before the fall of Quebec. It is not necessary to have read the previous volumes of the series to enjoy thoroughly this one; and we heartily commend it as true not only to the outside facts of history, which have been evidently studied with painstaking regard for accuracy, but also to human nature. There is religion in it, but no cant, and the religion could not have been left out, without marring the historic truth of the picture. There is besides in the book a solid sense of what constitutes the elements of strong character, and a boy will find here not only plenty of adventure but the constant suggestion of a sturdy manliness. We hope the Forest Glen Series will stretch out to the crack of doom if it can always hold such excellent books. -It is not a little singular that agriculture, which is surely a time-honored occupation of mankind, should be one in regard to which there is so little exact knowledge. The number of questions still in doubt is simply enormous; opinions vary concerning the best fertilizers to use, the best way of applying them, the best crops to raise, etc.; it is only necessary to read any one of the Massachusetts Agricultural Reports to see how much in the dark the scientific farmer still is. There is no lack of experiments; every farmer is forever trying to solve the questions that occur to him, but the uncertainty remains, although there are signs of light within the last few years. Books on agriculture are often unsatisfactory. At times, the information given is buried beneath a load of more or less dramatic conversation, perhaps delightful to the farmer whose reading consists of but little more than the almanac, but wearisome to almost any one else. Mr. Allen's book 1 has not this fault; it is a very clear and precise account of the way in which he succeeded in bee-raising. His methods need not be told here. Those who can try the experiment will find in this book all the needed information intelligently given, and they will have but to follow his advice, with as close an imitation of his energy and constant care as may be possible. Intelligence and persistence are, and always will be, the farmer's main aid. Without them all books are useless, and with them an enormous deal may be done on even the most exhausted farms in New England. 1 The Blessed Bees. By JOHN ALLEN New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1878. FRENCH AND GERMAN. Mr. Hillebrand is an intelligent writer, as we have had frequent occasion to say, and the reader is kept always interested, as well by the great variety of subjects that he is competent to treat as by his manner of treating them. He writes well in German, French, and English; he has a special knowledge of Italian subjects; and there is nothing he undertakes to discuss on which he does not throw some light. That he throws all the light that is desirable cannot be affirmed; there is about his judgments at times a certain narrowness and harshness -not in the way of being too sensitive to faults, but of not always accurately distinguishing between what is good and what not so good that disappoint the reader. But, on the whole, his volumes are entertaining, for Mr. Hillebrand is a practiced writer; and they are instructive, for he is a thorough student. The volume2 before us to-day contains an interesting series of essays on Doudan's and Balzac's letters, on Daniel Stern's Memoirs, and on Buloz and Thiers. These are followed by two chapters on Renan as a philosopher, and Taine as a historian. There are some essays on Italian subjects; the whole concluding with four papers on Machiavelli, Rabelais, Tasso, and Milton. At the beginning, Mr. Hillebrand discusses with considerable warmth an essayist's right to publish in a single volume scattered essays that have appeared in various periodicals. That there should be any question about this seems strange, and certainly this form of reaching the public is too common in France and England to be objected to at the present day. Its advantages are obvious; but few periodicals are read by every one, and essays published in those few are sometimes too good to be left in clumsy volumes against the day when the reader shall have both time and inclination to hunt them up, and especially to do that in public libraries, for lack of house-room prevents most people from binding all their old magazines. In Germany, too, volumes of collected essays are tolerably frequent. Julian Schmidt publishes them often, and so do, one would think, enough other German writers to make the fashion widely recognized. As a general thing, probably, 2 Zeiten, Völker, und Menschen. Von KARL HILLEBRAND. 4ter Band. Profile. Berlin: Oppenheim. 1878 it is the lack of smoothness and unity of the essays that is the most serious objection to their republication. There is no difficulty of the kind here, however, as we have already said, and the essays are worthy of preservation, especially since it is in part a foreign public that will read them. That on Doudan does him more justice than he has got from many of his reviewers. There is no objection made to his humor or to his criticism, - both of these have been attacked in print more frequently, one is safe in saying, than by private readers, and he is discreetly appreciated. The article is a very slight one, however, giving the merest glimpse of what is to be found in Doudan's letters. Here, as elsewhere, we notice one of the objections to this method of writing, the brevity of the essay. This is also, in a way, a virtue, but it has its bad side, when, without any