THE injustice of genial criticism was alluded to last month. It is in order now to say something about the injustice of ungenial criticism, although criticism is a delicate subject for any one to write about, if he knows anything about what he writes. I met an old Jersey acquaintance the other day who used to belong to the state legislature. He was one of the few members of that body heartily respected for intelligence as well as honesty. "I tell my friends," said the senator, "that I had a much higher opinion of the laws before than after I helped to make them."

One of the greatest faults of the better class of current criticism is its lack of proportion. The critic will condemn sharply two books, or two pictures, in language and in a tone which would lead the reader to suppose that the books are of an equal badness. In point of fact, the critic knows, or ought to know, that while one of the works criticised is bad throughout, and by a man who can do nothing but bad work, the other work has a great deal in it that is good; it is bad perhaps by the excess of its virtues: i. e., by too heavy stress here and there on a quality which in other places is an element of strength. In other words, discrimination seems to be the rarest critical faculty. Nobody wants to read those see-sawing, now-we-go-up-up-up and now-we-go-down-down-down "reviews" that some of our young men are fond of writing, and which have such a look of judicial fairness, but which, in point of fact, are very far from being judicial, on account of the total absence of either judgment or insight. But it is manifestly unjust to condemn in the same terms a not entirely successful work by Michael Angelo, and an entirely unsuccessful painting by Michael Angelo Titmarsh.

Some of the most unjust criticisms that I have ever read were written by young men who started out to do their part in reforming criticism in general. They were going to be honest, and conscientious, and outspoken. One of these young men was an art critic. He had had a quickening in his own artistic thought, and artistic taste. Under the influence of a fresh and interesting mind, he had learned to look at nature with new eyes. He had learned to demand of painters that they also should, as the expression is, "go to nature." His reviews were all written with this idea. If the painter had not gone to nature, the critic "went for" him. Among the pictures that the young critic condemned with special severity was one full of the most exquisite and profound sense of nature; in color luminous, rich, solemn,-a picture painted from nature, with repeated study and with a fidelity as exact in its poetry as in its literalness. "Here," said the young critic, "is the same old shallowness, the same lack of out-door observation, the same convention, the same studio-manufacture. Why does not this artist go to nature?" The young critic of those days,-now grown gray and wiser,

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if he should come upon that very picture in a gallery of to-day, would be likely to use it as a text for half a column of preachment; he would hold it up as an example of the work of a man who always "goes to nature."

There is nothing that so pleases the young literary critic as to make sarcastic allusion to the old fellows who failed to appreciate the young Byron, and the young Keats, and the young Tennyson. They delight in painting in its true colors the asininity of the ancient Quarterly Reviewers, who made such fearful mistakes about the first books of those illustrious poets. One of these young men it was, if I am not mistaken, who, in reviewing (I will not say how many years ago) an old poet's prose sketch of the poetic career of Keats, took two or three columns in a daily paper to say that the review might have been better, and,—especially,—that the old poet who wrote it did not appreciate Keats as fully as did the youthful critic himself. If Keats's first book had been sent to the youthful critic when he was in this frame of mind, I fear that it would have fared badly at his hands.

IT was long ago found out that those people who, according to their own stories, are the most unfortunate, are, by no means, the most unhappy. All of us know what it is to enjoy the luxury of a grievance, but there are some of whom it is justly said, that they are unhappy unless they are miserable. I have a friend who seems to me one of the most contented of mortals. He is a painter by profession; he does not paint well, but his pictures find a ready market, and he is pleased with them himself. He likes his pictures, but he likes better his misfortunes. There is nothing that delights him so much as to tell about some calamity that has just struck him. Every time we meet, he brings out a precious morsel of this kind for my entertainment. He was just finishing his most profitable order when somebody knocked over the easel and plumped a hole through the "Sleeping Beauty's" left cheek; or, the savings bank went up with all his earnings for the past winter; or, a "hall thief" walked off with his new ulster; or, the Academy hung his best picture over the south door in the corridor. When I first knew him, I used to make light of these unpleasant experiences; I tried to "chirk him up a bit," as they say in New England. But I soon found that comfort was not what he wanted.

