United States," shall, on doctrinal grounds, be denied appointment to the service of this board, or discouraged from seeking appointment, or relieved from appointment:

Provided, That, in case the prudential committee, or the officers in its service, shall feel called on, in any instance, to act contrary to this vote, the person aggrieved shall have the right of appeal at the next annual meeting of the board in the manner following, or in some other equally just manner which the board may appoint:

Namely: The aggrieved person shall select two corporate members present at the meeting of the board before which his case comes, the prudential committee shall select two others, these four shall select a fifth, and these five, having, as a committee of inquiry, examined fully into the case, shall report in the matter to the board at the same meeting; and the report, when thus presented for consideration and action, shall take precedence over all but the most necessary routine business before the board.-Rev. D. N. Beach, in The Congregationalist, Cambridge, Mass. * BUT ONE THING TO BE DONE.-There is just one thing to do at Spring'field-the supreme duty of the board. It is this: Reaffirm the action taken at Des Moines in the Chapin resolution, and justify the interpretation put upon that action by the prudential committee in refusing to send out any new candidates into the missionary field who are tainted with these future probation speculations. That action will show to our churches and to the world just where the board stands and means to stand. It is along that line sooner than along any other that the board and our churches will find their way into peace. It is painful and humiliating even to think of all this strife. But the conflict has been forced upon the board, and the board must meet it in a straightforward, manly, courageous way. There is, as is well known by all who have taken pains to go to the root of this controversy, a wide divergence on the part of new departure men from the views commonly held by our evangelical churches, and the drift is still more threatening to the truth as it is in Jesus. Unless the board is to be kept in endless tumult, or swept over hopelessly into this gulf, its position must be defined, and defined so clearly that no man and no body of men can mistake its position.-The Advance.

RISE AND EXPLAIN. The plain truth is that if death does not end probation, nothing is reliable in the Bible; it does not reflect the mind and purposes of God; it is worthless, and human reason, with all its manifest weaknesses and imperfections, becomes our only guide. By the way, and in conclusion, if the Saviour knew there was to be a probation beyond this life for those who did not hear of him here, and one under more favorable circumstances, will some one please rise and explain why he gave the command to his disciples: "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature? Where was the need of it? We ask because we have recently heard of a few sporadic cases of the disease in unexpected localities.-Interior (Pres.).

THE RIGHTS OF THE MEN ONLY.-The plain question there to be discussed is whether a minority of one or two men are to continue to say what a candidate for the foreign missionary field shall believe or not believe as the doctrinal qualification for his work. The fact which is apparent to any careful observer is that the Congregational denomination is undergoing a sea change in its theology. The ministers are not nearly so sure about many things as they used to be, but they are bringing the great truths which they are commissioned to teach closer than ever into practical relations with our society and with the men and women who belong to it. It is not free thinking that is encouraged, but a larger freedom in ethical thinking and teaching. The question before the American Board is whether the Congregational denomination is to pursue a policy of ecclesiastical stultification in its foreign work, whether it will impose tests upon its missionary candidates which would be resented as an insult to honest thinking by the same men if required for installation over the churches at home.-New York Times.

PRESS AND PULPIT.

There was real home life at Bethany. In it there was a true element of home joy. All loved Christ, and each loved the other. Many were the happy hours spent by Lazarus, Mary, and Martha, when alone. But how their pulses must have quickened in anticipation of happier still as they heard that well-known and anxiously-listened-for footstep of Jesus approaching their lowly door! How happy they were when they could sit round and listen to His teachings concerning the resurrection, or the of things connected with the welfare of His Church, or concernprogress ing life in heaven, or of the meeting of friends there, and of the occupation of the saved, and of the last great day! We must seek to be so assured of salvation, through Christ, that we could go from life with as little tremor as out of the city of Bethany! If we have a real faith in Christ, we shall here, whether in city or suburb, find true satisfaction. In Christ alone we have all that heart can desire-deep peace without risk of disturbance, absolute plenty without biting penury, sufficient occupation without irritating exhaustiveness, brilliant day without gloomy night, loftiest pleasure without counterbalancing pain, and a present available strength without risk of the loss of the joy unspeakable and full of glory.-Frederick Hastings, in the Quiver for October.

