must come to New York, so formerly the New | society in question are very large indeed. They It is in such things, as in the general character of our buildings, that we feel our easy neighborhood across the bridge of steam to the Old World. Such a building as the Union Club House, which was unique when it was erected, showed our growing familiarity with the European models, and our natural adoption of them. There are churches in the city which might have been brought as they stand over the Atlantic bridge. And as it acquires the appearance, New York gains the feeling and the pride of a metropolis. Unhappily, it has its corruptions and its miseries also! The strange vision of the opening of "Edwin Drood" can be seen here also. The life of the darkest passages of "Our Mutual Friend" is not unknown here. Not even Naples could show scenes more repulsive and degrading than may be witnessed here. Whether we owe them to the bridge or to native human nature, or to both, may be a question. Or is she of those who think that clergymen ought not to be well paid? Then she belongs to the class whose opinion is faithfully followed. The clergy are the worst paid body of laborers in the country. They work with ability and zeal. They are educated, sensitive men, often carefully nurtured, and they are expected to be every body's servant, to hold their time and talents at the call of all the whimsical old women of the parish and of the selectmen of the town. They are to preach twice or thrice on Sunday, to lecture and expound during the week, to make parochial calls in sun or storm, to visit the poor, to be the confidant and counselor of a throng, and always in every sermon to be fresh and bright, and always ready to do any public service that may be asked. Of course the clergyman must be chairman of the school committee, and a director of the town library, and president of charitable societies. He can not give a great deal of money for educational and charitable and aesthetic purposes-not a very great deal-but he can always give time, and he can always make a speech, and draw the resolutions, and direct generally. He is, in fact, the town pound to which every else will tolerate upon the pastures and lawns of WHETHER We bear or forbear, it is difficult to appease Mrs. Candour. Her responsibility is incessant, and the world always needs her correc-body may commit the truant fancies that nobody tion. A certain religious society recently decided to give their minister a certain salary, which was apparently larger in the opinion of Mrs. Candour than any minister should receive, and she expressed herself to the effect that no society ought to offer and no clergyman ought to accept so large a sum. Mrs. Candour's impertinence is certainly as striking as her sense of responsibility. What business can it possibly be of hers whether a clergyman, or a lawyer, or a carpenter, or a physician, or a railroad superintendent, or a shoemaker, or a bank president, is paid more or less for his services? It is a purely private arrangement between private persons, and if Mrs. Candour had a quick sense of humor, which we sincerely hope, but are constrained to doubt, and were the editor of a paper, how she would smile if the Easy Chair should gravely remark: "We learn with great pain that the proprietors of the weekly Green Dragon have decided to pay the editor, Mrs. Candour, twenty thousand dollars a year. This is a sum much too large for the proprietors of any journal to offer, and very much more than an editor ought to receive." Does the laborer cease to be worthy of his hire when he enters the editorial room or the pulpit? The facts of the case make this remark of Mrs. Candour's the more comical. The receipts of the And when a man who does his duties of this kind so well that a great deal of money gladly given is the result, and it is proposed that he shall be paid as every chief of every profession is paid, Mrs. Candour exclaims in effect that the alabaster box had better be sold and given to the 1 what Mrs. Candour's is now-that a clergyman should not be well paid. The chaplain was a pauper, and he was treated accordingly. The result was certain. Human nature always re poor. If the good lady is of this opinion, let her advocate the method of the Church of Rome. If she thinks that a minister is a priest of the old dispensation, a part of a complete ecclesiastical system, let his support be made part of the sys-venges itself. If you arbitrarily set apart certain tem. But if she prefers that a minister shall be a man and a citizen, like the rest of us, discharging all the duties of a parent and an equal member of society, and leading the worship of those who invite him to that office-then let him have the same chances and fair play with other men. Now one of the proper aims of other men is a provision for their families; the possibility of saving something for the day of inaction, of ill health, of desertion. If the reward of