products of labor, to a month thirty years since. It used to occupy six weeks to fix an amalgam of mercury on a large looking-glass: now it takes just forty minutes. The engines of a first-class iron frigate perform as much work in twenty-four hours, as forty-two thousand horses. We strongly commend this work to our intelligent manufacturers and artizans.

The Every Day Philosopher in Town and Country. By the author of "The Recreations of a Country Parson." 12mo. pp. 320. Boston Ticknor & Fields. 1863.

THE Country Parson changes nothing but his name in becoming the Every Day Philosopher. He works but a single vein whether in country or city, essay or sermon. You have the whole of him in any five dozen of his pages. No one expects that he will turn over a new leaf and wake you up with some startling contrast, whether in thought or style, to what has meandered through previous level meadows of well nigh measureless breadth. His literary mode is as well determined as though he were already among the preterites. But of his special quality there is a large, we had almost said, an unlimited development. He lets nothing slip by him untaxed for his pages, takes toll of every thing that comes by his mill; uses his eyes, wits, and feelers, with the alertness of a policeman; moralises and grows quite sentimental over small every day concernings in a way that makes you wonder how he contrives to think of so many things where another man would see nothing to speak of. Mr. Boyd's books will have the same kind (we do not say, degree) of permanent interest which perpetuates the popularity of Charles Lamb, Leigh Hunt and William Hazlitt; from each of whom he differs at many points, while belonging to the same section of literateurs.

ARTICLE IX.

THE ROUND TABLE.

OUR CONTEMPORARIES. The North British Review (Feb.) gives its attention to "Novels and Novelists of the Day." The ghost of Dr. Samuel Johnson steps forward in a wondering mood at the astonishing expansion of fictitious literature in this age which (the

writer says) has absorbed the genius and the dulness that used to find employment in epic, dramatic, and other poetical composition. The present rate of supply in the British market is two novels of six volumes gross every week, some two hundred men and women, more or less, making it their steady business to keep up this rate of production; that is —a larger amount of British brain having been thus occupied for a dozen years past than in philosophy, history, poetry and biography together. No marvel that the old lexicographer's shade should confess an honest surprise at this phenomenon.

This article has given us also some serious thoughts concerning the deluge of novel reading which is submerging us. We are made very sensible, by its aid, of the great drift which has taken us from the old moorings of Scott's and Miss Austin's healthier and more reasonable pictures of life and manners—just to what point of literary demoralization it would not be easy to determine. Bulwer first, and after him Dickens and Thackaray are responsible for this revolution in the reading tastes of the public. Of these masters of fiction, the third is adjudged a greater artist than the second, and a really great moralist besides. Mrs. Gaskell and Kingsley write for special social reforms, and "Tom Brown" has exhausted his shaft of school-life ore. The Brontés were full of "lyrical impulse and impetuosity," but "George Eliot" has more powers of insight and reflection, avoids strong coloring, works along in an easy-going, retrospective, introspective, psycological way. Her story of Silas Marner is pronounced thus far to be her best. Wilkie Collins is her antipode, in whom there is utterly nothing but the skill of a firstclass plot-maker. Here he is beyond rivalry the "Professor Harrington" of stage effects and claptrappery in general. Anthony Trollope hits the popular taste with very clever facility, eminent in no one gift, but average and sufficient in all, a good-natured sketcher of just what is going on in the world of to-day, using a large amount of "padding" in all his books. We thought as much in reading his North America." This lands us among the "No Names" and "Lady Audley's Secrets"-a jungle of poisonous vegetation which we would no more camp in for a night than in an African swamp. Our readers can find a thorough exposé of this subject of "Sensation Novels" in the London Quarterly Review [April, Am. republication.] It is hopeful that this sort of sinning against good taste and sound morals is receiving so much merited castigation.

Appropos of this teeming topic, the Church Review [April] puts a sharp knife into "New England Religious Novels." The writer

is at home in literary criticism, and dissects with severe truthfulness Mrs. Stowe's, Dr. Holmes's and some others' attempts to run Christianity into their peculiar moulds of thought. He shows a close acquaintance with the transcendental scepticism of this latitude, and strings together the epitaphs of some of its whilom coryphoei as coolly as an anatomist would wire up a skeleton for his museum. "Theodore Parker and Margaret Fuller are no more; Ripley has given up Socialism for Literature; Hawthorne has gone back to his Romances; Lowell is absorbed in a Professorship; Brownson and Hecker have taken refuge in the Roman Church; Dana is absorbed in Law; Dwight has turned to Music; Channing and Alcott have died; Curtis is a Lecturer; Emerson is 'the Concord Sage; Thoreau has but recently left us, a pure worshipper of Nature; the Dial has become one of the curiosities of literature."

With very much of this spicy and caustic article we cordially agree, for the evil of the literature which it takes in hand has already become a nuisance. But we smile at the churchliness which finds the fountain head of most of this and associated perversions in the puritanic departure of our people from the rubric, and which can see no other cure for them than the "ventilating New England with a knowledge of the Church." The author would hardly undertake to defend, as a thesis, all the sharp points which he makes against our religious and social life. His "squeaking bass-viol," for example, is an anchronism. We are amazed at his angular, dun-colored picture of what we know to be all aglow with soft, bright beauty. He pleases his readers, however; and we are too used to this handling to be at all disturbed by his clever exaggerations.

