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become tedious, although for a change Ulbach is pleasant enough. He has no great power, but there is a kindliness of heart about him, and an intention of doing good by his work, that are rare and attractive qualities. This novel certainly, slight as it is, cannot fail to please those who do not crave the most highly spiced fiction.

-Those who want fiction of the spiced kind have probably read Mario Uchard's L'Etoile de Jean,1 as it appeared last year in the Revue des Deux Mondes. Uchard is of course not one of the greatest of living novelists, and perhaps he will be best known to posterity as the husband of Madeleine Brohan, and the man who is supposed to have introduced bits of his autobiography into a play he wrote for the Théâtre Français about twenty years ago. Yet this novel is entertaining enough, as novels go. It is as artificial a story as ever was beaten out of a writer's brains, but it keeps the reader's attention fastened while he has the book open before him; it is only when he has finished that he will feel any discontent with the writer's method, and even then his discontent will not be of a very serious kind. The hero, whose family relations are of an extremely complicated kind, has been a soldier on the Southern side during our war, and he has brought back with him that phlegmatic nature which is the distinguishing trait of all good Yankees. The evil angel of the book is a young woman of gypsy blood from Cincinnati, who has married the eminent General O'Donor. She is known as Lady O'Donor. We have no cause for complaint, however, for there is similar inexactness in the way that noble dame wanders about France in a boy's dress, without exciting surprise even when she calls upon a respectable family. "The originality of Lady O'Donor was a satisfactory explanation of a visit to Brittany in this disguise." In fact, the scene of the novel is set in the civilized fairy-land which is familiar to the readers of French stories. The principal interest of the story hangs upon the escape of a young girl from her mother, who is anxious to make her marry a man against her will. By a singular coincidence, Henry Gréville's Marier sa Fille has just the same plot.

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three or is it four?- novels a year, it is impossible to notice every one of her books, which, moreover, appear in English about as soon as they do in French. Certainly Marier sa Fille 2 is an entertaining story. The heroine and the hero stand out in bold relief against the setting of their disreputable surroundings, and there is a great deal of humor in the talk of all the people. In short, the writer's cleverness cannot be questioned, and there will be but few, it is fair to say, who will object to the goodnatured way in which the good people are rewarded for their virtue by a comfortable income, although the generous gift on the part of the author is like the way in which amiable hostesses cram the pockets of their neighbors' children with sweetmeats when they leave the house. The question of its fitness for translation does not fairly come up here, but it may be well to wonder whether the array of vicious relations and habits that makes the merit of the story is exactly what careful parents would like to place in the hands of young girls. So long as a book stays in the original French, it is, so to speak, behind a door, in the bookcase, possibly, but yet not under the hand; when it is translated, it tempts the youngest readers, who will not be much improved by premature knowledge of vicious society. Other readers, however, will find the book agreeable.

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The four books just discussed bear the mark of being manufactured to suit the public rather than that of being the utterances of writers who were burdened with something to say, and it is a pleasure to turn to a volume of such real merit as Paul Heyse's last volume of collected stories, entitled Das Ding an sich. When it is mentioned that this is the twelfth volume of Heyse's short stories, it will be seen how practiced a writer he is. He has done well, too, to confine himself so exclusively to short stories. He has twice tried to write long novels, and the Kinder der Welt and Im Paradise serve to show what a fist he made of it. It is hard to say which of the two is the poorer. Im Paradise has been translated, and has received the flattery that is more the due of the German empire and of the German army than of the distasteful and long-winded novel itself. In his short stories, however, Heyse fully deserves all