labor which is offered a clergyman is more generous than Mrs. Candour thinks to be becoming for him-if she insists that, like certain friars of the Roman Church, he shall take the vow of poverty, let her, at least, be as just to her own communion as those of that Church are to theirs. Let her also insist that he shall not marry, that he shall not be left to the mercy of a congregation that may tire of him, and that he shall be supported when he is not in service, or is unable to serve Jonger. Does it occur to Mrs. Candour why the cleverest men hesitate long before they become clergymen? "Yes," said the great leader of a sect in this country, a few years ago, in a convention of his fellow-believers-"yes, you wonder why the standard of the profession seems to decline. I will tell you why. If any brother has a son whom he does not know what to do with, he makes a-minister of him." And if the good lady with whom the Easy Chair is expostulating fears that if there are great prizes in the pulpit the religious character of the teacher will decline, and that the profession will become attractive to merely clever men, she states a good reason for changing the voluntary system, but a very poor one for starving ministers. Nor must she forget to ask herself, on the other hand, whether religion itself gains by identifying its preaching with feeble and timid men. There will, indeed, always be the great, devoted souls who, under any circumstances, in riches, in poverty, in health or sickness, in life or death, will give themselves to the work of the evangelist. But Mrs. Candour is not speaking of them; she speaks of an established profession, like that of editing, in which she is, let us hope, prosperously engaged. If she is morally bound to give her labor for nothing, or to stint her family, when there is plenty of money made by her honest work, she may speak with the fervor of conviction, indeed, if not of persuasion, upon the impropriety of paying a minister well. men as ex officio a peculiarly holy class, and deny them the advantages and chances of other men, they will become servile and mean, and lose the noble spirit of a true man. Mrs. Candour may point to the fat English bishoprics-to such a shameful correspondence as that which Massey records between William Pitt and Dr. Cornwallis, Bishop of Lichfield-and ask if prizes of such a kind are a good thing, and if any thing could more corrupt good men than such chances. Yes, one thing could; and that is sure penury and starvation. But there is no need of fat pulpit appointments. Wherever they exist they will be the objects of intrigue and chicanery. What has that to do with a society giving their minister part of the money that he makes for them? If Mrs. Candour insists that the money should not be made, and that the preaching should be free, the argument is still against her, because infinitely more good can be done by the charitable organizations which the money supports than by mere free preaching. Besides, the money to which she objects founds free churches and sustains free preaching. If she will fall back upon the other system, and have the churches built and the pulpits supported by established funds, then, at least, she would be consistent. But does she think it desirable for the welfare of society that there should be huge ecclesiastical funds? Would she restore the dead hand? Upon the whole, is it better that the priesthood, or the church as such, should hold great properties, and dispose of unlimited money? The voluntary system has, at least, this advantage, that the money is not ecclesiastically held, and while it is the system of her choice, Mrs. Candour has no right to complain of those who are willing to pay to hear a great preacher, and thereby enable countless others to hear preaching, and to be taught and succored for nothing. Her position, indeed, is that of those who sometimes invite a speaker to lecture for the benefit of a charity, who agree to pay the lecturer what he asks, and then ask him to take half as much, giving the rest to the charity. They either think that the lecture is not worth the price agreed upon, or that it is the lecturer's duty to bestow a sum equal to half his fee. The reply to such gentlemen is short: It was a fair bargain; you have profited by it; and what the lecturer does with his part is none of your business. And there really is no other reply to make to Mrs. Candour: Madame, the minister and his friends have made a fine sum of money; but what they will do with it is none of your business, unless they fall to corrupting the public. If Mrs. Candour ever looks into English history she will remember the condition of the country curate and the squire's chaplain a century and a half ago. She will recall the contemptuous manner in which he was treated. Macaulay tells of him. Fielding describes him. The plays But, indeed, there was no need, madame, to have him. He is every where in the literature argue for the