THE SITUATION may be summed up briefly thus. At home, the passing of the District Suffrage Bill over the veto was the most noteworthy event of the earlier part of the month. From the position thus taken in favor of Manhood suffrage we cannot afford to recede.

The Irish Republic, was not organized A. D. 1866. James Stephens appears to be not only in New York, but in a peck of trouble with his deluded followers. If we had not a terror lest we should be found a false prophet, we should say that we had seen the culmination of this gigantic fraud upon a generous and patriotic people, and that ere long there shall rise a prosperous Ireland, an integral part of the British Empire, yet free.

Germany is being reorganized.—Austria is unsettled and feverish. Italy springs to her work as though she had sipped at the fountain of youth. Agriculture is to be encouraged, manufactures are to be improved the people are to be educated. Pio Nono will (perhaps) be persuaded to remain in Rome, so long as his tottering frame may continue to be the rallying point and focus of Roman Catholicism. And after that a united Italy.

In Egypt they have, as one should say, a Parliament. By the beard of the Prophet, hearken, O! public! A Parliament of the people in the land of the Pharaohs under the beneficent Government of Ismail Pacha and his Sublimity the Sultan!

The events which are transpiring farther east, while doubtless of great importance where they occur, do not touch us in any vital point. We hear of troubles in the Corea and Japan, and farthest Ind, but these things, is it because they are beneath our feet, that they are beneath our notice?

OUR relations with the Indians are of a very complicated character, and the subject is a puzzling one; yet most people will

Perhaps it would not be possible or at least practicable to adapt such a sentence as this to various cases, but it seems just that the family of a law-abiding citizen who loses his life by no fault of his own, should be comfortably provided for, by the government which was bound to protect that life. We say comfortably provided for, which does not mean separation of infants from their mothers and complete disruption of family ties.

The utmost diligence in meting out justice to the offender cannot restore the lost life, but it should be the duty of the government to stand as protector to those, whom unlawful violence has deprived of their proper guardian.

It is quite time that the thinking men of the so-called laboring class in the United States were following the example of their

compeers in England in the organization of Co-operative Societies, and "partnerships of industry."

It is true that we have within our borders immense undeveloped resources, and do not therefore feel so greatly as yet, the yawning gap between the rich and the poor, and the consequent strain upon and degradation of the latter. But nothwithstanding these enormous resources, the increase of population in our cities has been such already, as to cause great distress: to such an extent indeed has this gone, that we have heard the title "dangerous classes" applied within these five years past to a large number in this city.

And if we should for five years longer progress as rapidly in the same direction, as during the five years past the title could be used with good cause. Largely as the natural result of an inflated condition of the currency, but from other reasons as well, we have seen a tendency to crowd from the country into the city, a tendency toward the accumulation of capital in the hands of a minority, an immense increase in the proportion of those who attempt to live without labor, or upon unproductive or deleterious labor, and a consequent lowering of the standard of morality in business, and oppression of those who have to do the labor left undone by others.

Not until the labor of the city is controlled by those who do it, shall we expect to see the now constantly growing class of the unproductive or the parasitic, often erroneously called the "respectable," reduced to its proper level, and made in some true manner productive, and not until this result is to a good extent attained can we expect to find the value of the work done the measure of the work, rather than the price in dollars and cents which can be obtained for it.

ONE of the pleasantest symptoms of the healthy spirit which has pervaded our national life during these latter years, and which seems to be acquiring a controlling influence in our affairs, is the attention now directed toward the political and social status of woman. So much has heretofore been said, and said so unwisely, upon "woman's rights," so much ignorance has

been shown in relation to all laws of political economy, such a belligerent spirit has been manifested by persons of little knowledge, and little ability, who have been thrown or have climbed to the surface, as such persons always will in the inception of any great movement, claiming to represent it, that the general public may fairly be excused, if, judging the movement by the loudest of its supporters, they have long been disposed to meet it with derision or regard it with silent contempt.

