picture (to change the figure) is full of the delicacies of half-tints and reflected lights.

Ah-that is the trouble. It is art, not nature. I have said often as she has swept by me on the street or in the saloon-What a master! never, What a woman!

And yet I know that she is truly kind and womanly; admirable in all the relations of life; a gracious presence in her home and in society,-and not without traits that are noble. But did you ever read Taine's comparison of Tennyson with Alfred de Musset?

I see that I have betrayed myself, and that my readers have discovered that my stagey person is by no means a man, as I at first weakly pretended. Never mind; I shall not change the pronouns. I feared that she might read this and be hurt, and I would rather cut off this hand than bring even a passing sorrow to her heart. But I am sure she has not read far enough to discover my ruse, and, judging from some former experience of mine in such matters, I am reasonably certain that even if her eyes are upon these words she will never suspect that her portrait has been placed in the Old Cabinet.

A FRIEND with a single fault! Have you never formed one of a little company all engaged in talking about just that one little fault of a friend? To the rest of us it is so apparent. If it were not for the solitary

flaw we say, the dear boy, the dear girl, would be perfect. Sometimes it is fretfulness; sometimes conceit; sometimes a morbid self-abasement; sometimes a touch of selfishness; a disposition to dwell upon the failings of others; a faculty for interference; a lack of attention to personal appearance; procrastination-or dear knows what. Now is it not very much like a nightmare-the way we live in the same house with these people, year in and year out, and see the petty fault growing bigger and bigger, and can raise no voice against it can do nothing but say "if, if, if," "alas and alas !"

"O but we do speak!"

Yes, sometimes we do; and sometimes the warning voice is enough. But the tragedy appears in those cases where either the warning cannot be given, or where it is unheeded. A family might be described as a succession of conventicles, composed always of the same members, save that at each session a different member is absent, and is by the others apprehended and discussed in a way in which he can neither appre

hend nor discuss himself.

It has come to be considered a point of humorto be played upon as may happen-that we can see other people's faults so much better than our own. Now while this is very true, it is also very true that we do generally know our own faults, have had at least side-glimpses of them, and that they grow upon us because we dread to apply the knife; because, to be honest, we are every one of us shirks, more or less.

In these slight etchings of character you know I do not care to seize upon those patent vices-or (let me call them) follies-and' virtues which flaunt along the

street, and with which every one is familar enough; but rather to look up from my desk at the ordinary man or woman who goes past the window on the lawn, or comes in to dust the room, or spend an evening with me, with his or her ordinary failings and attainments. In other words, my gentle reader, nothing would please me more than to give you the sensation of coming unexpectedly upon a mirror; I should like you to be startled at seeing your own face look up at you from the page.

So my friend Philip hardly answers my purpose as an example-he who began by being very fine in his moral purposes, and very clean in his person, who gradually neglected his appearance till he became more than untidy, and ended in complete personal demoralization and moral dirt. I saw how it all began; he shirked his duty with regard to soap and water. He knew he shirked his duty; knowing it, he did not cease to do so, and ungodliness followed uncleanliness in natural sequence.

One of the signs of advancing age is our acceptance of certain foibles, of which our friends have told us, and which up to this year of grace we had been in the habit of looking upon as mere accidental and transient peculiarities. It is a sad day for us when we make that acceptance. There is some hope for us when the joke about our prospect of being fifteen minutes late at the door of Heaven has a certain sharp freshness; but when we settle down into the conviction that we are likely to be lives behindhand all our-well, perhaps the first gray hair has not been discovered, perhaps the grasshopper is not yet a burden, but we are "ageing."

The older and wiser I grow the more am I impressed with the idea of every man's personal responsibility. Make what allowance you will for taint in the blood, sordid circumstance, and all that, I believe more and more that every soul has a chance. I doubt if there is any well deep and dark and smooth-walled enough to keep a poor devil down if he is determined to get to the top of it. He will win out if he wants to hard enough. It is wonderful how good-luck follows the hospitable mind and honest endeavor.

I wish my friend the parson would hurry up that essay of his on How not to go Mad !"

Morning, Noon and Night.

THE mountain that the morn doth kiss, Glad greets its shining neighbor : Lord heed the homage of my bliss,

The incense of my labor!

Sharp smites the sun like burning rain,

And field and flower languish : Hear, Lord! the prayer of my pain,

The pleading of my anguish !

Now the long shadows eastward creep,
The golden sun is setting:
Take, Lord! the worship of my sleep,-
The praise of my forgetting!

A Plea for Age.