reduction of the salaries of clergyof the time, and every where a pitiful figure. men. We hear in no direction of any tendency Whether the portrait of the chaplain be accurate to excess; but we do hear every where of those or not, it certainly faithfully shows the feeling abominations," donation-parties!" Do we make with which he was regarded. And if the feeling donation-parties to other people whom we pay were justified by the character of the men, what honestly for honest service? Are bakers and was the reason that the men were what they lawyers and tailors and doctors surprised by dowere? Because the general opinion was thẹn | nation-parties? They are public confessions of our meanness. If we paid the minister ade-out. If we do not do it next year, what is to quately, why should we abuse the language by become of him? If we do, why not make it a "donating" the necessaries of life to the parson- certainty; in other words, why not, dear Mrs. age? Some kind soul knows that we starve our Candour, raise his salary? And if you, mashepherd, that he is pinched and cramped in his dame, would only issue a tariff or sliding scale, household, that his wife is thinly clad and his so that we might know how much a religious children shabby, and that the man of whom we teacher under different circumstances might propdemand that he should be a model of all the car- erly receive-in fine, whether all boxes, or only dinal virtues is torn with anxious doubts for his the alabaster box, must be sold and given to the family; and that generous soul proposes that we poor-it would be the most valuable service you should club our sugar and butter and help him are ever likely to perform to society. AS in nature, so in life and trade, there are cer- sun bath seems to us little in accordance with tain seasons of hibernation-seasons of rest and of recuperation. Writing in March, with the snow gone from the ground, the ice melted in the river, sleighing a reminiscence of the past, riding a hope of the future, winter with its sports departed, and spring with its life not yet come, only here and there a solitary patch of green to indicate the dormant life beneath the ground, and a solitary note of some too early songster in the trees prophetic of future choirs of the groves, we find in these aspects of nature a curious parallel to those of literature. There are a few new books, and promises of more. But the season of winter production is past, and the season of spring and summer fruits has not yet come; and so since our last writing there is less than usual of remarkable production in the literary world worthy to be recorded. Our book table, which usually spills its monthly accumulation on to surrounding chairs, or even in little piles upon the floor, is not overfull; and of all the books that lie upon it there are few or none that call for any protracted discussion. The most noticeable of them are some really valuable volumes of ESSAYS. WE wish that all our girls would read Dr. DIO LEWIS's last book to them-Our Girls (Harper and Brothers). We wish even more that their mothers would read it. For it is the mother of the period who is responsible for the girl of the period; and the regeneration of society must commence not in the party, but in the home circle. The medical faculty, as a class, we believe, look somewhat suspiciously on all such popular medical or semi-medical writing. The books of Dr. Bellows, Dr. Hall, and Dr. Lewis stand higher with the people than with the physicians. There is a reason for their popularity. Where there is one man who desires to get well, there are a dozen who desire to keep well; and while the physicians will only cure us, having made therapeutics much more of a study than hygiene, Drs. Lewis and Hall and Bellows tell us how we may keep out of their hands altogether. "Our Girls" discusses in a very brief and pithy style almost every theme which touches the physical well-being of girls, and incidentally, of course, a great many of those which affect their moral welfare. The prevailing tone of the book is plainness, simplicity, good commonsense, and a good, hearty hatred of conventionalism in manners and dress. We do not think our author is always practical. His plan of a the real demand of nature, and it certainly would be utterly out of the question for the great majority of our girls. His style is not without serious defects. Repelled by the dry and technical style of most medical books, he falls sometimes into an opposite extreme. If he were more simple, less studiously popular, he would be more effective. But these faults are superficial, and of no importance when weighed against the real merits of a book which, we repeat, we should like to see in the hands of every girl in the land, and, yet more, read and pondered by their mothers. Ir must be a year or more since Ginx's Baby (George Routledge and Sons) first appeared in England, where its keen discussion of social problems too