secrets of life and growth should of itself suggest a more reverent and persuasive bearing. His style is frequently too rhetorical or pretentious for the uses of exact science, and he occupies too many pages with reviews of ground which he has previously gone over. Nor does he clearly set forth his idea of the mode in which his dual forces balance each other without producing absolute stagnation and equipoise. Nevertheless, we find his work to be of a suggestive and highly absorbing interest. While addressed to advanced thinkers, there is little in it which any scholar, informed of the general results attained by modern science, cannot understand and enjoy. Among its excellences are a logical sequence of argument, the rejection of mere theoretical speculation, and especially many valuable statistics of cosmical phenomena, mostly of the author's own collection and tabulation. Among these the comparative numeration of earthquakes at perihelic and aphelie periods is the novel and important result of unremitting labor. A chapter upon crystallization is noticeable for its beautiful illustration of the writer's doctrine of the attractive and repulsive forc s.

In conclusion, we may assert that few can read this treatise without an instinct that Dr. Winslow's explorations are in the right direction; and that we are on the edge of discovery to which the facts hitherto obtained by science will seem but as a misty twilight preceding the risen morn. To a layman the perusal of such a work conveys an impression similar to that produced by a glance through some powerful telescope at the starry heavens. Far from tending to atheism or pantheism, it only calls forth the thought-how measureless, how simple, how multiform, this one Infinity! How wonderful are Thy works, O Lord of Hosts!

The prerequisite for a really valuable biography-that the hero of the life to be written should first have nobly lived it, was supplied beyond cavil by the imperishable career of Audubon, the prince of American ornithologists. The Life of John James Audubon is the title of a beautiful volume (from the press of G. P. Putnam & Son), which seems to us a fascinating and inspiring record of human genius. It is composed largely of extracts from Audubon's own journal, kept by him, either in diary form or in letters to his dearest companion, for many years. The passages here given, edited by the venerable widow, LUCY AUDUBON, originally were placed VOL. IV.-56

with a London house for publication, and went for further revision into the hands of Mr. Robert Buehanan, who compiled from them a book containing about one-fifth of the original matter.

Inman's portrait, an engraving of which is prefaced to this volume, of the long-haired, curve-nosed, eagle-eyed, broad-set, farsearching Audubon, gives one a strong impression of the character and bearing of that grand old man. There was something of the Homeric type about his eternal youth and restless vigor, his perfect sympathy with the form and being of natural things.

Now and then a man appears, whose tendencies are fitted exactly with the time and circumstances in which he is placed. Before the discovery of a new continent, or a century after our European civilization had transformed its original features, an Audubon might be a ne'er-do-weel and vagrant, neither understanding himself nor understood by others. As it happened, he was in the world at just the period to gather and set down in lasting form the likenesses of birds whose species are gradually and surely dying out; and all the chances of his birth, genius, education-even to the little accomplishments given him in childhood by French instructors,-adapted him to his mission and enabled him to complete it. How curious, that even his knowledge of music and dancing could not have been spared, and that, at the critical inception of an endeavor to publish his immortal masterwork, this son of a French Commodore obtained certain indispensable funds by giving dancing lessons and leading the step to the music of his own fiddle! When other resources failed, his intrepid wife went out as governess, while Audubon was teaching French, drawing and music, without pride or sloth, deeming nothing an abasement that gave pleasure to others and set him one step nearer his aim.

The popular conception of Audubon's qualities is fully sustained by the record which we now receive from his widow's hands. During the forty years of his wanderings, in which he took small thought for the morrow, and put little money in his scrip, his admirable wife was devoted to him present or absent, believing in his genius and constantly pressing him on to its best development. And what changes more romantic than those which Audubon experienced-at times almost destitute in the rude frontier and river towns, leaving them at intervals upon his solitary campaigns in the vast American wildernesses,

-and, afterward, as if by magic, the world-renowned naturalist, Fellow of the Royal Society, the friend of Scott and Cuvier and Irving, the honored of wise men and princes! Now, pushing through a magnificent publication, which he commenced without a penny and completed at the cost of twenty thousand pounds; again, returning to the woods he loved so keenly, and gathering new trophies in pathless regions where he needed neither chart nor guide.

His own writings show him as he was; large, cheery, audacious, full of simple exultation over his progress, confident of his own powers and mission, yet with little vanity, nor injured by his final success. First of all, and ever, a lover of nature and of natural life. He seems to have always distinguished the true from the artificial; and, with the feeling of other lusty spirits who have been much alone in the wilderness, was constantly impelled to return to it by abhorrence of the sordid ways of men. Although a living example of what one, who is not thoroughly schooled in art, can accomplish by direct study of natural objects, none listened with more reverence at the feet of such a master as Lawrence. Upon the failing of his strength he sought a quiet resting-place under the shadows of American elms and oaks, and there lived a few remaining years in simplicity and repose. Here he ended a life that wholly trusted to its instincts; and well it might, for these were always noble and heroic. He was a type of manhood in its most aspiring and self-reliant guise.

