It is not, however, with the theological consequences of this philosophy that we are now concerned, but rather with its effect upon the education and training of the young. A doctrine that denies free will, and makes of man only a bundle of appetites and impulses and propensities whose law is in themselves, destroys not only religion and morality, it destroys also the foundations of education, and makes discipline a solecism. A logical deduction from it is the notion that pupils should study only what they like to study, and when they like to study; and that children should do only what they like to do, and when they like to do it. Modern theories of education are tinged by this notion; it finds place in the regimen of the home and the curriculum of the university. The popular lecturer who criticises the Old Testament with the fairness, erudition and wit of a stump-speaker, sneers at the old-fashioned notions of obedience and discipline; says that children ought to follow nature in the formation of their habits; and his audiences applaud the sentiment. It does not take such ideas long to filter down through all the strata of society, and thus to affect, in many ways, the conduct of old and young. Do we not note an increasing tendency to depend on moods and impulses? "I don't feel like work," is often proclaimed as the sufficient excuse for idleness. Disrelish for any particular pursuit is mentioned as ample reason for abandoning it. Even the paupers who beg at your door justify their failure to find employment by telling you that the labor offered them is not congenial.

Of course this plea has always been made, and, so long as the original sin of indolence continues to be so deeply rooted in human nature, it will be made; but it seems that now this vice of human nature is to be well-nigh elevated into the rule of life.

It is a pestilent notion. In it lurks the disorganizing force by which characters and communities are undermined and ruined. There never was a strong character that was not made strong by discipline of the will; there never was a strong people that did not rank subordination and discipline among the signal virtues. Subjection to moods is the mark of a deteriorating morality. There is no baser servitude than that of the man whose caprices are his masters, and a nation composed of such men could not long preserve its liberties.

This is a truth that the young must lay to heart. It will be a sorry day for this world, and for all the people in it, when everybody makes his moods his masters, and does nothing but what he is inclined to do. The need of training the will to the performance of work that is distasteful; of making the impulses serve, instead of allowing them to rule, the higher reason; of subjugating the moods instead of being subjugated by them, lies at the very foundation of character. It is possible to learn to fix the wandering thought, to compel the reluctant mental energy, to concentrate the power upon the performance of a task to which there is no inclination. Until this victory has been gained, life holds no sure promise; the achievement of this conquest is the condition of future success. No matter how splendid may be the natural gifts, unless there is a will that can marshal and command them, the life is sure to be a failure.

Even in the fine arts the highest inspirations wait on those who have learned to work. The poets who

manded nor described" (p. 124),—which last phrase sums up all the canons of criticism in ten words. But perhaps the best of all the new matter in the book is the description by Miss Sarah Hennell of a visit made to her family by Emerson in 1848, where he saw "George Eliot," then Miss Marian Evans, and so remote from fame as to be mentioned by Miss Hennell as Mary Ann. ""He was much struck with Mary Ann (Miss Evans); expressed his admiration many times to Charles-That young lady has a calm, serious soul"" (p. 338). It seems quite characteristic of both that, when Emerson asked her "What one book do you like best?" she answered, "Rousseau's Confessions," and he said, “So do I. There is a point of sympathy between us (p. 339).

We find some errors in Mr. Conway's book, but they are mostly such as would naturally be made by one writing in England about American affairs, after slight points of time and locality had grown dim in memory. Rev. James Freeman Clarke did not "surrender his pulpit rather than exclude Theodore Parker from it" (p. 9), but he merely endangered it. Some of his influential parishioners left him, but he and his church went on. It is not "a mistake" (p. 86) to attribute to the New England Quakers the naked exhibition several times charged upon them, nor has Mr. Whittier proved that this was merely the reaction from Puritan whippings. Southey's "Commonplace Books" contain a long extract from the diary of an English Quaker of that period, who vindicates these naked performances as proper symbolical acts, without resorting to any such justification as Mr. Whittier has offered. The "Boston Museum” (mentioned on p. 160) is not a systematic collection of natural history, but is mainly a theater; Mr. Conway must mean the "Museum of Comparative Zoology" at Cambridge. Emerson was not made LL. D. at Harvard in 1867, but in 1866 (p. 162). Mr. George William Curtis was not graduated at Harvard, but at Brown University (p. 237). Mr. Alcott's twentydollar gold piece (p. 247) is reduced by several narrators to five or ten dollars. The name of George Searle Phillips is curtailed to "George Searle Phil" (p. 329), probably through some typographical misfortune. It was not at Longfellow's funeral, but on the way home from it, that Emerson spoke of having forgotten that poet's name (p. 382).

