The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864

When we went out, Mr. Benjamin called Judge Ould, who had been waiting during the whole interview—two hours—at the other end of the hall, and we passed down the stairway together. As I put my arm within that of the Judge, he said to me,—

"Well, what is the result?"

"Nothing but war,—war to the knife."

"Ephraim is joined to his idols,—let him alone," added the Colonel, solemnly.

I should like to relate the incidents of the next day, when we visited Castle Thunder, Libby Prison, and the hospitals occupied by our wounded; but the limits of a magazine-article will not permit. I can only say that at sundown we passed out of the Rebel lines, and at ten o'clock that night stretched our tired limbs on the "downy" cots in General Butler's tent, thankful, devoutly thankful, that we were once again under the folds of the old flag.

Thus ended our visit to Richmond. I have endeavored to sketch it faithfully. The conversation with Mr. Davis I took down shortly after entering the Union lines, and I have tried to report his exact language, extenuating nothing, and coloring nothing that he said. Some of his sentences, as I read them over, appear stilted and high-flown, but they did not sound so when uttered. As listened to, they seemed the simple, natural language of his thought. He spoke deliberately, apparently weighing every word, and knowing well that all he said would be given to the public.

He is a man of peculiar ability. Our interview with him explained to me why, with no money and no commerce, with nearly every one of their important cities in our hands, and with an army greatly inferior in numbers and equipment to ours, the Rebels have held out so long. It is because of the sagacity, energy, and indomitable will of Jefferson Davis. Without him the Rebellion would crumble to pieces in a day; with him it may continue to be, even in disaster, a power that will tax the whole energy and resources of the nation.

The Southern masses want peace. Many of the Southern leaders want it,—both my companion and I, by correspondence and intercourse with them, know this; but there can be no peace so long as Mr. Davis controls the South. Ignoring slavery, he himself states the issue,—the only issue with him,—Union, or Disunion. That is it. We must conquer, or be conquered. We can negotiate only with the bayonet. We can have peace and union only by putting forth all our strength, crushing the Southern armies, and overthrowing the Southern government.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES

Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin. By James Parton. New York: Mason Brothers. Two Volumes. 8vo.

To appreciate the importance of this work, we must remember that it covers more than three-fourths of a century full of great events, if not of great men; that it begins with Boston and Philadelphia as small provincial towns, and leaves them the thriving capitals of independent States; that it finds colonial energy struggling with metropolitan jealousy and ignorance; that it follows the struggle through all its phases, until the restrictions of the mother became oppression, and the love of the children was converted into hatred; that it traces the growth and expansion of American industry,—the dawn of American invention, so full of promise,—the development of the principle of self-government, so full of power,—the bitter contest, so full of lessons which, used aright, might have spared us more than half the blood and treasure of the present war.

To appreciate the difficulty of this work, we must remember that the inner and the outer life of the subject of it are equally full of marvels; that, beginning by cutting off candle-wicks in a tallow-chandler's shop in Boston, he ended as the greatest scientific discoverer among those men renowned for science who composed the Royal Society of London and the Academy of Sciences of Paris; that, with the aid of an odd volume of the "Spectator," used according to his own conception of the best way of using it, he made himself master of a pure, simple, graceful, and effective English style; that the opinions and maxims which he drew from his own observation and reflection have passed into the daily life of millions, warning, strengthening, cheering, and guiding; that he succeeded in the most difficult negotiations, was a leader of public opinion on the most important questions, and, holding his way cheerfully, resolutely, and lovingly to the end, left the world wiser in many things, and in some better, for the eighty-four years that he had passed in it.

Nor must we forget, that, among the many things which this wonderful old man did, was to tell us half the story of his own life, and with such unaffected simplicity, such evident sincerity, and such attractive grace, as to make it—as far as it goes—the most perfect production of its class. Then why attempt to do it over again? is the question that naturally springs to every lip, on reading the title of Mr. Parton's book.