THERE will be a new orthodoxy, and, as compared with the old orthodoxy it will be perfect; it will not contain any portion of the fundamental

Through a mistake, an article entitled "The Real Issue" was credited in the issue of September 24 to this writer.

doctrines of old orthodoxy. The doctrine of "the Trinity" will be determined to be as unscriptural as it is absurd and ridiculous; the doctrine of "the Fall of Man" will be voted to be in conflict with God's word, and of bad moral tendencies; the doctrine of "the Vicarious Atonement" will be denounced as God-dishonoring, unjust, and contrary to the letter and spirit of Holy Writ; and the doctrine of "Future Rewards and Punishments" will be forever laid away among the relics of the paganism from which it was taken, and will never again "make the heart of the righteous sad."-The Universalist.

WHAT a sad world this would be to a thoughtful man if there were nothing beyond this world! Not for himself, perhaps, but for others, there is need of another life to make this life tolerable to one who ob serves and reflects. On every side there are deserving ones who suffer far more than the undeserving. And there are saints whose lives are lives of toil and trial and seeming failure. Here, often, if not always, the fittest die and the unfittest survive. If there were nothing to live for beyond the life that now is, the helps to true character making would cost more than their apparent worth.-Sunday-School Times.

Some well-known American Christian divines are leading in a movement to have the English Bible more thoroughly studied. We Hebrews have rights to demand in our age, but there are duties which we have no less earnestly to perform; and one of these is certainly to acquire a knowledge of the Bible.-Jewish Messenger.

NOTES.

There are more than 500 Baptist churches in Burmah, with over 25,000 communicants.

The missionary work of the Religious Tract Society of London is carried on in 186 different languages.

There are in the Church of England 100 clergymen, converts from Judaism, and over 3,000 communicants.

Dr. Talmage's church in Brooklyn received 728 to membership the past year. This makes the entire membership 4,020.

Of the nearly 4,000 clergy of the church in the United States some 521 bear the title of D.D., or its equivalent, S. T. D.—The Churchman. The Norwegian Lutheran synod has changed the location of their theological seminary from Decorah, Iowa, to Minneapolis, Minn. The average contribution in the whole church for home missions last year was a little over $1.10 a communicant.—Interior (Presbyterian). The Evangelical Alliance of the United States will meet in Washington, D. C., December 7, when sessions will be held for three days. A Methodist tabernacle in the central part of the city of Los Angeles, Cal., is to be built at a cost of $50,000. It will furnish seating capacity for 2,500.

Twenty years ago the Gospel was not allowed to enter Spain; now there are between 10,000 and 12,000 adherents to the evangelical churches.-Iowa Methodist.

The English Baptist Mission in Shantung Province, China, district of Tsin Chan Fu, has fifty-five self-supporting churches, ministered to by native pastors and teachers.

Andover Seminary opens with a total of forty-six students; advanced class, seven; senior, twenty-one; middle, nine; junior, seven; foreign scholarship men studying there, two.

Rev. John O. Foster, of Chicago, has been re-elected secretary of the Association of the United States Christian Commission, Army Chaplains, and Good Samaritans of the Late War, North and South.

The thirtieth anniversary of the Fulton street daily noon prayer-meeting was celebrated on Friday last in the Collegiate Church, Fifth avenue and Twenty-ninth street. Rev. Dr. T. W. Chambers delivered an address.

As an illustration of the missionary spirit of the native churches of Bengal, the call made for a Bengali preacher for the Bengali coolies in the Fije Islands was responded to by ten eligible young men.-Indian Methodist

Times.

A few years ago it was thought improper for a woman to be a foreign missionary unless she were a missionary's wife. Now there are two thousand four hundred unmarried women in the mission field.---Pall Mall Gazette.

In 1880 there were 10,000,000 members of Evangelical Protestant Churches in the United States who, from 1870 to 1880, gave annually for missions, home and foreign, $5,500,000, an average of fifty five cents for each church member.-Our Country.

There are 205 communities of the Greek Church in Japan, with 16 priests and 104 native preachers, and the number of Japanese converts to that religion is 12,500. The number of churches and prayer-houses is 148, and there are three children's schools, with a total of 150 pupils.

A most interesting farewell meeting was held in Pilgrim Hall, Boston, on Wednesday, September 7, on account of fifty-eight missionariestwenty-six returning to their fields of labor, and thirty-two going out for the first time. Of the number three are to go to Foochow, sixteen to North China, thirteen to Turkey, seven to India, two to Ceylon, sixteen to Japan, and one to Spain. This is the largest number ever sent out by the board at any one time.

