life of The Earnest Man, as she calls the late Dr. Judson, whose career as a missionary in India was one of the most remarkable in the history of the church. It is founded on the documents collected in Wayland's life, together with other original materials, and has been prepared with much judgment and skill.

-We have also a translation of the famous Theologia Germanica, "which setteth forth many fair lineaments of divine truth, and saith very lofty and lovely things touching a perfect life." It is a small volume, of rare excellence in itself, but with an enormous porch; for the titlepage announces that it has been edited by Dr. Pfeiffer, translated by Susannah Winkworth, prefaced by Charles Kingsley, explained by Chevalier Bunsen, introduced by Calvin E. Stowe, and again historically introduced by the translator, to say nothing of an ancient introduction, which is also quoted from Dr. Martin Luther. Yet all this is quite acceptable, unless we should except the introduction of Mr. Stowe, the chief merit of which is that it is very brief. Mr. Kingsley's remarks are excellent, and so are Bunsen's, while the translator's historical elucidation was necessary to show the origin of the work. Apart from its exquisitely sweet and beautiful religious spirit, this work has a historical value, in that it was one of those which quickened the mighty soul of Luther in his trying conflict with the papacy. The author of it is not known, except that he was a priest and warden of the Teutonic Order of Frankfort, and one of the "Friends of God," a sect which sprung up in the fourteenth century. It is not polemical in any sense-the principal doctrine being simply, that sin is selfishness or self-will, and godliness the love of goodness, because it is goodness; but it is very thorough and penetrating in its views, and most divine in its spirit. Let us add, that it is neatly printed in the old style of typography.

-A new doctrine comes into the world, generally, like an alkali into an acid and unfriendly medium, with a great deal of effervescence. It provokes fierce hostilities at first, but these soon subside, and then it quietly addresses itself to the reason. Such has been the case with the teachings of the socialists, which, after arousing the enthusiasm of some, and the heated opposition of others, have passed

into the consideration of calmer and soberer minds. MR. CALVERT's Introduction to Social Science is a fruit of this second stage of the process. It is a profound, earnest and intelligent study of the questions presented by the existing condition and aspirations of society. A little too abstract. perhaps, in its methods of treating the subject, it yet abounds in original and weighty thoughts, and deserves the candid perusal of all reflective men, of those even who may not agree with the author in his conclusions. The theme itself is so novel and comprehensive as to admit of a wide variety of opinion-and yet it is so important as to demand the most patient and zealous investigation. Accepting the more practical parts of Fourier's discoveries as to the organization of work, and rejecting the fantastic parts, Mr. Calvert gives us a careful elucidation of its principles, and a most eloquent exbortation to their application. He writes with fervor and force, and, to reflective persons, his little book will prove an acceptable present.

-ROEMER'S Polyglot Reader, published by D. Appleton & Co., is now complete, and is a most valuable addition to the list of text books designed for assistance in mastering the living languages. Vol. I. consists of a valuable series of English extracts; II., their translation, by Prof. Roemer, into French; III., German, by Dr. Reinhard Solger; IV., Spanish, by Simon Camacho ; V., Italian, by Dr. Vincenzo Botta, thus serving as Mutual Keys to each other. Commencing with the ordinary maxims, proverbs, and moral reflections of life, it gradually proceeds to choice and familiar historic, romantic, and poetic extracts, judiciously selected from the most prominent of the favorite English and American authors.

We have examined each volume, and it is but just to say that the editor, Professor Roemer, of the New York Free Academy, makes no claim for the value of the series, which is not amply sustained. The names of the eminent scholars who have assisted him are sufficient evidence of the quality of their work. We remark, with pleasure, that the selections in our own literature are made from the writings of some of the younger authors, as well as from the American classics; so that the foreign reader will have a taste of the present flavor of our

literature. As a comparative view of the relative force and character of the variouslanguages, the series is very interesting and instructive. It is a valuable work, accomplished with fidelity and elegance.

-A highly useful practical work is Mr. Charles night's Knowledge is Power, edited in this country by David Wells, It is not a treatise on political economy so much as a familiar illustration of the more settled principles of that science. Describing the condition of industry at successive epochs, and showing the gradual progress of man, from the savage to the higher civilized states, it explains the causes of the change in a most intelligent and agreeable manner. Mr. Wells, with excellent judgment and information, has adapted the several chapters to the state of improvement and opinion in the United States. It is also enriched by many wood

cuts.

