interesting to some people who are "up"-as we say-in those things, but it is not at all interesting to those who do not see the use of it. That isanybody can see that a beautiful object in a barren place serves a purpose, while a great many beautiful things, shut up in a cabinet, serve no purpose except by their numbers to cheapen one another.

An object of art in a home is entirely and always out of place whenever it shows that the interest of its owner is in the object rather than the home. A collection usually betrays a passion or a taste which subordinates the love of home. A person possessing this passion, and enthusiastic in his pursuit of its object, spoils his home by transforming it into a show-place for curiosities. The true policy is, never to buy an object of art, of any sort, without knowing just where it will fit into the home-just what uninteresting spot it will illuminate—just what vacant shelf or barren surface it will adorn. Cabinets may be very interesting pieces of furniture, but they are often used in such a way as to degrade or destroy the home idea.

Village Society in Winter.

WITH the closing of the doors and lighting of the fires for winter, accidentals, sociables, sewing and reading clubs begin in all inland towns and villages. We have a word or two to say concerning these stated little assemblies which constitute society in thousands of our towns.

First: As to sewing-clubs; the work should be carefully restricted to such embroidery, etc., as cannot be done by women who earn their living by their needle. The justice of this ought to be at once apparent; but it is, as a rule, overlooked. We have known the plain sewing taken from the sempstresses of a village, and given to church clubs, for a winter; the consequence of which was, hungry women asking parish help, and a stained-glass window back of the pulpit.

Secondly: In reading-clubs, let the time for each rcader be limited by inflexible rule. If this is not done, there will be found in every such club, at least one dogmatic, selfish reader who will force his author and his voice upon the club, until in disgust and weariness the members fall off and the experiment fails.

Thirdly: If we may trench upon a most delicate topic, we would suggest that in merely social combinations, for the purpose of music, dancing or conversation, the old caste lines of the town be disregarded. There is no despotism more narrow or cruel than the aristocracy of a village. New blood and new ideas would generally revivify it; outside of the so-called "good society" of such a place which has been fenced in for two or three generations, is frequently found the larger proportion of intelligence, culture, and breadth of thought.

Fourthly: The great want experienced by cultured men and women in a small town is of books, periodicals, etc., which, individually, they are not able to buy. There are very few circulating libraries in American towns of a population less than

ten thousand. This want can be obviated in a measure, by a friendly combination between certain families or individuals, in which each contributes a given number of books to a common stock; these books are loaned to the members in turn.

A more formal and much better way is the formation of a book-club, such as were common in England before the establishment of Mudie, in which each member pays at the beginning a certain sum, with which as many books are purchased as there are members, each one choosing a book; these pass in regular rotation from hand to hand, remaining a fortnight with each reader; twenty books may thus be read for the cost of one. When the books have passed around

the circle, they are sold to members for the benefit of the club. Fines for detention and abuse of books also keep up the funds. No officer is required in this association but a treasurer. Another advantage in the plan is that books can be bought by the quantity at lower rates than singly. The same rule applies to subscriptions for magazines, newspapers, etc.

Notes from Correspondents.

HINTS ABOUT COFFEE,

I VENTURE to give a few items in regard to coffee which may not be known to youthful housekeepers. They have been told, in a general way, not to buy coffee ready-ground or roasted. They obey the first direction, because it is easy enough to grind coffee, and it requires no scientific knowledge to perceive that the security with which the ground berries can be adulterated with chicory and beans, to say nothing of less cleanly additions, must prove a great temptation to dealers.

But it is a difficult matter to the uninitiated to roast coffee properly, and the young housekeeper, finding that coffee of her own roasting is either burnt or tasteless, sees no good reason why she should not buy the ready-roasted berries, which certainly have a better flavor than her own.

There is a reason. The method of roasting coffee for sale is to put large quantities at a time into iron cylinders. The mass of material, and the comparatively close vessel in which it is confined, prevents the grosser elements from being evolved and evaporated properly. Now, in roasting coffee in small quantities in open vessels, this is obviated.

