exclaims, in the midst of his fond and passionate | tle study at the back of the house, which looks longing: "Tho' if an eye that's downward cast out upon the field of Concord fight and its modest monument, and upon the winding river, and into an orchard with rank grass muffling the trunks of the mossy old apple-trees, sits a man writing. The stream flows sluggishly along; there is no sound from the neighboring village, except when the church-bell rings for noon. It is a plain, tranquil landscape, and all is silence and repose. It was of such days and of this place that Hawthorne, the man in the study, wrote: But now, being happy, I felt as if there were no question to be put......The treasure of intellectual gold, which I had hoped to find in our secluded dwelling, had never come to light. No profound treatise on ethics, no philosophic history, no novel, even, that could stand unsupported on its edges; all that I had to show, as a man of letters, were these few tales and essays which had blossomed out like flowers in the calm summer of my heart and mind." 66 THERE were two or three public events in the city during the early summer which are well worthy remembrance; and the Easy Chair will here remind the future reader of this magazine that it was in this year that the statue of Professor Morse was erected in the Central Park, upon one of the most delightful of June days, and that the day and evening were devoted to appro Could make thee somewhat blench or fail, Then be my love an idle tale, And fading legend of the past; "And thou, as one that once declined, When he was little more than boy, On some unworthy heart with joy, But lives to wed an equal mind; "And breathes a novel world, the while His other passion wholly dies, Or in the light of deeper eyes Is matter for a flying smile." Precisely such self-renunciation the best friend of Mrs. Hawthorne felt in her, for she says, in words which are a paraphrase of this poem: "Their mutual relation was truly a moral reverence for each other that enlarges our idea of what is in man; for it was without weakness, and it enabled her to give him up without a murmur when he came to need 'so much finer conditions' than she could command for him with all her love and all his appreciation and enjoyment of it. And thus it was, as she also said in the very hour of her bereavement, 'Love abolishes death."" They were both past thirty when they were married, yet their love, says her friend, was first love' with both of them, though the flower bloomed on the summit of the mountain of their life, a genuine edelweisse." A year ago Mrs. Hawthorne wrote from En-priate festivities. In the morning there was an gland, where she had made her home, and where she lies buried: "I find the most heart-satisfying cordiality, 'as of old, among my friends here. It seems as if they all could not express enough or do enough for me. It is wonderful how my husband is loved, admired, revered by every body of value; and they are kind enough to include me and the children in the rich esteem in which they hold him." She contrasted this with the fact-which every body may well ponder who thinks that if he can make a living in no other way he can, at least, write-that in America all Hawthorne's works never brought him an average of a thousand dollars a year. Of course Mrs. Hawthorne did not expect that works of so rare a literary art as her husband's would be sold in this country in such numbers as many poorer books; but it was for her an unanswerable argument that this immense difference between his English and his American readers proved that he belonged more to "Our old Home" than to this country. Her reverence for her husband's genius, her noiseless and constant devotion to him, her profound trust and delight in his answering affection, justify the words of the Tribune that "the world owed a great debt to this woman"greater, as another friend, Mrs. Waterston, suggests, than any one but Hawthorne knew. As the Easy Chair writes these words, which may possibly give to some who never before heard the name of Sophia Hawthorne a kindly impression of her always, it recalls the brown old manse at Concord, at the end of the long avenue of black ash-trees. The road beneath them, leading straight to the house, is grassy-it is, indeed, greensward rather than road; and the gable roof of the old house, seen under the trees, has a stately, if rustic, respectability. It is a summer morning, and a lady clad in white is drawing in the shadow of the trees a wicker wagon, in which a child lies sleeping. In a lit excursion on the bay, with music and speeches; and in the afternoon the unveiling of the statue; and in the evening congratulatory addresses from Professor Morse himself and others, at the Academy of Music, in the presence of an immense multitude. The occasion was fortunate in many ways. The event which was commemorated is one of the great events of history. We are too near to it, perhaps, to estimate its profound significance. But the discovery of the means of instantaneous communication around the globethe absolute annihilation of time and space for the purposes of human intercourse-is one of the most prodigious and memorable of incidents. To commemorate so great an event the day was singularly beautiful; the place is as fine as the country affords; and