EDUCATIONAL.

STATE SYSTEM OF EDUCATION VS. PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.-It is a generally accepted theory that a State-governed system of education is the great palladium of American liberty, and the great preventive of crime. But I know likewise that a more dangerous fallacy never spread its baleful influence over the minds of a great people. If a system of education controlled by politicians does more to prevent crime than a system under which each parent controls the education of his own child, then it is evident that, other things being equal, the more schools we have under political or State control the less crime we shall have. But can the political State, even with the best intentions in the world, take the parent's place, so as to properly discharge the educational duty which parents owe to their offspring? It is one of the most amazing features of modern life that fathers and mothers can consent to abdicate their sacred offices and surrender the control of their little ones into the hands of the public. Notwithstanding its amazing inconsistency, there are millions of honorable, intelligent, and kind-hearted parents who do this thing with the very best of intentions, and why? It is because they do not know, nor do they stop to think, of the dangerous consequences of this fatal departure from nature's law.-Hon. Zach Montgomery, Commencement St. John's College, Washington, D. C.

PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS.-An edict has gone forth from the agents of Rome to establish Roman Catholic parochial schools in the United States. This means war on our free school system; and I believe that in the coming contest between Roman authority and Irish-American Catholicism, the Italian priesthood will be worsted. The Irish at home and in the United States love America. They have fought for its independence and baptized it with their blood in two succeeding wars. They are proud of the men of Irish birth and blood, who shed honor any glory on the Irish race as soldiers and statesmen, on the tented field, in the halls of Congress, and in the Executive Mansion. They revere the land over whose destinies ruled Jackson, Buchanan, and Arthur-all sons of Irish emigrants. And when the contest comes in earnest, between free schools and Romanized ones, the descendants of the Irish heroes of the Revolution and 1812, and the children of the Irish soldiers of the war for the Union, with the citizens of Irish birth will be firmly arrayed on the side of American institutions.-John Hull, in Chautauquan for October.

Those prelates and priests who are now engaged in Boston and its vicinity in undermining the public schools have started a controversy which will not operate to their advantage or the benefit of any ecclesiastical interest they represent. This is a land of freedom since slavery was abolished. We have faith to believe that the classes such priests believe to be completely under their thumb will not entirely vacate their manhood, but continue to send their offspring where they please, parochial schools and meddlesome prelates to the contrary notwithstanding.Evening Transcript, Boston.

It is stated on good authority that there are now in New England 191,000 people who can neither read nor write; 322,000 in Pennsylvania and 241,000 in New York, while the total for the whole country reaches nearly 6,000,000, or ten per cent. of the population. It is reasonable to believe that, outside of the great cities which have public libraries, sixty per cent. of the population never read anything but the personal items and "locals" in the newspapers.-Morning Herald, Baltimore.

MUSIC AND DRAMA.

A JAPANESE THEATER.-There are two tiers of boxes, the lower of which is provided with sliding paper doors, forming small rooms like bathing machines. The pit is divided by low cross-bars into squares, reminding one of the cattle pens of old Smithfield, each capable of holding four persons comfortably. A Japanese family bent upon enjoyment engages a compartment for the day in a position suited to the purse-in the middle of the house, if well to do, nearer to the stage or to the back, according to the scarcity of coin-and, having deposited clogs in the yestiaire, take up a position with cushions, kettle, tea things, smoking tray, and never move till midnight, except to pay visits to friends. A Japanese theatrical performance commences generally at early dawn and lasts a dozen hours. The stage occupies the end of the building from wall to wall. Oddly, the actors do not make their appearance from the side or back (there are no wings,) but strut along a narrow platform over the heads of the pit by means of just such a boarded footway as is used by European conjurors. Faithful to the canon of no illusion, the performers stand ready dressed in an open place off the enterance lobby, where all who come in may see them; when they hear their cue they push through a knot of loiterers and march to the stage along the platform, acting as they go. Indeed, important portions of a scene which demands a rapid exit are frequently gone through upon this narrow footway and not on the stage at all; and the effect is apt to be unintentionally comic, when a small Tarquin is seen staggering along under a full-blown Lucrece, while the stationary chorus from their distant corner are entreating him to respect her virtue.-Murray's Magazine.

NOTES.