THE semi-annual house-cleanings being imminent, we want to say a word in behalf of the old things. After each carnival of soap and water, dusting-cloths and scrubbing-brushes, some ancient piece of furniture is apt to be banished to a back chamber, or to an odd corner in the attic. It may have had the misfortune to break a leg, or lose an arm, or to be so generally nicked and unsightly as to render further association with comely modern contrivances impossible. But it may also be hustled out merely because it is old, and this is an insult and an injury which it has never merited.

What can be more hopelessly, helplessly unhomelike and inhospitable than a parlor full of span-new furniture? There stand the chairs, and sofas, and tables, staring you out of countenance with their uncompromising freshness. Pretty, graceful though they be, still they are so reeking with newness as to repel when they should attract. Even a well-worn door-mat is some relief; but a familiar lounge, a tattered "sleepy hollow," an every-day footstool, will leaven the whole.

Ancient furniture is much in vogue now, and those who have it, without buying it at ruinous rates, may consider themselves fortunate. Mahogany chairs, straight of back and broad of seat, such as are com、mon nowhere but in New England, are sought far and wide. Those monuments of mahogany, half secretary and half chest of drawers, that were at once the emblem of the solidity and solemnity of our ancestors, are seized upon with avidity by relic-buyers. Cheval glasses, pier-tables, claw-footed tables, and numberless last-century bits, are deemed rare prizes. A dish of one's great-grandmother's dinner-service is regarded with awe, while one's great-grandfather's silver-capped cane is preserved with care.

Doubtless much of this newly-aroused admiration for the ancient is simply affectation, but there is much genuine liking as well.

Time-honored household gods are one of the few links with the fast obscuring past that this rapid and iconoclastic age has left us; therefore let us adore them while we may,-as long as they have a leg to stand on or an arm to uphold.

Coming Styles.

OF Autumn modes it is hardly time to speak definitely, only one thing being assured. The promise of plainness, made in the early Summer, will be strictly kept. Superabundant flounces and furbelows will take an unlimited leave of Winter wardrobes, and artistic simplicity reign in their stead. How our weary and over-dressed women have sighed for this change, they only are aware; and that they will hail the new order with delight is undoubted. It is hinted that the prospective styles will require not more than half the quantity of the past; but this is a dream that seems impossible of realization.

It is not improbable that the newly-modeled garments may have a "skimpy" appearance, but familiarity will soon arrange that, and once accustomed to it, weary eyes will be thankful they are no longer compelled to wander over vast fields of flutings and hedgerows of headings.

Plainness of fabric, no less than of fashion, is to be the rule. New goods, different from any yet produced, will soon be shown, and new colors, or rather new shades, are imminent. The tints and doubledistilled shades of last year were so unbecoming to Americans that the dry-goods houses are importing only novel hues, which it is expected will satisfy the most exacting.

Reform in Dress.

WITH all the talk to be heard on every side about reform in women's dress, very little of it points to any really wise and practical solution of the much mooted question. It is easy to discover the evils, but most difficult to present the remedy. Plausible theories are as plenty as grapes in Malaga, but practicable suggestions as rare as water in the desert. Some persons seem to think that to be hideous is to be healthy; while others hold that short skirts are but another name for prolonged existence.

Hygienically considered, it is scarcely questionable that feminine attire is not all that is desirable; but, thus far, no very acceptable substitute has been offered, even by the most radical reformers. Meanwhile, a few alterations will make the existing costume less injurious and certainly quite endurable, till the perfect model, that is to be at once beautiful and healthful, shall be evolved from somebody's interior consciousness. In the first place, waists should be made loose enough to permit a full expansion of chest and lungs, when the dress is buttoned. This is quite possible without looking baggy or wrinkling, if the corsets and underThe same syswaist are as loose as they should be. tem should be tried when lacing corsets, and these should be tied when the chest is expanded. Then they will cease to do harm by compressing the lungs, and will do good by sustaining the skirts.

Waists ought to be cut very short on the shoulder, to give perfect freedom to the movements of the arm, which cannot be free where the arm-hole comes low down over the shoulder joint. If not tight, plain waists, with biases, are probably as healthy as full loose waists, there being no more cloth in them than is actually needed, and not so much tendency to drag from the shoulder.

