three from his speeches, Charles Sumner; and eighteen pages are devoted to the productions of Horace Greeley. We have Mr. Greeley's characteristic letter to Forney, where he says: "You know my inveterate conviction that a journal that cannot support itself can support nothing else that is good; that all journals that need bolstering ought to die, and so strengthen those that have inherent vitality; that Washington city is the great mistake of our country, and in good part because it seems to require a press essentially parasitical, or dependent on some sort of government or partisan subsidy. If every journal that does not pay from its legitimate income were annihilated to-morrow, I feel sure that it would be a blessed thing for the country"; also his letter to President Lincoln urging emancipation, entitled "The Prayer of Twenty Millions"; and his “Literature as a Vocation." Ample space is given to Harriet Beecher Stowe's popular stories-some twenty-five pages -the quotations from "Uncle Tom's Cabin " and "Sam Lawton being happily chosen. Henry Ward Beecher is represented by numerous selections from his sermons and political speeches, of which nothing is more noteworthy than his discourse "On the Death of Lincoln." John Lothrop Motley also, "The Fall of Antwerp" being perhaps the most characteristic of his writings which appear in the compilation. From Parke Godwin there is an extract from his brilliant address at the reception of Henry Irving by the New York Goethe society in 1888; Elizabeth Cady Stanton is commemorated with "A Plea for Woman Suffrage"; John Godfrey Saxe by his poems "The Way of the World and the "Briefless Barrister"; and Hon. John Jay by an extract from his address to the Union League club in 1866, entitled "Happy Results from a Policy of Justice."

James Russell Lowell holds a proud place among the authors represented in this volume, not less than thirty-four pages being devoted to selections from his poetic and prose writings. It is all good, but nothing is more readable than the extract from his sketch of Wordsworth. He says: "Take from Wordsworth all which an honest criticism cannot but allow, and what is left will show how truly great he was. He had no humor, no dramatic power, and his temperament was of that dry, juiceless quality, that in all his published correspondence you shall not find a letter, but only essays. If we consider carefully where he was most successful, we shall find that it was not so much in description of natural scenery, or delineation of character, as in vivid expression of the effect produced by external objects and events upon his own mind,

and of the shape and hue (perhaps momentary) which they in turn took from his mood and temperament. His finest passages are always monologues. He had a fondness for particulars, and there are parts of his poems which remind us of local histories in the undue relative importance given to trivial matters. He was the historian of Wordsworthshire. This power of particularization (for it is as truly a power as generalization) is what gives such vigor and greatness to single lines and sentiments of Wordsworth, and to poems developing a single thought or sentiment. It was this that made him so fond of the sonnet." Among the writers on religious subjects who appear, in this volume are Noah Porter, the great educator, and Philip Schaff, of the Theological Seminary. General W. T. Sherman is represented by an extract from his account of the Beginning of the March to the Sea"; General U. S. Grant by an extract from his "Personal Memoirs." Some excellent selections appear from the works of J. G. Holland, of which is "Self Help," in which that eminent scholar says: "Labor, calling, profession, scholarship, and artificial and arbitrary distinctions of all sorts, are incidents and accidents of life, and pass away. It is only manhood that remains, and it is only by manhood that man is to be measured. When this proposition shall be comprehended and accepted, it will become easy to see that there is no such thing as menial work in this world. No work that God sets a man to do-no work to which God has specially adapted a man's powers-can properly be called either menial or mean. man who blacks your boots and blacks them well, and who engages in that variety of labor because he can do it better than he can do anything else, may have, if he choose, just as sound and true a manhood as you have, not only after he gets through the work of his life, but now, with your boots in one hand and your shilling in the other. There is very much dirtier work done in politics, and sometimes in the professions, than that of blacking boots; work, too, which destroys manhood, or renders its acquisition impossible." From Edwin Percy Whipple's charming literary productions are extracts from "The Shakespearean World," the "Judicious Hooker," and Webster as a Master of English Style"; from Charles A. Dana's writings, "Greeley as a Journalist," and "Roscoe Conkling"; from Samuel Osgood, "Hours of Sleep and Hours of Study." We might, if space permitted, make further pertinent reference to the varied contents of this particular volume, but enough has been said to show their general and useful character.

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