I know a man whose first play was accidentally damned. If that play had succeeded, he would have had a career! Over how many lives has there been thrown a pleasing melancholy, by the inability to obtain a publisher. A young friend of mine is trying to get a volume of amiable amateur essays published; I am sure that it will be a sad day for him if his desire is gratified. Years ago, a young American musician was struggling to obtain a musical education. His friends thought, and he was sure, that

if he could only enjoy the advantages of foreign study, he would turn out a tremendous fellow. Enough money was got together finally to enable him to obtain the education he needed. He came back from Germany, and began to play at concerts, and to publish "pieces." But it proved that the musical personality which had, at last, been given a means of expression was not a beautiful one. There was something hideous in the man's compositions. The ugliness that existed in his early attempts at expression had been supposed to be the result merely of his lack of training. But it was finally evident that this unpleasantness was inherent. The better he learned to express himself the worse he was off. His life, from being merely pathetic, turned into something tragic.

I WAS once talking with a very interesting person, and one with whom it is always a pleasure to talk. After leaving him I found myself feeling like a pickpocket,-for I remembered that I had been led into criticising an acquaintance of ours in a free and uncharitable manner. In thinking over the incident, it became clear to me that this

was the way it happened: The person with whom I was conversing was a man himself given to free and uncharitable criticism of others, to the kind of insinuation which puts himself in the right, and all others in the wrong. He was also a person of such knowledge, and such intellectual force and insight, that no one could escape the desire to win his good opinion. So, before I knew it, I was forced into the contemptible business of asserting myself and depreciating others.

I sometimes think, when I look around upon the community and see the selfishness and lack of consideration that make so much trouble and misery; when I see the absence of conscience and the want of generosity in public and in private life; when I see young married people-nourished upon a diluted "culture," and trained in a sentimental and bogus spirituality-breaking up their homes and forgetting their solemn vows of companionship and protection as soon as they discover that life is a more serious business than they had imagined;-when I see all this, I sometimes think that after two or three centuries more of such criticism and despisal as Christianity is getting nowadays, the world will awake to the fact that there is something in it, after all.

Shall we Have a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty from Children?

THERE is no denying that in hotels and boardinghouses, cars and steamboats, street and parlor, children are coming to be dreaded more and more. As a class, their manners are almost universally bad; their voices are appalling; they eat like savages, and, in fact, set at naught all the social amenities.

Who is to blame for this? Certainly not the children. How can you expect a child to eat in a civilized way if it has never been trained to it? We are not so many degrees removed from the aborigines that refinement is always instinctive. It is hardly fair to condemn and dislike a child for monopolizing or interrupting conversation when no education has taught it differently; and why should the ears of the public be deafened by the shrill voices of Young America till such time as it shall learn that all the world does not care to hear its innocent remarks? Why-to be comprehensiveshould children, as a rule, be regarded by their parents, friends, and the public generally as a curse instead of a blessing? Simply because the parents do not respect the rights of the public. Let me mention a few instances in my own experience which will recall similar cases to every mind.

Only a few days ago, I went in the cars from No-matter-where to A-place-of-no-consequence. It was a warm, damp, muggy day,-one of those days when dust will stick to the most immaculate, and when eating, except with the most attractive sur

roundings, is not to be thought of. The cars were quite full of returning city families, and I did not notice till we had moved from the station that I had placed myself in the seat directly behind a mother and four children, the eldest of whom might be ten and the youngest two. The appearance of the party was not unprepossessing, and for a short time things progressed quietly; but before long the baby became fretful, and finally asked for milk. Now began my trials. A basket of portentous size, which I had not before noticed, was drawn forth from among the family feet, and a bottle and a cup were extracted from it. But what a bottle! What a cup! The first was flat and brown, suggestive of rum, and the latter was silver, with greasy fingermarks upon it. Some milk was poured out and given to the child in a back-handed kind of way, which caused about two-thirds of the liquid to run in streamlets over its clothes, and the remaining portion to go down its throat with a “glug" which meant a choking fit before long. I will not particularize. Handkerchiefs were brought into requisition, thumps on the back administered, and quiet restored only to be broken by cries from the remaining three for something to eat. A peach was now given to each child and the juice from the fruit, mingling with the dust which had by this time accumulated on their small faces, soon painted them in colors which memory dreads to recall. The peach refection was followed by sandwiches. And why will people persist in making sandwiches of a large and substantial slice of ham between two

uncertain pieces of bread? Need I tell how the bread vanished, and the ham straggled forth in hopeless strings? Who cannot imagine the greasy shine which surrounded their mouths and glistened on their fingers,-fingers which soon seized on the glasses of the ice-water boy and made you feel that if you had not had your individual drinking-cup with you, death, in the agonies of thirst, would be preferable to nectar from those tumblers ? A damp bread-and-butter smell now pervaded the atmosphere, and from time to time a dive would be made into the depths of the basket, and more peaches, more sandwiches, and then crackers were brought up, crumbly crackers, crackers which fell to pieces in unwholesome-looking flakes, and stuck to the children's faces. Then as if to top the climax, the lunch-basket at last produced—molasses-cakes ! -small oblong cakes, so full of the sticky fluid that they seemed perspiring with it; the kind of cake which left its shiny surface in brown patches on faces and fingers till the latter were cleansed —shall I tell it?—by a series of licks-there is no other word. Had I remained in their vicinity longer, I have no doubt that either gingerbread or cream-cakes would have been the next course; but at this point I reached A-place-of-no-consequence, and hastily left. My last view of those children haunts me like a nightmare.

