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impudence (pages 442-3), we refer to the anecdote related on the authority of the Reverend Dr. J. P. Gulliver, the President of Knox College, a man whose high character it will take something more than Colonel Lamon's unsupported and wanton disparagement to injure. Dr. Gulliver had written and published, while it was still fresh in his mind, his recollection of an interesting conversation with Mr. Lincoln, the tone of which was for some reason unacceptable to Colonel Lamon's prejudices. Accordingly Dr. Gulliver becomes at once "a clerical sycophant," "a little politician," a "Bunsby," preaching "with the cant peculiar to his kind." What business had he, to be sure, to know anything about Abraham Lincoln which Colonel Lamon did not know before? Especially if it gives any indication of a religious spirit on the part of Mr. Lincoln, the story is "most tolerable and not to be endured," and the author of it is to be set down at once as either a silly fool or a conceited knave, or both. The violent and reckless prejudice, and the utter want of delicacy and even of decency by which the book is characterized, in such instances as this, will more than counterbalance the value of its new material, its fresh and vigorous pictures of Western life and manners, and its familiar knowledge of the "inside politics' of Mr. Lincoln's administration; and will even make its publication (by the famous publishers whose imprint imparts to it a prestige and authority which its authorship would fail to give) something like a national misfortune. In some quarters it will be readily received as the standard life of the good President. It is all the more desirable that the criticism upon it should be prompt and unsparing.

Longfellow's "Three Books of Song."

MR. LONGFELLOW's new volume associates itself in aim and in quality with the best work that he has ever done. The contents of the Three Books of Song are as pure poetry, and on the whole, perhaps, as high poetry as their author, in any previous volume, has offered to the public. We hail this collection of poems with a delight that is lessened by no alloy. We hail the poet, too, and thank him for the still fairer poem of his own blameless and beautiful life. May its wane be as long and as slow as it will be sure to be lovely and benign !

There is a very gracious relationship severally assumed and allowed between Mr. Longfellow and the reading public. It is a truly restful relief to the frequently mutable fortunes of authorship, the uniform welcome by anticipation thus accorded by us all to a favorite poet, and never once disappointed or in any danger of being disappointed by him.

In the present volume Mr. Longfellow, with ingenuous artifice gives us an after-thought to his previous. Tales of a Wayside Inn, in a collection of narrative pieces entitled here "The Second Day." This constitutes "Book First " of the Three Books of Song. (James R. Osgood & Co.) These new tales are marked

by all that easy flow of verse and musical tinkle of rhyme which commended the first series to its audience of readers. The diffusive, the expansile force perhaps dilutes the interest of the stories, as stories, unduly. But sweet sentiment, graceful fancy, and limpid phrase, with the occasional charm of a picturesque proper name, or a revived obsolete word, aptly introduced, very well make up, to the lover of poetry for poetry's sake, the lack of concentrated passion and vivacious action.

It was a dawn of cloud, and fog, and rain, that kept the guests at the inn for their second day together. The tales of this second day having been told, the weather clears, and the guests scatter. The change is thus, with charming felicity, described:

"A sudden wind from out the west
Blew all its trumpets loud and shrill;
The windows rattled with the blast,
The oak-trees shouted as it passed,
And straight, as if by fear possessed,
The cloud encampment on the hill
Broke up, and, fluttering flag and tent,
Vanished into the firmament,
And down the valley fled amain

The rear of the retreating rain."

But

The second book is a closet drama, entitled “Judas Maccabæus." The plot is simple and there is little apparent attempt at development of character. the revolt and success of the great Maccabee, and the spendthrift and cruel pride and the retributive overthrow of Antiochus Epiphanes, are given in clear outline. The exigencies of plot hardly seemed to require that the death of Nicanor should be placed several years earlier than the actual date. We are almost ready to ask whether a better total impression might not have been produced if Acts IV. and V. had exchanged places. Otherwise "Antiochus Epiphanes" would seem a fitter title for this drama.

There is a noble effect of scriptural sentiment and expression ingrained in the verse. The versification is rather free from fault than noticeably fine. Does this line mispronounce “Ecbatana"?

"Of Ecbatana. These are the Orontes."

Such a negligence is singular enough to be remarked in Mr. Longfellow's unimpeachably scholarlike work.

The last book is modestly called "A Handful of Translations." The interest of these translations, we should say, is rather incidental than intrinsic. If they can be accepted as faithful suggestions of originals really existing, they certainly possess, at least, some curious illustrative value. Among them are some Tartar songs and some Armenian songs. Of these pieces, as also of the pieces composing the first two books, several will doubtless be remembered by readers of late periodical literature, as having been in print before. But, like every proffer from so wellestablished a popular favorite as Mr. Longfellow, this fresh bouquet of song, notwithstanding that it contains some flowers not now first plucked, is sure of

Its welcome. The fragrance that it yields is as pure as it is sweet.

