and good taste are essentials of poetry, it must be denied the title of anything more than rhetorical if not nonsensical verse.

London Lyrics. By F. Locker. A new edition, enlarged and finally revised. H. S. King and Co.-It was by his "London Lyrics," if we are not mistaken, that Mr. Buchanan, the plaintiff in the recent literary libel case, won his first laurels as an author. Had he always written with the discretion and moderation, as well as poetic insight, he there displayed, society might have been spared the sorry exhibition which reflected so little honour on all persons concerned in it.

Mr. Locker's "London Lyrics" are of a lighter cast, being for the most part in a jocular vein, and written in a free and easy manner, partaking more of the character of occasional jeux d'esprit than the higher class of lyrics; they are, in fact, rather epigrams than lyrics. Though many of them relate to London life, there are quite as many, if not more, which were neither written in London nor have any obvious connection with London. Most of them are merely playful effusions, with a sparkle of wit and a pleasant flavour of humour. There is no pretension to recondite or original thought; but if the sentiment be familiar and bordering on commonplace, it is at least always healthy and agreeable. Good sense and good feeling are everywhere present, while there is not the slightest trace of sickly sentimentalism. The writer takes a cheerful and kindly view of men and things, and is altogether a merry but no less wise companion.

The first requisite of a good work of art is that the artist should

have a high ideal in his own mind at which to aim. This requisite Mr. Locker seems to possess, if we may judge from what he says as to the kind of verse he has attempted in this volume:

"Light lyrical verse should be short, elegant, refined, and fanciful, not seldom distinguished by chastened sentiment, and often playful, and it should have one uniform and simple design. The tone should not be pitched high, and the language should be idiomatic, the rhythm crisp and sparkling, the rhyme frequent and never forced, while the entire poem should be marked by tasteful moderation, high finish, and completeness; for however trivial the subject matter may be, indeed rather in proportion to its triviality, subordination to the rules of composition, and perfection of execution, should be strictly enforced. Each piece cannot be expected to exhibit all these characteristics, but the qualities of brevity and buoyancy are essential. It should also have the air of being spontaneous; indeed, to write it well is a difficult accomplishment, and no one sessing a certain gift of irony, which is has fully succeeded in it without posnot only a rarer quality than humour, or even wit, but is altogether less commonly met with than is sometimes imagined. The poem may be tinctured with a well-bred philosophy, it may be gay and gallant, it may be playfully malicious or tenderly ironical, it may display lively banter, and it may be satirically facetious, it may even, considering it as a mere work of art, be pagan in its philosophy or trifling in its tone, but it must never be ponderous or commonplace. It is needless to say that good sense will be found to underlie all the best poetry of whatever kind."

Of course there is all the difference in the world between knowing how a thing should be done, and being able to do it. Probably Mr. Locker himself would hardly maintain that he has in every case come up to his own standard. But it

may safely be said he has never fallen very far below it, and sometimes approached it pretty nearly. Mr. Locker can be pensive and sometimes grave as well as gay. Some readers may prefer his occasional touches of pathos and tender family affection to his brightest flashes of merry wit. The beauty of his sentiment is its truth. On the whole Mr. Locker is to be congratulated on having produced a volume which, though bristling with point, wounds no one, and when once taken up is reluctantly laid aside.

Transcendentalism in New England. A history. By O. B. Frothingham. London: Trübner & Co. 1876. From the above title it may be gathered that the present work is more suited for American than English readers. It is a question whether it will attract or interest even American readers to any great extent. Transcendentalism is a long, high-sounding word, not very easy to bring within the range of popular comprehension. To most minds it is either utterly unintelligible, or suggestive of cloudy mysticism and unpractical dreaming, than which nothing could be more at variance with the sort of character ascribed to the 'cute Yankee. It is hard to imagine that many of that pre-eminently practical, hard, matter-of-fact people will feel curiosity enough even to look into a book on such a subject, much less spend any length of time over its pages.

There is the less reason for them to do this, that the subject, besides being uninviting in itself, is now obsolete. The transcendentalism here described is a thing of the past, according to the author's own confession. Mr. Frothingham's use of the term is vague and vari

able. Sometimes he employs it to denote a particular school of philosophy, and speaks of Kant as the first transcendentalist. At other times he makes it synonymous with idealism, and ascribes it to Plato.

Then, again, he makes it equivalent to mysticism in religion, as exhibited by Swedenborg, George Fox the founder of the Society of Friends-and others. But the special signification of the term as the subject of his present work is of a local and personal character. Transcendentalism here denotes rather a mood than a system of thought, an intellectual movement derived from Germany and France some forty years ago, and shared by a small clique of thoughtful persons, mostly Unitarians, at Boston and in the neighbourhood, among whom Emerson, Theodore Parker, and Margaret Fuller occupied prominent positions.

