yet proves from the outset that nothing but time is necessary to give her one of the highest positions on the English-speaking stage. Her difficulties are chiefly those of false intonation, appearing often in the simplest sentences, and giving a bizarre air to the most natural questions. One soon forgets this, however, in the dignity and grandeur of her declamation in parts of "Mary Stuart, as well as in the intensity of unstrained natural feeling which she displayed in “Camille." She is greatly aided by an exceedingly mobile and expressive countenance; and there is certainly no actress in America who can approach her in her command of the finest plastic effects of the human figure. It was a lesson in sculpture as well as in drama to watch her move about the stage. As an English actress, when her present errors of false pronunciation and grotesque inflection shall have been overcome, Madam Ellmenreich has a great future, and the American public will not be slow in giving their applause. BOOK REVIEWS. Memoir of Ole Bull.1 THIS volume is a tribute of admiration and affection, and therefore eulogistic rather than critical. It is a successful attempt to tell the most interesting incidents in the life of a great violinist, who was known over Europe and America for a period of nearly half a century before his death. Like all who have achieved eminent successes as musicians, he gave evidence of his inclinations at a very early age. When he was five years old a musical uncle gave him a violin, and, "to the surprise of the family, he played well on it from the first, though he had received no instruction." At eight years old he was asked to take the place of an absent member in a musical quartette, and playing, to the astonishment of all, each movement correctly, he had made "his first triumph with all its train of consequences." At ten he could play what his teacher could not. His father intended him for the career of a clergyman, and with that view sent him, at the age of eighteen, to the university in ChristiBut his genius was not so inclined. His stay at the university must have been short, though we are not told the direct occasion of his quitting his studies and the severance of all his ties with home; but we are at once made acquainted with his lonely and severe struggles, and the great difficulties which he had to overcome during a period of seven years, which passed before he saw again his native Norway. Then he had gained fame in capitals of Europe, and his future was assured. ana. He played always from within, and not from without. His genius could not be confined in the straight-jackets of mechanical rules. Early in life he was "fond of composing original melodies, and in these he took especial pains to imitate the voices of nature, the wind in the trees, the rustle of the leaves, the call of birds, the babble of brooks, the roar of waterfalls, and the weird sounds heard among his native mountains." Mr. Hamerton said of 1 Ole Bull. A Memoir. By Sara C. Bull. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. For sale by Billings, Harbourne & Co. him, later in life, that he "arrived at his wonderful effects less by manual practice than meditation. He practiced less and thought more than other violinists. This is quite in keeping with his reflections after hearing Paganini. Ole Bull actually sold his last shirt to hear the mighty master, and having heard him, instead of saying, like the crowd, that nothing new was possible after that, began to seek after hitherto unknown effects that even Paganini had not discovered. Both these facts clearly indicate that Ole Bull was a musical transcendentalist, and his long retirement confirms A true transcendentalist dislikes publicity, and loves to cultivate himself in solitude." The Dan it. ish poet, Adam Oehlenschläger, in his Reminiscences, says that when Ole Bull played for the king in Copenhagen, and Frederick VI. asked him who had taught him to play, he answered, "The mountains of Norway, your Majesty." It was said that some of his peculiarly wonderful feats came from the unusual strength of his arms, which he displayed particularly in performing four distinct parts on the violin at once, and keeping up the motion of his bow with lightning swiftness for a long time. "No person who has not tried it can conceive of the extreme difficulty of playing at once distinct parts on each of the strings. It requires muscles strong as iron and elastic as india-rubber. Paganini had sufficient elasticity, but not sufficient strength. Ole Bull is the only man in the world that ever did it. After his first triumphs in Paris at an early age, Jules Janin, calling him "ce jeune sauvage," speaks of him in terms of praise almost without limit. In the course of his life of three score years and ten, he had the acquaintance and friendship of the most celebrated vocalists and musicians of his day-Paganini, Vieuxtemps, Malibran, Ernst, De Beriot, Thalberg, Liszt. But he was, besides being a musician, endowed with many charming traits of character, and wherever he was most known he He was the seems to have been most admired. occasion of tributes by those famous poets of his native country, Welhaven and Wergeland. Hans Christian Andersen was his friend, and Bjornstjerne Bjornson spoke to assembled thousands at his burial. Painted by Raphael, he seemed." After Ole Bull was dead, the eminent