Coffee should be roasted in small quantities in an open earthen vessel on the top of the stove. Stir frequently. If done too little, the aroma will not be fully developed, and the beverage made from it will be insipid. If done too much, on the contrary, this aroma will be dissipated, and the infusion will be bitter. A little practice and careful observation will enable the operator to know when it is just right. When done properly, the berries are of a rich, bright brown color.

Although it is proper to roast the berries in an open vessel, they should not be cooled in the open air. The best plan is to empty them into a sheet of clean brown paper, and wrap the whole in flannel until they have cooled. When cool, put them into

a vessel that is perfectly dry and that can be tightly closed.

For these same young housekeepers may not know that coffee berries very readily absorb the odors of substances near them. A few bags of pepper once spoiled a whole ship-load of coffee. Some berries that had lain for several days in a box in which sugar had been kept were utterly ruined.

All kinds of coffee improve by keeping. It is best when two or three years old. It is hardly necessary to add that coffee should be ground as it is wanted for the table. S.

RED.

I FULLY agree with what Hannah Snowden says in the October number in regard to wood fires, but I would say add to the attraction by putting a touch of red here and there in the favorite family room, whether it be library, sitting-room or parlor. The delicate blues and pinks, mixed with white muslin, are very pretty and suitable for chambers, where we

want the rooms to look pure and cool and lovely; but if we want our intimate friends who are admitted into our family rooms to exclaim, on opening the door, "What a bright, cheerful room, and how cozy and comfortable you look," then add the touch of red. Two or three shades of light gray; a wallpaper, with graceful sprays supporting little redbreasted birds, or composed of autumn leaves, lights up well. Add a few red-bound books to those on the shelves, red, or red-and-white lambrequins, a red table-cover, or gray with red applique, a red and gray cover to the lounge, and a bright carpet. Put autumn leaves among the grasses in the pretty vases on the mantel. Then, with pictures on the walls, no matter of what kind so that they are good, and a few flowers in the windows, the furniture can be of the plainest; but such a room will be the delight of the family, and the coloring, not being sufficient to be glaring and offend the eye, will add twofold to the cheerfulness of the bright fire, with the brass andirons, of course. M. W.

Pierce's "Memoir of Sumner."*

THE two volumes by Mr. E. L. Pierce, which have just issued from the press, deal only with Charles Sumner's private and literary life, from his birth (1811) to the year 1845. They are crowded with most entertaining reading, viz.: personal sketches of famous men in European literature, politics, art and society,-apart from the tracing of Sumner's own characteristics in early manhood. They present the future senator as an aspiring student of law and literature, a teacher of the science of law, and a not very successful practitioner. Sumner's political career will probably be described in a future work by the same authorized biographer. Like most of the distinguished men of Massachusetts, Sumner was descended from an English

man.

William Sumner came to this country in 1635. Legal associations appear to have been transmitted with the blood. The name Sumner is contracted from "summoner," and the cmigrant ancestor was a deputy to the General Court of Massachusetts, and a commissioner "to try and issue small causes." Charles Sumner's grandfather left college to join the revolutionary army, became Major Job Sumner, for some days had charge of the guard of Major André, and escorted Washington into New York after the British evacuation. It is worth noting that he went to Georgia after the war, and came near being elected governor of that state. His son followed the bidding of his surname, and went into the law, and afterward (as is well known)

became sheriff of Boston. Charles was not distinguished at school, except for his wide range of careful reading outside of prescribed studies. But this passion for enlightenment, and the industry with which he followed it up, began to tell at Harvard, where Professor George Ticknor, on reading Sumner's notes of the belles-lettres lectures, said if he "continues as diligent as he has been, he will go far in the ways of reputation and success." In the law school, his untiring energy in the reading of everything bearing on the science gained him distinction. He became the trusted friend of the professors, in particular of Judge Story, and for two or three years after admission to the bar gave instruction at the law school. It was just after his gradu ation from college that he wrote an essay on commerce, and received for it the prize of the Boston Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, which Daniel Webster publicly assigned to him in Faneuil Hall.