3 Das Ding an sich und andere. Novellen. Von PAUL HEYSE. Berlin: Um. Hertz. 1879.

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the praise that he has got, and more. the four that form this volume there is not one that is poor. They should not be translated, because here, as in other instances, Heyse has chosen subjects which stand outside of our conventional propriety. Yet he writes with such delicacy of feeling, with such true modesty, that he cannot seriously pain the grown-up reader. Possibly the best of the four is the one called Zwei Gefangene. This tells with great simplicity the story of a young man and a young woman who meet at the theatre, where is given a representation of Schiller's Kabale und Liebe. They fall into conversation, and it appears that the youth of both has been sacrificed to the claims of duty. Then arises in both - and it is very naturally told — the longing for a taste of the joys of life, and, to put it grossly into a single sentence, they run off together. He is a priest, that is to say, he is a sort of innocent Fra Filippo Lippi, who has come into some money, and they propose coming to this country to be married. On their way he

meets at Hamburg a woman who makes him untrue, and the tale ends tragically. This, it will be seen, is not a plot that Miss Mulock, for instance, would have chosen, but no one can read the story without seeing the hand of a master in the way it is told. There is another story, equally sad, of a young officer who falls in love with a young girl; and the one that gives the title to the book, though possibly a trifle spun out, shows us, what indeed is nothing new, how worthy a writer Paul Heyse is. He has many of the qualities of a great novelist, and if he is better at writing tales than at writing long novels, he is not to be despised on that account, any more than is Meissonier, for choosing small canvases.

Heyse has very delicate feeling, and he writes in a really charming style, which is what few German authors do. This volume cannot fail to be read with pleasure by those who like good work. Good storywriters are rare even nowadays, when every one tries his or her hand at some form of novel.

EDUCATION.

THE collegiate education of women is to have a partial trial at, or more correctly near, Harvard. The college authorities, it is well known, have steadily refused to admit women upon the same footing with men, but have indicated their interest in the problem by lending their aid to what is known as the Harvard examination for women. Meanwhile Girton and Newnham Hall have been founded at the English Cambridge, with the clear purpose of making use of the academic advantages of the university, and a movement is reported on foot for trying the same experiment even more closely at Oxford. Possibly these English trials have given greater confidence to Harvard; possibly, too, the individual experience of professors at Harvard has demonstrated the capabilities of young women to carry forward college courses with perseverance and the true scientiæ sacra fames. At any rate, an ingenious and yet simple scheme has been devised by which the collegiate education of women may be secured at Cambridge; not in the university

itself, and not in the name of Harvard, but under conditions which are identical, so far as teachers go, with those governing the young men. A young woman could at any time, if regardless of expense, have come to Cambridge, resided there four years, and pursued as a private pupil of various professors the studies which a collegian followed before taking his degree; but she would have had the immense disadvantage of solitary study and solitary recitation. What is now proposed is the formation of classes of young women, doing this same thing, with the advantage of a division of expenses and the stimulus of society.

The machinery of this college running on parallel lines with Harvard is very simple. Seven ladies, well known in Cambridge and elsewhere from their position as members of professors' households, constitute a board of management, having also for secretary a gentleman unconnected with Harvard, and their function is to secure suitable lodgings for the students, to assist them with advice and other friendly offices, and to bring to

gether the professors and students, organize the classes, and establish the tariff of fees. The courses followed must be those of Harvard, but it is only recommended, not required, that a complete course of four years should be undertaken. The management has of course no power to give degrees, and Harvard, being officially ignorant of these students, will give none; in place, certificates will be given, signed by the instructors, when any course has been satisfactorily followed, and in the case of a four years' study the certificates will be merged in one and signed by all the instructors. It is hoped that the expense of tuition for each pupil will not exceed four hundred dollars a year, and that it may fall as low as two hundred and fifty dollars. The hint is thrown out that endowments may be looked for which will still further reduce expenses.

The practical difficulties of instruction appear to gather chiefly about the courses in those studies which require laboratory work. There is no deficiency of apparatus at Harvard, and a way may be found by which it may do double service, as well as the professors who employ it; but if not, the elementary instruction, which is all that many require, does not call for elaborate or very costly appointments, and it is not likely that a difficulty of this kind would be suffered to spoil the scheme. The splendid library is already accessible to all, without distinction, for consultation, and to such as the authorities approve for borrowing; there are certain lecture courses to which ladies are admitted, and in short the material for collegiate education is ready and capable in large part of duplicate use; it only needs that the individual pupils, who have hitherto availed themselves of it in a desultory fashion, should be increased in number and organized economically.

