to attract a husband, but to be faithful, indus- seemed to the high sheriff unpardonable weaktrious, intelligent, efficient, whether she ever mar-ness, suggested that nothing was really gained ried or not, her life would have been serene and by what it was pleased to call blackguarding an her husband happy, because he would have been opponent. Speak as severely as you may, you compelled to respect. By discipline, indeed, and need not resort to personal abuse; because, by hard discipline, the husband might have shown however effective at the moment, there is such a the courtesy of pity for weakness where respect secret sense of justice in human nature that was utterly wanting. Margaret Fuller, in her abuse is instantly felt to be the sign of weakness, "Summer on the Lakes," incidentally mentions and invective the mere mustard of oratory which a sensitive and accomplished man married to a a healthy taste rejects. But the high sheriff, woman who could not be respected, but whom he delicately trying the edge of his blade, answered treated with constant politeness. That, too, is that the Easy Chair evidently did not understand like Charles Lamb's gentleman. It is the re- the situation. When, said he, I wish to move spect for humanity, however obscured. men upon some moral question, to spur them to But to the ordeal of the household who can some moral action, I may properly denounce its come too well prepared? And what parent, what immoral opposite. For instance, if I wish to human being who has learned by experience, but urge the virtue of punctuality upon young men would gladly equip every child with the most who have been trained all their lives to admire perfect equipment? No, Dorinda Jane, to whom Samuel Slug, who is always late, I know, to bethe youth, crusty at home, will presently come gin with, that the most resistless tradition of the sweetly smiling, it is not the flowing hair, and town makes unpunctuality respectable, and that the graceful dress, and the bloom upon the cheek, in vain the youth profess approval of punctuality and the soft lustre of the eye, that will make if they also reverence the very incarnation of home happy. No, nor is it his horses and unpunctuality. So what do I do? I describe as plate, and the luxury and ease he promises. sharply as I can the abomination of this negliIf he is harsh and short and crabbed, what if gence. But I observe that my young hearers he has fifty thousand a year? If you are care-are languid and inclined to sleep. So I say, less and ignorant and helpless, the victim instead of ruler of your house, what if your eyes are black and your cheeks a dim carnation? And you, dear Sir and Madam, who permit that boor to sit surly at the table, and to growl in monosyllables at home, you who suffer that fairfaced girl to grow up utterly unequal to the duties to which she will be called, you are responsi-those young persons will from that moment relax ble. This mother feels it, and writes to the Easy Chair. Let the Easy Chair echo her feeling to a thousand parental hearts. Respect is the root of courtesy. But a selfish boor can not be respected by a woman, nor a pretty doll by a man.

WHAT a millennial state it will be when all the gentlemen and ladies who speak in public, and advocate favorite systems and theories, speak courteously of their opponents! When two gentlemen differ in private, it is usually with politeness and good-humor. One does not say to the other that all who hold his opinions are thieves and murderers, and the other does not reply that all who disagree with him are liars and scoundrels and bribed assassins. Upon the whole, there is nothing sharper in many of the most biting satires than in the daily reports of meetings and speeches. The Eatanswill Gazette is a study from nature, and Hogarth's pictures are mere history. Of course, when men seriously differ upon the most vital points, they will not talk gingerly in debate. But they need not "make mouths" at each other, nor "call names." Yet much of the most immediately popular and effective oratory is the most stinging personal criticism. The orator holds up his opponent, or more truly his victim, to contempt. He covers him with obloquy. He leaves him stuck all over with arrows of scorn. The man who differs from the orator is left quartered at the public crossroads.

"Young gentlemen, I have shown you what this vice is, and Samuel Slug is its chief illustration.'

Of course there is a terrible awaking. The high sheriff is accused of personality, of publicly insulting the very genius of respectability. But he insists that he has not only driven his nail, but that he has clenched it. He contends that

their admiration for Mr. Slug, and unpunctuality, ceasing to be respectable, will be corrected. But if we all followed the practice of the high sheriff, what would become of us? If, when the preacher's sermon is upon lying, he should say, “I mean Timothy Jenkins, sitting down there under the organ loft," and if, when he denounces avarice and worse vices, he adds, "It is the miser, Deacon Grab, whom I have in mind," there would be dire consternation. The palpable injustice is that although Grab may be miserly, he has other feelings and qualities which are good. But when he is presented to contemplation as a miser only, that fact overbears all the rest, and he becomes merely odious.