-Mr. BARTLETT, of Cambridge, whose little volume of "Familiar Quotations" has already become a necessity to all people who read and talk, has just issued

a glossary of a peculiar and interesting kind. Under the title of College Words and Customs, Mr. B. H. Hall has collected all the phrases which throw light upon the ways and manners, the morals and the life of students, in the English universities and the American colleges. There are hundreds of collegemen, in every State of the Union, who will be glad to know of the existence of such a book, and to learn that it has been carefully compiled, and to us, ancient collegians as we are, it seems remarkably full and accurate. The only fault we have to find with the work is, that the author has introduced a few illustrations from Germany, which, as the book is confined to the Anglo-Saxon academies, seem a little out of place. This, however, is a slight matter, nor ought we, perhaps, to suggest that the style of the editor's preface shows that he has not sufficiently pondered his own excellent definition of the formidable word "splurgy." He has done his work, in the main, so judiciously and so well, that we will not quarrel with his adjectives, but simply wish all his labors the reward they merit.

THE WORLD

UPON this height of the year which we now have reached, let us pause for awhile, O faithful reader, to survey the path over which we have thus far traveled together, and to discourse of the good and the ill, the present and the future, of our great metropolis, in respect of those matters which, legitimately, or by a graceful allowance, may occupy us in our monthly conversation. Do not fancy, however, that we desire to invite you to an overserious and didactic talk! By no means! Solemnity in palaver is the special attribute of savages, and the affectation of solemnity is hateful to all wise and civilized men. It is the mask of mediocrity; the crown and crmine of imbecility; the pomp of pedagogues and prigs. You shall not find a sermon in your magazine; and we trust you do not need to have us tell you that we of the monthlies can mean earnestly, and talk earnestly, without putting on the gown and wig of the mighty quarterlies. The thought and its formation are one thing, the word and its utterance another; and if we ask you to do for the

OF NEW YORK.

city and its arts what everybody is doing now for himself and his affairs, to run your eye with us over the accounts of the last six months, we rely upon you not to suspect us of levity, because we are not lugubrious, but to remember Shakespeare's scorn of those———

"whose visages

Do cream and mantle like a standing pool." No! we shall converse with you, invisible but beloved reader, through these our columns, as we should desire to do, were we present with you in the body, upon themes to which we trust you are not wholly indifferent, and yet which we may discuss together without unpleasantly assisting the calorific influences of this hot July weather.

For if you, Madame, who, robed in loveliest muslin and seated where the favoring breeze most freely trifles with your tremulous ringlets, now honor us with your partial attention-or you, sir, who, flattering your sun-strung nerves with the soothing magic of the post-prandial cigar, now drop a careless glance upon our pages-if you

or both of you remember, as witnesses, all that the winter and the spring have brought of shows and shams, of gladness and of sorrow, to our vast Babylon, you will not be sorry, perhaps, to waste a moment's thought upon the sum of the whole matter. And surely, ye, whose name we rejoice to think is legion-ye, citizens and citesses (it was the British Jacobins and not we who coined that ugly word) of all the many cities, and towns, and hamlets, and villages, whither the servants of our queenly Maga wander, dispensing peace and pleasure, wit and wisdom, from Maine to Mexico, from Nantucket to California, ye surely will turn no deaf ear to our talk of the doings and the movements of this chief and central hive, to which all the busiest bees of busy America hourly bring their stores of honey.

The spectre of centralization which dismays so many good democrats, need never alarm us in America. There is no danger that any wicked wag will soon have a right to say of the States at large, and of New York, what poor Heine (he is dead now; let his sins be forgotten, and his songs alone remembered!) used to say of France and Paris, that the "opinions of the provinces were of no more importance than the opinions of a man's legs; the head being the seat of thought!"

Such is the constitution of our society, and such are the relations of the great communities which make up our Union, that we shall rather tend to resemble the galaxy that swarms with suns. than the single system whereof this poor little world of ours is by us considered to be so overwhelmingly important a member.

But some one sun, larger and more brilliant than the others, there must always be, and the chances are clearly in favor of the preponderance that way of the world of New York. And this we say, without one thought of offense to all the other suns, actual or possible, of our political and social heavens. In fact, it is very unreasonable for any one to find fault with the growth of our city toward a cosmopolitan rank. It is only in exceptional cases that the expansion in all directions of one leading city in a nation has been purchased at the expense of the substantial prosperity, the power, or even the attract iveness of sister cities, less universally prominent.

When imperial Rome was the "umbilicus orbis," the magnetic mistress of the world's wealth, and industry, and art, there flourished beneath the sway of the Cæsars a hundred other royal towns, each of which was a planet in stateliness and splendor. Byzantium and Antioch. Athens and Alexandria, Lyons and Milan, were names which even the lordly Roman heard with a thrill of curiosity and desire, and the lounger of the Via Sacra feared not to tempt the highway or the sea in search of the marvels which made these names, and so many more, as sounds of sweet music in his ear.