But of necessity there have always been some among our strongest and best people who sympathized with and supported it upon its own merits, and since the recent great troubling of the waters, the number has been constantly increasing, of those who are disposed to make the broadest application of radical principles, to weigh calmly and dispassionately each question which is presented, and having proved all things, to hold fast that which is good.

Therefore we find to day that this important subject is quietly discussed in social gatherings. earnestly debated in legislative halls, temperately argued by the most scholarly representatives of the periodical press. One of the very best articles upon it with which we have ever met, was published in The Nation of December 20 1866. Cool, logical, and earnest, it states most admirably the present position of the question, claims that only one result is possible, and that inevitable at an early day, and does this in such a manner that it makes its way to the eyes and ears of those who would not otherwise be disposed to listen, laying before them arguments which they cannot controvert and convincing them ere they are aware. In reading this article we are led to rejoice over two things; first that a question of such transcendant importance has been so ably treated, and next that our people have been cultivated up to the point of supporting a journal, which, refusing to bargain with either fashion or passion, is disposed to consider weighty social questions in a philosophical and liberal spirit.

Upon this matter of the enfranchisement of woman, by which we mean not only the bestowal upon her of the right of suffrage, but her real enfranchisement from masculine

control, her establishment in a position of independence as regards society, as regards business, as regards life,—with all the collateral changes which are inseparably con

nected with it, we hope in the coming months to bestow some share of the respectful consideration and earnest labor which it deserves.

Afloat in the Forest: by Capt. Mayne Reid.
Boston, Ticknor & Fields.

We suppose it is a difficult thing to write a book for young people, and avoid being either silly or pedantic, and sometimes, unhappily, authors succeed in being both.

Such we take to have been the case with Mayne Reid in writing the book now before us. Led on by the reputation of the author, we took up "Our Young Folks" number by number, and read the story conscientiously, we believe from first to last, and we may sum up our impression of it by saying that we have seldom experienced a greater waste of time. Perhaps it is fitting that along with the many good things to be found on the pages of the magazine we have mentioned we should receive a due proportion of padding, but we must confess that we did not expect to be called upon to float on and on month after month through that bristling forest of scientific names, with its Gapo of story, and its igarape of weak morality.

This in short, is the tale. Two brothers are dispossessed of their inheritance, and leaving England in consequence, turn up at length in South America, one on the east and the other on the west coast. They prosper in a satisfactory degree; and this much being given as a prelude, we get fairly afloat, with the journey of the brother from the west with his family to join the other brother at Gran Para. This journey takes place during the time of the annual flood of the Amazon, down which river they are voyaging, and by an unlucky mischauce, (a convenient one however for the author) they lose their way and wander from the river into the great Lagoon at its side.

Here, to use an expressive bit of slang, they keep "bobbing around," and as if they were in the Jardin des Plants with cages all around them, find themselves constantly bumping against Jaguars and Tamanduas

and Myrmecophaga-jubatas, and Cannibals and charqui, and Juarouas, and every other combination of letters which you can think of; and all of these have to be introduced and their parentage discussed, with their personal habits, their likes and dislikes and their general moral character, until the reader, if he follow very closely (which we will go bail that he will not do) should be prepared to write a biographical dictionary upon the inhabitants of the Solimoes.

Now this is all very well so far as concerns the general idea of combining instruction with amusement. But there are at least two ways of doing a thing, the right way and the wrong way, and in our humble opinion Mayne Reid has chosen the wrong

way.

We shall not attempt to defend our opinion by proofs. After spending so much time in the first reading, we cannot undertake to go over the book again to take soundings. All that we can say is, "here is a puddle; beware of it."

A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life: by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. Boston, Ticknor & Fields.