little comprehended, and its sharp satire of abuses too generally concealed from public view, rendered it for a time the book of the season. It now crosses the Atlantic and appears in a first American edition. Ginx's baby is the thirteenth child of an English navvy, whose previous twelve are more than he can support. So Ginx abandons him to a Roman Catholic nunnery, which assumes charge of him. A quarrel for the possession of the unfortunate ensues between Romanist and Protestant; but when no more religious capital is to be made out of him he is abandoned to the parish. Of two adjoining parishes, on whose boundary line he is found, neither will assume charge of him, and a parochial lawsuit follows, the final result of which is that he is a second time cast upon the street, to be picked up on the door-steps of a club, and made the theme of a protracted political discussion. Finally, after a few years of vagabond life, he commits suicide, leaving unsolved the problem, What shall be done with Ginx's baby? The book is a satire, not a romance; its interest is for the philosopher rather than the novel-reader. Yet its style compels even the careless reader to be for the moment a philosopher, and to ponder temporarily problems to which he has before, perhaps, never given a thought. The church, the parish, and the state are subjected in turn to keen satire, not always fair or impartial, but always with a sufficient admixture of truth and fairness to make the satire powerful. The problem of what to do with Ginx's baby presses more directly and heavily on Great Britain than on America; but it were well for us to consider it seriously now while its solution is comparatively easy, not wait, as Great Britain has done, till its bloodless solution becomes well-nigh impos- | you-when you stand, as before long you must, sible. if you live, where I stand to-day. That is Mr. Barnes's "Life at Threescore-and-Ten❞—a book of kindly, genial, cheerful, yet sacredly solemn thoughts, that will be dear to all who loved Mr. Barnes, and ought to be useful to many that never knew him. The Pilgrim and the Shrine (G. P. Putnam and Son) is a book of theology in guise of a story. Albert Ainslie, B. A., begins life as a student of the Church of England. The opening chapter reveals the result of theological study in his case-a result not uncommon in minds more Ad Clerum, by Rev. JOSEPH PARKER, D.D. independent than well-balanced-he has become (Roberts Brothers), is a novelty in theological skeptical. He has a hard struggle between hon-literature, being a remarkably entertaining volestly following out his new belief, or rather dis-ume, over which laymen as well as clergymen belief, and the course quite as often pursued, of may find at once food for reflection and provostifling his doubts, and accepting and preaching cation adequate for many a hearty laugh, albeit a conventional theology which does not secure it is a book of counsel addressed by a clergyman his cordial assent. He follows the former course, to young clergymen just entering the ministry. leaves home, escapes the restraints of society Those readers who are familiar with "Ecce by travel, and, traveling, still pursues the same Deus" will not be surprised to find in a volume doubts, abides still in the same skepticism. The issuing from the same pen some remarkably end of the book leaves him in this cloud-land of sound, and a great deal of very suggestive thought. disbelief, yet apparently contented with it. He But they may, perhaps, be surprised to find a disavows all belief in even the moral infallibility book of such fresh, genuine humor combined of the Bible. He thinks that the difference be- with so much good, solid sense. The author distween pantheist and theist is a difference of tem- cusses the customary themes in treatises on perament. Always a pilgrim, he reaches no homiletics and pastoral theology—earnestness, shrine, but still wanders on to the end. In a naturalness, delivery, textual divisions, pastoral word, the "Pilgrim and the Shrine" is an ad- theology, and the like-but in a way as little mirable statement of modern unbelief, written like the customary treatises as can be imagapparently by one who has not only passed ined. If we were a minister, there are several through it, but is content to abide in it; an chapters we should want published separately as interior view, therefore, and hence well worth tracts for distribution among our people. Bethe study of those teachers of mankind whose ing a layman, we have sent our copy to our minbusiness it is to acquaint themselves with every ister. form of belief and unbelief, that they may know how to deal therewith; an exceedingly fascinating book, and hence not one to be recommended to any man with whom the study of skepticism is not either a passion or a duty. It is clever, brilliant, graceful, thoughtful; but a book to chill enthusiasm, deaden faith, dwarf the spiritual nature, and cast the reader out of any