the orator was the oldest of our famous poets, and one of the most honored citizens of the country. The statue itself is of bronze, and of heroic size. The figure rests the left hand upon a telegraph instrument, and with the right holds a telegraphic dispatch. The costume is a furred cloak, which is disposed gracefully around the form, and both the attitude and the head and face are striking likenesses. The designer of the statue is Byron M. Pickett, and his success is conceded. By four o'clock on the Saturday afternoon the company was assembled in the Park upon the green at one side of the principal drive, and the services began by an address from Governor Hoffman of New York. They were met, he said, to witness the completion of a statue erected to a man yet living. And this was certainly a striking fact, and probably unique in our history. The statue was unveiled by Governor Claflin of Massachusetts, the native State of Morse, and Mr. Bryant then delivered an address. It was felicitous, like all his addresses. Mr. Bryant, in later years, is one of the most frequent and Judge Daly made addresses, and at the appointed hour a dispatch was sent from the platform "to the telegraphic fraternity throughout the world," to which Mr. Morse signed his name, amidst the enthusiasm of the audience. His address, which was very interesting, was full of good feeling and generous recognition of his friends and co-workers in the good cause. In 1842, he said, he laid the first submarine telegraph cable, one moonlight night, in the harbor of New York; and he added that to Cyrus W. Field, more than to any other individual, belongs the honor of heroically pushing to completion the telegraphic communication between Europe and America. And so the venerable father of the telegraph, having foretasted in the day's celebration his own immortality, received the personal congratulations of troops of friends. of orators, but he never disappoints; his speeches are all admirable, both for what he says and for the manner in which he says it. For almost half a century, as he said, he had known Mr. Morse. He was then an artist, and to him the fraternity of artists is indebted for the organization of the Academy of Design. In 1832, upon the packet ship Sully, from Havre to New York, after some conversation upon certain experiments which had shown the identity of electricity and magnetism, Mr. Morse was impressed by the conviction that there might be a gentle and steady current of the electric fluid which would convey messages and record them. In 1835 Mr. Morse showed its practicability at the New York University; but, like all inventions, it was received coldly and indifferently, as if it were the harmless fancy of a visionary. Even Mr. Bryant confesses that he had doubts whether it could A week or two before there was another imbe more than a delicate scientific pastime. In mense assembly at the Cooper Institute, gather1838, according to Mr. Morse's own statement, ed to celebrate the commencement, and to offer the telegraph appeared in Washington as a sup- a tribute of friendly homage and gratitude to pliant for aid to demonstrate its power. It had Peter Cooper. There were many thousand pufriends, but the session ended, and it fell into pils, who united in an address to the founder of the limbo of unfinished business. It was not the Cooper Union, who, having honestly made a until 1842 that it was again submitted to Con- great fortune, has devoted so large a part of it to gress, and a bill was passed on the very last night so noble a purpose. In the most quiet and unof the session. Mr. Morse had his instruments ostentatious way Mr. Cooper, with his council adjusted at each end of the Capitol to show the of friends, has developed his intention of gratuifeasibility of his project. "I talked to the mem-tously furnishing useful technical instruction to bers," he says. "I explained the working of the instrument hour after hour. I gained many adherents; still I saw that many were yet incredulous, and many even scouted at the idea as preposterous, and pronounced my instrument the toy of a crack-brained enthusiast. It was toward the close of the session, and there were yet two or three hundred bills to be passed before they came to mine. It was late at night; and finally I gave up in absolute despair, and left the Capitol with a sad heart. I was bankrupt, having spent all that I had upon my discovery. I walked down the Capitol steps with exactly fifty cents-all that I had in the world-and a more disconsolate individual it would have been hard to find. After a wakeful night, I arose in the morning to find my bill passed, and a new era in the history of science begun." Then came Ezra Cornell, and gave it his stout aid. Then a host of others, until the dream was a dream no longer, but an impregnable and beneficent fact. In the evening there were music and addresses at the Academy of Music. Dr. Loring of Massachusetts, Dr. Sampson of Washington, General Banks, Rev. Mr. Gallagher, Mr. James D. Reid, | led all the rest. young people who are too poor to pay for it elsewhere. The number who have enjoyed the opportunities provided by him is very great; and it is impossible not to feel that not the least of his services is the spectacle of so noble a consecration of riches honorably earned. Great riches are