retaining the sense of bareness and gloom which is so continually insisted upon in some New England books, and others, as in the book before us, dwelling lovingly upon the wholesome flavor, pungent yet mellow, which gives New England country life a distinctive charm unlike anything else either in this or the mother-country.  Even the Sunday is pleasant to look back upon to E.H.  Arr; which is probably one instance of the fact that retrospective pleasure is sometimes totally disproportionate to present enjoyment.

The author is more successful in her treatment of landscape than of figures.  Her village people are shown too much under one aspect:  she possesses none of the humor which dares to take the most opposite traits, the grotesque and the beautiful alike, and blend them in a sound, artistic whole.  Her characters are evidently drawn from life, but we miss the many little touches which would make them alive.  An essay on “Old Trees” contains some of the best work in the book, with its charming sketch of an old orchard, bringing to view the twisted trees and even the irregularities of the ground, and to the palate a sharp after-taste of yellowing apples picked up from tufts of matted grass.  After all, the New England of the writer’s bygones does not differ essentially from the New England of to-day, though a more vivid study of life would perhaps have brought out more contrasts between the two.

Books Received.

Homo Sum:  A Novel.  By Georg Ebers.  From the German by Clara Bell.  New
York:  William S. Gottsberger.

Unto the Third and Fourth Generation:  A Study.  By Helen Campbell.  New
York:  Fords, Howard & Hulbert.

Allaooddeen, a Tragedy, and Other Poems.  By the author of “Constance,” etc.  London:  Smith, Elder & Co.

Third-Term Politics:  A Lecture.  By Horace White.  New York:  Independent
Republican Association.

The American Bicycler.  By Charles E. Pratt.  Illustrated.  Boston:  Press of Rockwell & Churchill.

Alva Vine; or, Art versus Duty.  By Henri Gordon.  New York:  American
News Company.