Mr. Parton has anticipated this question, and answered it. "Autobiography is one of the most interesting and valuable kinds of composition; but autobiography can never be accepted in lieu of biography, because to no man is the giftie given of seeing himself as others see him. Rousseau's Confessions are a miracle of candor: they reveal much concerning a certain weak, wandering, diseased, miserable, wicked Jean Jacques; but of that marvellous Rousseau whose writings thrilled Europe they contain how much? Not one word. Madame D'Arblay's Diary relates a thousand pleasant things, but it does not tell us what manner of person Madame D'Arblay was. Franklin's Autobiography gives agreeable information respecting a sagacious shopkeeper of Philadelphia, but has little to impart to us respecting the grand Franklin, the world's Franklin, the philosopher, the statesman, the philanthropist. A man cannot reveal his best self, nor, unless he is a Rousseau, his worst. Perhaps he never knows either."

The basis of Mr. Parton's work is, as the basis of every satisfactory biography must be, the writings of its subject. "After all," he says, "Dr. Jared Sparks's excellent edition of the 'Life and Works of Franklin,' is the source of the greater part of the information we possess concerning him.... The libraries, the public records, and the private collections of England, France, and the United States, were so diligently searched by Dr. Sparks, that, though seven previous editions of the works of Franklin had appeared, he was able to add to his publication the astonishing number of six hundred and fifty pieces of Dr. Franklin's composition never before collected, of which four hundred and fifty had never before appeared in print. To unwearied diligence in collecting Dr. Sparks added an admirable talent in elucidating. His notes are always such as an intelligent reader would desire, and they usually contain all the information needed for a perfect understanding of the matter in hand. Dr. Sparks's edition is a monument at once to the memory of Benjamin Franklin and to his own diligence, tact, and faithfulness." We take great pleasure in copying this passage, both because it seems to illustrate the spirit which Mr. Parton brought to his task, and because the value of Mr. Sparks's labors have not always been so freely acknowledged by those who have been freest in their use of them.

To a careful study of those volumes Mr. Parton has added patient and extensive research among the newspapers and magazines of the time, and, apparently, a wide range of general reading. Thus he has filled his work with facts, some curious, some new, and all interesting, as well in their bearing upon the times as upon the man. He is a good delver, a good sifter, and, what is equally important, a good interpreter,—not merely bringing facts to the light, but compelling them to give out, like Correggio's pictures, a light of their own. He possesses, too, in an eminent degree, the power of forming for himself a conception of his subject as a whole, keeping it constantly before his mind in the elaboration of the parts, and thus bringing it vividly before the mind of the reader. Franklin's true place in history has never before been assigned him upon such incontrovertible evidence.

If we were to undertake to name the parts of this work which have given us most satisfaction, we should, although with some hesitation, name the admirable chapters which Mr. Parton has devoted to Franklin's diplomatic labors in England and France. In none of his good works has that great man been more exposed to calumny, or treated with more barefaced ingratitude by those who profited most by them, than in bringing to light the dangerous letters of Hutchinson and Oliver. Even within the last few years, the apologetic biographer of John Adams repeats the accusation of moral obliquity in a tone that would hardly have been misplaced in a defence of Wedderburn. Mr. Parton tells the story with great simplicity, and, without entering into any unnecessary disquisition, accepts for his commentary upon it Mr. Bancroft's wise, and, as it seems to us, unanswerable conclusion. "Had the conspiracy which was thus laid bare aimed at the life of a minister or the king, any honest man must have immediately communicated the discovery to the Secretary of State: to conspire to introduce into America a military government, and abridge American liberty, was a more heinous crime, of which irrefragable evidence had now come to light."

Never, too, was philosopher more severely tried than Franklin was tried by the colleagues whom Congress sent him, from time to time, as clogs upon the great wheel which he was turning so skilfully. And this, too, Mr. Parton has set in full light, not by the special pleading of the apologist, but by the documentary researches of the historian.