It would, undoubtedly, be generally better were the weight of a woman's dress supported by her shoulders; but to some women this is so painful as to be nauseating. Therefore, the next best way seems to be to have as little weight as possible hung from the hips. Shorter skirts, scantily trimmed, especially

for the street and ordinary use, are very desirable. Trains are unquestionably graceful, but to constantly drag about the heavy folds of a trailing robe cannot be otherwise than unwholesome. Since the blessed fashion of walking-dresses, cut at a convenient length, was introduced, women have taken at least twice as much out-door exercise as formerly, and they are just so much the stronger for it. But recently there has been a tendency toward long street-dresses, which must be either speedily repressed, or there is an end of long, vigorous, life-preserving walks for our girls. Exercise in the fresh air has but begun to be appreciated by our women as a means of retaining not only health but beauty. And for its full enjoyment they must have a convenient and simple costume, which shall be the one they ordinarily wear, so that no consideration of change of attire need prevent their going out of doors at any moment their occupations will permit.

Even these few suggestions, if carefully observed, will make the present dress less objectionable until a better can be had.

Domestic Silks.

AMONG the very best goods in the market for Autumn and Winter are the American silks. They are heavy and warm, of excellent material, fine in colorcoming in all the rich, dull browns, grays, plums, greens and maroons as well as black-and, more than all, they wear, femininely speaking, forever. They are not so handsome as the foreign silks, are not so smoothly finished; but they will outlast two or three of those. It is partly the smooth finish of the French and Belgian silks that makes them crack and wear shiny, as they are so likely to do nowadays. In the concluding processes of manufacture, they are passed over hot cylinders to give them the required lustre, but the heat injures the thread, and renders it liable to break, But the most serious cause of this defect is the extensive adulteration of the material used. The demand for silk has greatly increased in the last ten or fifteen years. Women who had two silk gowns twenty years ago, now have six, or eight, or ten in their place. Where silk was formerly used only for important occasions, it is now constantly and indiscriminately worn for house, street, shopping, church, even for morning. To meet this new demand, which came with heavier expenses for labor, manufacturers have been too often forced to sell poor articles instead of good ones, but poor articles of fair appearance. Nobody is willing to pay even a small price for an inferior looking stuff. Many, however, are beguiled into buying that which is actually bad, but seems good. To produce a handsome lustrous silk at a moderate price the makers have created a flimsy fabric, filling it in with oxides of lead and other substances in the dye to give it the proper weight; trusting wholly to the satiny finish to make it salable. When the sale of silks depended upon their real worth only worthy qualities were to be had; but now, when anything

under the name of silk can be sold, every grade of the goods is alike put forward by the dealers.

The $2 American silk, which is objected to by many because it resembles a nice poplin more than a fine silk, is the most serviceable and thoroughly satisfactory made in the country. It can be washed like a piece of white cloth, and seems never to suffer from the ordinary exigencies of apparel. We know a lady who wore one five years, and during that period had it subjected three times to the wash-tub.

The American silks which come at $2.50, $3.00, and even as high as $3.50 a yard, we believe, have the foreign virtue of a smooth finish; but with the virtue have, perhaps, some of the foreign vices as well.

Besides these different qualities of dress-silks, there are made in this country beautiful foulards, both plain and twilled; soft twilled silks, such as heretofore have been chiefly used for neckties, but which will be widely employed for trimming and drapery the coming season, gros-grain ribbons, black and colored beltings, white and colored silk handkerchiefs, and numerous other articles.

Homekeeping versus Housekeeping.

THE truest homes are often in houses not especially well kept, where the comfort and happiness of the inmates, rather than the preservation of the furniture, is first consulted. The object of home is to be the center, the point of tenderest interest, the pivot on which family life turns. The first requisite is to make it attractive, so attractive that none of its inmates shall care to linger long outside its limits. All legitimate means should be employed to this end, and no effort spared that can contribute to the purpose. Many houses called homes, kept with waxy neatness by painstaking, anxious women, are so oppressive in their nicety as to exclude all home-feeling from their spotless precincts. The very name of home is synonymous with personal freedom and relaxation from care. But neither of these can be felt where such a mania for external cleanliness pervades the household as to render everything else subservient thereto. Many housewives, if they see a speck on floor or wall, or even a scrap of thread or bit of paper on the floor, rush at it, as if it were the seed of pestilence which must be removed on the instant. Their temper depends upon their maintenance of perfect purity and order. If there be any failure on their part, or any combination of circumstances against them, they fall into a pathetic despair, and can hardly be lifted out. They do not see that cheerfulness is more needful to home than all the spotlessness that ever shone. Their disposition to wage war upon maculateness of any sort increases until they become slaves of the broom and dust-pan. Neatness is one thing, and a state of perpetual house-cleaning quite another.