He was bent upon laying a broad and thorough foundation, and investigated to the utmost whatever lay before him. When the time came for the choice of a profession, he reluctantly took up law; but once embarked in the study, where the great fund of energy which he possessed could be invested in books, his mind was excited by the perusal of legal biography. He resolved to make himself a great jurist of the historic pattern. This, the aim which ruled the rest of his life, sprang directly from his habits of acquisition. He followed it with the persistence that was born in him, and in turn gave birth to the greatest acts of his life. His father was a man of iron discipline in the family, and Sumner,

though courteous and winning in his manners, showed even in college a tenacity of opinion which sometimes became aggressive. The same tenacity, transferred to purpose, enabled him to go forward in a career of the kind he had chosen. He worked day and night, denying himself exercise, and indeed through life kept up such habits of labor that Dr. S. G. Howe wrote to him in 1843, that he behaved as if his body" were as immortal as his spirit."

For the development of the cultured, comprehensive jurist he found travel in Europe essential, and breaking away from his first beginnings in the profession, he went to France in 1837; afterward to England, then to Italy and Germany, returning to Boston in 1839. He wrote to Judge Story: "My tour is no vulgar holiday affair. It is to see men, institutions and laws; and if it would not seem vain in me, I would venture to say that I have not discredited my country. I have called the attention of judges and the profession to the state of the law in our country, and have shown them by my conversation (I will say this) that I understand their jurisprudence." There was no boastfulness in this, for the young American of twenty-seven was so erudite that he observed a degree of shallowness in eminent French lawyers or law professors, who had not read the French works he had himself studied. In England, he met with remarkable social favor. He had some excellent introductions; but his acquaintance was rapidly enlarged by voluntary introductions (he made a point of never soliciting any), until it was hard for his English friends to find a circle he had not already come to know. His letters at this time are full of fresh, informal impressions like the following :-" How odd it seemed to knock at a neighbor's door and inquire, Does Mr. Wordsworth live here?' Think of rapping at Westminster Abbey and asking for Mr. Shakspere or Mr. Milton! The house itself is unlike those in which I have been received lately, and in its whole style reminded me more of home than anything I have yet seen in England. 'Wordsworth's conversation' was simple, graceful and sincere; it had all those things the absence of which in Brougham gave me so much pain. I felt that I was conversing with a superior being; yet I was entirely at my He spoke warmly on the subject of copyright and of slavery."

ease.

*

#

*

Few men have entered upon American politics equipped with such various culture as Mr. Sumner, and his acquaintance at so early an age with the able minds in the government, the bar and the judicial system of England is almost unique. During this foreign sojourn, besides seeing so many people and places, investigating so many things, and writing home copious letters, he kept a journal and studied French, Italian and German. In Rome for three months, his routine, with a few exceptions for sight-seeing, was to rise at six and read four hours, reclining on a sofa; breakfast at ten, and then resume reading till six P. M., when he dined in a garden. In this way he learned Italian, and read Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Guicciardini, Alfieri, Niccolini, Manzoni's

"Promessi Sposi," and several obscurer authorsall in the term of three months.

