters around them as good portraits. Mrs. Marshall indicates in Lady Katherine, Frieda's wellintentioned tyrant, that she might achieve some success as a quiet humorist if she were to allow her powers free play. 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 nearly twenty years since a selection from them was formed by Mr. Browning, which was 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 accepted-by all except students of literatureas an adequate representation of Mrs. Browning's genius. a new edition of these two volumes of selections Quotations, from the Earliest Ages to the |