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After closely watching a performance of "Hamlet" through three acts, very little remains to be commented upon, and nothing likely to throw any further light upon the subject. The actor has very little to do in the fourth act, and this little Mr. Booth does with an adequate mastery of the situation. Whether Hamlet here is really distraught, or only assuming madness, can scarcely affect the actor's rendition, for the seeming is as patent as reality. How merely assumed insanity could so readily fall into the purposes of the king is to us wholly inexplicable. It is true that Hamlet imagines that he comprehends the situation, and promises that the "engineer shall be hoist with his own petard;" but this is all wild talk; he has no plans in contemplation; and the fact that, after having fully fastened upon the king the guilt of his father's murder, he should at once abandon the field and hie away to England, seems to us proof conclusive of a disordered mind.

In the grave-scene, at the opening of the fifth act, Mr. Booth appears to advantage. His dress is picturesque; he looks more than at any other time the melancholy prince. There is too often in his personation a certain lack of dignity. We do not ask for a Hamlet that struts and carries his nose in the air, but sometimes Mr. Booth seems to us lacking somewhat in the presence and carriage that becomes a great prince. In the grave scene the gravity, dignity, presence, and manner, are all good. The encounter with Laertes is well managed, and the bit of

rant

"And, if thou prate of mountains, let them throw
Millions of acres on us, till our ground,
Singeing his pate against the burning zone,
Make Ossa like a wart!"—

was uttered simply as rant, with unimpeach able discretion.

The fifth act, in fact, goes along prosperously until the last scene, when occurs the fencing-bout with Laertes. Here Mr. Booth seems to us wholly at fault. He introduces a deal of fantastic nonsense in the fencing business, and seems to forget that he is both a prince and Hamlet, about whose heart still clings an oppressive sadness. The childish play introduced here can hardly be witnessed with patience. So unbecoming is it to the character of Hamlet, that we must urge Mr. Booth to conduct the encounter with Laertes in some sort of accordance with likelihood and reason.

It must be conceded that Mr. Booth has banished from his personation almost all traces of rant and false theatrical methods. If he could free himself from that inflexible and unintelligent level delivery that he so frequently falls into, and which we have repeatedly mentioned, his style would be quite pure. Occasionally he permits his desire for naturalness to seduce him into undignified and familiar colloquialisms, but this fault may be forgiven in one who has done so much to rid his style of the strut, pomp, and sounding declamation of the traditional stage.

One element in his performance occasionally reveals itself that is difficult to catch and difficult to describe. We think that he does not illuminate or throw fresh and suggestive meaning into the language, but there are mo

us.

ments when something like an inward light gleams through his face, and for an instant the true Hamlet stands transfigured before These flashes of feeling and expression are momentary, and they do not commonly come when the eager listener longs to see him break through a hard and uninspired delivery. These instances are all we can discern of that magnetism which so many people find in Mr. Booth's acting-people who assert that his voice thrills and his passion completely dominates them. As a rule, we for our part feel no such fire; we catch from him but little inspiration, and are subdued by no divine rage.

And yet, with all the defects and deficiencies of Mr. Booth's Hamlet that we can enumerate, we must acknowledge that at present it is the best on the American if not on the whole English-speaking stage.

LORD HOUGHTON.

WHE

HEN, about a month ago, the Boston newspapers announced that Lord Houghton was the guest of Mr. Charles Eliot Norton in Cambridge, few persons seemed to be aware that Baron Houghton was the title of Richard Monckton Milnes;* and fewer still that Richard Monckton Milnes was one of the most delicate and humanly philosophical of England's poets. It is scarcely a solution of this enigma to say that Lord Houghton has written but little verse for the last dozen years or so, because we are at once confronted with the fact that, even at the date of his fullest poetic production, he was little known in this country. And yet there are lines of his that are familiar to most

readers of poetry. That most exquisite rendering of an almost universal belief in the value of love above every thing, which has been often quoted and has so familiar a ring that when we hear it we cannot remember the time when it first greeted us, is his:

"He who for Love has undergone
The worst that can befall,

Is happier thousand-fold than one
Who never loved at all;

A grace within his soul has reigned
Which nothing else can bring-
Thank God for all that I have gained
By that high offering!"