The North American Review (April) gives us some curious details of the working of the "The Roman Bar." The pleader either stood or sat, often freely walked the floor; when exhausted would drink from a water-vessel which was apt to be enforced with something stronger than nature's cordial. A clepsydra was placed before him when he began. How many turns of this he should continue was varied according to circumstances. When the allotted time was up, he must stop, unless the judge saw fit to permit him another turn. This was called dare aquam. A plea was measured by so many clepsydras, not, so many hours. While the advocate was reading documents, an officer put his finger on the water-vent, to check its flow; this was sustinere aquam. During the pleadings, the opposite party took every method to show his contempt of his opponent by chatting with neighbors, writing letters, shrugging the shoulders, tossing the head, and behaving generally like anything but a gentle

man; while the friends of the speaker and even hired clappers obstreperously applauded his telling points. A nervous client would recall his attorney from a too long rhetorical digression by the abrupt and direct demand-" speak to my goats." The height of these advocates' ambition was to become masters of a fluent and effective extemporaneous address-non compositum domi, but usque ad extemporalitatem.

The same Quarterly (it always has a kind word for new beginners in literary adventure) finds in the anonymous drama "Salome" the evidences of a fresh and vigorous power, of no common excellence, in this difficult branch of poetic composition. Herodias, the Lady Macbeth of the Gospels, Salome, pictured as a pure, gentle, artless, guileless maiden, the Baptist in his masculine, prophet-like independence and spirituality, Christ coming near enough to the movement of the tragedy to throw over it the unearthly majesty and mystery of his great nature-these certainly furnish materials for a masterly delineation of character, which, in the judgment of this critic, with some abatements, has been wrought out successfully.

With all the wisdom and erudition which our graver periodical literature is perennially pouring forth, it is surprising how little genuine wit or humor comes bubbling to the surface of the stream. We want another Sidney Smith among the reviewers and critics. His advent would be hailed with a clapping of hands around the whole table. Not much has been done to meet this want by the Rev. A. H. K. B. His juiciness is like a rather dry orange. We thought we were going to smile once or twice over his "Estimate of Human Beings" in the last Fraser; but not even the very unique correspondence therein reported, postscript included, nor Mr. Green's studying without shoes and stockings, could quite stir the risibles. Is it dignity or dulness or both which takes the sparkle out of our Catawbas and Champaigns? Is it a sin to laugh? or have the newspapers and lighter magazines bought up the licenses to bring the house down in a good, hearty round of applause? Is the second "time" in the fourth verse of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes no longer canonical among good, serious-minded people? But we strenuously demur against the pulpit-application of the subject, having no faith in laughter as an act of worship and a means of grace.

WIT OUTWITTED AN INCIDENT OF THE LECTURE ROOM.-Dr. , in treating the subject of Depravity in the light of New Schoolism, grew warm. His broad-brimmed hat was upon the table beside him. In the earnestness and carelessness of his gesticulation, he knocked the hat upon the floor. Smilingly he said, "That is the

way we knock down Old School doctrine." An Old School doctor, who was honoring the lecturer with a hearing, sitting by his side, picked up the hat, and replacing it upon the table said, “And this is the way we set it up again." It need not be said that the reply was greeted with something more than a smile.

THE MAGI'S THREE GIFTS.-Have they any special spiritual significance? Some of the old preachers evidently so thought, and their thoughts, if nothing but fanciful, are certainly very pleasant. Thus, John Tauler, the devout pietist of the Rhine, makes the "myrrh" representative of the bitterness of the soul's turning away from earthly delights to God: the "frankincense" emblematic of the incense of holy love offered up by the consecrated heart to God: and the "gold" the symbol of the devotion of our active service and outward resources to the Divine glory. So, in much the same way, Jeremy Taylor (reversing also the enumeration of these offerings) puts the "myrrh" for the purgative methods and adjuncts of the spiritual life, "faith, mortification, chastity, compunction": the "frankincense" for the illuminative graces, "hope, prayer, obedience, good intentions": the "gold" for the eminences and spiritual riches of the unitive life contempt of riches, poverty of spirit, consecration to God, and benevolence to men. Is this a fair and allowable passing upward from the literal and sensible to a higher religious sense?

WHAT'S IN A NAME?- Much; for instance :-The Tuileries have a very aristocratic and romantic sound: but how with the plain English of it, brickyards? Again; one might date a letter from Aguas Calientes, among the Mexicans, with a rather pleased feeling of importance about one's stopping-place: but reducing it simply to warm water would be very likely to evaporate the self-consequence in a wreath of steam. Names are powers.

THE hypocritical "hail Master" with its Judas-kiss (says the Patience of Hope) is only a short step from the open buffetting and scourging of our suffering Lord. They are of the same kin, and easily work at each other's evil trade.

On page 239, line 27, of our May number, for “ thing" read string. On page 277, line 16, a @ has changed places with ☀, and the kit should be a separate word. An additional proof, to what we have been able previously to receive, will (we anticipate) save us the need of further corrections of this kind.