and every sure anchorage on to the unknown sea of universal doubt and unbelief. It is a book of valuable, though not always fair, criticism on the religious creeds of the age; but it makes absolutely no affirmative contribution to the religious thoughts of the present, or the religious aspirations of the fu ture. While the author of "Ecce Deus" devotes a volume to instructions to the clergy, the author of "Ecce Homo," J. R. SEELYE, M. A., devotes one of the most interesting papers in his last volume, Lectures and Essays (Roberts Brothers), to the same subject. We account this essay as the most interesting in his volume, because it does more than either of the others to solve the question respecting the author's religious, or rather theological, status, raised by his former remarkable work. He avows himself distinctly a member of the Broad-Church party. He believes in church and state, but a church bound to no political party, and restrained by no definite creed. He believes that, "in a Christian country, to disLife at Threescore-and-Ten (American Tract credit Christianity is to discredit morality;" but Society) does not depend for its interest upon he complains of the ministers' "inveterate habit the fact that it is one of the latest works of Mr. of resting morality upon the Bible." He pleads Barnes. The very conception is novel. An old for the church, and exalts the importance of the man draws near his grave. He has lived through clergy, but he criticises sharply, though courteousnearly three-quarters of a century of intense ac- ly, their customary methods of instruction. He tivity, of immense changes in civil and social seems to desire to substitute ethical for theologand religious life. He has been himself a man ical instruction, yet declares, "I am not one of of ceaseless activity, not least among those who those who think that theology can be dispensed have contributed to make the age what it is. But with." On the whole, we are not sure but that now the time has come when he can do no more, Professor Seelye's avowed creed leaves the reader plan no more. He looks back upon life. His as much perplexed concerning his theological future is in eternity. Yet this, a mournful, or at position as did his concealed declaration of faith least a measurably sad, reflection to most men, in "Ecce Homo." The essay on Roman impeis not sad to him. He is not afraid to realize rialism is an admirable specimen of philosophic the fact, to know that he is old, and can do and writing on history. The other essays are on plan no more. He perceives that life at seventy Milton, and on certain phases of education. wears a different appearance from life at seven- The book is characterized by the same remarkteen. He sees through this new atmosphere ably pure English, by the same clearness and some aspects of life, finds in it some lessons that terseness of expression, by the same commingled boyhood, youth, mature and active manhood, force and calmness, which made "Ecce Homo" never could discover for itself. Come, my chil- as remarkable in a literary as it was in a theologdren, says this patriarch, let me tell you how ical point of view. There is the same admirable life looks at threescore years and ten; how it insight into the spirit of the age, as in the statemust look to you-what, at least, it must be toment that, "As idleness was the besetting sin VOL. XLII.-No. 252.-59 of the last age, industry is the besetting sin of inally a part of the environing states, it is practhe present;" the same paradoxical assertions, tically dissevered from them. The mountains, and singular non sequiturs too, as, in speaking lakes, and rivers, which in our common geograof a certain style of oratory, “It would be rarely phies fill up this terra incognita, are conjectural pathetic, because it would be above all things hon- merely. The book before us is a translation of the est." Taken as a whole, it is a book of remark-record of a journey by M. Morelet through this ably suggestive thoughts, and worth careful read-region, a journey of "upward of three hundred ing. BIOGRAPHY AND TRAVELS. Ir is difficult to know how such a book as WASHBURN'S History of Paraguay (Lee and Shepard) should be classed. It is part history, part biography, part political and personal controversy. There is a good deal more of it than the general public will care to read, or, indeed, than they could read with much real profit. Mr. Washburn begins with a history of Paraguay from the days of Sebastian Cabot, in the sixteenth century. The first volume brings that history down to the commencement of the war between Lopez and Brazil in 1864-65. The first word of the table of contents of the first chapter-"personal" -intimates the character of the second volume. It contains an elaborate and detailed account of the war, a revelation of the secret history of the diplomacy in which the author bore a prominent part, and a fuller account of a personal controversy between