"New England furnished the only plot of ground on the planet, where the transcendental philosophy had a chance to show what it was and what it proposed. The forms of life there were, in a measure, plastic. There were no immovable prejudices, no fixed and unalterable traditions. Laws and usages were fluent, malleable at all events. The sentiment of individual freedom was active; the truth was practically acknowledged, that it takes all sorts of people to make a world, and the many

ninds of the many men were respected. No orders of men, no aristocracies of intellect, no privileged classes of thought were established. The old world supplied such literature as there was in science, law, philosophy, ethics, theology; but an astonishing intellectual activity seized upon it. dealt with it in genuine democratic fashion, classified it, accepted it, dismissed it, paying no undue regard to its foreign reputation. Experiments in thought and life, of even audacious description, were made, not in defiance of precedent-for precedent was hardly respected enough to be defied-but in innocent unconsciousness of precedent.

A feeling was abroad that all things must be new in the new world. There was call for immediate application of ideas of life. In the old world, thoughts remained cloistered a generation before any questioned their bearing on public or private affairs. In the new world, the thinker was called on to justify himself on the spot by building an engine, and setting something in motion. The test of a truth was its availability."

Elsewhere New England transcendentalism is thus described :

"Practically it was an assertion of the inalienable worth of man; theoretically it was an assertion of the immanence of divinity in instinct, the transference of supernatural attributes to the natural constitution of mankind. Such a faith would necessarily be protean in its aspects. Philosopher, critic, moralist, poet, would give it voice according to cast of genius. It would

present in turn all the phases of idealism, and to the outside spectator seem a mass of wild opinions; but running through all was the belief in the living God in the soul, faith in immediate inspiration, in boundless possibility, and in unimaginable good. The editors and reviewers of its day could make nothing of it."

It is doubtful whether those of the present day will find it much easier to avoid misunderstanding the true nature of this mysterious movement or school, even with the aid of Mr. Frothingham's account of it, which is in fact rather a description of persons than of any system of thought. More than a fourth of the volume is taken up with sketchy notices of the chief writers in Germany, France, and England, who are more or less ideal in their cast of thought. Then follow chapters on the leading New England transcendentalists, their religious opinions, literary works, practical experiments in political and social life, &c.

The chief of these experiments was a communist co-operative scheme at Brook Farm, near Boston, which was founded on the principles of justice, wisdom, purity, brotherly love, and all the other virtues of humanity, with of course a total absence of selfishness, intemperance, impurity, injustice, or im; erfection of any sort, and intended to promote human culture, including "the highest physical, intellectual, and moral education" of both old and young. The author favours us with the constitution and bye-laws of the association, which, after a brief existence of five years with an average of seventy members, ended in failure and loss. This being the principal practical outcome of New England transcendentalism, one would be disposed to think the movement or school in which it originated might as well have been allowed to pass into oblivion. Such, however, is not Mr. Frothingham's opinion, though he is honest enough to confess he did not of his own accord undertake the task of chronicling its history. He maintains that transcendentalism in New England, whether a sound system of thought and action or not, deserves to have its history written, because as a matter of fact it has greatly influenced the character and destiny of the American nation. If he could really prove this satisfactorily, instead of simply asserting it, one might be willing to accept his conclusion, though even in that case the subject would seem to demand a higher and more exhaustive style of treatment than it has received at his hands. "His purpose," he tells us, "has been to write a history; not a critical or philosophical history, but simply a history; to present his subject with the smallest possible admixture of discussion, either in defence or opposition. He has therefore avoided the metaphysics of his theme by presenting

cardinal ideas in the simplest statement he could command, and omitting the details that would only cumber a narrative." Surely if the subject was worth handling at all, it should have been discussed thoroughly. The idea of writing a history of transcendentalism without touching upon metaphysics or philosophical discussion seems almost ludicrous to an unsophisticated mind, not indoctrinated with transcendental mysteries. But if Mr. Frothingham is chary of philosophical discussion, he favours us with here and there a specimen of transcendental literature, from which we are tempted to present our readers with a single gem, by "Thomas T. Stone, a modest, retiring, deep, and interior man, a child of the spiritual philosophy":

"Man is man, despite of all the lies which would convince him he is not, despite of all the thoughts which would strive to unman him. There is a spirit in man, an inspiration from the Almighty. What is, is. The eternal is eternal; the temporary must pass it by, leaving it to stand evermore. There is now, there has been always, power among men to subdue the ages, to dethrone them, to make them mere outgoings and servitors of man. It is needed only that we assert our prerogative, that man do with hearty faith affirm: 'I am; in me being is. Ages, ye come and go; appear and disappear; products, not life; vapours from the surface of the soul, not living fountain. Ye are of me, for me, not I of you or for you. Not with you my affinity, but with the Eternal. I am; I live; spirit I have not; spirit am I.'"