always worshiped for themselves. We know all about the camel struggling at the eye of the needle, but we are willing to take the risk. We know that money is the root of all evil, but we know, also, that our cases would be exceptions. Ours is a sordid city and a sordid age, as all others have been. And it is, therefore, pleasant to see how riches may be turned to great and noble public service, instead of being used wholly for a personal and private enjoyment. The men of whom New York may be truly proud are such as Morse and Fulton and Cornell and Vassar and Cooper and Wells-those who enrich mankind with beneficent inventions or with opportunities of every kind of instruction. There is no glory surer, no fame more satisfactory, than theirs. They are of the tribe of Abou Ben Adhem, whose name upon the angel's list Editor's Literary Record. GEORGE GROTE, the cele EORGE GROTE, the celebrated historian, | the Charter-house School, but in his sixteenth He was born year became a clerk in his father's bank, devoting his leisure hours to literary and political studies. His "History of Greece," the work by which he will be known to future generations, began to be published in 1846, and was completed in 1851. Political motives first suggested and largely influenced this undertaking. He was in politics a liberal, if not a republican. As early as 1821 he published in pamphlet form a re in 1794, and was therefore seventy-seven years of age-six years older than Lord Macaulay (who died in December, 1859) would be, had his life been spared to the present time. Mr. Grote's grandfather, whose ancestors were German, in partnership with Mr. George Prescott, founded the London banking house of Prescott, Grote, and Co. George Grote was educated at questionable facts of physiology. We wish it might be separately published, and couched in a form less scholastic and more popular. Dr. TYNDALL is one of the most successful of that class of scientists in Great Britain who have devoted themselves so largely to the attempt-to ply to an article on parliamentary reform, by Sir James Mackintosh, in the Edinburgh Review. He also wrote a work on "The Essentials of Parliamentary Reform." It was about the time of his reply to Mackintosh that he began to collect the materials for his great work. It was his design, as stated by Mr. Hallam, "to counter-quote his own words-"to extend sympathy for act the influence of Mitford in Grecian history, and construct a history of Greece from authentic materials which should illustrate the animating influences of democratic freedom upon the exertions of the human mind." And Mr. Hallam very justly adds that "in the prosecution of his attempt he has displayed an extent of learning, a variety of research, a power of combination which are worthy of the very highest praise, and have secured for him a lasting place among the historians of modern Europe.' During the preparation of his history Mr. Grote was drawn away from his literary project by his interest in the reform movements of his own time and country. In 1832 he was elected from the City of London to Parliament, where he remained until 1841. He was a strenuous though unsuccessful advocate of voting by ballot. Shortly after the publication of his history he published an elaborate work, entitled "Plato and the other Companions of Socrates." COUNT AGENOR ÉTIENNE DE GASPARIN, the distinguished French publicist and statesman, died in France quite suddenly, early in June, aged sixty-one years. Count Gasparin was connected with the Guizot ministry of Louis Philippe. From 1842 to 1846 he was a member of the French Chamber of Deputies. He was a zealous Protestant, and an earnest advocate for the abolition of slavery. His name should be a household word in this country, ever to be associated with that of Lafayette, on account of his efforts in our behalf during the late civil war. In the darkest days of that conflict he published "The United States in 1861," "The Uprising of a Great People," and "America before Europe," by which treatises he did more than any other foreign statesman to enlighten the Old World concerning the principles involved in our struggle for nationality. Since 1848 Count Gasparin has held no political office, nor taken any part in public affairs. POPULAR SCIENCE. science beyond the limits of the scientific public." There lie before us two publications from his pen, Scientific Addresses (Č. C. Chatfield and Co.) and Fragments of Science (D. Appleton and Co.). The former is a little pamphlet of seventy-fiye pages, one of the "University Series," and contains three of the papers comprised in the other, larger work-a respectable volume of a little over four hundred pages. Of the various articles which it contains, the most interesting to us have been the first three, the sixth, and the seventh. In the last but one of these he discusses, though very briefly, materialism, or rather, to speak more accurately, he defines it. He maintains, what few modern philosophers would probably deny, that the physical growth of man, like that of plants, is a purely material phenomenon; and he also asserts, what nearly all psychologists would admit, that every mental act involves a material change in the nervous tissue; but he also asserts, what many materialists do not concede, the unbridged gulf between mind and