But there is another kind of oratorical looseness and feeble fury of speech which is even more common; that is, the profuse sneering at other views, as if they were not only utterly baseless, but consciously corrupt. Here are two gentlemen sitting quietly at table, and discussing the route of a railroad to the North Pole. Shall the ocean be tunneled, or shall the track be laid on ice? It is a fair question. There are good arguments, drawn from great natural laws, and from the actual situation. What is abstractly better, and what is actually expedient, are points that may be carefully and intelligently discussed. And so they are. And the two gentlemen take different sides, and urge the proper arguments. The advocate of the tunnel shows why that is the better plan, and the friend of the surface route offers This is a system of execution, however, which what seem to him conclusive reasons. The tunis strongly defended by the executioner. One neler does not declare that his opponent is a of the most accomplished headsmen of this kind bloated mass of corruption, nor does his adveronce told the Easy Chair the reason of his prac- sary insist contemptuously that the tunneler has tice. For the Easy Chair, with what doubtless been bribed to support an immeasurable swindle.

ing, in one of his delightful Harvard lectures, a line from an old French poem describing the trees in the spring as longing to blossom; but the news from the weather-wise was such that it was doubtful whether the poor trees would ever come nearer to fruit than longing to blossom after such a winter as was in store for us.

If they did so, each would probably put the other | Even during the Indian summer, which was this out of the house, and certainly they would not year almost lost in the uniform gentle weather, be likely to be very cordial friends thereafter. like a clear stream in an equally clear lake, there What, then, is the reason that the tunneler, were awful stories told of the conduct of the parting from his friend, proceeds to a public beavers. They were building such houses, and meeting called to consider the subject of a rail- laying on such wardrobes, that we should be road to the North Pole, and, ascending the plat-lucky if the sea itself did not freeze, and if Mayform, vehemently declares that the project of day could find any sign of the earth above the laying a track over the ice is not only repug-snow. The Easy Chair heard of Lowell as quotant to reason and common-sense-not only are babies of eighteen months competent to detect its shrieking folly-but it is a vast swindle, and its advocates are knavish rascals? Meanwhile the friend of the ice track goes to his meeting, and sneers at the inexpressible absurdity of tunneling the ocean. They'd better tunnel their wits who advocate it, exclaims he. They are a That argument of the beavers, indeed, is an horde of grasping gormandizers of other people's old friend. It always appears soon after the money. They are a herd of antediluvian asses, first frost in the autumn, and threatens the most who try to pass off thistles as clover. And so he frigid future. It is presented with an air of perorates as passionately as his friend, each call- finality which is extremely discouraging; for ing the other swindler and fool. And what ef- when a man kindly says, in reply to your expresfect is produced upon the public mind? First, sion of hope or trust of an open weather, "Yes, disgust and indifference, and then a conscious- it would be very agreeable; but you know that ness that the advocates have each so covered the fur is making upon the beavers uncommonly the cause with vituperation that it will be a thick, and their houses are unusually strong," weary work to dig down to the pith of the mat- what can you retort? To question that signifiter. Every body would like to understand the cant fact is to accuse the accuracy of your obreasons upon both sides if they could, but call-servations in natural history. And the remark ing people fools and knaves is not argument, and the whole subject is demoralized.

The college professors of rhetoric used to say that expletives weaken. Now the sharpest criticism possible is not an expletive, and the most faithful description of official weakness or personal falsity not to be deprecated. Nobody wants pudgy orators nor sloppy evasions. But what is more superlatively ridiculous than to say that a man who hopes that Germany will prevail in the French war has been bought by King William, except to say that his neighbor, who hopes for France, is an atheist and a communist? Can not a friend of France see that a man may properly and for many sound reasons prefer the German ascendency in Europe? and must a friend of France necessarily be an "agrarian?" When a protectionist proclaims that free-traders are bought with British gold, every sensible man begins to be persuaded that if that is the argument of protection, it is a system utterly without reason, until he hears the free-trader shouting that protectionists are swindlers-that is, intentional knaves-upon which he begins to think that it is a pity the argument could not be conducted as among gentlemen, and not among bullies.

