When we find actually embalmed in a book the simple and touching song, “Let me kiss him for his mother,” our first inclination is to take all its merit for granted and hurry by, capping the matter as we pass with the inevitable quotation which also begins with a let me, and refers to making the songs of a people, with infinitive contempt for the adjustment of their laws.  The people for whom Mr. MacKellar’s ballad was made, being young women in ringlets who press the suburban piano, have, we may reasonably hope, small need of the law any how, and we may be pretty sure that the verses which have touched the great popular heart are made in a spirit which is better than any law, even the law of metre.  On reading attentively the poem in question we find a touching theme handled with simplicity, and in a certain sense earning its popular place, though no poem could possibly be so good as the simple fact—­an ancient woman in a hospital at New Orleans arresting the coffin-lid they were placing over a young fever-patient from the North with the natural impulse, “Stop! let me kiss him for his mother!” That little sunbeam of pure feeling, sent straight from the affections of the people, is the real poet in the affair, though Mr. MacKellar has succeeded in investing himself with its simplicity, supporting his subject with tenderness and directness.  When a writer happens, with luck in his theme and luck in his mood, to strike such a keynote, he is astonished in a moment by a mighty and impressive diapason, a whole nation breaking into song at the bid of his whisper.  Mr. MacKellar doubtless would think it strange, and a little hard to be told, that this trifle outweighs the whole bulk, body and sum of his collection.  He is a writer of old acceptance and experience, who began to rhyme long ago in Neal’s Gazette, with “occasional verses” about “no poetry in a hat”—­a question which was bandied, in the fashion of the times, through half a dozen assertions and replies, assisted by voluntaries from the public.  A stage-ride from New York to Singsing at that day was something of an adventure, affording a subject for six cantos, which Neal was doubtless very glad to get for his journal.  Neal’s death, and the parting with Henry Reed and Dr. Kane, with some other local changes, extracted short laments from the author, whose tone is nevertheless usually cheerful and canny; but his ballad is his best.

* * * * *

Books Received.

The Philosophy of Art.  By H. Taine, Professor of Aesthetics and of
History of Art in the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris.  Translated by John
Durand.  Second edition.  Thoroughly revised by the translator.  New
York:  Holt & Williams.

Fleurange:  A Novel.  From the French of Madame Augustus Craven, author of “A Sister’s Story,” “Anne Severin,” etc.  Translated by M.M.R.  New York:  Holt & Williams.

Love is Enough; or, The Freeing of Pharamond.  By William Morris. 
Boston:  Roberts Brothers.