And, familiarly as this rings, I have never met but a few students of poetry who could give the author, when the lines were quoted.

Perhaps it is too much to say that this verse is often quoted. It would fit the fact better to say that its sentiment is often quoted, with no real knowledge of its complete source. And this points to the special peculiarity of Monckton Milnes's verse. It leaves the haunting impression constantly that it is really a according to so high an authority as Mr. Emerpart of our own thought, which peculiarity is, son, one of the proofs of genius. Such philo

*It seems to us that our contributor underrates public intelligence in this matter. There are, it is true, an immense number of people who are never aware of any thing; but of those who are acquainted with the poetry of Richard Monckton Milnes are there any who do not know the poet's recent rank and title as Lord Houghton ?-ED. JOUR

NAL.

sophical writers as W. R. Greg quote largely and with the familiarity of old acquaintance from Milnes, which shows that in England the poet is known and appreciated in the right direction. In Greg's Enigmas of Life" we find Milnes well represented in the fine regions of speculative philosophy in such lines as these:

"Happy the man to whom life displays
Only the flaunting of its tulip-flower;
Whose minds have never bent to scrutinize
Into the maddening riddle of the root,
Shell within shell, dream folded over dream.

Then, again, Mr. Greg quotes this strong verse from Milnes's "Combat of Life: " "Yet there are some to whom a strength is given, A will, a self-constraining energy,

A faith that feeds upon no earthly hope,
Which never thinks of victory, combating
Because it ought to combat,

And, conscious that to find in martyrdom
The stamp and signet of most perfect life
Is all the science that mankind can reach,
Rejoicing fights, and still rejoicing falls."

This is enough to show how valuable the poet is to the philosophers, and in what strain his mind is set. But there is also another side a side so sympathetically human that we might well wonder that he was not accounted by "the people" as their special singer, if we did not know that it is only the cultivated person who can thoroughly appreciate the healthy balance of expression, which is the medium through which the educated mind makes itself heard. And to the uncultivated this balance seems coldness, however sympathetic it may really be. Yet it is such thinkers as Richard Monckton Milnes who are the real friends of the poor and suffering. Let us look a moment at this great peer's history up to the present time, and see what claims he has, by something more than poetic expression, to be called a friend of humanity. "Born in the purple as he was, he became at once, upon entering Parliament, an active worker and sympathizer with all the just and liberal measures of his day, often distancing his colleagues in these sympathies, and at one time hazarding his seat by the unflinching integrity of his purpose. The reform of England's penal institutions was one of the earliest objects of his interest and endeavor. In this he did great and praiseworthy service. He also, through these large human interests and sympathies, worked to such effect that he brought in the first bill for the establishment of juvenile reformatories, and is himself the president of the great reformatory establishment of that kind at Red Hill. It was amid such occupations that he learned to write poems, which contained such lines as these:

but when

The tortures of any brother men,
The famine of gray hairs,
The sick-beds of the poor,
Life's daily, stinging cares,
That crowd the proudest door,
The tombs of the long-loved,
The slowly broken heart,
Self-gloated power unmoved
By pity's tenderest art,
Come thronging thick about me,
Close in the world without me-
How should I not despond?"

In a poem called "The Curse of Life," we find with what pain this earnest spirit fed all

his sympathies. How little he shirked the darker 'paths of life, whose own path, by birthright, lay on the sunny uplands, he shows very clearly when he says"Knowledge worn by sadness

Grows too faint to rise

Anguish fathers madness

Labor brutifies:

If high feelings live, the man a martyr dies." The tenderness and faith in his poem of "Sorrow," beginning

"Sister Sorrow! sit beside me,

Or, if I must wander, guide me "

is only another indication of his temper of thought. And in such verses as

"In the green bud's bosom

There is secret grain;

Bees to the same blossom
Come not back again-

Waters weep that seem to sing a happy strain "— there is that haunting ring, both in thought and expression, I have spoken of before, and which marks his deep-veined humanity and sympathetic sense. So also in

"A man's best things are nearest him,
Lie close about his feet;

It is the distant and the dim

That we are sick to greet;
For flowers that grow our hands beneath
We struggle and aspire-

Our hearts must die, except they breathe
The air of fresh desire."

There is a certain Wordsworthian simplicity in some of these forms of expression, and, in comparison with Matthew Arnold's air of cold distinction, and the passionate fervor and grace of some other of our modern poets, they might seem at times commonplace. But, without going into the range of real criticism here, it will be enough to say that Monckton Milnes cultivates simplicity, and, with his natural tendencies in that direction, if he sometimes sacrifice grace and fervor, it is with no lack of knowledge or appreciation, or, in fact, of inherent poetic fire, but a matter of choice and taste, which chooses even severity of style to redundance.

Lord Houghton's latest book is a prose collection of reminiscences of famous people, called "Monographs, Personal and Social." This is much better known in this country than his poems, though of course it is mainly valuable for the accounts it gives of distin guished persons, as with great reserve and modesty the author keeps himself entirely in the background-so entirely that we perceive at once that the monographs are of less interest for that very reason. The almost af fectionate appreciation with which he tells the story of Suleiman Pasha's life shows how warm was his friendship for that most interesting of men, and how much we lose by the reserve which omits all personal history. And so, of Walter Savage Landor, we get such truthful glimpses in such even and just estimates that we regret there could not have been fuller revelation. The friend of Landor, of Sydney Smith, of Heinrich Heine, and Suleiman Pasha, Lord Houghton in these recollections of them evinces in what he has left unsaid the same peculiar delicacy and deference of mind which is perceivable in his verse. Our estimate of and respect for this deferential narrator are, of course, heightened by this, while at the same time we acknowledge

disappointment in the incompleteness of his

story.

Lord Houghton is now sixty-six years of age, though those who saw the small, active man who was strolling about Cambridge a few weeks ago, with Longfellow and others of that circle, would not have guessed that he was beyond sixty, of the simplest and most unpretending manners and exterior, neither would the ordinary observer have guessed that this small, active man was of any distinction. As one catches a glance, however, from the fine, kindly eyes, which seem to lose nothing, one cannot help recalling Burns's famous line

"A chiel's amang ye takin' notes." But we need have little fear of the nature of these "notes." The same just spirit which estimated that stormy riddle Landor with such clear accuracy will scarcely fail to do such justice, even in his own mind, as will hardly offend the most touchy and sensitive American. Lord Houghton very evidently comes to see, and not to be seen; but it is a great pity that the few who have known and appreciated his verse here could not more readily come in contact with him. In view of the many Englishmen, however, who have taken advantage of our lyceum field for their own purposes without regard to their own ability in that field, we have need to be grateful for this simple, and friendly, and respectful visit. NORA PERRY.

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EDITOR'S TABLE.

ALATE number of the Academy contains

a communication on the subject of "Painting in America," in which is observable that splenetic determination to misrepresent which is so characteristic of English criticism of American affairs. This article deals mainly with the recent exhibitions of paintings and works of art in Chicago and Cincin

nati. It begins by sneering at an American critic because he classified Corot, Coomans, Fortuny, Greuze, Bouguereau, Alma-Tadema, and Zamacoïs, among the great artists of the world-meaning, obviously, modern artists. If Corot, Fortuny, Alma-Tadema, and Zamacoïs, do not rank among the great ar tists of the period, one can but wonder who does. Is the Academy critic inflamed be cause the name of no English artist appears in this list? Or is he simply bound, rightly or wrongly, to imply ignorance to the Ameri can writer, and, in order to do so, forces the sentence quoted into a meaning not intended? Had it been claimed that the exhibitions described contained specimens of all the modern great artists, there would have been ground for censure. As it is, the sneer of the Englishman was wholly gratuitous.

Our English censor goes on to say that good art, in spite of the many recent purchases by American gentlemen, is still very rarely seen in America." Now, it is true that we have few examples of the old mas ters, but our people have opportunities to see a great deal of the best current Continental art. There are not so many specimens here of current English work as we could wish; but every American at all studi ous in this direction, and not living too far from the great cities, may make himself acquainted with the productions of nearly er ery great foreign artist of the period, and see besides something of the old art, by means of public collections and such private ones as are made accessible to students. There are not nearly so many pictures in America as in Europe; there is a great deal, indeed, to be seen in the churches and galleries abroad which must be studied by every one desirous of a thorough art-culture; but the extensive purchase abroad of works by modern artists for this country is proof that we are not nearly so much in the dark as is ❘ supposed.