There are some things, however, in this work which we could have wished somewhat different from what they are. Mr. Parton's fluent and forcible style sometimes degenerates into flippancy. We could cite many instances of felicitous expression, some, also, of bad taste, and some of hasty assertion. "Clubable" is hardly a good enough word to bear frequent repetition. "This question was a complete baffler" is too much like slang to be admitted into the good company which Mr. Parton's sentences usually keep. We were not aware that "Physician, heal thyself" was a stock classical allusion. We do not believe—for Dante and Milton would rise up in judgment against us, even if the vast majority of other great men did not—that "it is only second-rate men who have great aims." We do not believe that the style of the "Spectator" is an "easily imitated style"; for, of the hundreds who have tried, how many, besides Franklin, have really succeeded in imitating it? We do not believe that Latin and Greek are an "obstructing nuisance," or that the student of Homer and Thucydides and Demosthenes and Plato and Aristotle and Cæsar and Cicero and Tacitus is merely studying "the prattle of infant man," or "adding the ignorance of the ancients to the ignorance he was born with." We believe, on the contrary, that it was by such studies that Gibbon and Niebuhr and Arnold and Grote acquired their marvellous power of discovering historical truth and detecting historical error, and that from no modern language could they have received such discipline.

But we not only agree with the sentiment, but admire the simple energy of the expression, when he says that "Franklin was the man of all others then alive who possessed in the greatest perfection the four grand requisites for the successful observation of Nature or the pursuit of literature,—a sound and great understanding, patience, dexterity, and an independent income." Equally judicious and equally well-expressed is the following passage upon the Penns:—"Thomas Penn was a man of business, careful, saving, and methodical. Richard Penn was a spendthrift. Both were men of slender abilities, and not of very estimable character. They had done some liberal acts for the Province, such as sending over presents to the Library of books and apparatus, and cannon for the defence of Philadelphia. If the Pennsylvanians had been more submissive, they would doubtless have continued their benefactions. But, unhappily, they cherished those erroneous, those Tory notions of the rights of sovereignty which Lord Bute infused into the contracted mind of George III., and which cost that dull and obstinate monarch, first, his colonies, and then his senses. It is also rooted in the British mind, that a landholder is entitled to the particular respect of his species. These Penns, in addition to the pride of possessing acres by the million, felt themselves to be the lords of the land they owned, and of the people who dwelt upon it." And in speaking of English ideas of American resistance:—"Englishmen have made sublime sacrifices to principle, but they appear slow to believe that any other people can." And, "George III. sat upon a constitutional throne, but he had an unconstitutional mind." It would be difficult to find a more comprehensive sentence than the following:—"The counsel employed by Mr. Mauduit was Alexander Wedderburn, a sharp, unprincipled Scotch barrister, destined to scale all the heights of preferment which shameless subserviency could reach."

It would be easy to multiply examples, but we have given, we believe, more than enough to show that we look upon Mr. Parton's "Franklin" as a work of very great value.

The Maine Woods. By Henry D. Thoreau, Author of "A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers," "Walden," "Excursions," etc., etc. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

The steadily growing fame of Thoreau has this characteristic, that it is, like his culture, a purely American product, and is no pale reflection of the cheap glories of an English reprint. Whether he would have gained or lost by a more cosmopolitan training or criticism is not the question now; but certain it is that neither of these things went to the making of his fame. Classical and Oriental reading he had; but beyond these he cared for nothing which the men and meadows of Concord could not give, and for this voluntary abnegation, half whimsical, half sublime, the world repaid him with life-long obscurity, and will yet repay him with permanent renown.