body-a chasm "intellectually impassable" between the mental and the material. He evidently has small faith in any help from the Bible in solving any scientific problem, its account of the creation of man being in his mind only "that grand old Hebrew legend." He thinks it scientifically demonstrable that prayer can never call one shower from heaven, or deflect toward us a single beam of the sun;" and special providences are classed by him, with miracles, as events incredible, or at least quite unsubstantiated. However, his book is by no means largely theological. His treatise on the "Scientific Use of the Imagination" is interesting and serviceable in pointing out a wider function for that much-abused faculty than is ordinarily granted to it; and his lectures on "Radiation," 66 Radiant Heat," "Chemical Rays," etc., are purely scientific. There is perhaps no writer in the English language who possesses in a more eminent degree the power of stating abstruse scientific truths in such a manner as to bring them within the comprehension of the unscientifically educated mind. We have no faith in any of the "every-manhis-own-doctor" treatises. It is a proverb with the legal fraternity that "he who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client;" and the proverb, slightly modified, is equally applicable to the man or woman who attempts to substitute a little dangerous learning for the medical skill of an experienced practitioner. But there are exigencies of not infrequent occurrence in every household when the mother must be a quasiphysician for the time that necessarily intervenes between the unexpected accident, or the sudden and alarming attack, and the arrival of the fam DR. MARTYN PAINE's Institutes of Medicine (Harper and Brothers) has been submitted to a severer test than that of the literary critic, and has secured a more conclusive verdict than his encomium. It is now nearly a quarter of a century since the first edition was published, and yet nothing newer has taken its place. The author has, by revision and appendices, kept pace with the progress of medical science, and this ninth edition of the "Institutes" is quite up with modern thought and present knowledge. The book is professional rather than popular; yet it is a useful book for the household physician as well as for the regular practitioner. The physiological argument for the existence of an imma-ily physician, and for such exigencies she has terial soul is original and forcible-original in that it employs the materialist's weapons against materialism, and forcible in that it is based on no doubtful assumptions, and contains no ad captandum arguments, but is founded on the un need to be prepared beforehand. For this purpose she will find Till the Doctor Comes, and How to Help Him, by Dr. G. H. HOPE (G. P. Putnam and Son), an admirable little treatise. It is short, concise, practical. It is written by a physician, and appears to be medically safe without being difficult of comprehension. How to treat burns and scalds, sprains and broken bones, poisoning, and how to nurse in the common diseases, croup, measles, scarlet fever, and the like, are among its themes. It is a book to put on the shelf by the medicine chest, for the furnishing of which also it gives ample directions. To write any thing containing useful information of a scientific character in a style sufficient ly clear and vivacious to enable it to compete with the novelettes which form so large a proportion of the literary food of our children must be a rather difficult matter; but we think Mr. JACOB ABBOTT has accomplished it in his series of "Science for the Young," the second volume of which, Light (Harper and Brothers), is now before us. We have not much to add to what we have already said of this series, except to say that a more careful reading of the first volume, and a partial perusal of the second, confirm the judgment expressed by us in a previous number of the Magazine on the publication of the volume on "Heat." Either book is admirably adapted for reading aloud. If the father will devote half an hour an evening to reading to the entire family, he will carry them through these two volumes in two or three months, and will find that in explaining to the younger members of the family the various principles involved he has himself obtained accurate and fresh knowledge concerning heat and light. We are reading the volumes in course in this way ourselves, and the verdict of young and old, from the boy of seven to the oldest in the family group, awards them a place in interest above any of the ordinary story-books, The illustrations are admirably adapted both to enhance the interest and to make clearer the scientific explanations. Charles Scribner and Co. add to their "Illustrated Library of Wonders" the Wonders of the Heavens, by CAMILLE FLAMMARION. The style is occasionally too Frenchy, as though the subject had overpowered the imagination of the author, and poetry had got the better of fact. The book, nevertheless, states the substantial facts concerning the wonders of the heavens in language which makes them clear to the popular apprehension; and certainly the reader will find in this volume, not, indeed, any thing like a complete treatise on astronomy, but something very like a key to assist him in reading the enigmatical