Exception might be taken to some of Mr. Conway's points of criticism or description. When he says of Emerson (p. 136): “He studied the sciences carefully, always keeping abreast of their vanguard," he goes too far. Emerson, after all, approached science as a literary man, not as a scientist, and simply read about it instead of studying it. There is sometimes a little inconsistency, as where Mr. Conway says (p. 112) that, from the time Emerson began to read "Landor," "his tone became less fervid and prophetic, and more secular," and then afterward remarks (p. 123): "In the first discoverable scrap of Emerson's writing there is to be found nearly the same literary style as in his last. The only authors whose influence seems traceable are Shakspere and Montaigne." On the other hand, some of his remarks are singularly acute and valuable, as this: "It would be difficult to cite from any generation authors so various in air and style as those whose minds have been personally

enameling, he would have done a substantial service to the potter's art. But the chapters on lacquers and pottery may be commended to the reader as models of patient and intelligent study and preparation.

The author is evidently a close student of what may be termed evolution in art. It was his desire to discover, if possible, whence the Japanese have derived their designs, theories, and knowledge of art and artprocesses. He finds in Japan many curious analogies leading to Egypt, Greece, India, China, Corea, and distant parts of Asia. His studies of these branches of inquiry, although they may not all be received with unquestioning faith, are highly interesting. In the matter of designs of a purely native origin, also, the reader will find much novel entertainment in the illustrations that profusely adorn the work. A striking example may be found on page 278, where is given a cut from a Japanese artist's drawing, showing the origin of the familiar "hawthorn" pattern of decoration on porcelain. The translation of the legend, "The late frost nips the plum blossoms, and causes them to fall on the thin and cracked ice," sufficiently explains the design and its source.

The only drawback to the complete enjoyment of the volume is the ineptitude with which it has been put together. The flaws in the composition are numerous and often flagrant. The persistent use of the present tense is tedious, exasperating, and sometimes ludicrous. The author seems to have taken out a license to revise the generally received orthography of Japanese names to suit his own whims. For example, there is neither sense nor reason in his giving

us

"sachi" for the liquor commonly known as sake, and so spelled by all makers of Anglo-Japanese dictionaries. Nor is "Cutane," for Kutani, any more reasonable than any of the numerous other changes in the names of towns and cities which the author has unwarrantably made. We find him taking from Dr. Wistar the dedication to him of the climbing plant known as the wistaria, and repeatedly referring to it as the "westeria." These little liberties taken with

ern Mythology,” have furnished Mr. Mabie with the material for his pleasing stories, and it must be admitted that he has performed his task both with taste and skill. The arrangement of the myths, in what might be called their chronological sequence, is especially to be commended. The creation of the world from the body of the giant Ymer, the happy life of the gods in the shining Valhalla, their adventures and perpetual warfare with the giants, their destruction at Ragnarök by the powers of evil, and the final regeneration of the world under the reign of one god, All-father, are described with a happy simplicity and a keen appreciation of the poetic element in each separate myth. Especially delightful is the story of Balder, the God of Love, who, through the machinations of Loke, was slain by the blind god Höder, and had to descend to the under-world, whence he returned after the great battle of Ragnarök to reign once more over a peaceful and happy earth.

