IMMEDIATELY after the fall elections there was a disposition on the part of Bourbon journals of both parties to find in the results some demonstration of hostility to Civil Service reform; and the unthinking among readers were more or less impressed with that view. Analysis of the vote showed no such meaning in it, as the OVERLAND noted at the time; and the present attitude of Congress is a very significant commentary on any such belief. Last year, the whole question for reformers was whether the ground already gained could be held against hostile measures. The only bills on the subject that came up for consideration were those that looked to repeal or crippling of the reform law. It was, of course, a real step in progress merely to hold the ground through the critical period of a change of administration, when the restraint imposed by the law was first fully felt. While the attitude of the Executive was well known to be friendly, it was inevitable that sooner or later Congress, as it began to realize the extent to which it had lost, and was likely to lose, its usurped power of patronage, would develop an effort to break down the reform. If our readers will remember how thick the air was a year ago with rumors of the dreadful things that were going to be done to Civil Service reform, and with Boeotian abuse of it now from a leading Democrat and now from a leading Republican, he will better appreciate the peaceful apathy that marks the attitude of the present Congress on that subject ; in the midst of which the bill that has long been recommended by the associations as the next step in the reformthe repeal of the Tenure of Office Act-progresses safely through the gauntlet, and several important additions to the Civil Service rules, all looking toward increased application of their principle, are made by executive order, without provoking a speech of indignation. The effort to abolish the secret confirmation of appointments by the Senate,also,gathers strength, and evidently will not stay defeated; and this is a movement directly in the line of Civil Service Reform.

MR. HENRY GEORGE'S clash with the Catholic Church can end only in one way-the loss of most of his Irish following. The personal adherents of Dr. McGlynn will, for the moment, cling to him, but there is nothing in Mr. George's position to warrant him in hoping for any permanent or widespread alienation of Catholic workingmen from their church. In fact, it was all along bound to be

only a question of time before the essential opposition between his ideas and those of the Irish people became evident; and this breach with their church will only hasten their understanding of that fact. With the German socialist Mr. George has much in common; with the Irish nationalist, nothing—they are irreconcilably opposed ir political hopes and personal cravings. And it is not likely that when the Irish of this country keep up so close a connection and so passionate a sympathy with the aspirations of Ireland, they will go with much heart into diametrically opposite aspirations as to their own position in this country. The general ownership of land in fee simple, the abolition of tenantship, has been for generations the dream of Ireland. The abolition of ownership in fee simple, and a condition of universal tenantship, is Mr. George's dream.

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IT IS true that the Irish desire for peasant ownership arises from the fact that it is inextricably interwoven in their home politics with the principle of nationality, while tenantship means alien landlords and alien government; and not from an inherent 'land-hunger," like that of the Anglo-Saxon. This is evident from their indifference to obtaining land in this country. Mr. Corbet's assertion in our last number, that the Irishman is naturally agricultural, and reinforces heavily the agricultural element in this country, is not in accordance with our observation here; we are accustomed to seeing the Irish seek cities and wage-work by preference, and live contentedly as tenants on wages from which a Portuguese or Frenchman would strenuously save, to purchase a few acres of his own. Nevertheless the solidarity of sentiment between the Irish in this country and the Irish in Ireland is so strong, and peasant proprietorship of land so certain to be for a long time yet an object of passionate desire there, that when once the antagonism of Mr. George's theory to this aim is understood, that theory cannot but lose its attraction to them.

INDEED, it is not really in the line of the chief desires of any wage-laborers. Its socialistic element attracts them so long as it is only dimly understood, for they are disposed to vague socialistic leanings, amounting at bottom to little more than a feeling that government should look out for them somehow; while of course to the distinctly socialistic wing among them, mostly German, of the Marx school, George's socialism in land is a step in exactly the

right direction, so that they are ready to set the example of upholding him. Yet even they believe that he begins at the wrong end; that government ownership of land should come last, and of the wage-industries first. This body of men that calls itself "Labor," means the hand-workers in the wage-industries, and it is with these industries that their concern lies. Mallock-who is generally very shrewd in seeing existing phenomena, however weak his reasoning from the insight may be calls attention to the fact that even in England, where real grievances do arise from feudal land tenures, the hostility of the discontented is really aimed at the wage-paying manufacturing class, not at land owners. Much more must this be true in our country, where so vast a proportion of the land is held by a yeomanry, and where there is absolute free trade in land. That Mr. George must either extend his socialism from land to transportation and manufacture, or fail to hold a following that really cares very little about the land question, would seem inevitable. Hitherto those who have explained to laborers the lack of connection between Mr. George's theory and their wishes, have been professors and reviewers, who had not their ear; but if the church to which many of them owe allegiance takes up the explanation, the situation will at once change.

LOGAN'S RIDE.