language of the starry heavens. TRAVELS. THE half-conscious but inevitable prejudice with which we always take up a new book of European travels was partially disarmed in the case of Mr. CURTIS GUILD'S Over the Ocean (Lee and Shepard) by a sentence in the preface: The author has aimed to give many minute particulars which foreign letter-writers deem of too little importance to mention, but which, nevertheless, are of great interest to the reader." Mr. Guild has been successful in this aim, and it gives his book a peculiar and indescribable charm-of reminiscence to one who has traveled the same ground, of vivid reality to one who has not. The inevitable guide-book does come in occasionally, but not often. Where the author describes scenes which other tourists have already made familiar to us his descriptions are not ex ceptionally fine. But he sees much which other writers have not noticed, or have thought commonplace. His account of Westminster Abbey does not differ widely from a score or more we have read in the past; but his graphic and hu morous account of a London "bus," and of an English banking house, is as entertaining as it is fresh. This picturing of the every-day life of Europe, in its most notable contrasts to our own, is the peculiar feature of the book, runs more or less through every chapter, and renders it peculiarly "readable." One The Lands of Scott, by JAMES F. HUNNEWELL (James R. Osgood and Co.), is hardly to be classed among books of travels. It is rather a commentary, geographical and archæological, on the poems and novels of Walter Scott. The author is unmistakably an enthusiastic admirer of the Scottish romancer. He carries us to the scenes which Walter Scott has made immortal by his pen, and interweaves an account of the various stories with a description of the localities where they were placed by the novelist. must needs be as enthusiastic an admirer of Walter Scott as Mr. Hunnewell himself to read his volume through; yet every one who has been entranced with any of these unequaled romances will find it pleasant and profitable to visit some of the "Lands of Scott" under the author's guidance; and any traveler meaning to embrace Scotland in his European tour will find that a rapid reading of this volume will add materially both to the present enjoyment and the permanent value of that portion of his trip. Allusions which he will meet every day in guide-books and from the people of the country, otherwise incomprehensible, will become plain to him by the aid of Mr. Hunnewell's key. Mr. FAIRBANKS has told, in simple and unpretentious, but pure, English, the History of Florida (J. B. Lippincott and Co.). It is a romantic story, full of adventure, of dauntless courage, of invincible ambition, of a certain kind of religious zeal, but of a monstrous chivalry that hesitated at no falsehood and no bloody crime when dealing with either hapless savages or unfortunate Huguenots. One can not read without a new sense of the enormities which a false religion inspires the terrible story of the massacre of Ribault and his companions, "not as Frenchmen but as Lutherans." Now that the thoughts of so many are turned toward this haven of invalids, the history of Florida possesses more than a mere local interest. Mr. LEDYARD BILL sends us a book which he entitles on the back, Climate for Invalids, etc.; on the side, Minnesota, California, Florida, Nassau, Fayal, Adirondacks; and on the titlepage, Minnesota-its Character and Climate. Since the author did not know how to characterize his own book, we may be pardoned for our inability to do so. However, if we were to christen it we should accept Etc. as its true name, it being composed apparently in about equal parts of a little volume, half guide-book, half travels, on Minnesota, and of sundry articles of a miscellaneous character not wholly incongruous, which lay, perhaps, in Mr. Bill's portfolio awaiting a chance to come before the public. The book is published by Wood and Holbrook. Despite its miscellaneous character, it will be well for invalids seeking a cli mate that can cure or counteract consumption method of compelling the guilty boy to inflict to read it. FICTION. THERE is perhaps no living writer of fiction whose portraitures of English society are more photographically life-like than ANTHONY TROLLOPE'S. It is this which gives to Ralph the Heir (Harper and Brothers) its chief interest to us. The tangled story of the four lovers' lives is more intricate and involved than interesting. There is no hero in the book to awaken the reader's sympathies; and though one sorrows for poor Clarissa, still there is no broken heart to give a tragic interest to the simple story of her mistaken and unrequited love. As to Ralph, the heir, it is difficult to bear with his weakness and vacillation with any patience, or to show to him half the forbearance that is shown by Sir Thomas and his daughters. But the novelist carries us through various phases of English life, which he depicts with rare fidelity. Neefit the tradesman, the leather-breeches shop, the villa at Hendon, the stables at the Moonbeam, the hunt, the chambers of Sir Thomas, the bachelor life of Ralph in London, and, perhaps best of all, Moggs, Ontario Moggs, and his audience in the parlors of the Cheshire Cheese, are all capitally drawn, with less