But is it certain that we may not know something of good art without depending at all upon foreign productions? The Academy critic says it is astonishing how little is known of American art in England. Are we to assume that America is to blame for this! Has England exhibited the slightest interest in American art, or shown any disposition to

do justice to it? It has been pleased to stare with wonder at Bierstadt's huge canvases; but has it cared to enter into the spirit and study the methods of those of our landscapists who in truth are representatives of our genius? Has it given any heed to Inness, to Gifford, to Kensett, to McEntee, to these and others, who have gone reverently into our hills and our valleys, and striven to put themselves at one with Nature, to catch her spirit and reproduce her moods? Our critic declares that no American school of art has yet been formed. This is a mistake. In landscape-art American artists have founded a very great school-the school of Truth. They have learned something that noted schools and academies have to teach; but they have learned to reject the absolute tutelage of any faction, guild, or set, and to obey only the behests of the supreme master, Nature. The earnestness, the fidelity, the simplicity, the severe honesty, that are manifest in the better productions of American landscape - painters - we claim nothing for our art in other directions-are such as to enable our people to see at least a little of good art, and a very pure, truthful, beautiful art it is.

sistency that is the true jewel. Inconsistency, so called, gives freedom of soul, largeness of taste and appreciation, breadth of sympathy; it makes one, in fact, catholic and manysided. Consistency is plodding and dull, while Inconsistency is bright, fanciful, inventive, speculative, courageous, not afraid to say yes to-day because it said no last week.

But, while uttering this defense of inconsistency, we are all the time virtuously conscious of committing no such captivating sin. The people have not taken up our notion of aërial gardens. No one in obedience to our proposal has inclosed his roof-top and converted this vacant space into blooming parterres; no vines cluster about our townchimneys, nor festoon the cornices of our buildings. Our suggestion fell upon a heedless world. Like many other great thoughts, it was ushered prematurely into being before the taste of the public could aspire so high -ere æsthetic imagination is competent to reach an altitude so lofty. The people, clinging to their dull experience, have refused to believe that one may enjoy his otium cum dignitate on the roof-top, amid flowers and under bowers, amid the vine and the pine, where airs are pure and cool, where dust comes not, where the sound of the hand-organ is

WE have the following from a correspond- mellowed to strains of distant sweetness, ent at Baltimore:

"MR. EDITOR: I am one of your readers who smiled' when he read your article on the architectural elevation of the domestic kitchen, a recommendation which may by-and-by be adopted. By-and-by' is easily said, and, as you suggest, we will wait and see.' Meantime, permit me to explain why I smiled by propounding the following question: What is to become of those aerial gardens which you proposed some time ago should be adopted for the adornment of our house-tops if we are to reflect now upon elevating the culinary department, with Sarah, 'Sarah's young man,' and all, to the prophesied locality of the aërial garden? But, as Johnson tells us in his dictionary that the garret is the top room of a house, and that the cockloft is the room over the garret, perhaps we can have kitchen and garden on the house-top, and thus have both prophecies fulfilled. We will wait and see.' "C. H. M."

This correspondent is too hard upon us. He is evidently one of those persons who think consistency a great virtue, and that no right-minded individual could possibly entertain two ideas apparently in conflict. But we, for our part, refuse to be bound down by any such narrow restrictions. If to-day we like the idea of aërial gardens, we mean to be true to our impressions of the moment, and advocate the construction of parterres of flowers on the roof-top; if to-morrow we become enamored of the notion of lifting the kitchen to the topmost story-where may the dishes have a true attic flavor-we shall not be restrained in our admiration of this idea by any thing said before. It is incon

and the cares and vexations of a wicked world are put under our feet. Refusing to be thus elevated into a region of æsthetic delight, the next thing is to see whether their obstinate natures are insensible to every wise and ennobling suggestion-whether they will consent to remove the kitchen and its odors to the regions above, and convert the desolate premises which their rear-windows now dismally survey, into places of charm and elegance.

While it may be true that a householder cannot practically adopt both of our suggestions, he can at least entertain one of them; and no one ought to object because he has the opportunity to choose one of two good things.