Out of this grows by degrees the feeling that certain things and apartments are too good for daily use.

Hence, chairs and sofas are covered, and rooms shut up, save for special occasions, when they are permitted to reveal their violated sacredness in a manner that mars every pretense of hospitality. Nothing should be bought which is considered too fine for the fullest domestic appropriation. Far better is the plainest furniture, on which the children can climb, than satin and damask which must be viewed with reverence. Where anything is reserved or secluded, to disguise the fact is extremely difficult. A chilly air wraps it round, and the repulsion of strangeness is experienced by the most insensible.

There are few persons who have not visited houses where they have been introduced to what is known as the company parlor. They must remember how uncomfortable they were while sitting in it; how they found it almost impossible to be at ease, and mainly

for the reason that their host and hostess were not themselves at ease. The children were watched with lynx eyes, lest they should displace or soil something; so that the entertainment of friends became very much like a social discipline. They must recall, too, how sweet the fresh air seemed out-of-doors, and how they inwardly vowed, in leaving that temple of form and fidgetiness, that something more than politeness would be required to incite them to return.

Home is not a name, nor a form, nor a routine. It is a spirit, a presence, a principle. Material and method will not, and cannot make it. It must get its light and sweetness from those who inhabit it, from flowers and sunshine, from the sympathetic natures which, in their exercise of sympathy, can lay aside the tyranny of the broom and the awful duty of endless scrubbing.

The New York Central Park.

SINCE the articles on the New York Central Park were written, the ill news has come to us that Mr. Stebbins, who has so long been President of the Central Park Commission, has resigned his position, and that his resignation has been accepted. This is an event to be seriously regretted, and it cannot fail to be regretted by all who know how well Mr. Stebbins has filled the difficult post of President, and how much he has done toward making the administration of the Park what it has been, the one thing in our city government which decent citizens could contemplate with honest satisfaction. But it makes those who have the interests of the Park at heart still more uncomfortable to know the reasons why Mr. Stebbins has resigned the Presidency. It is, purely and simply, because he is tired of fighting with the politicians. These men were battering at his door night and day, in season and out of season, crying like the daughters of the horse-leech, "Give! give!" They want places for their friends, and they demand them as a right; they insist upon being paid in kind, as it were, for their services in getting the party into power that gave the new Commissioners their places. It is an open secret that there has been a steady fight with the politicians ever since the Park was created, and that they have not been kept at bay without much labor and sorrow. But, until the Ring got into power, they were kept at bay, and the Park was perhaps the only public department in America where politics were forbidden to enter. No man was ever appointed to any place in the Park service, from the lowest to the highest, from political consideration; and so far as human power could avail to make it so, the politics of the men employed in the works were as free from interference or dictation as those of any other private citizens. We believe all

VOL. VI-48

the Commissioners were united in the endeavor to keep the record clean in this respect. With Messrs. Olmstead, Vaux and Green, this was a religion, and the record of their administration is an honorable excep-. tion to the usual history of such affairs in our country. Then there came a melancholy break when the Ring burst in and trampled with their hoofs over the Central Park and its orderly government, and broke down the palings and made room for all the rest of the unclean herd. We had hoped there had been a recovery, but it seems not: another set of men have taken the place of the fellows who are hiding from justice, and are doing all they can to drag the Central Park down to a level with all our public administrations. We wish Mr. Stebbins could have felt strong enough to go on fighting them to the end, for they must be fought if we would preserve the Central Park for the people.

Huxley's Addresses.*

It may seem paradoxical, but it is nevertheless true, that a mind which is singularly affirmative, not to say positive, in one direction, is often at the same time as singularly negative in another direction. A mind which sees certain truths, or supposed truths, with unusual clearness, and is willing to accept these truths upon even a slender basis of testimony, is often disposed to reject truths of a different order, even when these are supported by a broader foundation of evidence. At the present moment modern science, though we may reasonably hope that the tendency is not inherent and ineradicable, undoubtedly tends to produce minds which are thus lop-sided and unequal, and it may fairly be said that few more prominent and

Critiques and Addresses. By Thomas Henry Huxley, LL.D., F.R.S. New York: D. Appleton & Co.

striking examples in point could be selected than the eminent author of these critiques and addresses. Though he explicitly rejects "Materialism as a creed, and with the utmost contempt and scorn defines "Positivism" as "Catholicism minus Christianity," he yet accepts thoroughly and ardently the doctrine of Evolution in its most "advanced" forin, and accepts it not only as being probable but as being proved; whilst he turns a dull and indifferent eye upon the higher order of spiritual truths, and declares these to be so shadowy and unsubstantial as not even to merit serious investigation. From an ideal point of view, such a state of things must be abnormal and unnatural; and instead of being really the product of the highest civilization, it is truly a proof that the intellectual development of the race has for a time out. stripped the spiritual development.