preacher, Dr. Bartol, spoke of his face as of that "in which, as much as in any countenance we ever beheld, the smile was a benediction. . . . . He was embodied beauty and an incarnate hymn—a mesmeric, irresistible man." And in confirmation of the good will of men towards him, it was said that all the children loved him. To those who never saw or heard him, there is no language that can bring the wonderful tones of his violin, or depict the indescribable skill of the artist. But this volume gives much of the interesting personality of the man to those who remember the great pleasure he blessed them with, and to all who find delight in music and its makers it is a contribution of undoubted value. It is almost perfection as a manufacture of type and paper. The Friendships of Mary Russell Mitford.1 THESE letters comprise a period of fifty-three years, beginning when Miss Mitford was sixteen years old, and ending with her death. Many of them, especially the earlier correspondence, are not worth preserving in book form, and would probably have been destroyed had not Miss Mitford prized them for the sake of the writers. Both Mrs. and Miss Mitford had a strong admiration for Mr. Mitford, who impresses us as a very disagreeable and selfish man, hardly worthy of the devotion of such a daughter. Mrs. Mitford's letters to her husband are decidedly gushing, and her accounts of fiveo'clock teas, dinners, and little parties are very amusing—the bill of fare playing the most important part in her eyes. Miss Mitford lived a quiet life, yet her sweet and womanly qualities, as well as her books, gained for her many devoted friends, some of whom were among the brightest minds in both continents. She have imparted it to almost every one with whom she came in contact, and people who knew her once were eager to claim her as a life-long friend. She carried on an affectionate correspondence with many people she had never met. She is extravagantly enthusiastic about people: she admires and detests. There are a number of letters from Elizabeth Barrett Browning, most of which were written before her marriage; kind and affectionate letters from Whittier, Ruskin, Bayard Taylor, and James T. Fields, the latter of whom was one of her most valued friends. Her own letters, of which there are a number written during the latter part of her life, are quite as charming as any in the book. Some of her criticisms are a little amusing. We quote a few: "Longfellow has beautiful bits, but his prose is trash, and I confess that I think he owes his success here quite as much to his faults, his obscurity, his mysticism, and his little dash of cant, as to his merits." "I have now on my bed (where I am writing) 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,' another American book; from which, I am told, Lord Carlisle said that he could not tear himself until he had completed it. I have only just begun it, but I doubt if it will equally enthrall me. I have no love for negro stories." "This brings us to 'Esmond.' Had I read it when I wrote to you? It seemed to me, besides the disgusting love story, very long and tedious, and full of commonplace and very false criticism--preferring Addison to Steele, and decrying that wonderful master of English style, Bolingbroke. All the best judges seem to dislike the book-at least, all who have mentioned it to me.' The following is from a letter written in 1834, after a visit to London: "I formed many valuable friendships, renewed old acquaintances, and made many new. The woman whom I like best is Harriet Martineau, who is cheerful, frank, cordial, and right-minded in a very high degree. I also liked much Mr. Willis, an American author, whose unwritten poetry and unwritten philosophy you may remember in my American book, and who is now understood to be here to publish his account of England. He is a best of our peers' sons than a rough republican." very elegant young man, and more like one of the The following is in an account of a conversation between James T. Fields and Carlyle: "I have knowr many brilliant talkers, but never any one that approached him [Fields]. It is the triumph of meekness and animal spirits without noise or abruptness, full of enjoyment, and perfectly unconscious. His conversation is for your pleasure thing in Carlyle displeased him far more; every one and his own, without an idea of display. Another knows that Emerson makes him a perfect idol, and it was thought that, if Carlyle cared for any one in the world, it was for Emerson. I have heard it said of them, They are not only like brothers, but like twin brothers. Well, remember that Emerson and Hawthorne both live at Concord, and you will appreciate the kindness of Mr. Carlyle's speech. "Isna there a place called Concord near ye? What like is it?' "Pretty! lively! ye ken I had fancied it to be a dull, dreary place, wi' a drowsy river making believe to creep through it, slow and muddy and stagnant, like the folk that inhabit it.' "So much for Mr. Carlyle, who has had the double misfortune of writing according to the humor-that is, the ill-humor-of the moment, without the slightest regard to consistency and truth, and to be surrounded by none but admirers, or listeners borne down by mere noise. In England his fashion is waning rapidly, and I have no doubt but that, like most overrated men, he will live to share the common fate of idols knocked