His choice of subjects, too, involves the same double recompense; for no books are less dazzling or more immortal than those whose theme is external Nature. Nothing else wears so well. History becomes so rapidly overlaid with details, and its aspects change so fast, that the most elaborate work soon grows obsolete; while a thoroughly sincere and careful book on Nature cannot be superseded, and lives forever. Its basis is real and permanent. There will always be birds and flowers, nights and mornings. The infinite fascinations of mountains and of forests will outlast this war, and the next, and the race that makes the war. The same solidity of material which has guarantied permanence to the fame of Izaak Walton and White of Selborne will as surely secure that of Thoreau, who excels each of these writers upon his own ground, while superadding a wider culture, a loftier thought, and a fine, though fantastic, literary skill. All men may not love Nature, but all men ultimately love her lovers. And of those lovers, past or present, Thoreau is the most profound in his devotion, and the most richly repaid.

Against these great merits are to be set, no doubt, some formidable literary defects: an occasional mistiness of expression, like the summit of Katahdin, as he himself describes it,—one vast fog, with here and there a rock protruding; also, an occasional sandy barrenness, like his beloved Cape Cod. In truth, he never quite completed the transition from the observer to the artist. With the power of constructing sentences as perfectly graceful as a hemlock-bough, he yet displays the most wayward aptitude for literary caterpillars'-nests and all manner of disfigurements. The same want of artistic habit appears also in his wilful disregard of all rules of proportion. He depicts an Indian, for instance, with such minute observation and admirable verbal skill that one feels as if neither Catlin nor Schoolcraft ever saw the actual creature; but though the table-talk of the aboriginal may seem for a time more suggestive than that of Coleridge or Macaulay, yet there is a point beyond which his, like theirs, becomes a bore.

In addition to these drawbacks, one finds in Thoreau an unnecessary defiance of tone, and a very resolute non-appreciation of many things which a larger mental digestion can assimilate without discomfort. In his dealings with Nature he is sweet, genial, patient, wise. In his dealings with men he exasperates himself over the least divergence from the desired type. Before any over-tendency to the amenities and luxuries of civilization, in particular, he becomes unreasonable and relentless. Hence there appears something hard and ungenial in his views of life, utterly out of keeping with the delicate tenderness which he shows in the woods. The housekeeping of bees and birds he finds noble and beautiful, but for the home and cradle of the humblest human pair he can scarcely be said to have even toleration; a farmer's barn he considers a cumbrous and pitiable appendage, and he lectures the Irish women in their shanties for their undue share of the elegancies of life. With infinite faith in the tendencies of mineral and vegetable nature, in human nature he shows no practical trust, and must even be severe upon the babies in the Maine log-huts for playing with wooden dolls instead of pine-cones. It is, indeed, noticeable that he seems to love every other living animal more unreservedly than the horse,—as if this poor sophisticated creature, though still a quadruped and a brother, had been so vitiated by undue intimacy with man as to have become little better than if he wore broadcloth and voted.

Yet there was not in Thoreau one trait of the misanthrope; his solitary life at Walden was not chosen because he loved man less, but because he loved Nature more; and any young poet or naturalist might envy the opportunities it gave him. But his intellectual habits showed always a tendency to exaggeration, and he spent much mental force in fighting shadows, Church and State, war and politics,—a man of solid vigor must find room in his philosophy to tolerate these matters for a time, even if he cannot cordially embrace them. But Thoreau, a celibate, and at times a hermit, brought the Protestant extreme to match the Roman Catholic, and though he did not personally ignore one duty of domestic life, he yet held a system which would have excluded wife and child, house and property. His example is noble and useful to all high-minded young people, but only when interpreted by a philosophy less exclusive than his own. In urging his one social panacea, "Simplify, I say, simplify," he failed to see that all steps in moral or material organization are really efforts after the same process he recommends. The sewing-machine is a more complex affair than the needle, but it simplifies every woman's life, and helps her to that same comparative freedom from care which Thoreau would seek only by reverting to the Indian blanket.