Returning to Boston in 1839, he plunged again into the struggle of law business, writing for legal reviews and editing reports. In 1844, for the first time he showed the effects of long-continued and prodigious over-exertion; he fell seriously ill, and his life was despaired of. He recovered, but was indifferent to life,-could not feel any gratitude for restoration to it. It is exceedingly suggestive that, after so many years of assiduous, enthusiastic reaching after a certain ideal, sparing no exertion that might be needed to attain to it, he should just at this time have begun to feel the agony of slow, consuming doubt as to his career, which is so much worse than final defeat. Sumner had not progressed as a practitioner; he was disappointed at not being asked to take a place in the Harvard law school on Judge Story's death; meantime, thirteen years had passed since his brilliant start in the study of his profession. His friends had somewhat doubted the wisdom of his long stay in Europe, though he had not. Now, however, the breadth and leisure of his preparation for an active part in the world seems to have brought doubt and despondency into even his own mind, hitherto confident of final success. But it was in the very next year that his first and wholly convincing triumph came. On July 4, 1845, Sumner delivered the great oration advocating universal peace, which drew attention from every quarter, and established his fame. Before this, while in Europe, he had so far entered political discussion as to publish in "Galignani" a long article on the Maine boundary dispute, which threatened war between the United States and England; and in 1842 and 1843, he had contributed to the "Boston Advertiser" long articles supporting England's right to search vessels suspected of being slavers, and discussing our national duty as to slavery; but he had as yet no thought of a political career. The oration on "The True Grandeur of Nations" decided his future. Hitherto but slightly connected with the abolitionists, in a few years he became not the least of their leaders. He had already, in private, put himself into opposition to Webster. "I bow to Webster's intellect; it is transcendent, magnificent.

But where slavery occurs, he falls like Lucifer!" "Webster wants sympathy with the mass,-with humanity, with truth." And, from questioning the soundness of Channing's reasoning, he had come to feel that the preacher's moral insight surpassed all standards of mere logic. He wrote to a friend that Webster with Channing's moral sublimity would be "a prophet "-not seeing that what the country needed was perhaps not a prophet, but a preserver. The idealist who dreamed of universal peace was more ready for war, when it seemed justifiable, than the conservative statesman.

We have pointed out the value of this biography as revealing the deep source of Sumner's power in early and incessant preparation for dealing with great subjects; but it is also valuable as showing how the same dogged persistence which gave Sumner his high place, in the end warped him from the

jurist and made him more a theorist and a reformer. In so far, it defeated its own intent. The resoluteness that won success against all opposition narrowed his view by making it impossible for him to abandon an idea once taken. Moreover, it made him appear inconsistent, for in expressing different sides of truth, he went to extremes without giving the connection which existed in his own mind. Sumner lacked humility, but in his youth, no less than in his later and more conspicuous years, we find always noble aims and unflinching obedience to conscience.

For the dignified, unobtrusive way in which he has presented his subject, Mr. Pierce deserves cordial praise.

"The House Beautiful," by Clarence Cook. * THIS is the first book of which Mr. Clarence Cook is known to be the author, with the exception of an illustrated volume on the Central Park, and text accompanying reproductions of Dürer's “Life of the Virgin." His reputation has been gained mainly by contributions to the daily press. For many years his criticisms on contemporaneous art were almost the only writings of the kind published in American newspapers which were not rendered worthless by the spirit of complaisance and compliment. He may sometimes have been needlessly bitter; but it must be remembered that he was making a lonely and desperate fight for critical independence, and in the interest of what he considered true art. He may not have been consistent throughout a critical career which has covered a good many years; but he has been too intelligent and too honest to aim at, or to pretend to, consistency.

In

In the present work, however, Mr. Cook appears, not merely as a critic, but also in the more genial role of teacher. Teaching—that is, lecturing to classes of young people on art and literature-has, in fact, been Mr. Cook's business, most of the time, for the last twenty years or more, and is, we believe, the occupation most agreeable with his inclination. book-form, rewritten, re-arranged and rechristened, the "Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks" essays appear to us an admirable piece of literary work. It is, in fact, the first book of the kind, in English, which has a literary, as well as a" practical," interest. These long chapters on "The Entrance," "The Living-Room," "The DiningRoom" and "The Bedroom," which might have been dull reading enough, are "as interesting as a story." Their discursiveness makes a part of their charm and their utility, and the bits of prose and verse from Sidney, Goldsmith, Emerson, Leigh Hunt, Ben Jonson, that we find between the chapters, have the effect of so many exquisite etchings appropriately hung in a room furnished with taste and refinement. As to the outside, the large, clear page of type and the rich and original drawings have been very

The House Beautiful: Essays on Beds and Tables, Stools and Candlesticks. By Clarence Cook (with one hundred wood engravings and an original frontispiece in colors, by Walter Crane). New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

carefully printed by Francis Hart & Co., and the volume is embellished with a frontispiece in color by Walter Crane, and a cover-stamp designed by Cottier.