Although Mr. Mabie's book is primarily intended for youthful readers, to whom the heroic element in such tales as Thor's "Fishing" and his fight with Hrungner must strongly appeal, there is a poetic suggestiveness in many of the myths, the full significance of which can only be appreciated by maturer minds. Thus, the charming tales of the "Apples of Ydun" and Odin's "Search for Wisdom" are replete with elusive hints, which invite to poetic treatment; and "The Twilight of the Gods," with its sequence "The New Earth," seem to contain an obvious allegory, prophesying the end of the bloody reign of the ancient gods, and the harmonious development of humanity under a new and peaceful code, when war shall have disappeared, and Balder the Beautiful, returning from the dead, shall pervade the earth with his beneficent influence. Mr. Mabie has done wisely, however, in confining himself to pure narrative and avoiding the many tempting opportunities for allegorical interpretation. That the above-named myths indicate a dim consciousness on the part of the Norsemen that their fierce and fratricidal religion was destined to be superseded by a gentler and more humane creed, is scarcely to be questioned, but beyond that fact all conjectures are unsafe. That Odin was neither a sun-myth, nor personified valor, nor a corruption of an original purer conception of the deity, has been demonstrated; while there is a strong probability in the theory which assigns both him and his colleagues definite places in remote history as chiefs who led the Teutonic tribes in their early wanderings from their home in Central Asia.

Bartlett's "Life of Rimmer "'*

DR. RIMMER is one of the many figures in American art that fill one with uneasiness. The artistic genius in this country, until recently, has had no place. In other circumstances Rimmer might have achieved more satisfactory results; here everything was against him, though perhaps nothing was so much against him as a disquiet and pride inherited from a father who believed himself a prince by birth, and his own inherent

The Art Life of William Rimmer, Sculptor, Painter, and Physician. By Truman H. Bartlett, Sculptor. Illustrated with Heliotype Reproductions. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1882.

lack of patience and humble teachableness. He had a strong artistic temperament, but was thorough in nothing except anatomy. In that he was an excellent theoretic teacher, though he always disapproved of dissection for art-students, and, in explaining the most difficult parts of interior anatomy, would use the blackboard only.

Rimmer made his strongest impression not in his studied designs, pictures, and modelings, but at the blackboard. He had a most facile pencil, and would improvise on the blackboard as a musician does on the key-board, producing varied and beautiful harmonies of line. He was eminently a draughtsman, caring little for the illusion which a picture-maker is apt to cherish. He was totally ignorant of color, and took very uncertain interest in form as such; but line as a rapid means of expressing a situation, an idea, a passion, was always at his own command, and strongly moved him in such men as Rembrandt and Michael Angelo. His enormous egotism not only prevented him from understanding and learning from his immediate contemporaries, but kept him from acknowledging indebtedness to an older artist like Allston (whom he was doubtless affected by), or to a modern master like Blake, who also evidently had a decided effect upon his thought.

As a teacher he will long be remembered with gratitude by many who were helped on by his stimulating manner and ready encouragement. As is apt to be the case to-day, his best pupils were women, who, for the sake of learning, were willing to be "bullied," and who would blindly follow his lead. Mr. Bartlett's book contains many curious testimonials and notes from this class of acquaintances and critics. The author throughout has done, perhaps, a little more than justice to an extraordinary man—a man of an irascible and far from frank disposition; of much untrained and unfruitful power; and one whose career was pathetically painful and unsatisfactory. The reproductions scattered through the volume will give an idea of the largeness and vigor of some of Rimmer's conceptions.

Hunt's "Talks on Art."*

THE second series of the late Mr. Hunt's "Talks," as preserved by one of his pupils, is, if anything, of first has had a success at home and abroad which more value and interest than the first,- although the must have been gratifying to the artist. Both books give an interesting insight into his method of teaching, which seems to have been by a series of mental shocks alternations of scorn with extravagant praise. He regarded his pupils as little children, and scolded or commended them accordingly. Artists will find the book full of suggestion, and the general reader will learn much in it of interest in regard to Millet and Couture (both of whom Hunt knew well) and in regard to inany other persons and things of artistic and human interest; and the same general reader, as well as the artist, will get either a pleasant or a painful, and very likely a profitable mental fillip, from nearly every paragraph.

*W. M. Hunt's Talks on Art. Second Series. Compiled by Helen M. Knowlton. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883.