Supposing this plan carried out as proposed, will it constitute practically a college for women? Will the young women who encamp under the walls of Harvard secure all the advantages of their brothers who look down upon them from within the sacred inclosure? Wherein would it differ from the regular Harvard? In the first place, there would be the absence of all the compulsion which, under many forms, exists for the young men; the supervision by the board of management would be purely advisory; there would be, we suppose, no such thing as comparative rank, but each would run against time; the stimulus of a degree would be wanting; the

comradery, in the absence of dormitories and class associations and college sports, would be reduced to a very small point, and the whole competitive system, with its prizes and honors, would be left out of consideration. Now, it is undoubtedly true that the young women who entered on this purely intellectual course would be those only who were impelled by the noble thirst for learning, and that the very absence of all the engaging circumstance of college life would exclude those who regarded that as the chief pleasure of the four years' career at Cambridge. Nevertheless, this indefinable something which makes college other and more than the bare intercourse of studious minds cannot be left out of the account. A college for men never will be resolved into the simple relation of teacher and taught. The traditions which have grown up may be modified and refined, but the experience of every collegian shows him how largely his character and destiny have been the result of the countless streams which have made his four years at college green and fertile. Therefore, admirable as this step is, we cannot look upon it as final or sufficient. It is valuable chiefly for what it may prove and what it may develop. It is too early to say what kind of scholastic life would be unfolded were such a scheme to ripen, but it is very certain that it could not remain in such an embryonic condition. It must either die or advance.

In the interest of a just and economical use of the hoarded wealth of Harvard, the trial of this plan is every way to be desired. It would seem as if it would test the capacity of women to subject themselves to a severe training, and we hope that those having the ordering of the plan will not suffer themselves to lower the standard of attainment. In the interest of the broader education of women, too, the experiment will be watched closely. Should it succeed, it will undoubtedly extend its influence backward upon the preparatory education of girls. It will also, in such an event, have an effect upon the women's colleges already founded. It cannot injure those that are doing solid work, but if there are any that content themselves with superficial results, the experiment at Cambridge, so far as it means severe training and solid acquirements, will be a test for them. In any event, this movement has the advantage that it involves no radical change in the university, but simply readjusts existing conditions. If a more intimate identification with Harvard grows

out of it, it will be because the step now taken proves itself to be a real advance; if the experiment fails, there will be no wrecks or ruins to clear away. In this respect a

more conservative course has been pursued than at Cambridge, England, where an investment in brick and mortar preceded a somewhat similar experiment.

THE NEW YORK CATHEDRAL AGAIN: LETTER FROM MR. HASSARD.

NEW YORK, February 22, 1879.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY :

SIR, -I learn from the March number of The Atlantic that Mr. Clarence Cook has written me a letter in reference to grants by the public authorities for the benefit of the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum in this city. If I had been invited to a public discussion of this or any other topic I should have declined the distinction. When Mr. Cook

asked my leave to print, as an act of justice, a private note which I had sent him in friendly correction of his mistake about the cathedral property, I did not suspect that in a public epistle addressed to me without my knowledge, he would bring a fresh charge against the Catholics (no better founded than the first), and virtually challenge me to an

swer it.

Admitting that the Catholics did not "jockey" the city out of the cathedral land, he complains that they did nevertheless jockey it out of the land for an orphan asylum. I should think that the difference between a grant to a church and a grant to a free orphan asylum ought to be tolerably plain; but Mr. Cook says of the donation to the charity: "From a point of view outside of any sect or party, I cannot see any defense or excuse for the transaction I have described. The men who were at the head of the city government at the time had no right to give away or to lease in perpetuity, for the benefit of any body of men, secular or religious, lands that belonged to the whole people. Nor could the bargain have been proposed and consummated except by crafty and unscrupulous men. That was a dark day for our city politics, and I am much mistaken in your character if you do not agree with me that it was a time in the history of the Catholic church in this city which its best friends must prefer not to have dragged into the light."