If any person, suddenly awakened to the necessity of furnishing or refurnishing "artistically" should run to "The House Beautiful" for "plans and specifications," he will be sure to find the book most provokingly" unpractical." But if those who do not undertake the business by the wholesale, or merely for the sake of show and fashion, will look into it for advice and suggestion, they will find it quite practical enough for their purpose, and delightfully suggestive. The following passage from the chapter on "The Living-Room" gives the author's own reason for his methods:

"Fault has been found with me, good-naturedly enough, but I venture to think mistakenly, for the number of elegant and costly things I introduced into the articles in SCRIBNER'S MAGA. ZINE, from which this book is made up, and I am so little penitent for what I have done that I have not left a single one of these elegant and costly things out of the book itself. This is not because it is every now and then possible to purchase a fine piece of furniture-artistically fine, mean-very cheap, but because I think we need in this country to be made as familiar as possible with the look of beautiful things of this sort. A drawing like this is a lesson in good taste, and it happens to be, like many another in this book, a threefold lesson. We have, in the first place, a very elegant and interesting piece of furniture, and this has been drawn with spirit and picturesqueness by Mr. Francis Lathrop, and then engraved with the hand of a genuine master by Mr. Henry Marsh.

"Now, the improvement of the public taste, if that be not too presumptuous an aim, is one of the principal objects of this book of mine, and it seems to me I can do something toward this end by showing beautiful things, even if they are, not seldom, out of reach, as well as by always complying with the demand that I shall show people how to get things cheap.

"It happens that the piece of furniture under discussion gave so much pleasure to one reader of SCRIBNER'S MAGAZINE when the cut was published there, that she determined to have one as near like it as she could contrive. She had the body of the piece made as neatly as her favorite carpenter could do it,-and he was a skillful workman and did his best,-and then with her own hands she painted all the ornaments, in colors, not attempting to imitate the brass, and filled in the panel of the door with a painting on silk which had belonged to a great-grandmother, and might have been painted by Angelica Kauffman herself, so far as age was concerned. It is true this lady had exceptional taste, and exceptional skill in carrying out her designs, but nothing extraordinary, and many a one could have done the The result of this venture was a piece of furniture that does not look as if it were copied from any model, and that deserves to be admired for its own sake."

same.

It is one of the good points of "The House Beautiful" that it is not likely to give rise to any new brand; we will not find "Clarence Cook furniture" from cellar to basement in half the houses we enter, especially of the "newly marrieds." He inculcates no mannerism,-rides no hobbies, except the good old ones of common sense, simplicity, use and beauty. It is an open secret-that is, to those who read attentively no secret at all-that the author, through long experience, has learned how to furnish a house, if not perfectly, certainly much nearer perfection than most of us are ever likely to get. It has not been in Mr. Cook's line to furnish a house for any one save himself; but in these chapters all the communicable knowledge of a man of unusual taste and general culture, who has, more. over, enjoyed special training in drawing and in architecture, and who has given an unconscionable amount of thought and bother to "beds and tables, stools and candlesticks," is generously spread out for the reproof and edification of his countrymen. In tell.

ing so frankly and fully and persuasively what he has himself learned in manifold trials and tribulations, he has not only conferred an immediate favor upon a great many worthy persons, but he has done something which is sure to help toward that end which the hopeful never despair of,-and our author acknowledges himself one of the hopeful,—the "general improvement of the public taste."

The English critic, Walter H. Pater, in a recent essay on "Romanticism," calls "the true aesthetic critic" the Interpreter of "that House Beautiful which the creative minds of all generations-the artists, and those who have treated life in the spirit of art are always building together for the refreshment of the human spirit." Mr. Pater's happy use of the familiar expression might have suggested the title of the present work,—although we happen to know that it did not. Certainly our author is an interpreter, to whom a great multitude of pilgrims will be grateful for services here performed, and whose guidance in other rooms of the House Beautiful we shall all be glad to claim. The next in order are the galleries where hang the paintings of "Some of the Old Masters."

