"The Life and Correspondence of Mrs. Delany" covers more than three-quarters of the eighteenth century, and is overflowing with lively gossip of the English court life of that time. Indeed, it reminds constantly of Pepys and Burney in its intimate tone. Rousseau, Fielding, Dean Swift, Lady Montague and a host of personages pass through the pages. Of John Wesley it is said: "I never met with so delightful a man as my hero, Mr. Wesley,-so much goodness, friendliness and cheerfulness joined. . . . Miss Wesley is the finest girl I ever saw; you would have been charmed had you seen her mimick the dancing of twenty people."

A letter from Horace Walpole mentions that "there is a new institution that begins to make, and if it proceeds will make, a considerable noise. It is a club of both sexes, to be erected at Almacks, on the model of that of the men at White's." And this in 1770.

Mrs. Delany was intelligently interested in astronomy and botany, and yet so little in advance of her generation that she could seriously write that "a spider put into a goose-quill, well sealed and secured, and hung about the neck as low as the pit of the stomach" would prove an infallible cure for her beloved nephew's ague. The long list of her paintings and crayons prove her not only an accomplished, but an industrious woman. She spun flax, of which fine damask napery was made. She designed and embroidered elaborate furnishings, notably some bed hangings "of nankeen ground, worked all over with most beautiful patterns of leaves united by bows of ribbon cut out in white linen and sewed down with different varieties of knotting in white thread, which gave relief and light and shade." She was a diligent collector of shells, of which she made use in decorations that were much admired. She went continuously into society, personally supervised household matters, was practical helpmate to her husband the good bishop, and, as this volume testifies, a diligent correspondent.

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Mrs. Delany ended her days as a sort of pensioner of King George III and the Queen Charlotte. The later letters give full accounts of the coming and going of the royal family to the apartment of their honored friend; one and all seem the perfection of amiability and gracious courtesy. They brought pretty gifts "so elegant it is impossible to describe," she declares.

Mrs. Delany wrote that she was wakened on Sunday morning. October 25. 1760, with the news of George II's death. "After church, Lady Jekyll and her little sprite of a daughter came and spent the whole afternoon, webt for the king, but talked of the coronation. Crapes, bombazeens, thick muslin, very broad hems, nothing else talked of. Fifteen hundred yards crape sold at one shop on Sunday night, they say."

Here is a description of the "ceremony of the coronation, which was performed with all the ponip and magnificence that could be contrived; the present king differing so much from the last that all pageantry and splendor, badges and trappings of royalty, were as pleasing to the son as they were irksome to the father. The dress of the Queen on this occasion was as fine as the accumulated riches of the city and suburbs could make it; for besides her own jewels (which were a great number and very valuable) she had on her head and on her shoulders all the pearls she could borrow from the ladies of quality at one end of the town, and on her petticoat all the diamonds she could hire of the Jews and jewelers of the other." These disjointed bits give but mere tastes of the flavor of the book, but our word for it, no one interested in the interior workings of court life will regret adding this volume to his shelf. Moreover the pervading spirit is specially kindly, no one word set down in malice. If the two volumes had been put inside two separate covers the great pleasure of reading them would have been enhanced. (Little, Brown & Co., Boston, $2.50.)

In 1894 Lyman P. Powell undertook to conduct for the University Extension Society a pilgrimage in the footsteps of George Washington. It proved the initial step that has resulted in the handsome volume entitled "Historic Towns of New England," made up of contributions from able writers. When it is known that Colonel Higginson and Dr. Hale have collaborated in the chapter on Boston, that Frank B. Sanborn has treated Concord and Edwin D. Mead Rutland, no further proof will be needed that thoroughness and finality of research characterize the entire work. It is printed on heavily coated paper with many illustrations and enclosed in neat box. (George P. Putnam's Sons, New York, $2.50.)

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Notwithstanding a little bit of a perfunctorily placating tone in James Fullerton Muirhead's introduction to his "Land of Contrasts," it is by all odds one of the best possible books of an Englishman's impressions of America that we can hope to see. Customs that excite no criticism when seen habitually, strike us very differently when viewed and described by our "cousin." No one can afford to miss the enjoyment-often tempered by humiliation-of seeing how we impress a foreign, but friendly, contemporary. Mr. Muirhead is specially to be thanked for his remarks upon our barbarous sleeping-car accommodations. A perception of decency, not to say delicacy, on our part should have made such condemnation long ago impossible. (Lamson, Wolffe & Co., Boston, $1.50.)

