anced by his account of the way in which competitions for monuments are commonly decided in England, which, had we room, we should be glad to quote, as a contribution to the periodical disputes over soldiers' monuments, with which our American communities are afflicted.

In the closing paper, on "New Paris," Mr. Palgrave has some very discriminating and just remarks on the present rebuilding of the great capital of Europe. This is, probably, the most extensive system of architectural improvement that was ever undertaken, at least in modern times; and the language heretofore used in regard to it, in France and elsewhere, has been, so far as we know, that of indiscriminate and excessive admiration. In the present condition of the popular mind on matters of Art, this is perhaps not a bad sign, inasmuch as the same language is commonly used in reference to any and every building enterprise which is sufficiently conspicuous or costly. But the architecture of the Paris streets is accepted, by the self-styled arbiters of architecture at home and abroad, as the Ultima Thule of excellence and good taste in that direction; as the style which cultivated people have tacitly agreed to consider" as combining all the desirable qualities which street buildings ought to possess; and we are glad, therefore, that even so restrained and moderate a demurrer as this of Mr. Palgrave's has been set against this hasty judgment. The Paris streets are without a rival in modern cities, as all must agree; but they are so, not because their architecture is unexceptionable, but because that of other capitals is beneath contempt. In the Paris streets, a mean house is the exception: in London or New York, mean houses are the rule. We have certainly no wish to undervalue the beauty of Paris; but we must be allowed to say,while paying the willing tribute of our admiration to the magnificence and grandeur of the plan of Louis Napoleon, and to the general good taste with which it is being executed, that the plan itself has afflicted the city with the monotony of style, which is the curse of all systematic improvement; and that, in its execution, the effect has been exaggerated by the same cause to which it owes all its excellence, viz., the rigid training of all French architects in a style. which is now fast becoming stereotyped. There is not, perhaps, in all the hundred kilomètres of new boulevards and avenues and streets and squares, a single building which can be compared iu vulgar ugliness with the dreadful piles of granite and freestone to which our American eyes are accustomed; but it is equally true, that, in all

the thousand examples of uniform good taste and frequent elegance, there is not a single design which has either grandeur or picturesqueness. There is no variety of style; the same forms of square openings, and pilasters, and festoons of flowers, and caryatids, and medallions, are repeated with ingeniously varied but wearisome iteration over the whole vast and splendid city. What Paris needs is a body of young architects, educated outside the Imperial school, with the power and the will to break through the pleasant trammels of government patronage, and to model the new architecture after the old. Let them go over to the Ile de la Cité, and study what remains of the Paris of the Middle Age; let them follow that up with Rouen and Chartres and Tours and Orleans and Blois and Lyons; and, when they have once got fairly penetrated with the vigor and interest and life of the old French Gothic, as noble an architecture as ever existed, whether for civic or ecclesiastic purposes, -they will be competent to build a city, beside which the Paris of the upstart emperor would sink into deserved neglect. And it is just possible that the change might be so far a beneficent one for us over the water, that our ambitious young architects might perhaps be induced to burn, or sell at a fair discount, the voluminous works of M. César Daly, and go to work designing for themselves, instead of taking pride in their adaptations from the latest Paris fashions.

Mr. ALGER'S "Genius of Solitude" is a book as to which the reader's interest, as well as his judgment, will depend on the mood in which he takes it up. If he happens to be unsympathetic, a trifle gay, inclined ever so little to satire and persiflage, the sentiment of it will be apt to seem overstrained, its style artificial, its view of nature and man quite subjective and unreal. A mocking temper, even an average sense of humor, will hardly do it justice. In fact, it has a merit and charm — along with its wealth of sentiment and suggestion, and its evidences of industrious and faithful study — in a certain naïve unconsciousness that such a temper really exists, a fearless candor of appeal to sentiments and emotions of which we are apt to

The Solitudes of Nature and of Man; or, the Loneliness of Human Life. By WILLIAM ROUNSVILLE ALGER. Boston: Roberts Brothers.

take too little account. Its style, both of thought and structure and imagery, seems to have been strongly affected by a kind of literature with which the writer is probably far more familiar than any of his readers or critics, - a literature which contains some of the rarest and finest utterances of the human mind, but which is imperfectly acclimatized among us. That literature of memoirs, correspondence, and mystical or reflective poetry, so largely reflected in Mr. Alger's writings, and tempering the accumulations of his patient study with a mellow warmth as rare as their curious abundance, is rich in a style of sentiment and imagery which is somewhat more familiar to us, and in truth somewhat more to our taste, under the translucent haze of a foreign idiom. We wish, now and then, that we could forget the associations of our English speech, and read some of these thoughtful and suggestive paragraphs in the French or German diction, to which they seem rather native. And it has occurred to us, that the writer, to whom we owe so much for what he has transposed from other tongues to ours, would do well to make himself familiar with the more plebeian uses of those tongues, and especially to cultivate that quick appreciation of humor, so essential in self-criticism, and so important in giving what we may call the stereoscopic effect of the words one uses, and winning a true mastery of style.

