A Year in Eden, by Harriet Waters Preston, is a chronicle of New England life, and is full of the elaborate subtlety of the American school of fiction.  The Eden in question is the little village of Pierpont, and the Eve of this provincial paradise is a beautiful girl called Monza Middleton, a fascinating, fearless creature, who brings ruin and misery on all who love her.  Miss Preston writes an admirable prose style, and the minor characters in the book are wonderfully lifelike and true.

The Englishwoman’s Year-Book contains a really extraordinary amount of useful information on every subject connected with woman’s work.  In the census taken in 1831 (six years before the Queen ascended the Throne), no occupation whatever was specified as appertaining to women, except that of domestic service; but in the census of 1881, the number of occupations mentioned as followed by women is upwards of three hundred and thirty.  The most popular occupations seem to be those of domestic service, school teaching, and dressmaking; the lowest numbers on the list are those of bankers, gardeners, and persons engaged in scientific pursuits.  Besides these, the Year-Book makes mention of stockbroking and conveyancing as professions that women are beginning to adopt.  The historical account of the literary work done by Englishwomen in this century, as given in the Year-Book, is curiously inadequate, and the list of women’s magazines is not complete, but in all other respects the publication seems a most useful and excellent one.

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Wordsworth, in one of his interesting letters to Lady Beaumont, says that it is ’an awful truth that there neither is nor can be any genuine enjoyment of poetry among nineteen out of twenty of those persons who live or wish to live in the broad light of the world—­among those who either are, or are striving to make themselves, people of consideration in society,’ adding that the mission of poetry is ’to console the afflicted; to add sunshine to daylight by making the happy happier; to teach the young and the gracious of every age to see, to think, and feel, and, therefore, to become more actively and securely virtuous.’  I am, however, rather disposed to think that the age in which we live is one that has a very genuine enjoyment of poetry, though we may no longer agree with Wordsworth’s ideas on the subject of the poet’s proper mission; and it is interesting to note that this enjoyment manifests itself by creation even more than by criticism.  To realise the popularity of the great poets, one should turn to the minor poets and see whom they follow, what master they select, whose music they echo.  At present, there seems to be a reaction in favour of Lord Tennyson, if we are to judge by Rachel and Other Poems, which is a rather remarkable little volume in its way.  The poem that gives its title to the book is full of strong lines and good images; and, in spite of its Tennysonian echoes, there is something attractive in such verses as the following: