JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.

James Russell Lowell was born in Cambridge, in 1819, in a spacious old house which is still his home. His father was the minister of the West Congregational Church in Boston. Lowell graduated at Harvard in 1838, when he was class poet, and recited a poem which was memorable in the student literature of the time. A law office in Boston was opened in 1840, but the poet soon shut its doors and devoted himself entirely to literature. A Year's Life (1841) included his poems up to that date, some of which the author has since revised, throwing away the rest. Two years later he began the publication, in Boston, of The Pioneer, a periodical of so high a character that it would surely fail now, and of course promptly came to its death at that time, though Lowell, Hawthorne, and Poe wrote for it. Robert Carter assisted Lowell in editing the three numbers that appeared. In 1844 Lowell gathered poems enough to make another volume; among them were A Legend of Brittany and Rhocus. Some of the sonnets were pronounced in their antislavery sentiments, being addressed to Wendell Phillips and Joshua R. Giddings. The remainder of the volume consisted of pieces which indicated that a new and true poet had arisen. The subjects were not novel, but they were treated in a style which was a rare union of strength and minuteness of phrase, the author's opulence of thought preventing his nicety from seeming artificial. A prose series of Conversations on the Old Poets (1845) critically considered Chaucer, George Chapman, and some obscure writers. It found few readers, and has never been reissued, though its author's maturer judgment has since prepared critical articles on several of the authors included, notably Chaucer. Another volume of poeins was printed in 1848, of which The Present Crisis made a considerable sensation. The Vision of Sir Launfal, published the same year, is the most elaborate of the

author's productions, being an allegory of good deeds, and containing many quotable lines. At this time Mr. Lowell was very industrious, for in 1848 he also brought out, in New York, A Fable for Critics, a wonderfully clever characterization, in fluent verse, of the leading authors of the day, himself included. This characterization, though made in a humorous style, was accurate and just, and in the case of the younger writers mentioned its predictions have been amply verified. At the same time appeared the first series of the Biglow Papers, a collection of poems in Yankee dialect, by "Hosea Biglow," edited and furnished with absurdly learned notes and introductions by "Homer Wilbur, A.M., pastor of the First Church in Jaalam." These poems served a double purpose; that of preserving the perishable local expressions of New England in a permanent form, and of fighting with the sharpest weapons of satire against the extension of slavery. This work, together with the Fable for Critics, for the first time made Mr. Lowell a popular author, and gave him a reputation in England, though English readers have more recently discovered that he is something more than a humorist. In 1855 Mr. Lowell succeeded Mr. Longfellow in the chair of polite letters at Harvard, taking a European trip before entering upon his new duties. In 1867 a second series of the Biglow Papers included those poems in dialect which had been called out by the war. They were preceded by a critical essay in which was shown the antiquity of many presumed Yankee peculiarities of expression. Never a fertile writer, it was not until 1869 that sufficient minor poems were collected by Mr. Lowell to make another volume, which took its title of Under the Willows from its leading poem. The Commemoration Ode, in honor of the Harvard men who were killed in the war, was recited at Cambridge in 1865, and is the author's noblest poem and the chief literary result of the war. For considerable periods Mr. Lowell was editor of The Atlantic Monthly and The North American Review; and his critical and miscellaneous essays in those periodicals have been collected into volumes entitled Among my Books (two series) and My Study Windows. These books, which show their author to be the leading American critic, are a very agreeable union of wit and wisdom, and are the result of extensive reading, illuminated by excellent critical insight. The only objection ever made to them is due to their somewhat colloquial style; but this has been generally regarded as one of their charms. As literary guides and stimulants for young readers they are unsurpassed.

Primer of American Literature.

The foregoing sketch of Mr. Lowell follows his career up to his appointment by President Hayes, in 1877, as Minister to Spain. He retained this office till 1880, when he was transferred to London as the representative of our government at the Court of

St. James. The change of politics in the administration at Washington occasioned his recall from this post in 1885, and since then he has resumed his residence in the United States. Both as Minister and as man of letters his life in England was invariably accompanied by the most cordial and honorable expressions of a preciation and regard. He is still Professor of Belles Lettres at Harvard University. His works published in book form, besides partial issues of the poems, are as follows: Fireside Travels, Among My Books, My Study Windows, Poems.