Jacquemart's "History of Ceramic Art."*

THE publication in this country of a second edition of so expensive a book as Jacquemart's "History of the Ceramic Art" is one of many signs showing a great increase of popular interest in the subject. It would be curious to inquire how the interest arose, in the first place, in any country, especially how it came to interest Americans, so far away as they are from collections and the contagion of Europe's example. But, besides that the inquiry would prove more curious than useful, it could never be satisfied. There is no how or why. All we know is, that pottery has been dear to man in all ages and in all countries, and there is no reason why the inborn germ should not spring to life here as well as elsewhere. If we had no collections,we could make them, and it might not unreasonably be hoped we should make the pottery tʊo in time. There can be little doubt, however, that, so far as cultivating the inborn taste of our Americans is concerned, we are much indebted to the books of Mr. Albert Jacquemart. There has been no work on the general subject of the art of pottery so winning to look at as his "Merveilles de la Céramique," in three pretty little volumes, published in l'aris in 1868. Other books there were, and are, among them notably Chaffers and Marryat, which played a great part in what we may fairly call the revival of pottery. But these books are so costly as to keep them out of the hands of any but rich amateurs. The little volumes of Jacquemart, on the other hand, were not only pretty, but cheap, and this, too, although the wood-cuts with which they were profusely illustrated (the three volumes having over three hundred wood-cuts in

History of the Ceramic Art. A Descriptive and Philosophical Study of the Pottery of all Ages and all Nations. By Albert Jacquemart. Translated by Mrs. Bury Palliser. Second Edition, New York: Scribner, Armstrong & Co.

all) were engraved as well as designed by the son of the author, Mr. Jules Jacquemart, one of the first engravers and etchers of his time.

In 1873, the author of Les Merveilles de la Céramique" published the volume we are now writ ing about, "L'Histoire de la Céramique," which contains in a larger form all the matter of the earlier book, with all its wood-cuts and monograms, and in addition to these, twelve etchings by the hand of the same distinguished artist. This work was translated into English by Mrs. Bury Palliser, the accomplished author of "The History of Lace," and it is this work, enriched with all the illustrations of the original French work, that the American publishers have put into our hands at a greatly reduced price. Mr. Albert Jacquemart died October 14th, 1875, leaving behind him an enviable reputation, not only as a most agreeable as well as learned writer on his favorite subject, but also as a collector of taste and discrimination. "One of the most modest of men," says "L'Art," in its obituary notice, "he took as much pains to keep in the background in order that he might devote himself without interruption to his favorite studies as some men do to make themselves conspicuous and to talk about themselves, and get themselves talked about, in season and out of season." He delighted in the beautiful work of his son, Mr. Jules Jacquemart, and esteemed himself a happy man in having such a collaborator; for all his books were illustrated by this son with wood-cuts and etchings, and fortunate he to whose share has fallen, among other good things of the world, early impressions of these ornaments of our time.

Mr. Jacquemart's book is republished in this country at an opportune time. Just now a great many people are amusing themselves with collecting china and studying the collections made by others, and while the Castellani collection is still for a little while with us, we have the rare opportunity (which we ought never to have let pass from us, and which our descendants will not forgive us for having let pass from us) of comparing the illustrations of Italian pottery in this book with the most beautiful specimens of that pottery to be seen anywhere in the world. The Avery collection, also in the Metropolitan Museum, will furnish splendid illustrations of the Oriental productions in this art, and the Prime collection will enable us to study from "the life" many rare European manufactures. Meanwhile, in the Di Cesnola rooms of the museum we have a treasure of early Greek forms such as can be found nowhere else in such variety and abundance, and the purchaser of Jacquemart's book, with these rich means of study at hand. will find the beautiful volume not only a trusty history, but a most useful guide.