Very much the same thing goes on at hotels. There are few of us who have not sat at the table with children whose food has been put in their mouths en masse; children who have reached before and across you for anything and everything they fancied; children who have talked about you and commented on your appearance with perfect freedom; and we exclaim, "What dreadful children!" when we should say, "Wretched parents, so to neglect your duty to the public!

On a breezy day in June, "when, if ever, come perfect days," I left the wear and tear of my worka-day life and went to a lovely country home to spend a long day. I had looked forward to the visit with the brightest anticipations. Alas! I had forgotten that since my last sojourn in that earthly paradise a baby had appeared there. Immediately on my entrance to the house I was reminded of the fact, and during the whole day I was not permitted for a moment to forget it. Baby's doings and sayings, its infantile ailments, its wonderful cleverness, were all canvassed again and again. I tried to become enthusiastic, but felt that I was failing. I sank rapidly in my friend's estimation. I returned to the city a baffled individual, having had but little enjoyment of the long-wished-for day. I felt embittered toward the whole race of infants, and thought that the Murder of the Innocents might, under some circumstances, be condoned. glad that people in general are satisfied with their babies, but that you and I and the public generally should undergo this sort of thing is most unreasonable.

I am

My friends, the H's, are among the brightest of my acquaintances. They have a charming home, and-four boys. "I used to dine at Sally's every

Sunday," said a bachelor brother of the lady; "but, since the boys left the nursery, there's no comfort at the house, so I dine at my club, and drop in after the imps are asleep." Disregarding this dismal view of things, I went one day to dine at Sally's, as her note said, "to meet informally two other friends whose ideas I know will prove congenial.” On the occasion specified, I had no opportunity to find out whether they had any ideas or not; and I have since made up my mind that the bachelor uncle was not too severe. Hereafter, when I dine at the H's, may it be "formally." Four well-dressed, bright-looking boys made their appearance as dinner was announced. They scuffled into their seats, and all four immediately entered into a brisk discussion with reference to a pair of rabbits which lasted through the soup and fish, when a brief respite ensued, owing to their steady application to roast turkey. During the "cutting up" process, I received numerous thrusts from the elbows of my two vigorous young neighbors, with an occasional splash of gravy by way of variety, or an arm reaching across me to secure some desired article of food which the waiter could not at that moment hand. Conversation among the elder members of the party had hardly begun, when it was interrupted by a question from one boy, which drew forth violent opposition from the other three, and with the exception of "five minutes for refreshments" which the quartette allowed themselves for ice-cream, they kept the ball going till we rose from table. On entering the parlor, the attention of the guests was demanded to decide on the respective merits of two postage-stamp albums, and requests for stamps now poured forth with startling rapidity and perseverance. Eight o'clock came, the nominal bed-time for the two younger torments. They argued and resisted, however, and before the point was settled, the two other guests, who had a second engagement, took their leave. When the boys finally did go to bed, and quiet was restored, Mrs. H. asked me if I thought her boys were worse than other people's. Returning a guarded answer, which I fear was not wholly re-assuring, she said: "I never let them do anything wrong, and, really, if I undertook to discipline those boys with their different natures, it would leave me no time for anything else." I did not argue the matter.

In my judgment, nothing too severe can be said about that large and ill-advised class of persons who permit their boys to harass travelers on the highways and byways, with that invention of the arch-fiend known as a velocipede. You are hardly more alarmed by the suddenness of the attack than by the uncertainty of its direction. You are startled out of your wonted repose of manner by the enemy dashing round a corner; you hastily take refuge in a puddle to avoid a rear attack, and perhaps run part way up the steps of strange houses to save yourself from the combined charge of three racing abreast down the sidewalk.

I have about given up going to matinées on account of the immense amount of school-girl gabble to which I am compelled to listen, instead of the

entertainment for which I purchased my ticket. If the gabble should stop, it is only to be superseded by munching of candy and suppressed giggling. If girls must go through the vealy age, let them undergo it at home, and not invade the domains of the public.