MR. BEECHER takes up the question, in the Christian Union, whether he is bound " to answer, or not to answer," every idle query that idle persons may choose to ask-whether "a man has no rights which letter-writers are bound to respect, or if his time and ink are at the absolute control of every man or child among forty millions of people who chooses to ask questions, beg favors, seek money, give advice?" Men of note are in truth so pestered with impudent and idle inquiries and requests, that it is practicably impossible to respond to them. A man cannot ignore the courtesies of life, but then he has a few rights which foolish people should not be permitted to deprive him of and among these is the right to his own time

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for his duties, and the right to occasions of undisturbed rest. We learn that Mr. Herbert Spencer has been compelled to announce, by a lithographic circular, that he is so deeply engaged in his special studies he can no longer answer inquiries, requests for autographs, and other demands of the kind made upon him. Mr. Beecher would be wise to follow this example; and it would be well if this circular gave a sharp lesson to those who know so little what is due to busy men.

While on this topic we may ask whether postal-cards have not now been long enough in use to admit of an inquiry as to the nature of the courtesies and social laws that do or should pertain to them? It may be asked whether people are under any obligations to respond to an open letter of the nature of a postal - card? Could one acknowledge a postal-card as an "esteemed favor?" If the postal card be purely on the business of the writer, what notice must the recipient take of the fact that no stamp is inclosed for postage on the reply? One sees some really Napoleonic strokes of meanness as the outcome of the postal-card system. The audacity is sometimes superb. A writer saves a sheet of paper, an envelope, a stamp for postage, and also the usual stamp for return-postage-all by one dexterous postalcard. The spirit of economy could no farther go. But really, what rights in courtesy have letter-writers who do not consider their correspondents of importance enough to give their epistles to them the poor compliment of an inclosure? How is a communication to be entertained when the writer confesses by the postal-card that it isn't worth a sheet of paper and a postage-stamp? That the postal card is very useful for circular notes, for announcements, for communicating any simple fact that does not call for a response, no one can deny. But we submit that social custom ought to establish that a missive of this kind calling for a response, excepting on business matters concerning the recipient, is an impertinence; and that a postal - card, partaking of the nature of correspondence as ordinarily understood, is entitled to no respect or consideration whatsoever.

IT must be confessed that when Turkey repudiates her debts, and at the same time admits her inability to subdue the belligerent discontent of her Christian provinces, the situation in Europe has become grave. There is evidently a vague apprehension of war in the European courts. Mr. Disraeli rather emphasizes than dispels it by his Mansion House speech; while the danger is undoubtedly aggravated by the fact that every great power stands at this moment armed to the teeth, and ready to assume at once, or in a brief time, the full panoply of war. Yet we

cannot think that some of them at least will consent to enter upon a general and horrible conflict in their present situation. The idea of war can be agreeable neither to England, France, Austria, nor Italy. England has been trying for years to extricate herself from any involvement in Continental troubles, and to confine herself to the pursuit of commerce. That she will go to war the moment India is threatened by the attempted possession of Constantinople by Russia is highly probable; but she will first use every art of diplomacy to avert that evil. France does not want war; peace for years to come seems to be her only hope of resuming her former place among the powers. Austria is inveterately weak, for Francis Joseph rules over a polyglot and inharmonious empire, in which there are at least three races whose interests are in conflict-the Germans, the Slaves, and the Magyars. She is only solvent, and no more; and she dreads the power of Prussia with an almost superstitious terror. Italy would only enter upon hostilities under compulsion, nor could she gain from it any thing but an ephemeral alliance which the next crisis might dissolve and leave her helpless. Before there is a war, these powers will, without doubt, use every effort to avert it. Yet, if the military ambition of Russia and Germany insists upon solving the Turkish question in a sense favorable to themselves, it is difficult to see how the other powers can keep out, or how a general war can be prevented. Germany has no direct interest in the suggested partition of Turkey should Turkey collapse; but she is the close ally of Russia, and would be likely to derive from war some advantage in Northern Europe by the annexation of Holland, Belgium, or Denmark, or all three; for upon those countries she looks with covetous eyes.