But many-sided men do not move in battalions, and even a one-sided philosopher may be a boon to think of, if he be as noble as Thoreau. His very defects are higher than many men's virtues, and his most fantastic moralizings will bear reading without doing harm, especially during a Presidential campaign. Of his books, "Walden" will probably be permanently reckoned as the best, as being the most full and deliberate exhibition of the author's mind, and as extracting the most from the least material. It is also the most uniform in texture, and the most complete in plan, while the "Week" has no unity but that of the chronological epoch it covers,—a week which is probably the most comprehensive on record, ranging from the Bhagvat-Geetha to the "good time coming,"—and the "Excursions" no unity but that of the covers which comprise them, being, indeed, a compilation of his earliest and latest essays. Which of his four volumes contains his finest writing it would really be hard to say; but in structure the present book comes nearest to "Walden"; it is within its limits a perfect monograph of the Maine woods. All that has been previously written fails to portray so vividly the mysterious life of the lonely forest,—the grandeur of Katahdin or Ktaadn, that hermit-mountain,—and the wild and adventurous navigation of those Northern water-courses whose perils make the boating of the Adirondack region seem safe and tame. The book is also more unexceptionably healthy in its tone than any of its predecessors, and it is pleasant to find the author, on emerging from his explorations, admitting that the confines of civilization afford, after all, the best residence, and that the wilderness is of most value as "a resource and a background."

There yet remain for publication Thoreau's adventures on Cape Cod; his few public addresses on passing events, especially those on the Burns Rescue and the John-Brown affair, which were certainly among the very ablest productions called forth by those exciting occasions; his poems; and his private letters to his friend Blake, of Worcester, and to others,—letters which certainly contain some of his toughest, and perhaps also some of his finest writing. All these deserve, and must one day receive, preservation. He who reads most books reads that which has a merely temporary interest, and will be presently superseded by something better; but Nature has waited many centuries for Thoreau, and we can hardly expect to see, during this generation, another mortal so favored with her confidence.

Jennie Juneiana: Talks on Women's Topics. By Jennie June. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 12mo. pp. 240.

Great are the resources of human invention, and the tiresome passion for alliterative titles may possibly have culminated in some name yet more foolish than that of this little green and gold volume. If so, the rival has proved too much for the trump of Fame to carry, and has dropped unnoticed. In the present case, the title does perhaps some injustice to the book, which is not a silly one, though it contains very silly things. It seems to be written from the point of view afforded by a second-rate New-York boarding-house, and by a person who has never come in contact with any refined or well-bred people. With this allowance, it is written in the interest of good manners and good morals, and with enough of natural tact to keep the writer from getting far beyond her depth, although she does talk of "Goethe's Mignion" and "Miss Werner,"—whoever these personages may be,—and of "the substantial fame achieved by the unknown author of 'Rutledge.'" It is written in the prevalent American newspaper-style,—a style which is apt to be graphic, piquant, and dashing, accompanied by a flavor, slight or more than slight, of flippancy and slang,—a style such as reaches high-tide in certain "popular" native authors, male and female, and in ebbing strands us on "Jennie June."

Of course, writing from the windows of Mrs. Todgers, "Jennie" manifests the usual superfluous anxiety of her kind not to be called strong-minded. She is prettily indignant at the thought of female physicians: there is nothing improper in having diseases, but to cure them would be indelicacy indeed. Girls out of work, who wish for places in shops, are only "patriotic young ladies who desire to fill all the lucrative situations at present occupied by young men." She would even banish Bridget from the kitchen and substitute unlimited Patricks, which will interest housekeepers as being the only conceivable remedy worse than the disease. Of course, a female lecturer is an abomination: "Jennie" proves, first, that a "strong-minded woman" must be either unmarried or unhappy in marriage, and then turns, with rather illogical wrath, upon Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown, for being too domestic to make speeches since their marriage. To follow the court phraseology, "This reminds us of a little anecdote." When the fashion of long, flowing wigs was just vanishing in Boston, somebody wore one from that town down to Salem, where they were entirely extinct. All the street-boys ran after him all the morning, to ask him why he wore a wig. He, wishing to avoid offence, left it in the house at dinner-time; and was pursued all the afternoon by the same boys, with the inquiry why he did not wear a wig. These eloquent women find it equally hard to please their little critic by silence or by speech. The simple truth probably is, that they hold precisely the same views which they always held, and will live to trouble her yet, when the epoch of the nursery is over. The majority of women's-rights advocates have always been wives and mothers, and, for aught we know, excellent ones, since that dear, motherly old Quakeress, Lucretia Mott, first broached the matter; and the great change in our legislation on all the property-rights of that sex is just as directly traceable to their labors as is the repeal of the English corn-laws to the efforts of the "League." If, however, "Jennie" consoles herself with the reflection that the points made in this controversy by the authors of "Hannah Thurston" and "Miss Gilbert's Career" are not much stronger than her own, she must remember her favorite theory, that all foolishness sounds more respectable when uttered from masculine lips.