Whatever the justness or aptness of these suggestions, there will be many readers of this volume who will feel no such drawback on their satisfaction in the instruction, counsel, inspiration, and comfort they get from it. Even the reader most critically minded, and craving to keep closest to facts tangible and outward, for the sentiments and emotions he slights are after all facts, though of another order, will be attracted and instructed by the personal sketches which make rather more than half the book. Some of them - for example the first, that of Gotama Buddha- -are full enough to be biographical sketches, of a curious and independent value. Others, such as those of Pascal, Rousseau, and Comte, are studies of character, or exercises in moral analysis, of much insight and psychological instruction. The closing one, that of Jesus, which with a frank simplicity is presented among the rest in this new aspect, is a real contribution to a study of everlasting interest and typical importance. In general, we should say of these sketches, that their value would be increased by a more scrupulous selection and more uniform fulness and carefulness of treatment; since many of them are mere hints and fragments, increasing the number of names, without adding to the

weight of testimony. But where a book errs through abundance, the reader's remedy is the easy one of skipping what he does not want; while the writer's judgment may be correct, after all, as to the names that really fit his plan.

THE author of the report to the Cornell University Trustees* has since been chosen President of the Institution, and is in a position to carry out his ideas in regard to the arrangement of studies and the choice of lecturers and professors. If these ideas are carried out, the Cornell University will take rank as the first among American literary institutions. It will be before, and not behind, the time; a place where the student may find and seek new truths, and not merely learn by rote old formulas or count old fossils. President White will not have in his college any sinecure offices, any superfluous and ornamental meu, any plodders, to turn the crank of a barrelorgan in routine studies. He will get live men, who believe in progress, believe in democratic ideas, and are ready to teach what the people want to learn. There is no mediæval tone in this remarkable report. It has the American idea in it, and it belongs to the nineteenth century. Of all the plans for practical University efficiency and reform that we have seen, -so numerous in these last years, this is the broadest, the wisest, the best adjusted, and the most clearly stated. Mr. L. W. Jerome has recently, we believe, established in Princeton College an annual prize for gentlemanly deportment. President White means, that all his teachers, in addition to their literary and scientific attainments, shall teach good manners by their example, and shall show students that a scholar is not a boor or a clown, but the truest gentleman. He does not intend, moreover, to allow any quarrels or jealousies among the professors; and if they cannot live peaceably together, cannot work harmoniously, he will "cut the Gordian knot," and dismiss the whole of them. No man shall be appointed an instructor because "he is poor or pious, or a 'squatter' on the college domain." No man will be favored because he belongs to a particular sect, or rejected because he holds an unpopular creed. In this institution, a Unitarian and a Roman Catholic have the same chance as a Presbyterian or Methodist.

* Report of the Committee on Organization. Presented to the Trustees of the Cornell University, Oct. 21, 1866. Albany: C. Van Benthuysen & Sons. 8vo. pp. 48.

There will be no sectarian test, either in the scholarship of students or in the fitness of professors.

We have been beyond measure charmed and refreshed by this vigorous document, and commend it to all our readers.

THE publication of "King René's Daughter" inaugurates an enterprise for which we hope a great success, the presentation to the American public of some of the choicest poems of foreign literatures, such as Lessing's "Nathan the Wise," Goethe's "Hermann and Dorothea," Molière's "Tartuffe," Calderon's "Life is a Dream," Tasso's "Aminta," and others from the Swedish, the Norwegian, the Russian, the Turkish, and the Sanscrit. Every friend of culture in America should cordially welcome these productions of the finest genius of other lands. Their influence is needed among us, and can be made effective for great good, both with our young poets and with our intelligent readers of poetry.

The little poem of Hertz, which is already, we trust, in the hands of many of our readers, is one of the most charming to be found in any language. The conception of Iolanthe, King Rene's daughter, — blind from infancy, brought up in a secluded paradise without the knowledge of her misfortune, wonderfully self-helpful through her other powers, beautiful with graces hardly known under the glare of the great world's light, -was worthy of a true poet. As the tale proceeds, and Iolanthe meets in her garden the noble gentleman to whom in earliest infancy she had been betrothed, it seems impossible that sight could add any thing to so clear and bright a life. Indeed we think it a defect in the close of the poem, that the art of the Moorish physician succeeds in giving sight to Iolanthe. The natural close of so fine a poem after the intended husband had seen Iolanthe blind, and lost his heart to her, ignorant of her parentage; and she, through ear and touch and other channels for the soul of the sightless, had found in him a hero - would have been the demonstration of the superiority of the soul to the limitations of physical organization. The poem has prepared us for this, and has almost made this necessary. We feel that Iolanthe without sight, the loveliest creature of pure faith, will be less than herself with the gift of sight. But this imperfection of the poem, as we regard it, will undoubtedly please the majority of

* King René's Daughter: a Danish Lyrical Drama. By HENRIK HERTZ. Translated by Theodore Martin. New York: Leypoldt & Holt, 1867.