were mounting without, until his dubious title to the throne had been sealed by the rite of Coronation. There is the Coronation Chair with the Stone of Scone, whereon the Kings of England for more than six centuries have received their crowns; and if it were necessary to prove by one striking example the continuity of English history, it were enough to remind you that Cromwell himself, at the inauguration of his Protectorship, could not afford to dispense with that historic chair. It was taken, for the only time, out of the Abbey; it was carried to Westminster Hall; and there, sitting upon it, he was installed. Yonder in the aisles of Henry the Seventh's Chapel lie the Queens Mary and Elizabeth, within one grave-regno consortes et urna, as the inscription written upon them tellsand Mary Queen of Scots over against them. Hither came another Mary and her husband, William of Orange, to be crowned, at the new birth of English civil and religious liberties; and in their procession up the Abbey, as a symbol of equal rank, the Sword of State was borne between them. Here George the Third received his crown, with his rival, the Pretender Charles Edward, looking on, himself unknown and envying, as he said, least of all "the perThe Nineteenth Century and After.

son who is the cause of all this pomp and magnificence." Here Queen Victoria came to her Coronation, at the beginning of that glorious reign which may boast, as one of the chief of its many glories, that it saw the Colonies of England united to the Mother Country by sympathetic ties which shall never be broken. And here but a week ago the Seventh Edward was consecrated at his crowning for the high and holy duties of his sovereignty.

I can say no more. But oh! as you dwell upon historic memories so inspiring, so ennobling as these, go home to your friends and tell them-tell them-that God has done great things for them already, that He has called them to an Imperial destiny, and that they must not and shall not prove unworthy of it.

With a full heart I bid you farewell. Unto God's almighty keeping I commit you. The Lord bless you, and guard you, and watch over you in your goingout and your coming-in, by land and by sea, and bring you safely home, and give you His peace and His benediction; and if we never meet again upon earth, as we cannot meet-not all of us -may He grant us in His infinite mercy at the last, when life is over, to meet in Heaven!

J. E. C. Welldon.

"The Fortunes of Oliver Horn" lead him from a youth spent in one of those charming Southern homes which Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith always paints so sympathetically, through the drudgery of a mercantile life undertaken to relieve the family estates from debts incurred in connection with unsuccessful

inventions of his father's, into final success in the artist's career of his boyhood's dreams. The writer's remarkable versatility has never been shown to greater advantage than in this volume. While to most readers its chief interest will be in its fascinating sketches of studio life in New York,

there will be others who will especially value it for its studies of Southern sentiment in the early sixties, with its striking description of the passage of the Massachusetts Sixth through Baltimore, and others still on whom the strongest impression of all will be made by the fine portrait of Richard Horn, the inventor. Charles Scribner's Sons.

Few story-tellers who cater for children understand their tastes better than Carolyn Wells, and the mammas must be many who count on her now for at least one book a year for the nursery shelves. "Folly in the Forest" shows the same blending of fun and fancy that made its predecessor so popular, and the boys and girls who followed its piquant little heroine to Fairyland, last season, will be eager to share her adventures among the famous animals of "Literachooria," "Historalia," and "Mythologia." Reginald Birch's illustrations are admirably adapted to the text. The Henry Altemus Co.

The heir to an English title and estate-stalwart and handsome, but thrown off his mental balance by an illness in childhood and now wavering between imbecility and madness-is the hero of Clara Louise Burnham's new story; "The Right Princess" is an attractive American girl who enters his household in a subordinate capacity; and the spell with which she breaks his enchantment and restores him to the privileges and duties of his position is Christian Science. Mrs. Burnham is always readable, but she is not at her best in this story, which is too obviously written with a purpose. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

A "problem novel" in which the human interest is developed in a way to give unexpected and increasing pleas

ure to the reader is "Luck o' Lassendale" by the Earl of Iddesleigh. It is the gambling problem that is involved, and the narrative traces the influence of horse-racing, company-promoting and the like on the fortunes of the ancient house of Lassendale. Sir Francis, the sanguine, generous, head of the house, Alfred, in prudent possession of a bit of property inherited from the maternal side, and Robert, the young barrister with his way to make, are all clearly individualized, and their sister's personality stands out equally distinct. A brother and sister who represent newer wealth, acquired in the engineer's profession, add variety to the social picture and furnish the element of romance for

the plot. From the ethical point of view, the story is effective, in spite of a disappointing weakness at the climax, and it has the readable qualities of the "society" novel, while entirely free from the flippancy and coarseness that mark so much fiction of that class. John Lane.

Of Mr. Carnegie's great gift of the library of the late Lord Acton to Mr. John Morley, The Spectator remarks:

It appears that the philanthropist millionaire, finding Lord Acton oppressed by the magnitude of his collection, which exceeded a hundred thousand volumes, purchased it some years ago, but left it with him for life,-a courtesy very rare, though not quite unprecedented, in the history of literature. We hope Mr. Morley may see his way to retain the library for his life, for he is probably the only Englishman living who can use it as well as Lord Acton, and that it may find its place of final rest in Cambridge or Oxford, preferably the former, since the collection was made by a Cambridge Professor. It is by a singular irony that a library collected by one of the first of Liberal Roman Catholics falls to a writer of Mr. Morley's opinions; but he may readily reply that learning and literature are always catholic.

ON THE WELSH COAST.

Blind led by many a friendly star,
I hurry through a land of sleep;
For like a trumpet from afar

I heard the challenge of the deep, And down the cliff's thyme-scented turf I spring upon the midnight sands, And strip beside the whispering surf, And give my body to its hands.