Mr. Washburn and certain naval officers stationed on the coast than is either profitable or pleasant reading. The size of the work debars it from the general reading public, while its personal and controversial character takes from it that appearance of impartiality which is indispensable to a standard history for reference. leagues, in considerable part performed on foot, and under difficulties and exposures of a formidable character." The theme itself is one which only rare genius for dullness could make uninteresting. But M. Morelet has no genius for dullness. He has the Frenchman's vivacity. In a scientific point of view his volume is only indirectly valuable. But as a book of adventure it is certainly entertaining; and as a disclosure of a new and unknown land it is exceedingly instructive. FICTION. ONE of the most peculiar novels of the season, whether judged as a story simply, or from an artistic point of view, is Earl's Dene (Harper and Brothers). The motive of the story, says the writer, R. E. FRANCILLON, is the power of circumstance, and the way in which it entered into conflict with the wills, impulses, and characters of certain men and women. The initial circumstance of the story is a winter torrent in one of the passes of the Jura, in France, which causes the death of the Marquis of Croisville, and the separation of his wife and child from each other, and which, remote as it may seem, affects for many years the lives of several of the inhabitants of a quiet English town. Out of this grow, on the one hand, the poverty of Felix, his acquaintance with Angélique, his struggles in London, and finally his restoration to his mother and his heritage; and, on the other, the high expectations of Hugh Lester, continuing just long enough to unfit him for any other career than that of a gentleman of leisure, his connection with Mark Warden, and his tragical end. Mark Warden, in a remarkable way, illustrates the influence of poverty upon a man of brains, who is at the same time selfish and aspiring, and whom every struggle, however successful, hardens. His early marriage with Marie, though merely nominal, yet as standing afterward in his way, and thwarting him at the most critical moment of his career, and in its sad influence over Marie's life, shows the power of circumstance even in the guise of a nominis umbra, and also serves to develop the worst and best points respectively of these two characters, the most important in the story. Earl's Dene itself is the central circumstance of all, the prize contended for both by Warden and AnIt is rarely the case that we have taken up gélique, who in the contest, which is won by neia book of travels so appetizing as that of the ther, sacrifice what is best in them, and finally chevalier ARTHUR MORELET-Travels in Cen- their lives. The novel is an exceedingly intertral America, including Accounts of some Regions esting one, though it has neither hero nor herunexplored since the Conquest (Leypoldt, Holt, oine. Any one of its characters, as the author and Williams). The region he has undertaken confesses at the outset, may, "in one form or to explore is the central part of Central America, another, fall within the range of a very limited a region," says Mr. Squier in his introduction, experience." But, though always plausible, and "almost as unknown as the interior of Africa it- removed as far as possible from the sensational, self." Since the adventurous march of Cortéz it numbers among its incidents a disastrous torfrom Mexico into Honduras no civilized traveler rent, a narrow escape from fire, two duels, alhas undertaken to pass through its labyrinthian most a suicide, and almost a murder. It is unforests, and scale the precipitous sides of its al- exceptionably well written. The great fault of most absolutely inaccessible mountains. Nom-"Earl's Dene" is that the author analyzes too The Life of John Adams (J. B. Lippincott and Co.) is a new edition of an old work, taken here out of its previous connection with the published works of John Adams, and presented in a form comely and attractive. The theme of which it treats rather the era with which it is concerned-makes it a standard contribution to American history; and its authorship-commenced as it was by JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, and completed by CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS-is a sufficient guarantee of its literary merit. The fathers were not infallible; and while a consideration of their purposes and intents may be conclusive upon a court in deciding what the constitution is, it is very far from conclusive upon the country in determining what law and public policy should be. Nevertheless, in this age of politicians it is not only refreshing, it is healthful in every way, to go back to the age which was prolific in statesmen, study their lives, and live in communion with them. And this such a work as the one before us enables us to do. 66 |