warning, the reader comes suddenly upon the end of an article when he imagines himself not much more than half-way through. This air of being bitten off is doubtless given by the editor's relentless shears, and so was unavoidable; but it is without grace. The paper on Balzac suffers from it to a much greater extent. Mr. Hillebrand had undertaken, with the recently published correspondence for a text, to put together a brief life of the great novelist, from the information he had derived from a great number of separate sources. This was an excellent plan, and it is well carried out, so that the reader has put before him a very full and accurate image of Balzac's elusive personality. The letters are shown to be important, whereas many reviewers had blamed them for not telling more about their writer's method of composition (as if an author could ever explain the way he was possessed by his genius!), and all the dignity and simplicity of Balzac's character receive the acknowledgment which is their due. It is impossible, however, to agree with the reviewer's praise of the would-be humor of Balzac's early letters. It has an artificial, willful sound, as of horse-play, which his sister, if she had been a wiser woman, would have taken pains to correct. Balzac was a great man, but facetiousness was not his strong point, and nowhere is this plainer than in his letters. Renan comes in for the warmest commendation as the "representative of the best part of his whole generation," a statement which, it will be observed, is throwing down the glove to pretty nearly his whole generation, for they would never give their votes to this representative. Of course this opinion may not be final, and Mr. Hillebrand may be right, after all, in calling Renan, "in the most distinctive sense, the man of his time," whose "works give the truest and most beautiful expression to the feelings of the time." The numerical majority does not always give expression to the feelings of an age; these are to be found rather in the mouths of some few leaders, who utter what will be the commonplaces of the succeeding multitude; but it will be a curious thing if Renan's strong, self-conscious devotion to an aristocracy ever becomes a popular principle. Until this shall happen he must remain a reactionary, struggling against the theories and practice of his time, unable and unwilling to approve of the course of events. He may be right, but it is not easy, under these circumstances, to call him a representative of the time; if he is one, he is very independent of his constituents. However, this is not a matter which can be settled off-hand in this way, and it is mentioned here mainly as an example of the sort of unconventional statement that continually calls upon the reader to pause and consider just how far he agrees with the writer. Another instance is the article on Rabelais, in which Mr. Hillebrand gives his reasons for not liking that famous man. He brings up his obvious faults, and fails to see enough to redeem them; in short, when we have said that he does not like Rabelais we have said all that there is to be said, and what many will agree with. The volume is full of intelligent remarks on a great variety of subjects which are of general interest, and it is well written. - Pêle-Mêle 1 is the title of a little book of poems, written by a French Canadian, and published in Montreal. The author, M. Louis Fréchette, a native of Canada, has collected a number of poems of very different kinds and of varying degrees of merit, written some as long ago as 1859 and 1860, and others only last year. The phrase "of varying degrees of merit " has no invidious meaning, for all the difference, or rather the main difference, between the poems is in the importance of the subject. Some were written merely as trifles to grace unimportant matters of temporary interest; but these are all neatly done, with a touch of the poetical feeling that distinctly marks the more serious verses. Certain of the lat 1 Pêle-Mêle: Fantaisies et Souvenirs Poétiques. Par LOUIS H. FRECHETTE. Montreal: Lovell. 1877. ter are not perfectly clear; but we gather from them that the author quitted Canada for political reasons, and that he took refuge in Chicago. Without pretending to solve this matter, it will be enough to say that the result has been the writing of some poetry far above the general run of the article in that famous city, which has not yet rivaled Weimar as a home of literature. The little poem Reminiscor, for instance, which is one of the most charming of the collection, has Chicago for its birthplace. It treats of a subject not wholly unfamiliar to those who know French literature,- -a poet's reminiscence of the time when he was a student; but it would be hard to find a more charming, a more truly poetical treatment of the subject than this which M. Fréchette dedicates to a friend of his : "Ah! je l'aime encor ce temps de bohême, "Oui, je l'aime encor ce temps de folie Où le vieux Cujas, vaincu par Musset, S'en allait cacher sa mélancolie Dans l'ombre où d'ennui Pothier moisissait. "J'aime le passé, qu'il chante ou soupire, The veritable Quartier Latin has not often been more gracefully sung. "Te souvient-il bien de nos promenades, Quand, flâneurs oisifs, les cheveux au vent, Où l'on nous lançait maint coup-d'œil savant? "Tout était pour nous sujet d'amusettes; Sans le sou parfois, mais toujours contents, Nous suivions aussi le pas des fillettes . . . Nous vendions des points à Roger Bontemps." The poet who writes so neatly about these light subjects