THE weather of the early winter was so remarkably beautiful, and it is so doubtful whether the historian who prepares the Historical Record for this Magazine will not prefer to treat of the French and German war and of the Black Sea question rather than of December-blowing roses and green lawns at Christmas, that the Easy Chair will here make a note of the long, lovely series of soft, bright days at the end of 1870, and wish the same, as the best possible compliment of the season, to the readers of these pages in 1970. The summer was so intensely hot-so unprecedentedly hot and dry-that every body was sure that there would be a winter of fabulous rigor, and indeed there is opportunity enough yet, as the Easy Chair acknowledges.

is always made with a provoking implication of the most perfect familiarity upon all sides with the habits of the beaver, as if we all came down to breakfast in the morning and began the day by looking at the thermometer and inspecting the progress of the beavers in laying on fur and piling up mud and sticks. The Easy Chair secretly believes that the whole story is an invention. Who sees the beavers? Who knows any thing about the comparative thickness or thinness of the fur? Does the respected reader keep beavers? Does his neighbor? Is there a large family of them in the immediate neighborhood? How does the fur compare with that of last year? If we were speaking of rabbits, ah! then indeed-but beavers! Let us be humbly thankful for them as blessings; but as for regarding them as arguments bearing upon the weather, let us smile and pass on.

The Easy Chair wishes that it could assure its reader of a hundred years hence that in these winter days, when the Western World has been so softly basking in the sun, mankind were equally gentle, and that the millennium was plainly at hand. But to read the newspapers of to-day is much like reading the history of a century ago. There are wars and rumors of wars. It is not the Emperor and Louis, nor the allies and the French republic, but it is Germany and France again who are fighting, and foolish, wanton France is terribly paying the piper for the dance she has danced for many a thoughtless year. And Russia and England are looking politely firm and a little defiant across the Continent; and Turkey is mentioned respectfully, as if it were not a mere dummy in the game of Europe; and Austria, pale with the thought of Sadowa, speaks with the uneasy consciousness that what she says is not of great importance. Farther to the south the kingdom of Italy occupies Rome, and the Pope protests, as if it were a bitter hardship to reduce the realm of a king with so light a sceptre, who has made his do

main to blossom with intelligence, progress, and civilization. And England and a certain country over the sea, to the west, stand with arms a-kimbo, and Jonathan says to John, "How are you, Alabama ?"

Indeed, dear next-century reader, we who are in possession of the world to-day are very much

what the ghosts before us were, and what you and your companions will be. But we all lift the old world a little. We all leave it a little better than we find it. And that we may leave it so to you, dear unborn reader, and that you may remember us kindly for it, is the New-Year's wish to you of this ghost that shall be.

Editor's Literary Record.

Is more in Aing in English They coming, a Ding
S political life more exacting in America than in | are scheming, ambitious, intolerant, malignant.

They are the power that inspires and directs the mob. No treaties with an emperor, whose sceptre is a shadow, no civilizing influences brought to bear upon the people, who are in a condition of abject because superstitious bondage, can prevent the recurrence, on a yet more terrible scale, of the Tien-tsin massacres. The mandarins, wily and unscrupulous, must be held responsible, and punished even somewhat arbitrarily, for crimes which they certainly could prevent, and which there is more than a suspicion they have incited. So, in effect, writes Dr. Thin, and certainly his book is worthy of a more careful perusal than it is likely to get in this country before we throw our cap in air again, in the sanguine faith that China is redeemed and civilized by a treaty signed by an emperor who is powerless to maintain it.