I

Another cause of complaint is the way in which the public are called upon to listen to recitations of "We are seven," "Little drops of water," etc. The increase of kindergartens has done much to bring about this sad state of affairs, but parents ought to interpose to save the public. Let me suggest that if the public met with more consideration, life would be made much more pleasant to children. I know those who never enter a place of amusement except when accompanied by little faces, whose bright eyes fail to see aught but the beautiful. could tell of many a drive and picnic postponed till Saturday or vacation gave the children a chance to go. But, they were children whose parents recognized the public, and upheld their rights. I could also name several libraries, picture galleries, greenhouses, and museums, whose treasures never. unfold themselves to children, because the little fingers are so rarely taught not to touch. Most children love music. Witness the crowd around a grinding organ, even when unattended by the attractive monkey. Yet, how many children does any one know whom she would risk inviting to a musicale?

I cannot say I wholly agree with the man who thought a boy should be brought up in a hogshead, and fed through the bung-hole, for I doubt not that on being released the wild ox of the desert would be a more desirable companion; but I do think that parents should so bring up their offspring that no one should have occasion to make the suggestion. Yet many of us feel with and for the sufferer who said his sister followed to the letter one Bible injunction with regard to children, namely: "Forbid them not."

M. REBÈQUE.

Letters from Correspondents.

A SUGGESTION.

Ir is something in favor of healthful public feeling that greater freedom now than heretofore is allowed in the ceremonies and the etiquette that belong to death. Very few now gauge grief by the old conventional signs of mourning. People who choose to do so may still close their houses for months; they may shut out air and sunshine, and live in a gloom that corresponds with their sad hearts; women may exclude themselves from all society, and walk slowly through the streets shut in by hanging crape veils; but such things are not insisted upon. The windows may be opened, the veils may be thrown back; it is a choice whether black shall be worn or not. It is not that we grieve less, nor that the world is not so much the poorer and more wearying for our loss, but life in these days presses on us, and we have little time to stop and

weep. The tears may fall, but the work must go on. But the revulsion of feeling against funeral etiquette is most shown in the conduct of the funeral itself, and our friends are best pleased when the ceremonies are the most simple. While this is so, there is one custom which it would be well to establish more firmly. The friends who attend the funeral ought to leave their cards. There is no time in the life of a family when respect and sympathy are so fully realized as at the time of death, and silence is so often construed into indifference that there ought to be some sign given by those who care to show their feeling. It is impossible ever to know who follows us as we follow our dead, and it would knit many a friendship more tightly, it would condone for many offenses, if it were possible for us to know which of our friends, which of our acquaintances, and which of our supposed enemies cared enough for us and for our dead to make our sorrow their own. It is not pleasant to go to funerals; it is often inconvenient, and always burdensome; and if neither the dead nor the living know that we have paid this last respect, what use is there in the doing it?-S.

THE YOUNG FOLKS' STUDY-HOUR.

WHEN are the children to study their lessons? After school is out and dinner is over there is but little time before dark for them to exercise in the open air, and this exercise should be firmly insisted upon. On the other hand, the mornings are short and dark, and if any home-study is done, it is generally at night. It is this night-study that is bad for the tired bodies and brains, and that brings the nervous manner and the unquiet sleep.

How to help the children so their studying may be a pleasure rather than a constant weariness becomes a serious question for the most of us. From my own experience, I find the following plan answers well:

Let the children have one hour or more after the gas is lit, but at eight o'clock precisely send them to bed, with the promise that you will call them at six in the morning. Do not allow them to have the waking up on their own minds. This would disturb their sleep, which ought to be free from care. To do away with the darkness and the oppressive stillness of the house before day, rise instantly at the sound of the alarm-clock, light the gas, and put a match to a small lot of wood on the hearth. (My boys take turns in bringing up and arranging this wood the day before, their aim being so to lay the sticks and splinters that they will instantly burn on the application of a lighted match.) When the fire is well under way, call the boys. Expecting light and heat and cheerfulness, they will come down with alacrity,—the only trouble then being to get them dressed, for turning over the logs and picking up the hot coals are more pleasant than pulling on shoes and stockings. The gloomier and colder the morning, the more pleasant it is, and the more hilarious the children become. While they are dressing and playing, get ready a cup of something hot for them to drink. I prefer beef-tea, but I vary it with chocolate or coffee made five-sixths of

boiling milk.