TOURISTS from time immemorial have been in the habit of grumbling about the number and persistency of Paris beggars; and, indeed, one of the most striking contrasts between the Old World and the New consists in the mendicity of the former and the absence of it here. That the complaint has considerable basis may be known by the recent report of the Paris Prefect of Police, who, having counted the beggars who defy the Code Napoléon and the gendarmerie within his jurisdiction, finds that there are between sixty and seventy thousand of them. Beggary in Paris, too, is not a mere desperate makeshift for sheer existence; it is a craft, a profession, with its apprenticeships, its graduations, and its cunning and enterprising expedients. Only the other day a Paris beggar died at Passy worth a hundred thousand francs. Some years ago an elderly lady with gray curls, attired in silk and diamonds, was pointed out, as she

bowled down the Champs-Elysées in her carriage and span, as one who in her early days was one of the most artful mendicants of the boulevards. Not long since an old beggar was caught flagrante delictu, upon whose ragged person was found a memorandum-book, in which were jotted down the days when it was most profitable to apply to certain persons such as birthdays, rent-days, the occasion of a marriage in the family, the receipt of an unexpected legacy. The pretexts of the Paris beggar are innumerable. He sells matches, he waits on susceptible ladies in threadbare broadcloth, having seen "better days," or come to penury through disappointed love and consequent dissipation; he sits on curbstones groaning, with bandaged arm or head; while young girls use every art of feminine timidity and beauty to compel the compassionate franc or two-sous piece.

Hitherto even the well-executed laws of the Second Empire, followed by those of "the state of siege," have not even availed to decrease the army of beggardom; and we cannot wonder that M. le Préfet is in despair.

ST. PETERSBURG presents many anomalies in regard to its population. It appears by recent returns that the Russian capital has grown more rapidly than any other city in Europe. It is much younger than London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or Constantinople; has grown up from a little provincial town in Peter the Great's time to be a city of rather more than seven hundred thousand inhabitants in less than two centuries. Singularly enough, the deaths in St. Petersburg exceed the births, which shows conclusively that its growth in population arises from the rapid aggregation of rustic Russians at the capital. Another curiosity of its census is, that the greatest mortality, excepting with young children, occurs at a period of life when there is least mortality in other cities-that is, between the ages of sixteen and thirty-five. St. Petersburg has a trying climate, and it seems to act most violently on adolescence and younger manhood. Otherwise, it is one of the least healthy and comfortable of cities for the poorer classes, who are jumbled together in damp and ill-ventilated houses, while a large proportion actually live in cellars reeking with damp and filth. One-fourth of all the children born in St. Petersburg are illegiti mate; and something like one-half of these die in infancy. Thus, though the capital of the czars presents at first view the appearance of prosperity and growth, it is delusive; and, when we come to examine the condition of its population, we find them to be even worse than those of the much and justly decried slums of London, Paris, and Constantinople.

Literary.

OAQUIN MILLER'S faults as an artist

JOA

are so flagrant, and lie so near the surface, that it is not surprising that they have obscured his real merit and challenged the attention of the critics. Nevertheless, while the excuse is obvious, we think that Mr. Miller has received less than justice, especially among his own countrymen. For, in spite of all his faults, he possesses some genuine poetic qualities. For one thing, his voice is his own; his themes, thoughts, and illustra tions, are not echoes of a library, but are drawn from his own experience and observation; and his verse is no mere structure of rhythm and rhyme, but spontaneous, natural singing. Notwithstanding much that was false in sentiment, tawdry in conception, and crude in style, the "Songs of the Sierras" contained some true poetry, and poetry of an original and vigorous type. The "Songs of the Sun-Lands" displayed the same quali ties, and seemed to indicate that culture and wider experience were exercising their proper chastening influence upon the poet's art. We were among those who believed that Mr. Miller's merits were of a kind likely to be developed, and his faults of a kind likely to be outgrown; and we felt tolerably confident that he would in time produce work that would compel recognition. It is with no slight sense of disappointment, therefore, that we confess that his latest book, "The Ship in the Desert" (Boston: Roberts Bros.), is so distinctly inferior as almost to justify whatever has been said in his dispraise.