Tolstoi's views are so radical and delivered with such condensity, that an elaboration of his sentences is requisite to a clear understanding of his interpretation of "The Christian Teaching." Many think that much of our so-called civilization would be subverted by the adoption of Tolstoi's opinions, but he himself would unhesitatingly choose to be Christian rather than to be civilized if the alternative were necessary. Injustice is so much a part of us that we can exercise it to the point of cruelty without knowing it, and even with a sense of benevolence in our hearts. I venture to say it will be with a feeling of derisive pity, even if mingled with the scruples of an astonished conscience, that most of us will read the concluding paragraph of Chap. XXVIII: “And thus arguing, not seeing the evil he is doing, a man will quietly take from others the result of their labor, compel them to labor to the detriment of their life, deprive them of their land and-most striking example of all-will rob a child of its milk in order that its mother may feed his child. This constitutes the family snare, or the snare of the continuation of the race.'

This "most striking example of all," reduced to simple details, will convict us that at the moment of assuming parental duties, and when our hearts are specially and tenderly open to love and gratitude, unthinking, unjust, criminal acts may be selfishly committed. Who among us can receive such doctrines? But who among us dare to say that they are not the very pith and marrow of the teaching of the man Jesus? (Frederick A. Stokes Company, New York, $1.00.)

"Taking Beethoven's sonatas (which, by the way, no one will ever properly appreciate until he regards them as symphonies, and mentally distributes the parts among flutes, reeds, horns and strings as he goes through them), his songs, his symphonies together, I know not where one will go to find in any human product such largeness, such simplicity, such robust manliness, such womanly tenderness, such variety of invention, such parsimony of means with such splendor of effects, such royal grandeur without pretence, such pomp with such modesty, such unfailing moderation and exquisite right feeling in art, such prodigious transformations and retransformations of the same melody, as if the blue sky should alternately shrink into a blue violet and then expand into a sky again,-such lovemaking to the infinite and the finite, such range of susceptibility, such many-sidedness in offering some gift to every nature and every need, such comprehension of the whole of human life.

There is but one name to which one can refer in speaking of Beethoven: it is Shakespere. For as Shakespere is, so far, our king of conventional tones, so is Beethoven our king of unconventional tones. And as music takes up the thread which language drops, so it is when Shakespere ends that Beethoven begins."

It is with this appreciation of Beethoven that Sydney Lanier's first chapter in "Music and Poetry" ends. These essays, the work of the

lamented young poet in the seventies. are full of the highest qualities of the title. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, $1.50.)

Walter Cranston Larned's "Rembrandt" is a judicious interweaving of romance and biography, and if the wonder where one begins and the other ends is often present in the reader's mind, certainly no other method makes deeper impression upon the memory.

The masterpieces of few artists are more familiar to the modern traveller or student than those of Rembrandt van Ryn, and acquaintance with the circumstances attending their production only augments the lively interest they inspire. If the artist really played the prank of secreting himself at the clinic of the celebrated Dr. Tulp, in order to catch the spirit of it before undertaking his "Lesson in Anatomy," to know the fact is assuredly to add to the beholder's pleasure. Through Mr. Larned we learn to love and esteem the demure Saskia van Ulenburg, who became his wife in 1634. Her lovely face looks out from so very many of his works that it is well to know that she was as good as she was beautiful. Rembrandt was impulsive to impetuosity, fond of elegant, even sumptuous surroundings, but careless of the money which his art brought him so easily and abundantly. He eventually fell into the hands of the Jews and was sold out ignominiously and mercilessly. Fortunately this did not occur until after the death of the beloved Saskia. Rembrandt is presumed to have married the peasant girl, Hendrickje, who had become the mother of his daughter, but no mention is made of the third wife, Catherina van Wijck, who survived him. (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, $1.50.)

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An old physician, retired from practice, had placed in his hands by an East India missionary the formula of a simple vegetable remedy for the speedy and permanent cure of Consumption, Bronchitis, Catarrh, Asthma and all Throat and Lung Affections; also a positive and radical cure for Nervous Debility and all Nervous Complaints. Having tested its wonderful curative powers in thousands of cases, and desiring to relieve human suffering, I will send free of charge to all who wish it, this recipe, in German, French or English, with full directions for preparing and using. Sent by mail, by addressing, with stamp, naming this paper, W. A. NOYES, 820 Powers' Block, Rochester, N. Y.

Housekeepers dread the task of polishing stoves, but Enameline lightens the task. It is ready for use, makes no dust or odor. It is easily applied with a cloth and with very little labor produces a jet black and very brilliant gloss. It has the largest sale of any stove polish on earth. Sold everywhere.