Mlle. Rhea, like other foreign actresses, has "declared her intentions" to become an American citizen, and has taken out her first naturalization papers.

Managers of London theaters are said to have offered to contribute $50,000 per annum toward the expenses of theater supervision by a government department.

Wagner has invaded South America. "Der Fliegende Hollander,” under the more harmonious title, of course, of "Il Vascello Fantasma,"

having just now been given for the first time at Buenos Ayres.

The series of Campanini operatic concerts is to commence at the Academy of Music on Thursday evening, November 10, the second concert being given on the afternoon of Saturday, November 12, and the third on the evening of Tuesday, November 15. Then the singers go to Boston.

NOTES.

Henry Wood, who died recently in New York, after a protracted illaged 71 years, was the proprietor of Wood's Minstrels, a Broadway theater up to 1854, when he retired from business. He was a brother of Fernando Wood, who was mayor of New York in 1854-55, and of Benjamin Wood, of the New York Daily News.

The Levy Operatic Concert Company is now complete. It consists of Mr. Levy himself, supported by Mme. Stella Levy, soprano; Mlle. Lulu Klein, contralto; Sig. Enrico Battistini, tenor; Mr. Lithgow James, baritone, and Herr Max Hirschfeld, solo pianist and director. The tour will commence in the New England States about the middle of October.

For a long time Mme. di Murska was renowned throughout the Old World for her eccentricities as well as for her song. Of her old-time waywardness, however, nothing now remains, they say, save an occasional belt, the loss of which, she fancies, would entail upon her no end of calamities.

The largest university in the world is Oxford, in England. It consists of twenty-one colleges and five halls.

In 1850 we had in the United States some 3,642,694 school children, and the entire amount then being expended for educational purposes was $16,162,000.

One hundred new students are enrolled this year in Lafayette College, making a total of 278. One of the freshmen is a son of the head of the department of Marine Engineering in Japan.

Yale University began the new collegiate year September 22 with 204 men in the freshman class. This is the largest class that ever entered. In the scientific department there are nearly 100 new men.

The graduating class of the C. L. S. C. will number five thousand persons, of whom six hundred and eighty-seven took diplomas at Chautauqua, and three hundred and eighty at South Framingham, Mass. Large numbers have joined the new class; among them are the names of Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and Mrs. Mary T. Lathrap.

The partnership of Mr. Brander Matthews and Mr. George II. Jessep by them for John T. Raymond, will be produced by Mr. N. C. Goodwin as playwrights promises to have good results. "A Gold Mine," written during the winter. They have written also a five-act melodrama called "Lynch Law," which is said to deal in a new and reasonable way with the work of the vigilance committee in California's early days.

Mr. F. C. Bangs, whose reputation as an actor is well established, will begin a starring season about October 17. He has secured the right from Mr. Lawrence Barrett to produce Mr. Boker's "Francesca da Rimini," and Mr. Barrett's version of Miss Mitford's "Rienzi." They are to be presented with all the original costumes and scenic and musical effects which marked their production when Mr. Barrett filled the leading roles. It is said that both Parisians and Londoners are to be shortly provided with new sensations in the shape of Chinese plays performed by qualified actors from the Flowery Land. The Celestial historians probably will first come to Paris. They are to be eighty in number, and many

Parisians are looking forward with interest to the performances of the "Pi Ka Ki," a fearful drama in forty-two tableaux, which is said to be the masterpiece of its author, Kao Tong Kia.

Mr. Abbey's formal announcement of a series of concerts by Mme. Etelka Gerster disposes finally of the discouraging rumors that that popular songstress would never return to America. Mme. Gerster comes to sing in concert, and the performers that are to appear with her are Signor de Anna, the young and gifted baritone, who was last here with Mr. Mapleson; Mme. Sacconi, the brilliant harpist, who was in Mr. Mapleson's orchestra, and Miss Nettie Carpenter, a youthful American violiniste.

New tenors are so rare that the following remarks of the London Times should cause emotion: "A tenor singer has just made his appearance at Berlin in Bellini's 'Norma.' His nom de theatre is Riccardo, but he is a Hungarian by birth, and his real name is Palik. He is said to possess the much-coveted Csharp. He was a very successful animal portrait painter, especially of horses, and enjoyed as such a considerable reputation among Hungarian magnates. But one day he discovered he possessed a voice, and, as he believes, dramatic talent. He made his first appearance at Breslau, whence he received an engagement for the opera house in Berlin."