CONCERNING TITLES.

A young poet, who is shortly to revenge himself on the world by publishing a volume of verses, writes to ask us to suggest a title for his book. Our young friend may not know it, but he did just the right thing in communicating with us, as a part of our profession consists in furnishing ideas to other people. We have in stock a large supply of conceits which apply to every walk in life, and at moderate rates we are prepared to suggest names for anything, from a new brand of soap to a brand-new baby.

Our titles for volumes of verses are, for the most part, we deem it necessary to state, adaptations from the works of other but not greater poets than ourselves.

Our correspondent must be aware that in many instances the title will sell the book, and he may accept an assurance that the titles we suggest to him have been suggested to us by books that have sold to a gratifying extent.

Mr. Bunner's Airs From Arcady was very well received by an admiring public, and we doubt not that Whispers From Weehawken will attract many who will be struck by the similarity of titles. If there happens to be a misfit here there are such others as Screams From Schoharie, with the accent on the extreme end of the post-penultimate; Howls From Hoboken, Pipings From Peekskill, or Chirrups From Chicago. The poet can take his choice.

Mr. Fawcett's Romance and Reverie sends the titulist into thoughts of Peaches and Potatoes. Mr. Bates' Berries of the Brier suggests Thistles of the Thicket. Mr. Scollard's Pictures in Song is a good basis for The Rogues' Gallery, or Tin-Types in Sing Sing, and so forth, ad infin.

Any one of these our correspondent may have if he will relinquish to us, our heirs, and assigns forever all his right, claim and title in, to or for the postage stamps he inclosed for a reply.

We beg to observe in conclusion that when Mr. Hallam Tennyson applied to us for a title for a book of selections from his father's poems, we sent him Chips from the Old Block, which struck him so forcibly that he gave up the enterprise. Life.

TO ROBERT BURTON.

A quaint old store of learning lies
In Burton's pleasant pages;
With long quotations that comprise
The wisdom of the ages.

'Tis strange to read him 'mid the crowd, And modern hurly-burly;

The only author Johnson vowed
Could make him get up early.

He lived a solitary life,

He said "Mihi et musis,"

And put his rest from worldly strife
To very pleasant uses.

He wrote the book wherein we find
"All joys to this are folly;"
And naught to the reflective mind,

"So sweet as melancholy."

How strangely he dissects his theme
In manner anatomic;

He's earnest at one time, you deem,
Now decorously comic.
And most prodigiously he quotes,
With learning quite gigantic,
Or, telling classic anecdotes,
Is pleasantly pedantic.

There's sterling sense in every page,
And shrewdest cogitation,
Your keen attention he'll engage,
And honest admiration.
If any man should vow to live

With but one book, be certain
To him could friendly fortune give
No better book than Burton.

He lies at rest in Christchurch aisle,
With all his erudition:
The hieroglyphics make one smile

That show his superstition :
His epitaph survives to-day,

As one "Cui vitam dedit Et mortem Melancholia," So he himself has said it.

Andrew Lang in Punch.

TO JOHN BURROUGHS.
Sure he, to whom, of mind or hand, belongs

Some craft that doth uplift the thought of men
Above the mold, and bring to human ken
The joys of radiance, air and clear bird-songs;
So that the brow, o'er moist with sullen toil,

May catch a breeze from far-off paradise;
So that the soul may, for a moment, rise
Up from the stoop and cramp of daily moil,-
May own his gift Divine! as sure may trace

Its Source, as that of waters kind hands hold
To thirsty lips; nor need he mourn (since grace
Of his hath such refreshment wrought) if gold

Be scant; to him hath richer boon been given-
An earth-bowed head to raise the nearer heaven.
Maria Lefferts Elmendorf in the Century Magazine.

REVIEWS.

HUNGARY.