down by his former worshipers in revenge of their own idolatry." Studies in Historical and Political Science.1 WE have just received the above interesting monographs, the first two of a series called "The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science," edited by H. B. Adams, which will prove of value to members of the legal profession, and generally to students of American social and civil history, as dealing more especially with local institutions that have hitherto met with partial and inadequate treatment. A part of the series will consist of republications of important papers which have appeared elsewhere in local or otherwise inaccessible prints. Mr. Freeman, in his general introduction to the collection, insists strongly on the true historic connection between the constitutions of England and of the United States. "To me the past history and the present condition of the United States is, before all things, a part of the general history of the Teutonic race, and specially of its English branch." The institutions of the English peoples are "part of the general institutions of the whole Aryan family." He develops his arguments on this subject in lines already laid down in his previous writings, with which we are familiar, and clearly points out the true value of the comparative method in historical as in natural science. Inasmuch as various portions of the eastern seaboard were colonized and settled by different elements of Teutonic stock, which became fused together, but not without leaving signs of the old distinctions, so fields affording materials for study of other kinds may be opened up by the student, well worth searching into. Each of these colonies reproduced some features of English, Swedish, Dutch life; and all these points in the local history of the colonies need to be "put in their right relation to one another, and to other English, other Teutonic, other Aryan institutions." The second monograph, by Dr. Adams, traces various resemblances and customs subsisting between many towns of New England and of Germany, which, rooted in the national instincts of Saxon 1 Studies in Historical and Political Science. An Introduction to American Institutional History. By Edward A. Freeman, D. C. L., LL. D. 1882. 39 PP. The Germanic Origin of New England Towns. By H. B. Adams, Ph. D. 1882. 38 pp. For sale at Publication Agency, (N. Murray) Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Md. social polity, have descended in hereditary heirship through centuries of English history, and have been transplanted to the western continent. Chief among these are the town, the township, with its individual contiguous homesteads; its woodland, its pasture, and plow-land, held in common for certain seasons of the year, and divided up at others; its co-operative husbandry, etc. But besides these purely agrarian customs, there was handed down the idea of the sovereignty of the community over the individual as expressed by the will of the majority, and also the political right of local self-government. Strange as it may appear, these peculiar social ideas are found exemplified not merely in New England villages, as in their old English and Germanic prototypes, but also in many localities of the South and West. Such is a brief indication of the two papers of the series thus far issued, and the titles of some of future monographs as described in the prospectus may be quoted: "Saxon Tithing-men in America,' Local Government in Illinois," "Local Government in Pennsylvania," "Origin and Development of the AdminisMunicipal Government of New York," " tration of Berlin compared with that of New York," "French and English Institutions in Wisconsin," "Civil Government in Iowa," "Indian, French, and English towns in Ohio," etc. Miscellaneous. THE American edition of Dr. Brown's miscellaneous papers is completed in a third volume of Spare Hours just issued. The initial paper on Locke (as a physician) and Sydenham is the longest and most elaborate; the rest are for the most part also semimedical, though not at all technical, nor beyond the comprehension of the general reader with reference to whom, indeed, they were written. They are, for the most part, eulogies of worthy physicians, either of historic note or the recently deceased of his own acquaintances. A few of the essays, however, are on matters of art, music, literature, and other general subjects. They are, as was to be expected from their author, frank, sensible, and worth reading; and in the strongly avowed commonsense doctrines with regard to the medical profession every intelligent reader will agree, except as to the throwing open of practice to the unlicensed. Agreeable as is all Dr. Brown's writing, however, one lays down the volume with a little weariness, and a misgiving that he wrote too much in proportion to what he had to say.--The purpose of The Still Hunter is to give such direction as will enable the hunter of deer to do the proper thing at the proper time under all the various and unexpected circum 2 Spare Hours. By John Brown, M. D., LL. D., etc. Third Series: Locke and Sydenham, and other papers. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 1883. For sale by Billings, Harbourne & Co. 3 The Still Hunter. By Theodore S. Van Dyke, author of "The Rifle, Rod, and Gun in California." New York: Fords, Howard & Hulbert. 