The Berlin Courier says: "We hear from Venice that an opera, whose name is yet enveloped in the densest darkness, will be produced this year in seventeen opera houses simultaneously, and of these sixteen are Italian. The composer is Franchetti. That in itself would signify nothing were it not for the circumstance that he is the son of the banker Franchetti, a son-in-law of Rothschild. Baron Franchetti has, therefore, in order to do his son justice worthy of the young man's genius, leased sixteen opera houses in Italy, where the opera will be heard by crowded audiences, to whom the tickets will be given. The old baron has taken care that the opera shall be heard in New York under similar advantages."

ART.

THE PARIS SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS.-The phenomenal results produced by the French School of Fine Arts, which for nearly four and a half centuries has successfully trained men from every civilized country of the earth, is a constant refutation of the criticisms of those who insist that to bring a student in contact with the masters of his art is merely to develop imitative ability through a system of instruction tending to perpetuate mannerisms, cramp individuality, and fetter genius, rather than to stimulate genuine originality. A school that can elevate a nation's taste, which makes itself felt in the smallest article of usefulness that enters into the commerce of the world, has a right to exist and a mission to maintain, especially while its superiority of standard is sustained through the teachings of men no less famous and world-renowned than Taine, Viollet-le-Duc, Le Sueur, Lenoir, Heuzey, and many o hers, whose writings and lectures explain all the truths and theories of art. It is a rare treat to be shown by such talent how architecture goes through a regular gradation of changes from aesthetic to utilitarian principles-from principles founded upon self-imposed laws of imaginary construction to those founded on the necessities of actual construction, the one concomitant and cotemporaneous with ideal art, the other with imitative art; to have pointed out these changes, beginning with the Egyptians, whose buildings were hewn out of the rock, when economy was never questioned and ornament was flat and conventional, all to become, in the hands of the Greek, a style of greater elegance and refinement, though still stable, firm, and severe, with the perfect repose of a system which was complete, simple, integrate, but limited, as the Greeks were moderate, always showing a refined reticence in their work; to note how the Romans, who robbed the column of all pretense of occupation, carried their processes from unity to disintegration, from mass to detail, from æsthetic to utilitarian construction, which finally led to that decadence of truth and beauty which arrived with the advent of the early Christian ages.-Henry O. Avery, in Scribner's Magazine for October.

NOTES.

Professor Siemering's great equestrian statue of Washington, ordered by the Pennsylvania Society of the Cincinnati, for placing in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, was recently shipped from Berlin by the steamer Santiago and within a few days will reach New York.

There is a report that the Spanish-Americans in Paris and elswhere have proposed to M. Bartholdi, the designer of "Liberty enlightening the World," to form a companion monument on the isthmus of Panama. This is to be dedicated to the Liberator Bolivar. It is stated that the cost is to be £400,000.

Mr. Robert Koehler, the painter of "The Strike," who is on his way hither from Munich, comes as the accredited agent of the Central Committee having in charge the preparations for the Munich International Art and Industrial Exhibition of next year. His object is to secure a good representation of American art and art industry at what is expected to prove the most important exhibition of the kind ever held in Germany. Mr. L. W. Volk's marble bust of the late David Davis has reached

Chicago from Italy and is now in readiness to be unveiled and placed where the subscribers to the fund for its execution may designate. The model was made from the death-mask taken by Mr. Volk the evening after the judge died, together with photographs, of course, and the likeness and work are pronounced to be without a flaw by the few persons who have seen the bust and the models in clay.

In an immense mansion, fitted up in perfect taste, at the head of the Champs Elysee, facing the Arc de Triomphe, lives alone the wealthy and cultivated Mme. de Cassin, owner of one of the choicest collections of ancient and modern paintings in Paris. The number of her visitors is very limited, so that when a year or so ago she sent her pictures to the Petit gallery for exhibition for the benefit of the Societe Philanthropique, the event aroused great interest in artistic circles, which was enhanced by the well-founded rumor that Mme. de Cassin at her death intended to leave to the Louvre the pick of the collection. There were fifty pictures, admirably hung, each sufficiently isolated by surrounding wallspace to enable it to be seen to the full advantage of its tone and coloring. The insurance was for $600.000, which would give to each picture an average value of $12,000.-The Art Amateur.