It greets me with a giant glee;
I wrestle in its rough embrace;
The stinging kisses of the sea

Are like a scourge upon my face.
But we who drink its air divine,
And listen to its endless song,
We love the buffet of the brine

That makes our thrilling nerves so strong.

Then, on a travelling wave adrift,
Supine with idle arms I lie,
And watch the coastwise mountains
lift

Their kingly summits to the sky;
While in the pauses of the breeze

Mysterious voices call and chide, For these are Gwalia's faery seas, And yonder Snowdon's haunted side!

. . . It is only when they put on the breeches and try to write like men that they become pedantic and tiresome.Hazlitt's Conversations.

There is a fashion in feelings, as in costume.

The most marked changes happen before we are even aware of them. This is eminently the case in fiction, sensitive as a mirror to every contemporary breath. We are deluged with "novels" and "romances," and no very nice distinction is now observed in the nomenclature. Could Fielding revisit Covent Garden, he would be surprised at the publishers' wares. To set a chief character, who was called a hero, roaming on the highway of life; to portray subtle shades of character by speech and action, instead of by analysis; to reserve reflections for the author's lips alone; to describe "adventures," and to give the whimsical or "humorous" free rein, was his method. Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope followed it; George Eliot was the first conspicuous exception. But all of these had a "history" to relate, not a "snapshot" to exhibit. It is far different now. Life is no longer a series of adventures. We are far too scientific and pessimistic for that; and as for a "history," it suggests length.

Take one of our most charming writers, Mr. Anthony Hope. Above all things, he desires not to be heavy. He knows that the railway carriage is often his theatre. Yet even he, the least self-conscious of authors, a true humorist, and a fine artist, is constantly jerky and inconclusive. He eschews description (for which we are devoutly thankful), but he cramps his scene; and, moreover, to accentuate characters that have not free space for movement, he is forced to lend them tricks of expression. Both these weaknesses are evident in one of his later "novels"-Quisanté. To delineate a character by the words and impressions of a few spectators, he is compelled to set that select few constantly meeting, till they should be bored to death of each other's society, and ashamed to look one another in the face; while, to stamp his heroine with a "cue," he has constantly to repeat "May smiled." She must "smile" over thirty times in the single volume. She is the "Cheshire cat" of heroines. These foibles tend in the direction of grimace. Take once more another able writer-the authoress of Richard Calmady. Nobody can accuse her of stinted Its length is colossal. But, none the less, we receive the same cramped impression. It lacks width.

canvas.

We

There is a rich monotony in her passion for descriptions. Her background of sun and trees, with luscious epithets, is so frequently elaborated as to make us half wish that the landscape was blotted out. With all her minute detail there is no room in her circle. seem imprisoned in it. The few persons in her drama are constantly treading on one another's heels. So is it also with another gifted authoress-Mrs. Humphry Ward. A sort of academic Bädeker seems her vade mecum. But the local color of scenery, or of learning, or of society, does not enlarge her horizon. We listen to her lectures in a library-a library, too, where humor is oppressed, and the windows carefully shut; the heavy curtains of cultivation half exclude the light. We long to run out into the fresh air.

So far we are only discussing method. We shall soon approach differences more vital. But it may be as well now, and without multiplying instances, to summarize the various modern methods as briefly as possible.

"Realism" is an unhappy term. Strictly, it is opposed both to "idealism" and to the "unreal." Yet Zola himself has perpetual recourse to the idealist in his photography of statistics. Indeed, he photographs the idealist. Still, to our thinking, nothing can be less "real" than his perpetual insistence on the most sordid side of life. To rake in a gutter for specimens, to catalogue and dissect refuse, does not present a true picture of the big world. And yet the microscope, applied to the disgusting, is constantly dignified by the name of "Realism." The "strength" of such fiction is a misnomer. It tends to a morbid anæmia. It contrasts most unfavorably with the angel's message to Adam and Eve: "Be strong, live happy and love." "Impressionism," again, is another modern catchword. Impressionism ought to mean the vivid suggestion of emotions by associated sights

and even sounds. Sterne and Keats are the greatest impressionists in our language. But the modern poet or novelist find it convenient to be slipshod. A splash here, a dash there, an exclamation everywhere, a flimsy topsyturvydom are covered and condoned by the title. It reminds one of the painter who showed his friend a chef-d'œuvre. "What a beautiful landscape," ejaculated the friend. "Landscape!" indignantly growled the impressionist. "Why, it's a portrait of your uncle."

"Il

The "Problem Novel" is another misleading label. All life is a problem in the sense that it is very hard to understand. One might as well speak of a "Miracle Novel." But the public have been familiarized to understand by the term little more than an infringement of one of the ten commandments. y'en a trop," Sarah Bernhardt is reported to have exclaimed when once importuned by an American as to her views of the "Decalogue." At any rate we have too much of the "problem." Its monotony, as material, checks originality. We suppose that the "novel" is derived from "novellum," the dogLatin for "something new." Where shall we find our novelty then, if more than half of the modern inventiveness, so mechanical in its nature, is engrossed in the "problem." Marriage and love have always engrossed fiction, but the old romance was ante-nuptial; the modern is post-nuptial. It is incessantly now the same story of the discontented wife and the bald-headed bachelor with a past, or the discontented husband and a lady who has been waiting for him; of the strong brutal man, the fascinated feeble matron, the flirting ascetic, or the grass widow. All our makebelieve of scientific lenses only magnifies, it does not create; and if we are to examine a flea, we would rather see it small, otherwise it becomes an appalling monstrosity. But to do the "problem" justice it is occasionally used for