1883. For sale by A. L. Bancroft & Co. stances that arise in still hunting; and at the same time to write a book interesting to the unprofessional as well as to the professional reader. The author has certainly succeeded in making it pleasant reading to any one who delights in deer-hunting, and as instructive and capable of making a good hunter out of a poor one as anything but actual field work can be. He devotes several pages to proving that one must aim ahead of a running deer in order to hit him a statement which he seems to think the general pubiic will be slow to believe-but for the most part he is practical and to the point.Major Ben C. Truman is author of the just published Tourists' Guide1 of the Central and Southern Pacific roads in California. It is an imposing pamphlet-bound book of 232 pages. It consists of descriptions of the va rious "places to go to" in the State, abundantly illustrated. Each description is supplemented by directions as to the route. It thus has less of the gazetteer and more of the literary quality than one would expect in a guide-book. The author does not depend alone on his own descriptive powers, but quotes largely from others, including John Muir and B. B. Redding. Many of the descriptions are quite alluring enough to inevitably accomplish their intention of starting off the reader to see the place described. -Two little books of verse,2 so unpretentious as to disarm criticism, come to us from opposite directions. Hawaiian Verse contains five local poems, of which "Lahaina," by Charles Warren Stoddard, is the only one that calls for mention; the card covers are beautifully engraved by the John A. Lowell Company, and the tiny col lection is intended as a holiday souvenir. Bird Songs of New England contains imitations and descriptions of the notes of some eighteen birds, done into verse. It is a second edition.The Story of Patsy has all the sympathetic spirit, the picturesqueness, and the narrative liveliness that are fast giving its author an assured position among the children's writers of the country. The tiny, cardboard-bound book has an additional claim to interest, in that it is "written and to be sold for the benefit of the new Silver Street Kindergarten."- -A holiday juvenile that reaches us somewhat belated is Two Tea-Parties, in which some very pretty drawing and lithographing (pretty, except for the faces, which are uniformly ill done) is strung on a chain of verse that is even thinner and more laborious than the unexacting taste of childhood will fancy. A convenient dictionary of the technical terms of architecture and the minor arts comes to hand from a French source. The fact that it is the minor artsArms, Costume, Lace, Personal Ornaments, Pottery, are some of the heads enumerated on the titlepage-brings a great number of out-of-the-way words into it. It is rather hard to find just what line did limit its scope; opening a page at random we do not find Heliotype, but do find Heliopolites, a political division of ancient Egypt; in another place, chirography and chiromancy, but not chord or chromo; Berlin porcelain, but not Berlin wool, although crewels, crash, worsted, and the like are admitted. Incongruities apart, however, there is much convenience in the hand-book, for many of its words are not to be found in the ordinary dictionaries. ances. EAST AND WEST. FASHION inclines to sentiment in dress and observThe nosegays now preferred are old-fashioned garden flowers and herbs, with the dew of old English poetry on their leaves-primroses, cowslip, and eglantine, and the quaint rosemary, with its stiff leaves and aromatic odor. Nothing prettier has been revived from old customs than the habit of sending St. Valentine baskets of simple flowers to a lady, instead of the amorous epistle on lace paper. New York sets the fashion of sending baskets of blooming lilies of the valley, or the graceful, neg 1 Tourists' Illustrated Guide to the celebrated summer and winter resorts of California, adjacent to and upon the lines of the Central and Southern Pacific Railroads. By Major Ben C. Truman. San Francisco: H. S. Crocker & Co. 1883. lected star of Bethlehem, or primroses, with one or two blossoms open, and buds which will keep the giver in remembrance by flowering until Easter. Innocent little Satsuma vases with clumps of white clover from the greenhouse are ornaments in houses of the finest fashion. Silver baskets with a single variety of choice fern growing in each are preferred to cut bouquets, in rooms furnished in the light creamy or fade hues of old French style. The colors of flowers, unless very carefully chosen, are bizarre in such rooms. 