Cold milk does not cheer them like something hot. To boil the milk for the coffee or chocolate takes only a few moments. I put the tin cup upon a little fixture called the "Pet" that fits over any common gas-burner, and costs but thirty cents. This will heat without burning or smoking the cup. After they have taken their hot drink and eaten a cracker or two, the boys will be ready for their books. In one hour now they can do more hard work, and do it with more cheerfulness and courage, than at any other time of day.

Now see how little it costs, all this pleasure. For the best hickory-wood I have just paid $7.25 the cord, $1.50 for hauling it to the house, $1.00 for

sawing once, and 50 cents for piling in the cellar. For this morning fire, I had one cord sawed into three pieces, which made its cost $11.25. As this fire only burns till eight or nine o'clock, the one cord may last the whole winter. Even if it uses two cords, how else can so much comfort be had from so small a sum? I have been told that in New York City hickory-wood can be bought for the same price as pine, because there is so little demand for it. Outside of the cities the cost of the wood would hardly be a consideration. Even if the use of it lightens the purse, it will just as surely lighten children's hearts and clear their brains. HANNAH SNOWDEN.

Mrs. Browning's "Earlier Poems."* FIFTY-THREE years ago, the Rev. Alexander Dyce, a ripe scholar, with a wide range of reading, edited a collection of feminine verse, which he entitled "Specimens of British Poetesses,"-an excellent work, which ought to be reprinted and brought down with additions to the present time. It covers a period of about four hundred and twenty-five years, and contains specimens of the capacities and incapacities of nearly one hundred English ladies who were addicted to rhyming, beginning with Dame Juliana Berners, and ending with Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon, whom Jerdan was airing in the "Literary Gazette." All the great and all the little songstresses figure here,-Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Elizabeth, Mary, Countess of Pembroke; the Princess Elizabeth (afterward Queen of Bohemia), Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle; Anne, Marchioness of Wharton; Lady Chudleigh; Anne, Countess of Winchelsea; Henrietta, Lady Luxborough; Lady Mary Wortley Montagu; Anne, Countess Temple; and Lady Anne Barnard. These were the greater lights of the poetic firmament. The lesser (yet greater) lights were our own Anne Bradstreet; Mistress Katharine Phillips, "the Matchless Orinda;"" Mistress (and a very disreputable one) Aphra Behn, Miss Hester Vanhomrigh (whose heart Swift broke), Mistress Mary Robinson (friend of the Prince of Wales), Mistress Charlotte Smith (who was pensive sonneteer), Miss Anna Seward (who was a silly pedant), Mistress Hester Piozzi, Mistress Anna Letitia Barbauld(who wrote eight or ten immortal lines), Mistress Hannah More, Mistress Joanna Baillie, Mistress Felicia Hemans, and Miss Letitia Elizabeth Landon. The world of English readers were glad to possess themselves of Mr. Dyce's beautiful volume, but they would be more glad to possess it now, with its necessary continuation, for

a

*Earlier Poems of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. 18261833. London: Bartholomew Robson, Cranborne street, 1878.

great poetesses have arisen in England since it was first published, and good, if not great, poetesses have arisen in America, also. Among the former may be named Jean Ingelow, Christina Rossetti, Augusta Webster, and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We know but little about Sappho, one of whose reputed poems has come down to us; but setting Sappho aside, Elizabeth Barrett Browning must certainly be pronounced a most extraordinary genius, -as extraordinary in English poetry as George Sand was in French prose and fiction. (This comparison, which is intellectual only, ends here, of course.)

We know almost as little about this great woman as we do about her impassioned sister, Sappho, who died about twenty-five hundred years before she was born. It seems to be settled that she was born near London in 1809; it is certain that she died in Florence in 1861. Bibliography traces the dates of her publications, but gives no idea of the poetical value

of her first and second volumes. She herself was averse to them, being anxious as Mrs. Browning to disown the girlish and young-womanly verses of Miss Elizabeth Barrett Barrett. She was right perhaps in so doing, and during her life-time they were not laid up against her. An author has a right to ignore his or her work if it be outgrown, and the greatest have done so. The world has also-or thinks it has a right to all the works of those who have been its instructors and benefactors, and, willynilly, when the pens have once dropped from their hands, and their eyes are closed in the last sleep, it sets its literary detectives to mousing about until they find what has long been missing,-it may be in the linings of many portmanteaus, or in huge depositories of waste-paper. One of these acute gentlemen, who probably represents the Scotland Yard of literature, has lately unearthed Miss Barrett Barrett's first fugitive from the bar of criticism, and passed it into the open court of publication. It is called "An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems," and it was originally issued in 1826, when she was in her seventeenth year. It is a curious, not to say an