"The Ship in the Desert" sins in nearly every possible way. In the first place, the author proclaims at the start, with a sort of contemptuous candor, that it is not the kind of work he would be at, but was written merely as a concession to "the world," which, like a spoiled child, demands a tale." So anxious is he to have this condescension understood that, after calling attention to it once in his preface, he goes out of his way to weave it into his verse, where it cannot be overlooked:

"The world's cold commerce of to-day
Demands some idle, flippant theme;
And I, your minstrel, must sit by
And harp along the edge of moru,
And sing and celebrate to please
The multitude, the mob, and these
They know not pearls from yellow corn."

Now, whatever Mr. Miller's real merits as a poet may be, he certainly has not attained a position which entitles him to look down, as from a lofty pedestal, upon a suppliant world craving the bounty of his speech. Waiving this point, however, and conceding that the world is listening, we are certainly entitled to assume that, if it demands a tale, it wants one which should at least be intelligible and interesting. If so, the demand has not yet been supplied. Mr. Miller's present tale reminds us of nothing so much as of the manuscript of a "novel" which once came under our notice. It was written by a miss, scarcely more than a child, and, while it contained some really felicitous bits, the young author had quite forgotten that men must

eat, drink, sleep, and rest. From the begin. ning to the end of the story her characters were kept in a perpetual movement, which would not have given time even for a surreptitious biscuit. And this is literally and truly the case with "The Ship in the Desert." Its subject is the pursuit of one party of men by another across the great deserts of the West, from the Missouri River to far beyond the Rocky Mountains-the flight of the one and the pursuit by the other remaining entirely inexplicable from first to last; and, for all of human interest or incident pertaining to them, they might as well have been a procession of clouds. On and on, day and night and night and day, over withered wilderness, across mighty rivers, up rocky steeps, down precipitous paths, and across trackless deserts, pushes the black cavalcade of Morgan toward the most western West; and, equally released from the limitations of human powers, follows the fierce pursuit of Vasques. Even delicate, fragile Ina knows nothing of hunger, thirst, or fatigue, during an apparently continuous ride of more than three thousand miles. The truth is, Mr. Miller carefully avoids introducing any element of realism into his story, which is a mere thread on which to hang descriptions of natural scenery. It would be a libel on the theatre to describe his personages as "theatric; " for even Pantaloon and Clown are quite plausible creations in comparison with Morgan and Vasques. As to Ina, Mr. Miller has never yet seen a woman with the naked eye.

If the conception is bad, the verse does not redeem it. A single measure is adhered to throughout, and at length becomes monotonous and even wearisome. It would seem, too, at times, as if Mr. Miller had tried to render his style "rugged," and there are many long passages in which, to quote Hazlitt's phrase," the decomposition of prose is substituted for the composition of poetry." There are fine things in the poem, however, which enable us to hope that "The Ship in the Desert" is simply a mistake of judgment, not an evidence of declining powers. The desolation and solemnity of the desert are described with real force and impressiveness, and with astonishing fertility of expression. In fact, nearly all the purely scenic description is good. Occasionally we come upon a passage of real grandeur and beauty; more rarely upon a peculiarly felicitous bit of imagery. Here is an example of the latter:

"She dreamed, perchance, of island home, A land of palms ringed round with foam, Where Summer on her shelly shore Sits down and rests for evermore.” Nothing could be happier than the couplet we have italicised. Of the more sustained and elevated passages, the following description of the ship and the desert is as quotable as any:

". . . . They pierced at last
The desert's middle depths, and lo!
There loomed from out the desert vast
A lonely ship, well-built and trim,
And perfect all in hull and mast.

"No storm had stained it any whit,
No seasons set their teeth in it.

Her masts were white as ghosts, and tall;
Her decks were as of yesterday.

The rains, the elements, and all
The moving things that bring decay
By fair green lands or fairer seas,
Had touched not here for centuries.

"Lo! Date had lost all reckoning,
And Time had long forgotten all,
In this lost land, and no new thing
Or old could any wise befall,
Or morrows, or a yesterday,
For Time went by the other way.
"The ages have not any course
Across this untracked waste.
The sky
Wears here one blue, unbending hue,
The heavens one unchanging mood.
The far, still stars they filter through
The heavens, falling bright and bold
Against the sands as beams of gold.
The wide, white moon forgets her force;
The very sun rides round and high,
As if to shun this solitude."