The glories of modern St. Petersburg have not dimmed the ancient spell of Moscow, and the traveler, even while he gazes on the granite miracles of the Nevskoi Prospect, dreams of the golden domes of the Kremlin. So, too, in crowded Germany, there is one glory of Vienna, and another of Berlin, and another of Munich, and still another of Frankfort, though, among them all, the Austrian capital rise first and fairest upon the fancy or the memory. And who does not know that, while London has been dwarfing the traditions of antiquity, and astounding the boldness of modern speculation, a brood of rich and flourishing cities has been springing up and waxing mighty over all the soil of Britain, from the Tay to the Channel?

It is, indeed, in every possible respect, desirable that every nation should possess one city in which every interest of man and of society is adequately represented and cared for. There may well be other places in which this or that industry, this or that science, this or that art, shall be carried to the highest degree of special perfection, but it is hardly conceivable that there should be more than one great capital in which the importance of every branch of human effort shall be at once acknowledged in action, and balanced by the presence and vitality of all other branches of human effort.

The tone of such a capital must tend toward common sense and impartiality, and the exaggerated estimate which men are quite as apt to form of their parties, their pursuits, and their professions, as of their personal qualities and merits, will always be sagely chastised by metropolitan criticism. We are continually prone to forget

that the world is large enough for several persons beside ourselves, and that the Creator, in summoning into existence the eight or nine hundred millions of our fellow-men, may have intended to indicate that there were some objects worthy of attention and aspiration, beside those which happen to be dictated to ourselves by our particular tastes, and temperament, and training.

From this unfortunate proclivity, men and communities are continually recalled by the voice and the example of a great capital. When our streets were crowded a month ago with all manner of clergymen and clergy women, with reformers and philanthropists, from the east and west, and delegates of every degree of orthodoxy and heterodoxy known to Christendom, a friend of ours, meeting us one day, said: "I begin to perceive, now, that New York is really a metropolis, for the conventions of the old school Presbyterians and the new school Presbyterians are both open at the same time, and their proceedings are reported in the same papers!"'

In the spirit of this remark lies the gist of all the just praise of great cities. "And of all the just blame of great cities, too," do you say? Ah! we know that impartiality is the next neighbor of indifference, and that eclectic amiability is the mortal foe of that enthusiasm without which no great thing is possible. But we shall see whether our great city is so cosmopolitan as to care for nothing. Our own private conviction is, that such a charge (and it is very often made) is really the extreme of injustice. Many a good thing goes unnoticed and unrewarded in New York, no doubt (as where does it not?); many a laudable enterprise comes to shame; many a flower blooms just as much unseen, and just as sadly wastes its sweetness, as if it had sprung up in the desert and not beside the daily walk of a hundred thousand men. But, not seldom, the flower itself is at fault, and, more often still, the flower's friends, who will choose ill their season and their place. For, of all the charities and of all the graces of life, we believe, there is not one which might not now take firm root among us, and grow thriftily and well, and find favor abundantly, would the right hands, directed by the right heads, but take charge of its fair fortunes.

This belief of ours will, no doubt, be re

garded as a mild form of fanaticism, by many of our readers, native as well as foreign, who will pooh-pooh us with allusions, for instance, to the forlorn retreats in which the National Academy of Design is yearly compelled to hide itself, and to the successive shipwrecks to which gallant steersmen have conducted the Italian opera. And it is but a little while since an accomplished stranger, M. Tajan Rogé, took the pains to demonstrate to a limited audience, in Clinton Hall, that the arts in America were, and always would continue to be, exotics, hardly to be kept alive in glass houses and with a liberal expenditure of artificial heat. Now M. Tajan Rogé is a clever man and said many witty things, and the opinions of a gentleman who tried, for twelve years, to naturalize the French Theatre in St. Petersburg, ought to be received with attention when he speaks of exotics.

But does even the history of the opera in New York support such melancholy conclusions? Who that recalls those lovely summer nights at Castle Garden, who that remembers the gracious circles of Astor Place, the Parma violets, and the brilliant arrays of beauty, recurring with a regularity which enforced respect even from the world of fashion, and made the most domineering of ball-givers bow to the supremacy of art, will hazard the assertion, that the opera, wisely conducted, cannot flourish in Gotham?

Or consider the Academy itself, whose very vastness testifies to an ambitious enthusiasm which, if it overshot its mark, did so by reason of its too high-vaulting force.

The season just past, witnessed, indeed the failure of the public to support the enterprise of one of the most enterprising impresarios who had ever attempted to manage our lyric drama. But was the public wholly to blame?

We owe much to Mr. Paine for the spirited and resolute temper in which he undertook his task; but must we not own, however reluctantly, that neither in the composition of his corps, nor in the production of his operas, did he exhibit a judgment equal to his enterprise. Had he sacrificed certain superfluous singers to secure for us the services of such a tenor as Mirate, and such a contralto as Didiée ; had he not dulled the edge of the public