A vivid idea of the recent condition of Ireland under the church-rate and landed-tenure system, is obtained from the Realities of Irish Life, by W. STEUART TRENCH,—a reprint of which is published by Roberts Brothers as the fifth number of their "Handy Volume Series." The author is a kinsman of Dean Trench, and worthily bears the family naine. He is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin University, and his opening sketches give a spirited description of episodes in Irish school and college life.

Upon receiving his degree, Mr. Trench resolved to adopt, as a calling, the agency of estates in Ireland owned by non-residents, and zealously informed himself of the condition of these impoverished and dangerous properties. Of course, the management of of the tenant peasantry, goaded by years of neglect and oppression, was the main problem to be solved. Our author, by mingled

kindness, firmness and intrepidity, was more successful than stewards of the ordinary class. Placed in charge of Lord Lansdowne's and Lord Bath's tenantries, he converted rebellious, non-paying sections, into orderly and remunerative estates. A shipment of the more intractable tenants to America was an important feature of his system. Mr. Trench's book is full of the romance, the sunshine and the shadow of Irish peasant life. He well may say, in his preface: "From youth to manhood, and from manhood to old age, it has been my lot to live surrounded by a kind of poetic turbulence and almost romantic violence, which I believe could scarcely belong to real life in any other country in the world."

Though we trust that the state of things here described is largely of the past, yet one can gather from this narrative that further reforms must be consummated before the Emerald Isle can become a happy home for "the finest peasantry in the world." The book in some respects is exciting as a novel, and few will commence it without reading to the end.

The earnest and thoughtful Irish poet, AUBREY DE VERE, whose "May Carols," published a few years ago, first introduced him to American readers, has the affection of all who appreciate careful finish, delicate conception, and pure religious feeling, in lyrical song. A more extensive selection from his works, entitled Irish Odes and other Poems, has been issued by the Catholic Publication Society in a very beautiful volume. The leading characteristics of Aubrey de Vere's poetry are "sweetness and light." He possesses a sensitively aesthetic and moral dispotion, exhibiting a fine type of the romantic Celtic nature, exalted by culture and pious faith. A close study of Wordsworth is apparent in the thought and method both of his descriptive and religious verse. He often falls into long and somewhat tedious didacticism; but again, in some lyric or sonnet, we find grace and delicate beauty; though never the strength of "Tintern Abbey or the subtle perfection of the Sonnets "By the Seashore," and "Upon Westminister Bridge."

Like his predecessors of the Lake School, Mr. De Vere has written a preface to his poetry. He gracefully recommends himself to his new audience, and especially to the Irish in America, and then utters a protest against the sensational and spasmodic tendencies of the contemporary school. As a poet, all of whose yearnings, if not of the high

est genius, are toward whatsoever things are pure and whatsoever things are lovely, Aubrey de Vere will gain many sympathetic readers upon these western shores.

Mr. CALVIN N. Oris, architect, is the author of a series of Essays, tastefully published by G. P. Putnam & Son, upon the Origin and Progress of Sacred and Constructive Art. The scope and mission of this book show that its author aims at something higher than the mere corpus artis, pursuing his theme to its spiritual meaning with the zeal of a philosophical thinker. He declares Architecture to be a genuine out-growth of the nature and aspirations of mankind, embodying the ideal sentiment of each successive age; that the religious element of our nature rules supreme, and finds outward expression in symbolic forms of art; that these vary in nobleness with the lesser or higher forms of religious progress; that art can only be spontaneous and original through the favorable sentiment and conditions of the people from whom it emanates. In this spirit he criticises the development of art, from the rude Egyptian materialism to the joyous ideal of the Greeks, the sensual power of the Romans, and so through the transitional confusion of the Early Christian School, to the final perfection of the pointed or "Christian" style,—the symbolic expression of the latest Latin Church. Passing to the condition of the arts in the United States, he explains our failure hitherto to develop an original style of architecture. While unsatisfied with the methods of the present, he does not despair of the future, but awaits the era of a new and specific growth.

Mr. Otis has written a catholic and sincere treatise, conceived in a truly reverent spirit. Though we agree with him as to the importance of his field of study, we do not consider it altogether unexplored. Perhaps no work of precisely similar construction has appeared, yet readers are not unfamiliar with the general idea of this volume. His mode of criticism is somewhat analogous to that of M. Taine, yet he is no copyist, and the appearance of such books as this is an encouraging symptom of the radical and searching purpose of our late American thought.