8 The Story of Patsy. By Kate Douglas Smith. San Francisco: C. A. Murdock & Co. 1883. ENAMEL furniture takes the place of carved wood in ultra-fashionable houses. The slender white and gold Louis XVI. suites are strictly classic, but the artistic fancy of the new Renaissance designs a style at once light, elegant, and distinctly modern, decorating chairs, panels, and cabinets with garlands and knots of flowers by famous pencils. The piece of furniture receives many coats of paint and polish till it assumes the quality of enamel. It is given a delicate ground-tint, over which flowers, with the transparency of life, are painted, not in the festoons of Pompeiian frescoes, but as if strewn by a careless hand, and painted with the finish of a Florentine brooch. The panels of walls, screens, and furniture are decorated in correspondence, with charming freedom and variety, the upholstery being of softhued velvet, or silk embroidered in shades its own color, softening into white. EMBROIDERY has thriven from the beginning under the patronage of the church, from the time when the robes of Egyptian priests were wrought with borders of the sacred lotus, and the hangings of the Jewish tabernacle were rich in blue and scarlet and fine-twined linen, to the cut-work and vestments made in the cloister for the altar and the dalmatic in medieval days. While needle-work was in its decadence of Berlin wool and cross-stitch, not longer ago than the most enthusiastic young student can remember, the convents and the devout of our country were not without their pious achievements of the kind. Religious subjects, like the offering of Isaac, or the vision of St. Peter in prison, wrought on canvas with wools of brilliant green and scarlet and white for leading tones, were exhibited with pride by the sisterhoods, and the work was careful enough to merit praise, whatever might be said of the design. There is still, I believe, in the church of St. Francis Xavier, of Sixteenth Street, New York, a chancel carpet, made by the ladies of the congregation, in cross-stitch on canvas, worked in squares, and afterward set together. Much fine altar-work is done by priests and lay brothers, who have the commendable sentiment that the adornments of the sacred altar should not be wrought by careless, sceptic hands. To hear of the altar pieces and chalice veils worked in the quiet of religious houses in Boston and New York, by monastic brothers, as a relief to hours of meditation, is like taking a step backward into the leisure and gentle employments of two centuries ago. The illuminator's brush, and the silks of the skilled needle-woman are lavishly bestowed in the service of the Anglican church, in which, to the outsider, art and religion appear interchangeable terms. Beautiful vestments are sent to the missions in this country, from the hands of notable workers in England, and it is said that Miss Anastasia Dolby, who is one of the finest artists in this kind of design, has composed a prayer to be said by the worker before beginning work upon sacred embroidery. The smile, if smile there wak ens at this, should be of the most respectful, when we recall that such was the sentiment and practice of the fine and single-hearted artists of the Middle Ages, whose skill rose to the highest achievements the world has to cherish. The demands of church work, however, find execution nearer home, at the hands of those few good artists whose names have been leading ones in the interest in art needle-work. Mrs. Carter's altar laces in New York, and both the laces and embroideries of Mrs. Damoreau in Boston, are known to those best informed in such matters. The embroideries are symbolic in figure and color: chalice veils wrought on satin thick as leather, weighted with a leaden plate in the center to fall in orderly folds over the cup at sacrament, true dull blood-reds or violet being usual colors chosen, which are worked with gold thread of extreme fineness, in intricate design; Maltese crosses, foils, and trefoils, everywhere carrying the sacred three of the Holy Trinity; Tudor roses, whose petals group themselves in threes, and all the signs of the altar. Fine beyond all bridal elegance, or the dainty providings for the first born, are these churchly furnishings, lined with white satin, like the plumage of a grebe's breast, fringed with gold that will not tarnish in centuries, kept in cedar coffers silver embossed; they are a branch of needle-work which links our day with the devout craft of the best age of art. IT was a happy idea of a young lawyer and member of the Snowshoe Club of Montreal to suggest holding a carnival of winter sports, that their neighbors in the States might come and see for themselves what a Canadian season and society can furnish. The idea was so sensible and attractive that it only needed mentioning when the Snowshoe Club, the Toboggan Club, the skaters, the curlers, even the hackmen-for they, too, have a club in Montreal-took it up with zeal, to give their guests such a week's skylarking as never was dreamed of outside of Russia. The ice palace, eighty feet high; its walls and towers reared from blocks of ice, not clouded and opaque, but clear as glass; its roof of evergreen sprinkled with water till the boughs flashed with ice brilliants, was a lovely spectacle for a grown folks' fairy book: and electric lights, colored fires, and the resources of modern magic transfigured it at night into a hall of jeweled light. The days were not long enough for the various and exciting sports pursued with true Canadian spirit, which is the sturdy temper of John Bull crossed with Indian toughness and excitability. Days were given up to curling and putting the hammer; the Snowshoe Club found its guests in shoes, and started out to give them the peerless pleasure of going fifteen or twenty miles over the hills on snow banks; and tobogganning was favored as the easier amusement, and one in which ladies could join. This sport consists in riding at lightning speed down the steepest and longest hill you can find, on a board on runners packed with twentyfive to fifty women, the craft steered by the man |