One characteristic of all Mr. Miller's poetry is especially conspicuous in the present volume- namely, his fondness for certain epithets that happen to catch his fancy. This time it is "black" and "blowy," and he frequently manages to use one or the other of them two or three times in a single sentence. For instance:

"And only black men gathered there,
The old man's slaves, in dull content,
Black, silent, and obedient."

In conclusion, we may say that it is genuine friendliness for Mr. Miller that induces us to hope that he will not give us another such volume as "The Ship in the Desert," even in response to the spoiled child's demand for a tale.

CARL JOHANN ANDERSSON failed to link his name with any great geographical discovery, but it is doubtful if any man, even in the noble army of African explorers, ever devoted himself with more unselfish and indefatigable ardor to the cause of geographical knowledge in all its branches. It is to him almost exclusively that we are indebted for what we know of that portion of South Africa lying north of Cape Colony to the Cunene River and west of Livingstone's transcontinental route; and no section of the African field ever confronted its explorer with more deadly perils and apparently insuperable difficulties. Andersson was a Swede by birth, but, being in London in 1850, he associated himself with Francis Galton in an expedition, the object of which was to penetrate to Lake Ngami, then newly discovered by Livingstone, from some point on the west coast. As is well known, this expedition failed of accomplishing its main object, and Galton returned to Europe; but the "African fever" had taken hold upon Andersson, and he resolved to remain behind and make one more attempt to reach the lake. The attempt, made in 1853, after nearly three years of preparation, was entirely successful, and he not only explored the portion of the lake unvisited by Livingstone, but discovered the Teoge River and ascended it toward Libebe until arrested by the treachery of the natives. Returning then to England, he published an account of his journey in a book entitled "Lake Ngami," one of the most fascinating in the entire literature of African travel. Andersson was a daring sportsman, and his

pages teem with accounts of hair-breadth escapes and dangerous achievements.

While searching for Lake Ngami, Andersson had heard rumors among the natives of a great river (the Kunene or Cunene) lying far to the north; and the discovery of this river was henceforth the main object of his life. Returning to Otjimbingue, in Namaqualand, in 1858, he immediately organized a caravan and struck northward. After incredible dangers and difficulties he reached the banks of a previously-unknown river, the Okavango; but scarcely had he entered upon its exploration when he and five or six of his men were prostrated with fever, and, after waiting an entire month in the vain hope of getting better, he was compelled to turn back as the only means of saving his life. A narrative of this expedition was published in London in 1861, under the title of "The Okavango River," a book scarcely less interesting than the author's first.

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The last of these books was published many years ago; but the record of Andersson's life is only now completed from the point where it there left off, by the publication of a work compiled partly from some "Notes of Travel" which he left in an unfinished state, and partly from his "Journals." From it we learn the details of Andersson's career after his return to Africa as the agent of the Walwich Bay Mining Company, whose establishment he subsequently bought out and converted into a trading-station on his own account, and there remained until his death, which occurred during an expedition in search of the long-sought Cunene River. In this expedition he actually reached the banks of the fatal stream; but the hand of death was even then upon him, and he turned back only to die in the wilderness, with all his plans unaccomplished.

Dealing as they do with a comparatively uneventful period of Andersson's life, the "Notes of Travel" are less exciting than the earlier volumes, though by no means destitute of stirring adventures by flood and field. They contain, for one thing, many vivid incidents in the wars between the native tribes, notable among them being a graphic description of a great battle between the Namaquas and the Damaras, the latter of whom Andersson commanded, in which he was so severely wounded as to be rendered a cripple during the remainder of his life. There are also several valuable chapters on the geography and ethnology of the country, on its natural history, on the missionary system, etc. Even when the record is unnecessarily minute it does not cease to be interesting, for it reveals more of Andersson's real character than any of his finished works. He seems to have been in many respects singularly like Livingstone; both exhibiting in an eminent degree modest simplicity of character combined with generous enthusiasm and an indomitable will.

Ir is characteristic of Jules Verne's audacity that he should address himself confessedly to the task of furnishing us a new version of "Robinson Crusoe" and the "Swiss Family

*Notes of Travel in Southwestern Africa. By C. J. Andersson. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

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