For the republication of HERBERT SPENCER'S grand System of Philosophy we are indebted to the enthusiastic energy of his friend and American editor, Professor E. Y. Youmans, and to the liberal enterprise of D. Appleton & Co. The earlier divisions of this

great work were, it will be remembered, "First Principles," and "The Principles of Biology." From the publishers we now receive The Principles of Psychology, Part I: The Data of Psychology--a volume in pamphlet form, opening the third division of the series. The author first treats upon the structure and functions of the Nervous System, and then proceeds to that which, in the Spencerian system of nomenclature, is termed Estho-Physiology, i. e., the study of nervous phenomena as phenomena of consciousness. A chapter follows upon the Scope of Psychology, and introduces the reader to the main topic of this division. We content ourselves with merely announcing the new volume, since every student of Spencer, who has followed him thus far, will

at once make himself master of this store of scientific knowledge, subordinated to the philosophical system, which is one of the most significant and potential phenomena of the

modern era.

The "Musical Library" of Leypoldt & Holt has been extended by their reprint of Madame ELISE POLKO's Reminiscences of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy. A Social and Artistic Biography. This book forms an interesting appendix to the "Life of Mendelssohn," and the "Letters," which are now in the hands of so many who enjoy musical literature and the records of one of the sweetest and most eminent of artist-lives. Madame Polko writes, as she herself confesses, in an enthusiastic and con amore style; but her personal recollections of the composer are noteworthy, and many delightful glimpses of the incomparable music-life in Leipzig and Berlin-at its most auspicious periodare given in her work. The appendix consists of some of Mendelssohn's letters to English correspondents, and hitherto out of print.

EDWARD E. HALE, author of "The Man without a Country," has taken a specific place in our literature of the day, by his culture, quaint humor, and delicate side-touches upon things past and present. The latter are so clever and facile as often to escape the hurried reader. Few writers more readily wear beneath a surface-story an inner meaning. Mr. Hale's sketches must be read with the Dervish's cintment upon one's eyes. The Ingham Papers, from the press of Fields, Osgood, & Co., amply illustrate this remark. Some of them show the author at his best, and others, to our thinking, at his worst; but

all are the craft of a most original hand, from which we hope yet to receive a sustained production, that shall bear the same relation to these early studies which Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter" bears to the "Twice-told Tales."

Although deeply impressed with the defective and irrational character of our prison discipline, and assured that a wiser generation will effect radical changes in the management of criminal offenders, we are not so informed with regard to the actual working of the present system, as to pronounce decisively upon Mrs. CAROLINE H. WOODS' report of her experience as under-matron of a large penitentiary. Women in Prison is the title of her book, which is published by Hurd & Houghton. Reading it through with painful and sustained interest, we have not failed to see that the author has written from motives which command unusual regard. She took up her occupation in a missionary spirit, and for months filled a post in which it is difficult to say whether keeper or prisoner is the more to be commiserated-only leaving it when utterly broken down with labor, and sick at heart over the abuses and horrors of the institution. Her narrative carries us through the penitentiary routine, in all its petty and repulsive details. If Mrs. Woods' statements are not colored by prejudice, or aversion of those with whom she was associated in office, they are worthy the immediate attention of all legislative bodies and executive officers having penitentiaries under their control.

Books relating to those subjects which, under the general head of "The Woman Question," are now obtaining such wide discussion, become so frequent as to fill a department by themselves. VIRGINIA PENNY brings out, through Claxton, Remsen & Haffelfinger, of Philadelphia, a well-meaning, but vague and desultory work, entitled Think and Act. It is about what it claims to be-"A Series of Articles pertaining to Men and Women, Work and Wages"-and its special topic is the need of more varied occupations for women and a consideration of what these should be. The author, however, has contrived to fill too many pages with her loosely-written newspaper articles. They contain little practical information, and a deal of "thoughts accumulated" but neither systematized nor definitely conceived. The True Woman, by the Rev. J. D. FULTON (Tremont Temple, Boston), comes to us from Lee & Shepard, and is a narrow and dogmatic series of discourses

by a pastor who regards the Woman Question precisely as Slavery was regarded in the dis courses of those old-time clergymen who took "Cursed be Canaan" for their text. Mr Fulton's conclusion--that women should stay at home and not vote-may or may not be right; but his " scriptural argument," that the "effort to secure the ballot for woman found its origin in infidelity to the Word of God"this argument, we say, is unmitigated bigotry, and will meet with nothing better than contempt from those who believe that the Bible was made for Man and not Man for the Bible.

From the press of Lee & Shepard, Boston, we have a constant yield of juvenile literature, always of a popular, and o'ten of an excellent, quality. The reprint of LEWIS CARROLL'S Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, with the quaint and characteristic illustrations by John Tenniel, certainly ranks in the latter category, and will gain the rapt attention of ten-year-old misses. They have some key to unlock the nonsense of its text, which wiser hands have lost; but the pictures commend themselves alike to old and young.