THE STORY OF HUNGARY. By Arminius Vámbéry, Professor at the University of Buda-Pesth; with collaboration of Louis Heilprin. Illustrated, 12mo. Sold by Wanamaker, $1.10; by mail, $1.26.

to say

To secure attention to this book, it should be enough that this is the first comprehensive account of the country which for centuries served as the eastern bulwark of Christendom that has ever appeared in English. It is written, it is true, not by a professional expounder of his people's history, but by a Magyar man of letters better known to English-speaking nations than any other of his countrymen, and qualified, at all events, to present the salient features and characteristic aspects of Hungarian history. An extraordinary fact it is that Americans and Englishmen, supposed to be well educated, know but little more about Hungary than about Russia as regards the long interval between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, when the fate of Christian Europe hung in the balance. Yet, on every ground of gratitude and honor, such ignorance is inexcusable in the case of the Magyars. They bore the full brunt of the onset of the Ottoman Turks, whose armies, for a long period, were the best disciplined and the best equipped on earth, whereas the natives of Great Russia bore for 200 years the yoke of Tartar nomads. But this is not the only ground on which Hungary deserves the careful study of every one desirous of defining the foci of mediæval civilization. How many of us are alive to the fact that in the fourteenth century there was a higher and softer civilization on the banks of the middle Danube than on the banks of the Seine; that the torch of culture and refinement which blazed so high under Frederick II., the last Hohenstaufen Emperor, was caught up by the hands of the Angevin sovereigns of Hungary, and that the latter, for two hundred years, exercised a potent influence over the Italian peninsula?

The first point to bear in mind with reference to Hungary is that the Romans left a deep imprint upon it, as deep almost as that which they left in southern Germany, and which accounts for the advance maintained by the latter region in mediæval civilization. The eastern and central part of Hungary, known to the classical historians as Pannonia, was from the time of Tiberius as thoroughly Romanized as Gaul. The eastern section of the country, now known as Transylvania, was part of that province of Dacia conquered by Trajan, but it does not seem to have been included in the district nominally abandoned by subsequent Emperors. We say nominally, because even the parts ostensibly forsaken, and now known as Wallachia and Moldavia, exhibit in their present dialects indisputable proof that Roman colonists remained long after the eagles were withdrawn. It is important

to remember, if we wish to appreciate the civilizing matrix in which the Magyars were cast, that their eastern neighbors interposed between them and later Asiatic inroads, the Moldavians, and Wallachians, have to this day retained a language as distinctly descended from the Latin as is the Portuguese. Too much emphasis cannot be laid on this fact, that Hungary, at the date of the Magyar emigration, was still, notwithstanding the sporadic settlements of some earlier invaders, as completely and insuperably Romanized as were southern Gaul and Spain at the date of the Visigothic settlement. We could not otherwise account for the position maintained in the van of medieval civilization by the Hungarians, who were confessedly not only an Asiatic but a Turanian people.

Upon the whole, the Angevin period may be regarded as the golden age of the Magyars. The culture and customs of western Europe now became more deeply rooted than ever in the valley of the Danube, for the royal family, through their Angevin kinsmen, were now connected through many intricate ways with almost every reigning house throughout the west. It was at the apogee of this epoch that even the Polish nation placed its crown upon the brows of the Hungarian King, and that, so far from Hungary having no seaport, it had outposts upon three seas--the Black, the Baltic, and the Adriatic. As we have said, a feudal subdivision of land and duties had long existed in Hungary, but it was the first King of the Angevin dynasty who, in the first half of the fourteenth century, introduced the institution of chivalry, which, with its adjuncts of coats of arms, heraldic ceremonies, and knightly tournaments acquired extraordinary vogue among the Magyars, to whose vanity, as Prof. Vámbéry acknowledges, appeals are never made in vain.

The house of Anjou may be said to have come to an end in Hungary with the accession, in 1387, of Sigis mund of Luxembourg, who had married the Princess Mary. To his subsequent acceptance of the imperial throne of Germany, which had been twice refused by Kings of Hungary lest they should be tempted to neg. lect the affairs of their own kingdom, the rapid advance of the Moslem power in the Balkan peninsula and the conquest of Constantinople are with much plausibility attributed. It was during the reign of Sigismund, whose family, it will be remembered, united the crown of Bohemia to that of Hungary, that the islands and cities on the east coast of the Adriatic were wrested from Venice, and that accordingly a seacoast is attributed to Bohemia in the Winter's Tale with as much correctness as is the title of Duke to the mediæval ruler of Athens in The Midsummer Night's Dream and in Chaucer's Knights' Tale.

The section of Hungarian history which spans the interval between the Angevin and the Hapsburg period, and in which John Hunyadi and King Mathias are the most conspicuous figures, is one of those subdivisions of modern European history over which