1. Woman and her Era. By Eliza W. Farnham. In Two Volumes. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

2. Eliza Woodson; or, The Early Days of one of the World's Workers. A Story of American Life. New York: A. J. Davis & Co.

In the three and a half centuries since Cornelius Agrippa, no one has attempted with so much ability as Mrs. Farnham to transfer the theory of woman's superiority from the domain of poetry to that of science. Second to no American woman save Miss Dix in her experience as a practical philanthropist, she has studied human nature in the sternest practical schools, from Sing-Sing to California. She justly claims for her views that they have been maturing for twenty-two years of "experience so varied as to give it almost every form of trial which could fall to the intellectual life of any save the most favored women." Her books show, moreover, an ardent love of literature and some accurate scientific training,—though her style has the condensation and vigor which active life creates, rather than the graces of culture.

The essence of her book lies in this opening syllogism:—

"Life is exalted in proportion to its organic and functional complexity;

"Woman's organism is more complex and her totality of function larger than those of any other being inhabiting our earth;

"Therefore her position in the scale of life is the most exalted,—the sovereign one."

This is compactly stated and quite unequivocal, although the three last words of the conclusion are a step beyond the premises, and the main fight of her opponents would no doubt be made on her definition of the word being. The assumption that either sex of a given species is a distinct "being" cannot probably be slid into the minor premise of the argument without some objection from the opposing counsel. However, this brings us at once to the main point, and the chapter called "The Organic Argument," which opens with this syllogism, is really the pith of the book, and would, perhaps, stand stronger without the other six hundred pages. In this chapter she shows the strength of a system-maker, in the rest the weaknesses of one; she feels obliged to apply her creed to everything, to illustrate everything by its light, to find unexpected confirmations everywhere, and to manipulate all the history of art, literature, and society, till she conforms them all to her standard. She recites, with no new power, historical facts that are already familiar; and gives many pages to extracts from very well known poets and very ill known prose-writers, to the exclusion of her own terse and vigorous thought. All this is without a trace of book-making, but is done in single-hearted zeal for views which are only damaged by the process.

These are merely literary defects; but Mrs. Farnham really suffers in thought by the same unflinching fidelity to her creed. It makes her clear and resolute in her statement; but it often makes her as one-sided as the advocates of male supremacy whom she impugns. To be sure, her theory enables her to extenuate some points of admitted injustice to woman,—finding, for instance, in her educational and professional exclusions a crude effort, on the part of society, to treat her as a sort of bird-of-paradise, born only to fly, and therefore not needing feet. Yet this authoress is obliged to assume a tone of habitual antagonism towards men, from which the advocates of mere equality are excused. Indeed, the technical Woman's-Rights movement has always witnessed a very hearty coöperation among its advocates of both sexes, and it is generally admitted that men are at least as ready to concede additional rights as women to ask for them. But when one comes to Mrs. Farnham's stand-point, and sees what her opinion of men really is, the stanchest masculine ally must shrink from assigning himself to such a category of scoundrels. The best criticism made on Michelet's theory of woman as a predestined invalid was that of the sensible physician who responded, "As if the Almighty did not know how to create a woman!"—and Mrs. Farnham certainly proves too much in undertaking to expose the blunders of Deity in the construction of a man. Assuming, as she invariably does, the highest woman to be the typical woman, and the lowest man to be the typical man, she can prove anything she pleases. But even this does not content her; every gleam of tenderness and refinement exhibited by man she transfers by some inexplicable legerdemain of logic to the feminine side, and makes somehow into a new proof of his hopeless inferiority; and she is landed at last in the amazing paradox, that "the most powerful feminine souls have appeared in masculine forms, thus far in human career." (Vol. II. p. 360.)