(1.) If Mr. Cook means that the public authorities have no right to give public property to charitable institutions, I can only say that the contrary opinion has uniformly prevailed here, both in the common council and in the various churches. Be

sides the per capita allowances made annually from the public funds to a great variety of benevo lent societies, representing many creeds and no creeds, both the city and the State have always ap propriated lands and money of the taxpayers for the endowment of institutions of charity or education, Protestant and Jewish, as well-to say the very least as Catholic. The grant to the Catholic Orphan Asylum differs in no respect from numerous grants to other charities which are not Catholic I could cite a multitude of anti-popery precedents for the transaction which Mr. Cook is unable to defend or excuse; but not to trespass on your space, I confine myself to cases which seem to me the most exactly in point. The Colored Orphan Asylum, in which the religious instruction is Protestant, although no particular denomination controls it, obtained from the common council in 1842 a grant of twenty lots on Fifth Avenue, between Forty - Third and Forty- Fourth streets. The Hebrew Orphan Asylum (exclusively Israelite) obtained from the common council in 1860, for the consideration of one dollar, a deed of the land which it occupies, measuring three hundred feet on Seventy-Seventh Street and one hundred feet on Third Avenue, and in 1864, for a similar consideration, a further grant of adjoining land, one hundred by one hundred and twenty feet in extent. we to understand that these "bargains" could not "have been proposed and consummated except by crafty and unscrupulous men"? The legislature granted endowments of twenty-five thousand dollars in 1867, and other liberal sums in other years, to the House of Mercy of the Protestant Episcopal sisterhood of St. Mary. Bishop Potter was - and I suppose is president of the board of trustees of that institution; I hope nobody is going to call him a crafty and unscrupulous jockey.

Are

(2.) Mr. Cook is mistaken in my character, or in something else; for I do not agree with him that there is anytime in the history of the Catholic church in this city which its best friends must prefer not to have dragged into the light." Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

JOHN R. G. HASSARD.

THE

ATLANTIC MONTHLY:

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, SCIENCE, ART, AND POLITICS.

VOL. XLIII.-MAY, 1879.-No. CCLIX.

LABOR AND THE NATURAL FORCES.

VARIOUS causes have been assigned for the present commercial depression. Stump speakers during the late political campaign presented startling pictures of Western grain bins bursting with wheat, while there were millions of laborers unemployed, and therefore unable to earn their daily bread, on account of a woful lack of greenbacks. Specie resumptionists, on the other hand, have maintained that the cause of all the trouble was the great abundance of greenbacks.

Another class of writers claim that the distress is owing solely to the late civil war and the measures taken to carry it on, the passage of the legal-tender act, the inflation of prices, the disbandment of the army.

Still another class find the prime cause of all present disturbance in invention and the substitution of machinery for muscular labor.

It is certain that a lack of greenbacks and the great abundance of them cannot both be first causes; and it is clear that there must be some other cause, for the distress is sharper in England, where there are no greenbacks, than in this country. It is apparent, also, that the trouble is not due wholly to the war measures, for while there has been civil war in the United States, there has been peace in England. If the use of machinery is the cause of all the trouble, how

happens it that in China, India, Japan, Brazil, and Australia, where there is little or no machinery, there should be the same stagnation of trade and quite as much distress?

The distress being universal, there must be causes world-wide in their effects; and, moreover, this commercial disturbánce has been distinguished from all others that have preceded it by its breadth and prolongation.

With the beginning of the present century there was the beginning of a new civilization through the employment of the forces of nature, which up to that period had been dormant. Rivers had turned mills for grinding corn and sawing lumber, but now they were set to doing work which in all former periods had been done by human hands. The coal deposits had been lying in their subterranean beds from the primeval ages, but thenceforth this "stored-up sunlight" was to take the place of muscular power. This employment of the forces of nature brought about a change in social conditions. In all past ages men had labored singly, but from that time on they were to work collectively, organized and directed by one individual, as a general marshals an army, with astonishing results, as we shall presently see. This employment of the forces

of nature and concentration of laborers

Copyright, 1879, by HOUGHTON, OSGOOD & Co.

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