recuperate. Of the pile of books that lie on our table there is scarcely one that will outlive the year, or deserves more than a passing mention. Zell's Cyclopedia (T. Ellwood Zell) is indeed

politics which attracts men of literary tastes and culture, who are repelled by the scramble for the spoils which constitutes so large a part of American politics? Whatever the reasom may be, literature and politics certainly go hand in hand in Great Britain. From the humblest clerkship in Downing Street to the premier himself, or, to reverse the scale, from Disraeli to Charles Lamb, there is scarcely a political class that is not represented in literature. Disraeli's novels will live long after his crooked and sinuous policy is forgotten; and Mr. Gladstone has rendered a far more efficient service to English literature by his exceedingly graceful and often eloquent pen than he is likely to render to English politics by his somewhat weak and hesitating diplomacy. Last month we found among the Christmas tales for children none better, none quite so good, indeed, as "Puss-Cat Mew," which a member of the THE month which follows Christmas is always House of Commons has somehow found time to a dull one in the book trade. It is as if literature write; and of all English books of the present year had exhausted herself in adorning the Christmasthere is none which promises to fill a more import-tree with literary fruit, and stopped to rest and ant place than the Speaker's Commentary. Of course we can not undertake to speak of it critically, since it has not yet, at this writing, appeared. We can only note it as an interesting piece of literary history, that a man who occupies in En-an exception; but that handsome and useful gland a place analogous to that of the Speaker of volume has been patiently waiting until its comour own House of Representatives should have panion should join it, and so the completed the predilections which should lead him to con- work could be introduced to the reader at once. ceive of a popular commentary on the Scriptures This we can now do, for the second volume will for English readers, the scholarship to undertake probably be ready about the time these pages in a general way the supervision of it, the knowl- are printed. As a book of reference Zell's edge of men to lead him to select the writers and Cyclopedia" stands midway between a dictioneditors, and the time and energy to push the en-ary and a cyclopedia. Unlike the former, it terprise through, and so to father it as to give to the published book his own name. Of English books of the month not republished here, this work, which it will take one or two years to complete, is doubtless the most important.-Sir HENRY BULWER's Life of Lord Palmerston, imported by J. B. Lippincott and Co., is not likely to have a very extensive reading in this country, its interest being almost wholly local. -Dr. THIN's volume on the Tien-tsin massacre is the only other one of special interest to Amer-to "Digestion." Webster tells us that it is the ican readers. Much has been written about "conversion of food into chyme;" and when we China and the Chinese, but very little is yet un- turn to chyme to find out what that is, we are derstood. Dr. Thin was long a resident at left not much wiser than before by the informaShanghai, but as a physician, and personally tion that it is "the pulp formed by the food aftdisinterested in the Chinese trade. He has er it has been for some time in the stomach.' brought out very clearly, what most superficial Zell describes the process which Webster onlyobservers fail to see, that there is a wide differ-defines, and aids his description by a diagram; ence between Chinamen and Chinese mandarins. while Chambers, in a more elaborate article, The former are ignorant and superstitious, but gives some account of the experiments and repersonally inclined to be inoffensive. The latter searches which are connected with the subject.

แ

contains proper names, comprising articles on biographical, historical, and geographical subjects. Unlike the latter, it is a verbal dictionary, containing not only articles on important things, but definitions of verbs, adjectives, and other words as well. It is unlike the dietionary in that it describes as well as defines. It is unlike the cyclopedia in that it gives, except in purely biographical or historical articles, very little else than a description. We turn

This brief comparison will, perhaps, give our signed him, is depicted with very great power.— readers a better idea of the book than a de- Which is the Heroine? hardly affords an answer scription could do. It may be defined in a to its own question. There is not a great deal single sentence as "a describing dictionary.' ." of heroism in either Ida or Margery, but in the It should be added that the articles on natural former enough perhaps to point a moral, and science appear to be particularly full, and the make the story something better than commonwhole work is thoroughly fresh and modern. place. Certainly commonplace is not an accuThe book is a novelty in literature, but a suc- sation which can be brouglit against The Vivian cessful one. It lies on our library table by the Romance. MORTIMER COLLINS appears to have side of Webster; and when neither the synonym undertaken to write a story like nothing ever nor the etymology of a word is wanted, proves conceived before, and we are bound to say he frequently more serviceable than either the dic- has succeeded. In the compass of 150 pages he tionary, which is too brief, or the many volumed treats us to a murder, a suicide, a robbery, an cyclopedia, which is too voluminous. abduction, and coffee and pistols for two, and so successfully that an old novel-reader, not easily ensnared by any romance, assures us that it beguiled him into reading it through at a sitting. It is a book to gallop through at a mad pace; and if it affords nothing to pick up by the way, neither does it give you time to dally, were the side attractions ever so numerous.-In Duty Bound would have made several very good stories, but it does not make one good novel. The threads are well spun, but they are not well woven into a single strand. The reader is so much distracted by the fortunes of the different characters, with divergent lives, that he ceases to be interested in any one of them.