In short, her theory involves a necessity of perpetual overstatement. The conception of a pure and noble young man, such as Richter delineates in his Walt or Albano, seems utterly foreign to her system; and of that fine subtilty of nature by which the highest types of manhood and womanhood approach each other, as if mutually lending refinement and strength, she seems to have no conception. The truth is, that, however much we may concede to the average spiritual superiority of woman, a great deal also depends on the inheritance and the training of the individual. Mrs. Farnham, like every refined woman, is often shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous men; but she does not tell us the other side of the story,—how often every man of refinement has occasion to be shocked by the coarseness of even virtuous women. Sexual disparities may be much; but individual disparities are even more.

Mrs. Farnham is noble enough, and her book is brave and wise enough, to bear criticisms which grow only from her attempting too much. The difference between her book and most of those written on the other side is, that in the previous cases the lions have been the painters, and here it is the lioness. As against the exaggerations on the other side, she has a right to exaggerate on her part. As against the theory that man is superior to woman because he is larger, she has a right to plead that in that case the gorilla were the better man, and to assert on the other hand that woman is superior because smaller,—Emerson's mountain and squirrel. As against the theory that glory and dominion go with the beard, she has a right to maintain (and that she does with no small pungency) that Nature gave man this appendage because he was not to be trusted with his own face, and needed this additional covering for his shame. As against the historical traditions of man's mastery, she does well to urge that creation is progressive, and that the megalosaurus was master even before man. It is, indeed, this last point which constitutes the crowning merit of the book, and which will be permanently associated with Mrs. Farnham's name. No one before her has so firmly grasped this key to woman's historic position, that the past was an age of coarse, preliminary labor, in which her time had not yet come. This theory, as elucidated by Mrs. Farnham, taken with the fine statement of Buckle as to the importance of the intuitive element in the feminine intellect, (which statement Mrs. Farnham also quotes,) constitutes the most valuable ground logically conquered for woman within this century. These contributions are eclipsed in importance only by those actual achievements of women of genius,—as of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Rosa Bonheur, and Harriet Hosmer,—which, so far as they go, render all argument superfluous.

In this domain of practical achievement Mrs. Farnham has also labored well, and the autobiography of her childish years, when she only aspired after such toils, has an interest wholly apart from that of her larger work, and scarcely its inferior. Except the immortal "Pet Marjorie," one can hardly recall in literature a delineation so marvellous of a childish mind so extraordinary as "Eliza Woodson." The few characters appear with an individuality worthy of a great novelist; every lover of children must find it altogether fascinating, and to the most experienced student of human nature it opens a new chapter of startling interest.

The Cliff-Climbers; or, The Lone Home in the Himalayas. A Sequel to "The Plant-Hunters." By Captain Mayne Reid, Author of "The Desert Home," "The Boy-Hunters," etc., etc. With Illustrations. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

Beloved of boys, the adventurous Mayne Reid continues from year to year his good work as a story-teller. Since he held the youthful student a spellbound reader of "The Desert Home," he has sent abroad a dozen volumes, all excellent in their way, for the entertainment of his ever-increasing audience. He has not, however, dealt quite fairly by his boy-friends. He kept them waiting several years for the completion of "The Plant-Hunters," and it is only now that he has found time to add "The Cliff-Climbers" as a sequel to that fascinating story. While we thank him for the book that gives us farther acquaintance with those stirring individuals, Karl and Caspar, we cannot help reminding him how long ago it is since we read "The Plant-Hunters," and wished for more.

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