The influence of dwelling habitually in the presence of a striking work of art can hardly be overestimated, whether the work be of such a character as to debase or to ennoble. The pencil of the artist is bribed to make the den of vice doubly alluring to the intoxicated senses of the reveler, while the glowing ardor of the religious devotee rises almost to ecstacy as he gaze long upon some vivid representation of the tragedy of Calvary. As are the pictures upon the walls of the home, so are the pictures hung invisible to all but ourselves in the chambers of the imagination, where, night and day, they make much of the real world in which we live. Whether we dwell day by day with a picture or human being, the influence of the companionship is hardly greater in the latter case than in the former.-The Cosmopolitan.

LITERARY.

INTERNATIONAL COPYRIGHT.-Every honest man who thinks about the matter must feel keenly the disgrace, now fairly shifted from the American publishers to the American public, of the wrong involved in the absence of an international copyright law. We prefer to put our demand for it upon this ground at once, because we believe we shall never have such a law till we appeal to the common conscience instead of the common interest. With the common conscience it now distinctly rests, for, however literary piracy grew up in the days before the wrong had been duly considered, it must now be owned that American publishers, with but one or two exceptions, are in favor of its suppression. They stand with American authors in this, and it is now the American nation that willfully perpetuates an abuse which in a small way is morally worse than slavery in a large way. Slavery compelled a man's labor, but it gave him in return food, shelter, and clothing, such as they were; literary piracy seizes the fruits of a man's labor and gives him absolutely nothing in return. There can be no question of the nature of the wrong, and no justi fication of it. From time to time we hear that the English also pirate American books; but no one has the effrontery to urge this in defense of our piracy of English books, and every one knows that if the English continued to pirate our books for a hundred years the balance of guilt would still be upon our side. Moreover, every one knows that if we enacted justice to the English author there would be an instant response on the part of England to our tardy reparation; in fact, prior publication in Great Britain already secures for the American author the protection which our law denies to the alien upon any condition. We confess we have not much sympathy with the arguments of those who prove that foreign books would be just as cheap with a copyright law, and that we should somehow find our profit in doing justice to English authors. No doubt we should, if honesty is the best policy; but our people have no right to cheap literature by defrauding the author; they could have cheap silks and cheap wines by a like simple process. We are not to give over wrong-doing because it does not pay, but because it is wrong, and we are not to abandon literary piracy because it has disorganized the publishing business, but because it is a flagrant injustice, which no law and no want of law can change in its essence.

Those who appeal to the motives of self-interest in urging international copyright are like the philanthropists, of no great effect in their day and generation, who used to say that they did not care for the slaves, but were opposed to slavery because it was so ruinous to the masters. The masters smiled patiently under their burdens, and kept on holding slaves; and probably the literary pirates, unless they are rescued by a compassionate statute, will continue to bear their crushing load without murmuring. But the voluntary pirates are no longer numerous; they are very few; and this fact makes their offense more distinctly a national sin, because the nation could so easily suppress them. Some of us may seek to escape complicity in the sin by refusing to buy the cheap pirated editions of foreign books, as certain zealots used to refrain from the sugar and cotton produced by slave labor. But this privation had no perceptible effect upon the system of slavery, and for one just person who denies himself a ten-cent copy of an English novel because it pays

the author nothing, a hundred of the wicked will buy it because it is a ten cent copy. It is the slow conscience of these hundreds and hundred thousands that we must reach before we can hope for an international copyright law; and we ought not to be discouraged because we are indefinitely remote from the desired end. After all, the American nation is not so willfully as it is ignorantly guilty in this matter. The great mass of the people, even of those who buy books, have not the least notion what a pirated book is, or what the sacred principle which it outrages; they do not know what copyright is, international or otherwise. But they can be told; and we venture to suggest to our goods friends of the International Copyright League that they prepare a very brief and very plain statement of the facts, such as the wayfaring man, though a fool, might not err in, to be printed in all the newspapers, and to be read in the churches throughout the country. We trust that a few editors or ministers would refuse their aid to so good a cause, or would object to submit for signatures in their offices and vestries a petition to Congress for the passage of an international copyright law. The editor could readily illustrate the case by reference to some sketch or story reprinted in his paper from an English magazine without compensation to the author; and the minister could instance pirated reprints in the Sunday-school library in proof of the shameful wrong involved by the absence of such a law. We urge a little haste in the action of the league, because there has been proposedironically, perhaps a "bill for creating and maintaining national free circulating libraries," which must have a great charm for the fancy of the cheap politician. This bill proposes to levy a tax, graduated to the bulk of the book, upon all foreign works imported or reprinted; but the money thus collected is not to be paid over to the foreign authors-that would be opposed to the whole tenor of our dealings with these outlaws-it is to be devoted to establishing, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, free circulating libraries throughout the Union. By this simple and ready means a temple to our national discredit can be erected in every principal town in the country, and all our citizens can directly participate in the advantages of our common wrong-doing.-W. D. Howells, in Harper's Magazine for October.