can also strike a more solemn note, as in the following beginning of a poem entitled Le 1er Janvier:'Vents qui secouez les branches pendantes Des sapins neigeux au front blanchissant; Such pieces as Renouveau, La Louisianaise, A Anna-Marie, Vielle Histoire, Les Oiseaux Blancs, and Au Bord du Lac show another sort of facility which too often, although not here, becomes affectation. The sonnets, too, are very graceful. In short, the manliness and simplicity of the poems are very attractive, and although in his gleaning the poet has brought together some slight pieces, there are many more of real poetical worth. It is a volume which is a real addition to literature of the lighter sort. -We have also a book of prose by another Canadian, M. Napoléon Legendre, entitled Echos de Québec. It consists, apparently, of a number of chroniques from some French paper of that city, and naturally the number of subjects taken up for discussion is large and varied. The brief space allowed the writer has too often forbidden the full discussion of the subjects he has chosen, but at other times he manages to crowd into a very small compass considerable information. The article on Canadian literature, for instance, throws a good deal of light on what, judging from the books before us, is less well known than it deserves, and we cannot close without expressing our best wishes and hopes for its future. Certainly it is much to the credit of the French Canadians that they nourish so genuine a love of letters as these books testify to, and that they give such meritorious proof of their interest in literature. 1 Echos de Québec. Par NAPOLEON LEGENDRE Québec: Cote et Cie. 1877. Two vols I HE ATLANTIC PORTRAITS. LONGFELLOW, BRYANT, LOWELL, AND WHITTIER. The above are reduced heliotype reproductions of the four life-size portraits of distinguished American Poets which are offered to subscribers and purchasers of the ATLANTIC MONTHLY, for One Dollar each. They are the work of Mr. F. E. Baker, one of the best crayon artists in America, and if sold alone would be held at a very much higher price than they can now be obtained at in connection with the ATLANTIC. For full particulars, including the hearty indorsements of such competent judges as DR. O. W. HOLMES, R. W. EMERSON, C. D. WARNER, T. B. ALDRICH, G. W. CURTIS, BAYARD TAYLOR, and others, see the opposite page. ter are not perfectly clear; but we gather from them that the author quitted Canada for political reasons, and that he took refuge in Chicago. Without pretending to solve this matter, it will be enough to say that the result has been the writing of some poetry far above the general run of the article in that famous city, which has not yet rivaled Weimar as a home of literature. The little poem Reminiscor, for instance, which is one of the most charming of the collection, has Chicago for its birthplace. It treats of a subject not wholly unfamiliar to those who know French literature, poet's reminiscence of the time when he was a student; but it would be hard to find a more charming, a more truly poetical treatment of the subject than this which M. Fréchette dedicates to a friend of his : "Ah! je l'aime encor ce temps de bohême, "Oui, je l'aime encor ce temps de folie Où le vieux Cujas, vaincu par Musset, S'en allait cacher sa mélancolie -a Dans l'ombre où d'ennui Pothier moisissait. "J'aime le passé, qu'il chante ou soupire, The veritable Quartier Latin has not often been more gracefully sung. "Te souvient-il bien de nos promenades, Quand, flâneurs oisifs, les cheveux au vent, Où l'on nous lançait maint coup-d'oeil savant? "Tout était pour nous sujet d'amusettes ; Sans le sou parfois, mais toujours contents, Nous suivions aussi le pas des fillettes... Nous vendions des points à Roger Bontemps." The poet who writes so neatly about these light subjects can also strike a more solemn note, as in the following beginning of a poem entitled Le ler Janvier:'Vents qui secouez les branches pendantes Des sapins neigeux au front blanchissant; La cloche a jeté ses sanglots d'airain". . . etc. Such pieces as Renouveau, La Louisianaise, A Anna-Marie, Vielle Histoire, Les Oiseaux Blancs, and Au Bord du Lac show another sort of facility which too often, although not here, becomes affectation. The sonnets, too, are very graceful. In short, the manliness and simplicity of the poems are very attractive, and although in his gleaning the poet has brought together some slight pieces, there are many more of real poetical worth. It is a volume which is a real addition to literature of the lighter sort. -We have also a book of prose by another Canadian, M. Napoléon Legendre, entitled Echos de Québec. It consists, apparently, of a number of chroniques from some French paper of that city, and naturally the number of subjects taken up for discussion is large and varied. The brief space allowed the writer has too often forbidden the full discussion of the subjects he has chosen, but at other times he manages to crowd into a very small compass considerable information. The article on Canadian literature, for instance, throws a good deal of light on what, judging from the books before us, is less well known than it deserves, and we cannot close without expressing our best wishes and hopes for its future. Certainly it is much to the credit of the French Canadians that they nourish so genuine a love of letters as these books testify to, and that they give such meritorious proof of their interest in literature. 1 Echos de Québec. Par NAPOLEON LEGENDRE Québec: Coté et Cie. 1877. Two vols |