BEFORE ATLANTA, JULY 23D, 1864. Who rides so fast this march-worn track, Past line and trench and battle-wrack, Into the heart of that sulphurous hell Where the brave McPherson fell? The rider's brow is stern and sad For the leader lost, and for each lad In faded blue; the war-wise face Bent forward. And defying space, Spurning the road with feet of fire,

His eyes aflame with battle-ire,
Thunders the steed toward yonder scene,-
Where live the dreams of the Florentine.

The "Seventeenth" and "Tennessee,"
They know the nearing reveillé,
The drum-beat of your hoofs, Sir John,
Iron rain whereby the day is won;
That stride which wraps the distance round
Your arteries at every bound.

At last, while through the healing flesh,
The wound begins to bleed afresh,
That shrapnel from a Southern gun
Had made at gory Donelson,

The hero's bared and march-burned head
Is borne abreast the ranks. The dead
Might stir at that cheer the dying give
To him whose coming bids them live.
Oh, the rallying drums, the leveled steel,
Where the wavering lines hear that deafening peal!

"Comrades, will you hold this line with me?"
Voice of the rock to the swirling sea!
Iron surge of the sea that answers there,
Sweeps down all foes. The field is bare.-
All day that line is held. What time
Shall such a deed grow old with rime?
Will they forget the hour who heard

That bomb-burst, th' advance of the Thirty-third ?
No; tho' Stone Mountain's big, bald crown
On those lurid days no more looks down,
Each grandsire of the Tennessee
Will hold some infant on his knee

And proudly o'er the story tell :

:

The fight in that sulphurous hell
When gallantly McPherson fell;—
How they fought on with bloody cost,
And when the day was almost lost,
Then they heard that call to victory,
"Comrades, will you hold this line with me."

CHARLES J. WOODBURY.

A History of Greek Literature. The period of the production of Greek Literature, although its beginning cannot be definitely stated may yet, with a close approximation to the truth, be stated as about four centuries. This is upon the basis of the existence of the Homeric epics in B. C. 700, and putting a limitation at the death of Demonthenes, which occurred B. C. 322. It is a period nearly equal to that of modern literature, beginning with Chaucer, and ending at the present time. It included all that was great in Greek, and all that was greatest in all literature, for the genius of the later centuries stands still at the feet of antiquity, and acknowledges the earlier as its teacher and master. Compared with what once existed, that which remains of the ancient literature of the Greek is doubtless a minor portion, but we believe the most of the greatest works have survived; and indeed very little but what is eminent, and excellent has come down to us. It is all contained in the division of Epics and Lyrics, the Drama, History, Oratory, and Philosophy.

This volume, although designed mainly for students at the universities and public schools, will yet be found interesting to those who are not students in Greek, and, that it may be found so, all questions arising which involve and presuppose Greek scholarship, have been relegated to notes and appendices. It is a scholarly and carefully prefaced work, the author examining and discussing fully all doubtful questions, devoting many pages and much thoughtful argument to the Homeric question, enquiring into the nature of Melic, its periods and representatives, giving Sappho the praise that seems properly hers, and the place to which her genius entitles her, tracing the rise and development of the drama, earliest in Thespis, Protinas, and the Satyric drama, and later in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. He studies the beginnings of prose, invented in Miletus, and follows it from Cadmus and Pherecydes and the logographers to Herodotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon and the later historians. He studies the beginning of rhetoric and eloquence, and from the Sophists, follows its development in the practical oratory of Audocides and Lysias, and the Epideictic rhetoric of Isocrates, to the consummation of Greek oratory in Demosthe

A History of Greek Literature, from the earliest period to the death of Demosthenes. By Frank Byron Jevons, A. M., Tutor in the University of Durham. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1886.

nes, Hyherides, and Aeschines. He pays least attention to the works of the philosophers, but is just in his briefer study of Plato and the philosophers before him—Anaximander, Anaximenes, Haclitus, Zeno, and Anaxagoras, making his chief study that of Plato, with an examination of the estimate by Aristotle of Plato's literary qualities.

In conclusion the author justly gives to the history of Greek literature precedence over other studies, as the proper introduction to the study of literature in general, not merely because of the excellence of Greek literature in itself, and because it has influenced both directly and indirectly all subsequent European literature, but because the causes which determine the development of literature in Greece, are more easily discernible and more obvious in their operation than in the case of any other country.

Years of Experience.

In a fragmentary autobiographical narrative entitled Years of Experience, Mrs. Georgiana Bruce Kirby has managed to imprison in the rather rough but entirely transparent amber of her literary style, much that is deeply interesting to those who were born just long enough ago not to remember the events, which happened nevertheless in their lifetime. All the "isms" that America has received and entertained with hospitable indiscriminateness, for the past forty years, are shown in distinct outlines. All the notables of that first half of the middle third of the present century which was-partly on account of the anti-slavery movement, and partly because of a strong religious upheaval-the period of our most intense and emotional thought and partisanship, appear briefly in her pages in their special rôles.