Here we have a book of a very different character from the preceding. Published at the same time with it and in the same periodical, the institution of comparison between them is unavoidable. Simple, natural, and homely, thoughtful, earnest and human, we find on these pages one of the best stories for young people,-aye, and for old, that was ever written. The reading of it was a continual feast, and it has left in our memory precious gems which will linger there for many a long day.

Leslie, the heroine, is troubled because the plants in her bay window bear nothing but leaves, and now the winter is almost gone! And then she thinks that perhaps her life is like that of the plants and that is

what troubles her most. She wants to see somewhat more deeply into life, but then "There was sometimes a bit of wayward ness about Leslie Goldthwaite; there was a fitfulness of frankness and reserve. She was eager for truth; yet now and then she would thrust it aside. She said that nobody liked a nicely pointed moral better than she did; only she would just as lief it should not be pointed at her!" There is a nicely pointed moral in that, if you will only see it.

Still, Leslie would like to know what "is the sense of that-about the fig-tree! I suppose it's awfully wicked, but I never could see. Is every thing fig-leaves that isn't out and out fruit, and is it all to be cursed, and why should there be anything but leaves when the time of figs was not yet?"

And so she went on a journey to the White Mountains, to find in a world of little natural ways how it was, as her cousin Delight had told her, that there is a time of leaves as well as a time of fruit, and that the leaves are always a prophecy that still fruit may come. And this halcyon summer told her many more things in this story of life, which she had been tempted to think was "all a muddle." Bright Sin Saxon says:

"Well, then, in a general way, do you think living amounts to anything, Miss Craydocke?"

"Whose living?"

"You have n't done much of your living yet, my dear." The tone was gentle, as of one who looked down from such a height of years that she felt tenderly the climbing that had been, for those who had it yet to do.

"We're as busy at it, too, as can be. But sometimes I've mistrusted something like what I indignantly discovered one day when I was four years old, and fancied I was making a petticoat, sewing through and through a bit of flannel. The thread had'nt any knot in it!"

"That was very well, too, until you knew just where to put the stitches that should stay."

"Which brings us to our subject of the morning, as the sermons say sometimes, when they're half through, or ought to be. There are all kinds of stitches, embroidery, and plain over-and-over, and whippings,

and darns! When are we to make our knot and begin? and which kind are we to do?" for both. Practised fingers will know how Most lives find occasion, more or less, to manage all."

"But-it's-the-proportion!"

cried Sin, in a crescendo that ended with an emphasis that was nearly a little scream.

"I think that, when one looks to what is really needed most and first, will arrange itself," said Miss Craydocke. "Something gets crowded out, with us all. It depends upon what, and how, and with what willingness we let it go."

And this Leslie found to be the key to many little locks that she wanted to pick. "What gets crowded out? Day by day that is the great test of our life."

Thus passing her holiday time among the mountains, rattling over the stony roads or playing croquet upon the lawn, climbing rocky hill sides, or darning stockings and making childrens' dresses in the hotel, talking practical religion or representing Mother Hubbard in a tableau, everywhere she found new light thrown upon the problem which had daunted her. And little by little some things got "crowded out" and other things took their place, and a watchful observer might even have seen the downy cheek of early fruit among the luxuriant crop of leaves, with which that life was full.

And when she went to her home it was with a fuller heart and a riper soul than that with which she had left it, and you who go with her to the story's end will feel yourself a debtor to this young life. Leslie Goldthwaite is the figment of a novelist's brain perhaps, but the humanity in her appeals to that in your heart and ours, which recognizes it as akin to itself.

And the moral is this. Leslie said, "What a summer this has been! so full,so much has happened! I feel as if I had been living such a great deal!"

"You have been living in others' lives. You have had a great deal to do with what has happened."

"O Cousin Delight! I have only been among it! I could not do except such a very little."

"There is a working from us beyond our own. But if our working runs with that-? You have done more than you will ever know, little one."

Ah! truly!

"Nor knowest thou what argument

Thy life to thy neighbor's creed bas lent."