Boys will take more kindly to The General; or Twelve Nights in the Hunter's Camp. This is a true story, written by WILLIAM BARROWS, of the adventurous career of his brother Willard, who was a representative "The General" was pioneer in the far West. born in New England, and after the traditional experience of school teaching, became a surveyor, and in the latter capacity witnessed for many years the advance of civilization along our Western borders. The narrativo of his life is here given in twelve stories of forest and border adventure, told around the hunters' camp-fire. Lee & Shepard also publish Salt Water Dick, one of the "Helping Hand Series," by MAY MANNERING; and Dolly Dimple at School, by SOPHIE MAY, another of the "Little Prudy Stories."-The second part of LOUISA M. ALCOTT's domestic study, Little Women; or, Meg, Jo, Beth and May, is issued by Roberts Brothers, Boston. Miss Alcott's work is always that of a thoughtful and cultured woman, and shows delicate feeling and taste. There is, perhaps, a slight dullness, or lack of interesting action, in the progress of the present tale.-D. Appleton & Co., reprint Tommy Try, and what he did in Science, a juvenile-scientific storybook, by CHAS. D. G. NAPIER. This is profusely illustrated with pictures of natural objects, chemical experiments, etc., and appears to be a kind of autobiography, recounting the haps

and mishaps of the author in familiarizing himself, while a boy, with the wonders of scientific lore.

Hurd & Houghton now complete their admirable" Globe Edition," of CHARLES DICKENS' Works, with a final volume, containing The Uncommercial Traveller, Master Humphrey's Clock, (a noteworthy republication,) and the New Christmas Sories: The series

is closed by a general Index to the characters throughout the novels, and with a list of the author's sayings which have become proverbial. Of the "Globe Edition" of the British Poets, brought out so cheaply and usefully by D. Appleton & Co., we receive in separate volumes the works of JOHN DRYDEN, GEORGE HERBERT, and EDMUND SPENSER.-Many who have read a little tract, in verse, entitled No Sects in Heaven, have been amused with the quaintness of its jingle and pleased with its liberal intent. The author, it seems, is Mrs. E. H. J. CLEVELAND, and a pretty volume, containing this and other of her verses, is now published by Clark & Maynard. Juliette; or, Now and Forever, is a semi-religious novel by Mrs. MADELINE LESLIE, author of several former stories of home-life. We receive it from Lee & Shepard, Boston.

Evidence that American farming no longer is followed upon the principle of exhausting the soil in one spot, and then seeking "fresh woods and pastures new," for a repetition of the process, is given by the large number of agricultural works produced for our eager and intelligent modern farmers. Orange Judd & Co., supply a notable portion of the demand. This month we receive their edition of the New American Farm Book, originally by R. L. ALLEN, now revised and enlarged by LEWIS F. ALLEN. The merits of this work have been established by the success of 23 years, and its sale will be larger than ever in this improved form.-Another standard work is Parsons on the Rose, which likewise has stood the test of a score of years, and of which the new edition has been thoroughly revised by its author, SAMUEL B. PARSONS.-Orange Judd & Co. also have

brought out a hand-book of Farm Implements and Machinery now used in Agricul ture, the title of which sufficiently indicates the scope and value of the work: "Farm Implements and Farm Machinery, and the Principles of their Construction and Use; with simple and practical explanations of the Laws of Motion and Force as applied on the Farm." With 287 illustrations. By JOHN J. THOMAS.

Prof. CHAS. J. WHITE, of the U. S. Naval Academy, at Annapolis, has prepared a very careful treatise, for the use of schools and colleges, entitled The Elements of Theoretical and Descriptive Astronomy. It is well illustrated with plates and statistical tables, and is brought down to the latest period of astronomical discovery. Published by Claxton, Remsen, and Haffelfinger, Philadelphia.

First Steps in German, by M. TH. PREU, Svo., Oakley, Mason & Co., N. Y. The plan of this work seems a very sensible one. Rightly appreciating the weariness of the student condemned to dwell for weeks upon "the golden candlesticks of my brother," or "the beautiful thimbles of my aunt," the author has endeavored to give simple passages of German prose and poetry, as the basis of the lessons. These extracts are to be copied, in German script of course, to be parsed, to be translated, to be learned by heart, and to be made into as many other sentences as the pupil can contrive; thus combining the leading idea of the "Mastery" system with that of the older methods. With each lesson, a certain portion of the grammar of the language is taught, and great pains seem to have been taken to make the plan of teaching as thorough as possible. The book seems to supply a want which has long been felt, of an elementary method which should be minute without being tiresome, and simple without being puerile; and we doubt not many a beginner will rejoice at being freed from the everlasting repetitions of the Ollendorfian systems, to be led so pleasantly up the steeps (for they are steeps) of the German language. This book is worthy of special regard, and we think it is bound to be a positive success.