coloring than Dickens or even Thackeray would have employed, but with more real fidelity to actual truth-the difference between Trollope and Dickens in their descriptions of English life being that one painted and the other photographs. That which is to our thought the most interesting, as it certainly is the most characteristic, feature of the book, is the view it gives of a "rotten borough.' One might read a good many parliamentary blue-books and political newspapers and not get so good an idea of English political life-of how, in particular, an English election is conducted-as he will get from reading the account of the canvass at Percycross. And from the reading of that account the American rises with a considerably enhanced respect for his own institutions, and a new sense of the truth that the corruption of his own land is far less, though more exposed and pronounced, than that of the Old World. It can hardly be asserted that Little Men by Miss ALCOTT (Roberts Brothers), is a natural story, or doubted that it is an entertaining one. The description of an actual boarding-school, with its humdrum life, would be as tedious as any thing that can well be conceived of, and that Miss Alcott is able to invest a story of boarding-school life with any interest must be taken as one of the evidences of her genius. There is hardly enough in the story itself to sustain the reader's interest in it; and despite the author's bright style and vivid descriptions, and, best of all, her hearty sympathy with youth, the book drags a little if one attempts to read it directly through. It is more entertaining read as a series of sketches than as a single connected story. We beg leave to doubt whether, on the whole, it would be for the best interest of any well-ordered school for the boys to have unlimited liberty to slide down the balusters at the risk of broken heads, and every Saturday night, after their bath, to chase each other over the house in a sham battle with the pillows. We are inclined to think that Mr. Bhaer's original the feruling on the teacher would lose its moral effect if it were generally adopted. We protest that for a boy to bring a lying accusation against himself to shield a friend is a very mistaken kind of heroism. Had we been present, we should have been tempted to admonish Mother Bhaer that it was not a safe operation to let her baby suck the spoon in which she had just administered a dose of medicine to a ragged urchin just picked from the street, the nature of whose disease she did not know. But, after all, the lesson which these improbable incidents are meant to teach, and do teach, is a good one-this, namely, that personal sympathy with children, in all their life, even their pranks and good-natured mischief, is the first condition of acquiring influence over them, and hence is the first condition of any true and good government in school or family. The children will be sure to read "Little Men" with interest, and the parents can read it with profit. Ina (James R. Osgood and Co.) is an American novel in that it is by an American writer, but in every thing else a foreign romance. The scene is laid in Italy; the plot is Italian; the fierce, passionate love and hate are Italian; the pretended marriage, the long concealment, the final dénouement, the assassination of the guilty lover by the brother of the victim of his guilty passion, are all Italian. There is dramatic power in the story, but it is not a pleasant onehardly a healthful one-and reminds the reader in its general tone and character quite too strongly of the average libretto of an Italian opera. And yet there is artistic power in it that leads us to hope from the young authoress a better and more genuinely American novel in her next production. We are sorry to see Dodd and Meade's imprint to such a story as The American Cardinal, for we had learned to consider their name almost a guarantee of excellence; and such a reputation as they were acquiring among the publishers of religious literature is not to be lightly cast away. "The American Cardinal" may prove popular; but if it does we shall think more poorly of the average American novel-reader than we even do at present. We do not join the general hue and cry against sensational novels. The story that produces a healthful and genuine sensation, of hatred of wrong and of sympathy with some special virtue, is not to be condemned because its incidents are more startling than the cultured critic can commend. He must not forget that there is as great a difference in the moral as in the physical sensitiveness of men, and that different minds need different spicing in their books, as different palates need different condiments in their food. But a novel that tries to be sensational and is not is unpardonable; and this unpardonable sin against literature is committed by "The American Cardinal." That it is entitled "a novel" does not justify the author in travestying the faith and spirit of the Romish Church; and he will hardly expect any of his intelligent readers to accept Bishop Frances as a fair portraiture of a Roman Catholic bishop, or the abduction and imprisonment of Arthur Cleveland in the Vatican as a possible incident. Fidelity to truth is the first condition of the true novel, and justice is the first condition of all controversial |