"A Hidden Life: " By George MacDonald.* THERE are singers whose voices so interpret familiar music, that, till they came, we seem never to haye heard it before; such heights and depths of meaning, such beauty of sound do they reveal. Many poets before Mr. MacDonald have chosen themes like his. Between the covers of this volume there is scarcely a subject which has not been made nobly familiar by his fellows. And yet he says unnumbered things which have been waiting always for him to say. And if in his verse are memories of Tennyson and Wordsworth and Browning, it holds them only as the wind that stirs in summer woods holds the sweetness of all past sum

mers.

In MacDonald's poetry, as in his prose, before and above all other grace, shines the white purity of his mind. It is something wonderful, ineffable, because unconscious. For this is a man who puts no wall of separation between himself and his kind. Who says, "I pray put me not in good case

If others lack and pine."

This is a man whose joy in the world is a rapture; whom sky, and air, and sea, and odor, and sound, and love of women and children thrill with intensity of delight. This is a man the very piety of whose soul fills him with doubts and despairs concerning his worth to God. For we must believe that the passions of blood and tears through which, both in his prose and in his poetry, he makes tender lives to pass, have their prototype in his own agonies.

This marvelous clarity makes it difficult to judge MacDonald's work critically, because he seems, always, less poet and novelist than seer and inspired teacher; and because the reverent love which he compels from all who study him fetters the judgment, or, at least, hinders its expression. Thus it seems almost treasonable to the most uplifted genius of the time to say, what is certainly true, that as his novels are greatly defective as stories, so his poems have great lacks as poetry.

In both verse and prose he reveals keen observation, deep moral and spiritual insight, a profound love of beauty, and rare gifts of expression. But this volume of poems, which represents the mental growth of twenty years, shows no more assured or lofty flights in the last year than in the first. Indeed, the poem called "Light," parts of which are sublime, and which is, to our thinking, one of the noblest short ems in the language, was written more than twenty years ago; while "The Gospel Women" and the "Book of Sonnets," which we have not been able heartily to like, seem to belong to a much later time. The studied simplicity of the first touches the bald and prosaic; and the artificial construction of the

po

A Hidden Life and other Poems, by George MacDonald. Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

second induces obscurity, and seeming effort to say something fine enough for the occasion, which, of course, is only seeming.

The longest poem, whose name the book bears, is a lovely story of rustic life and aspiration. But, notwithstanding some fine passages, it would have been better told in prose than in blank-verse, it seems to us. For, the perfect local color would have been not less perfect, the delicate psychical studies not less delicate; while the expression, which is often hampered by the cadence, would have been freer, and such lines as "A flush of tenderness then glowed across

His bosom-shone it clean from passing harm" would never have been written. The "Story of the Sea-shore," which follows, has wide salt reaches and the very sound and fragrance of the sea.

But it is the shorter "Organ Songs," listening to which we seem to hear chords that no man of our

day has touched before. Among many, three hymns of praise, flower-like in beauty and fragrance, linger in memory through twilights and quiet hours. They are, "The Grace of Grace," "O, do not leave me," and an "Evening Hymn," whose last two stanzas we give :

"And when my thought is all astray,
Yet think Thou on in me;

That with the new-born innocent day
My soul rise fresh and free.

"Nor let me wander all in vain

Through dreams that mock and flee;
But, even in visions of the brain,
Go wandering toward thee."

Thoughtful and religious minds will place Mac Donald's poems with those of Herbert and Vaughan, as among the needs of their best hours. For if he

lack something that those rare souls had, he has something that they lacked. And the love that he kindles will endure, for, as we said, the man is holy.

Bible Music.

MR. JACOX's Bible Music (Roberts Bros., Boston) justifies its title on the lucus a non principle, by being all about music and not at all about the Bible. The author has simply taken a dozen or so of Scripture texts, in which music is mentioned, as hints for rambling but pleasant disquisitions on the subject in its various elements and aspects, in which the proportion of Mr. Jacox to other authors cited is about as one to twenty. The book has no perceptible logical sequence or guiding thought, except that we dimly gather an intent to enforce the same principle as that of Mr. Haweis, the value of music as typifying unconscious thought or emotion, not definite idea. In its construction it is the most bewildering canto of scraps and shreds from all possible authors, from Aristotle and Plotinus down to Martin Farquhar Tupper, and Miss Braddon, and reminds one for all the world of a German sausage, which may be cut up in lengths and consumed, or set over at pleasure. It belongs to the class of books which are available for a half-hour's lazy reading any time, and reads backward nearly or quite as well as forward.