She herself played a part in the Brook Farm drama-that immortally interesting experiment in co-operation-made thus interesting, doubtless, because it was a band of Immortals who undertook it. The writer herself gives this reason as mainly accounting for its permanent influence on those associated with it, adding: "It will always remain a mystery to those not directly connected with the movement, why it made so lasting and so happy an impression on those who were members." Again : Sincerity and devotion were the warp, and cultivation the woof, of the fabric of our lives."

Mesmerism she touches lightly; illustrating it

Years of Experience. By Georgiana Bruce Kirby. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1887. For sale in San Francisco by Samuel Carson & Co.

comes

by the case of Margaret Fuller's spinal curvature of ten years standing-the physician's hand never coming in direct contact, but being moved up and down very near the spinal column. Vegetarianism in its most inflamed form-if this is not a paradox-is represented by Bronson Alcott, (grandfather to "Jo's Boys,") who eliminates animal and animalized food from the human dietary; treats all ordinary meals as sacraments, to be eaten in silence; and demands that the mashed potatoes shall be moulded into beautiful forms. Abolitionism co in clothed in garments so extremely drawn aside from possible complicity with slavery, that secession, or as Garrison named it, 'disunion," was the one possible escape for the North from the position of particeps criminis; and the writer belonged to this extreme wing. Her record of experience in Missouri, among slave-holders, about the time of the passage of the fugitive slave law, must make interesting reading for those Campbellite preachers and others whose names she gives as actors in certain atrocious and vividly described scenes— and who are, many of them, still living there at the present date.

The chapter narrating the history of her assistance in a year's management of the female prisoners at Sing Sing is not without a practical value as hinting at our duties towards women prisoners everywhere-even in the city jail in San Francisco, where as yet a police matron is unknown.

Radical, fearless, unconventional, glowing with faith in humanity, Mrs. Kirby has written a curious book, full of side lights and new material for the future historian of those pregnant years of our national life.

How to Strengthen the Memory.

It is several thousand years since men spoke of the art of memory, as if memory were not a faculty to be developed, but an art to acquire; when Simonides, in the fifth century before Christ, offered to teach Themistocles the art of memory, that statesman replied, "Ah! rather teach me the art of forgetting." And to many persons who are without an active intelligence and habits of careful attention, other men's memories appear phenomenal acquisitions, and not the results of the exercise of a faculty natural to us all. But faculties are gifts, and we differ in gifts. People of bright wits have good memories, and among the endowments that make men appear great memory holds a chief place. Macaulay took the contents of a page into his memory at a glance, as a boy, after a single perusal of "The Lady of the Lake," recited canto after canto, while his mother's patience lasted. Later in life he said, that if, by some miracle or 1 How to Strengthen the Memory; or Methods of Never Forgetting. By M. L. Holbrook, M. D. New York: M. L. Holbrook & Co.

vandalism, all copies of "Paradise Lost" and Pilgrim's Progress" were destroyed, he would undertake to reproduce them both from recollection; and he was so familiar with "Sir Charles Grandison," that he thought it probable he could rewrite it from memory. Such feats are not attainable by any art, or by any mere cultivation. The secret of them is deep interest in the subject, earnest attention, careful reflection, and a quick and complete understanding. Given, with these, the average faculty of memory, and the retention of the matter is certain to follow. The reason people do not remember is that they are indifferent, or inattentive, or attentive for too short a time, or do not entirely apprehend the matter, or are not sufficiently interested to recall it. In other words, they do not exercise the faculty of memory, which demands in the first place that a thing be entirely taken into it before it can be acted upon, or retained. There is no one without a memory of a great many things, even though it be an imperfect one, and the things that are held by it are what have been impressed upon it by frequent repetition. The experience of every one teaches him the lesson that bringing the thing frequently to the mind, impresses the mind so deeply, that that thing is inseparable from it under certain conditions and associations. Isolated facts are to any mind the most difficult, and to most minds are impossible to remember, but once give a fact alliance to some other, which through some other natural alliances is brought at last to one already known and familiar, and the first apparently cold and detatched fact is chained to the mind and memory of every one.

Doctor Mulford has made a study of the subject of building a memory, and pleasantly, intelligently, and concisely put the the result of it into this little book. He has drawn upon the writings of other intelligent thinkers, and has cited his experiences of persons who consider they have acquired the art of remembering, by simply cultivating the faculty which, by observation and search, they each found themselves almost unconciously and unexpectedly possessed of. Good health is the basis and prerequisite, and fatigue and disease are accompanied by a lessened faculty. The author's experience and study make him believe that every memory can be improved through patience, perseverance, and the application of the principles that we have suggested above: "Those who wish to possess memories of great power, and become able to master the most difficult subjects, if nature has not given them the requisite ability," he says, "can do so by hard work, and by no other means. All will find that the rational methods of memory culture advised will not only strengthen this faculty, but every other intellectual faculty."