"NEWSPAPER ENGLISH."-The discussion of newspaper and novel English in Scribner's Magazine by Prof. Adams Hill moves the Daily News of London to "tender its grateful acknowledgments" to Mr. Hill for his admission that people must have newspapers, and for his inclination to allow a fiction-loving public its regular quota of novels of the season. "The truth is," it says, "that the 'best books' doctrine has lately been thrashed out (we are not quite sure that Mr. Hill will approve of this last sample of newspaper English '), and found to contain more chaff than grain. It has come to be perceived that intellectual high-feeding is not good at all times. Man's mind can no more be sustained on perpetual courses of Homer and Dante, Shakespeare and Bacon, than his body can be nourished exclusively upon venison and salmon. Fine wheaten bread is choice food, but the hygienic philosophers recommend us to prefer, at least now and then, the less concentrated nourishment of the whole meal or rye loaf. It is very well to tell us to stick to Shakespeare, but Shakespeare was clearly not averse to light reading, which he had a peculiar faculty for turning to account. So we may take it that the modern novelist and the modern newspaper writer, who have at least an advantage over the dead author in being able to show the age and body of their time 'his form and pressure,' may hold up their heads and claim to be earning their living in a decent way." The News further congratulates itself that as regards journalists, at least, "our castigator appears to be referring in great part to his own countrymen's special peccadillos." It is therefore the more ready to admit that Mr. Hill's indictment is a serious one. In "newspaper English," if Mr. Hill's views are correct, the common tendency is to sacrifice elegance and refinement to the "forceful" or the "funny;" in novel English, to substitute vigor and compactness for the sentimental or the fanciful. To make good his case, the complainant cites a long list of offenses from the pages of newspapers and novels, to which we shall not take exception, though a sweeping indictment can scarcely be based upon them, nor do they as a rule show that refinement was sacrificed to vigor, but rather to bad taste, haste, lack of discrimination, and poverty of diction.

If Mr. Hill detects a straining after vigor and humor, which may be classified fairly as the "forceful" and "funny" tendency, it may be rejoined that this tendency points out the existence of a general demand for these qualities in newspaper writing, against which it is vain to contend. For the preparation of newspapers will be fitted to the demands of their readers, as closely as practicable. If the effort comes lamely off with painfully forced conceits in place of humor and uncouth rudeness for vigor, it is justly castigated, but failures do not prove that the aim was unworthy. Humor may be misapplied and vigor overstrained, but both, rightly used, are indisputably effective for arresting and fixing the attention of readers. Moreover, they are distinctly virile characteristics, and augur well for the comparative work of the age which prizes them. For if the endurance of prose writings be accepted as evidence of worth, we see the work instinct with the vigor and humor far out-lasts what is merely "elegant" and "refined." In so far, then, as Mr. Hill complains of the tendency of the age, we think his complaint unsound, though his list of individual offenses is fitly held up for censure. To his suggestion of a frequent resort to the reading of good writers as a safeguard from infection through modern newspapers and novels, we have no word of criticism. It is an old prescription and a good one. In his anxiety for the preservation of the language from taint and defacement we cordially

join. But with a purism that would exclude all innovation we have no sympathy. There must be development and progress in all living things, and the English language lives. New words will creep in and old words will fall out or come to be used in new ways, but we do not think that thereby a language " will grow dim and fade." "Even the most fanatical of purists," as the News well says, "is content to use many words and phrases which would have seemed to his grandfather new-fangled and affected. Charles James Fox pledged his word to Lord Holland that in writing his history of the reign of James II he would admit no word for which he bad not the authority of Dryden. That may be a reason why he never got to the end of the job." Between a stagnant purism and a readiness to welcome what is both new and good into the daily flow of a language there is a happy distinction. The well of English undefiled is a poet's conceit of other days. The mingling of fresh waters keeps the stream sufficient for growing needs. A living language is a river, not a pool.— Boston Advertiser.