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You had best sit quietly down here while the glittering lines of carriages, crowded with the poor puppets of this Parisian Vanity Fair, toil along the heated and dusty way. Much, indeed, they know of the shade and grateful refuge of this antique forest of Rouveray. They do not even condescend to pass the cascade at a moderate pace, but, after they have cast a glance at the green expanse of Longchamps, they whip up their beasts and whirl away as swiftly as the poor horses' swollen joints will permit. Give me a quiet ramble in the wood near the grand cascade, and I will forego your promenades amid the glitter.

Parbleu I was indeed dreaming, for the good Bois de Boulogne is no longer as of yore. Where once stately trees waved their boughs one only sees fresh stumps; where the pale moonlight in the odorous evening once made a promenade by the lake and lakelets so delicious, the hand of war has been at work and ravaged rudely. Ah, my Lutetia! was it worth the while to wear the gaud and pay the heavy price?

VOL. IV.-33

Yet am I glad to see that even the Prussians reverenced the cascade. They could hardly dare to trample roughly on ground where Art had taught Nature some of its profoundest secrets. See how the sparkling water leaps down over the rocks-the miniature cliffs beneath which are caves into which the curious may penetrate and gaze through the spray-veil! Here is the ruggedness and grandeur of a mountain torrent; yet it is only a few steps from the noise and crowding of the city.

Some good Paris burghers, toward the beginning of the twelfth century, made a pilgrimage to Boulogne by the sea. Returning, they received permission from King Philip to build a church like the one they had seen at Boulogne in a little village near the then forest of Rouveray. Our Lady of Boulogne on the Seine soon gave her name to the adjacent wood: hence the Bois de Boulogne of to-day.

No one knows when the old wood was first named, or what monarch first made it his pleasure resort. A great forest spread its

somber shade over all the territory from the tower of the Louvre to the hills of Meudon, and, descending into the plain of St. Denis, overhung the banks of the winding Seine. From Mount Valerien's wind-swept height the pilgrim could see only an ocean of foliage where now Paris rears its glittering avenues. As far away as the eye could reach, a few black towers nestled on a little island, and along the river were scattered a few antique piles of stone. Where now stand the great suburban cities of Passy, Auteuil, and Boulogne, were a few miserable hamlets, inhabited by a wretched peasantry. The wood was dreaded, for banditti made it their home, and cut a throat readily for the sake of a few pence, or the garments the traveler wore. Later, Louis XI. dispelled much of the mystery by hunting in the forest and opening up avenues right and left. Rouveray forest was filled with wild beasts in those days, and the good wives of Paris frightened their children into proper behavior by saying, "A Rouveray wolf will get thee." Talbot's English archers, the Spaniards of the Duke of Parma, the lansquenets of Germany, and the Russian dragoons overran the forest from time to time. The great Revolution wreaked its malice on the vast expanse of park which belonged to the royal domain; and now the Bois de Boulogne, crowded away to the Seine bank by constantly encroaching Paris, and forced outside the fortifications, submits in tamest silence to the honors due

THE BOIS DE BOULOGNE CASCADE.

its venerable remains. Francis I. came to the forest to build himself a pleasure-house, and enjoy a sylvan retreat after his release from captivity. He built a vast château, which Louis XIV. razed to the ground long afterwards. That great windmill, not far away, whence the gay aristocrats used to look down on the race-course in those happy days before the siege, is the only relic of the famous Abbey of Longchamps, which Isabelle of France built on the ground her pious brother gave her in his "good forest." One day there came a great lightning flash! It was the Revolution, and the Abbey walls were leveled.

No! even though I may lounge by the cascade and conjure up most venerable and enchanting legends, I must fly. Where is all the mad whirlwind of carriages which on the festal day of the Grand Prize, when "Gladiateur" shook the turf from his heels and leaped like new-come Pegasus, filled every square-inch of space from the entrance of the Champs Elysées to the Lake in the wood? Where is all that wild mob of bedizened coachmen driving spirited horses in landaus, victorias, dog-carts, breaks, britzskas, and coupés, crowded with the rich and gilded of all the earth? Where is the sallow Emperor, wrapped in his hunting-cloak, rattling along the avenue, surrounded by his police? Where is the little group of three horsemen, sitting motionless upon their steeds as the great army of Paris defiles past them? One

might almost imagine it 1867 once more, and that Napoleon sits by Bismarck and King William again, little fancying that they are laughing in their sleeves at his coming disgrace!

Delicious avenues in summer-vast and ample enough for all the queen city's two millions of inhabitants-has the Bois de Boulogne. Even after it has broken its denseness, the old wood is fretted into little oäses which run away through all the suburbs on its side of the city. It breaks into lovely nooks and corners at Passy, and glorious walks like the Rond des Chênes near Auteuil.

One can hardly help strolling to the Jardin d'Acclimatation, one of the great institutions of the Bois de Boulogne, not far from the Maillot Gate, which was the scene of such dreadful slaughter during the recent Commune. Only the modern Parisian could have invented this singular garden. Its foundation was due to individual initiative-something very rare for France, where the

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