However, from a different and more restricted point of view, we are all mere intellectual machines, all more or less imperfect, but some much more elaborate than others; and it is not easy to find a machine capable of performing more than one kind of work, supposing that work is to be of a high order. In judging of such a man as Huxley we may fairly take this ground, as being probably the one upon which he would himself prefer to be estimated. Bearing this in memory, and not expecting from our machine work for which its construction unfits it, it is the mind of an intellectual giant with which we are brought into contact in the pages of these for the most part well-known critiques and addresses. "Not one but all mankind's epitome,' one cannot but regard with astonishment the varied intellectual açquirements of this most strenuous worker and most powerful writer. The mere enumeration of the essays which compose this remarkable volumeand we have hardly room for more-will bear out this assertion; and their careful perusal will conclusively prove that it is not exaggerated. Everywhere we meet with detailed knowledge of the most dissimilar subjects, with the keenest and most subtle logic, a biting and caustic sarcasm, relieved by a playful and genial humor, a fearless expression of opinions which the writer believes to be true, and an unquestionable reverence for human nature and love of his fellowcreatures, which wants but an abiding faith in the great truths of Christianity for its perfection. It must be added in fairness that opponents are sometimes treated, no doubt unconsciously, with hardness if not with injustice-great skill in fencing infallibly predisposing to the use of foils with the button offand that there is marked tendency to the acceptance of extreme views upon subjects regarding which much difference of opinion still subsists.

The first two essays in the volume present to us Professor Huxley as a politician in the highest sense of which this term is capable. One of them, entitled "Administrative Nihilism," deals with the much-vexed question of the true functions of the State, more especially as regards the expediency of State education. The practical good sense of this country has long ago

decided in favor of State education, and it is, therefore, unnecessary to say that all Americans must agree with the main conclusions of the writer on this question. We would, however, recommend a careful perusal of the final passages of this powerful essay to those who have been accustomed to regard the name of Huxley as significant of unbelief, skepticism, and materialism. That he is not a "believer" in the ordinary sense of this term is sufficiently certain; but the groundwork of the highest morality is in him who sees that "the highest, as it is the only permanent, content is to be attained, not by groveling in the rank and steaming valleys of sense, but by continual striving towards those high peaks, where, resting in eternal calm, reason discerns the undefined but bright ideal of the highest Good-'a cloud by day, a pillar of fire by night.'" Noble words, though but partially embodying the truth, and not spoken, we may be sure, without their being felt.

The second essay, on the English School-boards, and the third, on Medical Education, are especially directed toward institutions which exist in Britain, and do not specially concern us, though there is much in the latter which might well be taken to heart by those who discharge the important function of educating the medical men of the future. The fourth essay, entitled "Yeast," appeared in the Contemporary Review, and obtained such notoriety that we may conclude that most of our readers are already acquainted with it. Leaving out of sight the vast amount of reading of which it is an evidence, it is chiefly remarkable for a somewhat ungenerous attack upon Dr. Hutchison Stirling, the well-known Hegelian, who had replied to Prof. Huxley's celebrated lecture on "the Physical Basis of Life" by an elaborate critical lecture, subsequently published under the title of "As Regards Protoplasm." Most unprejudiced readers will have arrived at the conclusion that in this controversy Dr. Stirling had clearly the best of it; and it may be questioned if Prof. Huxley has bettered his position by the rough handling to which he subjects his adversary in the present article.

Lectures the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth treat respectively of the Formation of Coal, of Corals and Coral Reefs, of the Methods and Results of Ethnology, and of some Fixed Points in British Ethnology; and none of these require further comment, beyond saying that they are admirable examples of the popular treatment of scientific subjects. The ninth lecture is a celebrated one, being the "Anniversary Address to the Geological Society of London for 1870," and treating of the bearing of Paleontology upon the Doctrine of Evolution. Being himself a pronounced evolutionist, Prof. Huxley endeavors in this essay to bring together all the leading paleontological facts which in his opinion favor evolution, and nothing could excel the clearness of his argument so far as it goes. We fancy, however, that not many paleontologists are prepared at present to accept the conclusions here arrived at. So far, at any rate, as the doctrine of Evolution is