THE SAFEGUARD OF LITERATURE.-Any person with an appreciation of that which is best in literature must inevitably be provoked by the sapient utterances of small critics. Brown comes forward with the ultimatum that Rossetti was great neither as a poet nor a painter, and that, if he had not lost his digestion he would never have given to the world such "morbid" poems as "The Blessed Damozel." Jones denounces Tolstoi's writings as "dirty and obscene." Robinson arises to remark, with asinine solemnity, that it would have been better for human nature if Thackeray had never penned a line. Smith will not even pay the author of " Vanity Fair" the dubious compliment of considering him potent for evil; but relegates him to the garret, with the rest of the rubbish that has passed its day of usefulness. You, not being of the same mind, can scarcely refrain from a movement of foolish anger. But the books you love bear no message to these critics, and they are uttering their convictions in all sincerity. You must be liberal enough to allow every man a right to his own opinion. If even Tolstoi's sincere admirers can scarcely endure the solemn, almost religious, ecstacies into which Mr. Howells falls, once a month, at the feet of the Russian, you may fancy how harrowing they must be to the feelings of Jones. You, who are of a serious and contemplative turn of mind, dwelling with delight upon a perfectly-rounded sentence, and disliking mere raw tales of adventure, have doubtless uttered strictures upon Haggard's romances grievous to those whose taste inclines toward rolling pillars of fire, "slaughter grim and great," and gigantic Zulus performing prodigious deeds of valor. Naturally, such a tendency to place the "story" first, regardless of character-drawing or literary style, betrays a childlike quality of mind; but this is partly an affair of temperament, and partly of circumstances. The most extreme civilization will never be able to reduce all men to a dead level of uniformity, nor compel them to a unanimous manner of thought. It is precisely in this wide dissimilarity of predilections that the safeguard of literature lies; insuring the preservation of its breadth, and checking the tendency to run in a single groove. It is not desirable to be narrow, even in well-doing; and each man should be ready to admit that there are other ways besides his own. In literature, as in heaven, there must be many mansions, so that all may find room. Were all poets Rossettis, and all novelists Tolstois and Thackerays, many worthy people would forswear reading as a recreation; and, in truth, we might grow weary of their reiterated excellences.

The romance-lover need have no fears for romance nor the realist for reality, however the balance may tremble when weighted on one side with romanticism and on the other with realism. The former dreads to see a hob nailed boot planted dissapprovingly upon his little garden in which he cultivates the most impossible flowers; and the latter is alarmed lest some one may snatch away his pebbles and bits of broken glass, and insist upon calling them pearls and diamonds. But romance and reality have always existed side by side in the world, and it is probable that they will always continue to exist thus in literature. While falsity of sentiment and misrepresentation of salient facts of human nature cannot be too severely condemned, it is by no means desirable that we should close our eyes to the ideal aspect of life; for the ideal implies an appeal to all that there is within us of the angel. It is hard to fancy a state of existence so harshly utilitarian that the love of beauty and the joy of melody could find no place therein-its flute-notes and Arcadian pipings silenced forever. Such an influence will be slow to pass out from the heart of man, so long as the earth about him teems with evidences of its being. Its loss would leave him poorer. Unless "the seasons totter in their walk," and our eyes no more behold the rapturous springtime, the summer swooning under the weight of its golden glory, the bale-fires of autumn, nor the winter's white and glittering pageant-who shall say that the bright Immortal must follow the highway traversed by the creatures of the dust? Nature reassures the doubter. Who can restrain the eager grass as it starts in the chinks of the city's stony streets? Hemmed in by walls however high, the peach breaks into bloom, knowing its hour has come. Here is a rebellious element, made for all time,defiant of the petty workings of mankind. When the heart of the year stirs strangely with "the first blind motions of the May "when the trees are all a haze of tender leaves, and the turf is full of tiny flowers, and the birds grow wild as the the sky blushes bright with dawn-when the bright streams wander singing through the golden-green vistas of the woods, where the air is full of the "sweet, keen smell" of budding things, and the purple flags march across the swampy lands like an army with banners, then, truly, we feel that, if poetry be