66

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS.

SOME volumes which bloomed on our Christmas-tree too late for our Christmas Number are here asking a word of introduction from us. PAUL KONEWKA furnishes two or three volumes in silhouette. The best, though not the most pretentious, which has come under our eye is Evening Amusement (Roberts Brothers), a book for the little folks. It is a new wonder to us how this artist contrives to infuse not only so much meaning, but so much grace and beauty in these black outlines. His Faust (Roberts Brothers) is not so good, not at all equal to the "Midsummer Night's Dream" of last year. We miss the We have from different houses three or four ease and naturalness which characterized the American novels, first of which in fame, perhaps illustrations of that fairy drama. Mephistoph-in merit, is SYLVESTER JUDD'S Margaret (Robeles is the conventional Mephistopheles of com- erts Brothers). We do not propose to add any mon art, and the last figure of Margaret is un- thing to the stormy and controversial criticism pleasantly stagey."-The Lays of the Holy Land which its first publication twenty-five years ago (Robert Carter and Brothers) is a handsomely il- excited. American it certainly is. A fair, imlustrated collection of poems by various authors, partial portrait of American society it certainly the themes of which are drawn from the lands is not. Quaint, queer, original, minutely accuof the Bible or their history. We have been for rate in its descriptions, but often false in sentisome time familiar with it in its English dress, ment and philosophy, and crude and uncouth in and we judge this American edition to be only expression, it well deserves a permanent place an importation, not a reprint. We can very in American literature; but we should be sorry cordially commend it, both for its poetry and to believe it, with all its glaring defects of both its pictures.-Tony and Puss (Roberts Broth- thought and manner, to be "the most thorers) is for very small children, being twenty-four oughly American book ever written."-The scene pictures with half a dozen lines or so to each pic of Valerie Aylmer (D. Appleton and Co.) is laid ture. It is, however, a connected story, and is in the South. It is a story of-we were going very well done, the French, from which the book to say love, but, to be accurate, we must needs is translated, doing this sort of thing with im- substitute flirtation. The writer is quite desmeasurably more grace and tact than their awk-titute of invention, and builds her novel out of ward cousins across the water, who ordinarily make rather a stiff figure in attempting to amuse or instruct the little folks-i. e., the very little folks.

NOVELS.

HARPERS add several volumes, some new, one at least old, to their Library of Select Novels. Of these Mrs. EILOART's story, with its odd but significant title, From Thistles-Grapes? is the best. Real life is full of dramas, ay, of tragedies, and an exciting novel is not always an unnatural one. Mrs. Eiloart has succeeded in making one both natural and exciting. The characters are self-consistent throughout, though Dr. Langton, "the villain" of the story, is hardly a probable, certainly not a common one. The plot is well wrought; the thwarted love and sad death of poor Grace Rosslyn tinge the whole story with a true pathos; and the closing scene, in which Dr. Langton finds that Dick Girling is his own illegitimate son, but too late to save him from the gallows, to which he has himself con

incidents which have been the common property of novelists ever since writing romances became a profession; but she makes good use of her scant materials, and by a certain vivacity and sprightliness saves her story from the stupidity which otherwise would inevitably attach to it. Her Southern and Roman Catholic sympathies are unmistakable.-A powerful novel, well conceived and well wrought, is With Fate Against Him (Sheldon and Co.), by AMANDA M. DOUGLASS; a story that flows like a rough stream over rugged rocks; of life full of trial and turbulence; with few characters, yet none that are weak or borrowed from other models; with no moralizing, yet with a certain underlying moral wrought into the fabric of the story, as morals are truly wrought into the dramas of actual life; a story that is inherently a tragedy, though it ends in marriage at the last; and whose chiefest defect is this, that across its stormy scenes there scarcely falls a single rift of cheery humor, of gladsome hope, or even of bright faith in God. We long for some clear contrast to the iron creed of John Hurst,