There may be more in this than meets the eye, but to those blest with only average perspicacity it looks very much like solemn trifling or ironical caricature. A still brighter luminary in the galaxy of New England transcendentalists is Mr. Alcott, whom the author ranks

next to Emerson, devoting a special chapter to him under the designation of "The Mystic." He is described as "a thinker, interior, solitary, deeply conversant with the secrets of his own mind, like thinkers of his order, clear, earnest, but not otherwise than monotonous from the reiteration of his primitive ideas." A true follower of Pythagoras, he abandoned the use of animal food, and declining to take part in the Brook Farm, or any other socialistic experiment, "he undertook to do his part towards the solution of the labour and culture problem' by supporting himself by manual labour in Concord, working during the summer in field and garden, and in winter chopping wood in the village woodlands, all the time keeping his mind intent on high thoughts." One of these high thoughts was, that all existing forms of society were objectionable, and that it was his exalted mission to show mankind a better way of life. "Fascinated by his vision of an ideal society, and determined to commence with a scheme of his own, he resolutely began by withdrawing from civil society as constituted, declined to pay the tax imposed by the authorities, and was lodged in Concord jail."

Another transcendental curiosity who figures in these pages is Mr. Brownson, thus described: "Of rational stability of principle he had nothing, but was completely at the mercy of every speculation. That others thought as he did, was enough to make him think otherwise; that he thought as he had six months before was a signal that it was time for him to strike his tent and move on."

We fear our readers will think we have already transcended the bounds of reason in devoting so much space to such senseless mon

strosities, and will therefore refrain from further remark.

Cup and Platter; or, Notes on Food and its Effects. By G. Overend Drewry, M.D., author of "The Common-sense Management of the Stomach," and H. C. Bartlett, Ph.D., F.C.S. Henry S. King and Co., London. 1876.-It is only during the present century that the subject of Dietetics has received the attention which its vast importance in the economy of human life demands, Dietetics, properly understood, includes the adaptability of food to individual constitutions with a view to the preservation of health, and also regimen or hygiene. In other words, Dietetics is the science of using food so as to maintain health, and also of employing it as an auxiliary curative agent in the treatment of actual disease. The valuable researches of physiologists and chemists have succeeded in placing dietetics on a sound scientific basis, and a competent knowledge of the subject, especially in its prophylactic and therapeutic bearings, is now rightly deemed an essential part of an accomplished medical education.

Mankind, for the most part, live as if the air they breathe, and what they eat and drink, had no serious and abiding relationship with the Public preservation of health.

health is public wealth; hence the great importance of educating the people in sound sanitive principles, which are few and easily understood. The laws of health are just as fixed and undeviating in their operation as those that govern the universe, and no natural law can be infringed with impunity. But the laws of health are perpetually violated, not only from indulgence in vitiated appetites, but also in a large

degree from ignorance, which is not alone confined to the mass of the population, but is largely shared by those who claim to rank par excellence as "the educated classes." There is, however, a growing disposition in the public mind to regard this subject with the importance it merits, and we are inclined to believe that the time is not far distant when instruction in the leading principles that govern the physiology of life and regulate health, will be considered an essential part of national education.

The work before us is, in some respects, a valuable contribution to the many popular treatises that have appeared, of late years, on the subject of Dietetics. What relates to the "Platter" is commendable for sound physiology, good sense, and practical utility. The writers. very clearly point out how essential the knowledge is of the chemical elements of food, and of the laws that regulate the all-important processes of digestion and assimilation. Upon this knowledge depends the skilful employment of diet as a therapeutic agent, and also its judicious use as a most potent means of counteracting hereditary predisposition to disease:

"If every one were born healthy, and there were no constitutional diseases, the proper system of diet might soon be arrived at; but inasmuch as, from the earliest times to the present, a certain peculiar tendency to some one particular form of disease, or a deviation from health, has been recognized in each individual, it is of the highest importance to ascertain in which direction the tendency lies. By a wellregulated system of life, and notably by a proper selection of food, we may counteract that disposition, affording in plenty those matters which are lacking, and withholding such as in each individual case tend to form compounds in excess of those necessary for health.