yielded to the seduction, and nothing but the integrity of Governor Fenton preserved it from total demoralization.

In the exercise of that legerdemain by which the earnings of an honest industry are transferred to the pockets of those who create no wealth, and which is the bane of modern society, Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt stands unrivaled.

This statue, which in its proportions rivals the famous Colossus of Rhodes, will serve to perpetuate no virtues worthy of imitation; but rather will be regarded as a monument of ostentatious display, and as subserving no useful purpose. A single one of Mr. George Peabody's benefactions is a prouder monument to his fame than would be a thousand of these brazen images.

BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG. - The "Advance" a short time ago contained a capital article on the namby-pamby character of the books prepared for the young, specially designating those which are gathered in those receptacles known as Sunday-school libraries. We do not believe much in those books where every page is designed to illustrate the virtuousness of virtue and the viciousness of vice, and where all vigorous thought is pruned off, reminding one of the symmetrical arboreal forms in a Dutch garden.

The tendency at this day is to furnish the expanding mind with an intellectual pabulum corresponding, in the animal economy, with that of tapioca and arrow-root, at a time when it craves a more nutritious diet. John Quincy Adams, at eleven years of age, read Rollin's History, and we do not believe that his mind was dwarfed thereby. We recently picked up at a book-store a copy of "Robinson Crusoe," emasculated (by some one who, perhaps, really thought he was rendering an essential service to the youth) of all words over and above one syllable. Now, Defoe's

style is so pure and simple that it can be comprehended by a boy as soon, almost, as he has made any progress in spelling and reading. The narrative itself will arrest and rivet his attention, and what harm is there if he pause over a two-syllable word or ask its meaning? He is performing a mental exercise which to him is of the highest importance, and which serves to discipline the mind.

We have often thought that, in our intellectual training, we might draw a lesson from the regimen adopted by the prize-fighter. He discards light foodmush and milk and bran puddings-and resorts to mutton-chops and beefsteaks. This nutritious diet tends to produce muscle, and not flabby flesh. He walks or runs, not over lawns closely shaven with a scythe, or paths leveled with a roller, but over rugged places, up hill and down; precipices are scaled and streams leaped over. There are ingenious devices whereby all the muscles of the system are brought into play. Each day he is plunged into a cold bath, and then rubbed down until his flesh is all aglow. A man subjected to such a regimen must "exult," as Mrs. Stowe has somewhere said, "in the intense consciousness of life."

So in the intellectual training. The mind should be furnished with books full of strong and vigorous thought— such books as are suggestive of new spheres of contemplation, and which bring into full play the reasoning and reflective faculties. Force the mind to grapple with difficulties. A frivolous person once remarked to Emerson, “Ido not understand your book;" to which the Concord philosopher replied, "My dear sir, I should have been wofully disappointed if you had."

A book which does not suggest reflection, but lulls the mind into a dreamy, listless inactivity, is not worth the paper on which it is printed. The intellect should be aroused and startled

by being brought in contact with obstacles to be overcome, and, Antæus-like, it will gather fresh strength from every repulse.

THE HUMBOLDT ANNIVERSARY.-The anniversary of this illustrious man was very generally observed throughout this country, and very many of our distinguished savants rendered their tribute to his memory. Among these were Agassiz, at Cambridge; Lieber and Doremus, at New York; and Foster, at Dubuque. This observance was eminently proper, for Humboldt belonged not to Prussia but to mankind,

and his proudest contributions to science were made from materials gathered on this continent.

It is gratifying, too, as indicative of the general intelligence of the people, that they should render such a spontaneous tribute to one who discarded all claims to the arts of the statesman or the warrior, and who held in contempt those qualities which are supposed to be the most captivating to the popular imagination; and his fame will remain undimmed when that of most of those who now figure in the world's affairs shall have become veiled in the blackness of oblivion.

DIARY, REMINISCENCES AND CORRESPONDENCE OF HENRY CRABB ROBINSON, Barrister-at-Law, F. S. A. Selected and Edited by Thomas Sadler, Ph.D. Boston: Fields, Osgood & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.

The readers of Talfourd's loving life of Charles Lamb knew he had a friend whom he greatly liked, and who returned the kindness with interest-a man more knowing than known; known well to the select literati of more countries than one, but to the general world scarcely at all. The readers of the work to which we have referred will recollect a touching letter of Lamb to H. C. Robinson, on the death of "poor Norris," a bencher, of whom Lamb wrote: "To the last he called me Charley. I have none to call me Charley now." He spoke of Norris with that tender, manly affection which came so naturally from Charles Lamb's heart; and put in the joke of how his dead friend used to say, after reading Chaucer, "In those old books, Charley, there is sometimes a deal of very indifferent

spelling!" He then asks Robinson to do what he can among the lawyers to aid the widow, who has been left not only desolate but poor. It is a remarkable coincidence that this letter-one of the best that even Charles Lamb ever wrote was written because, on going to see Robinson personally about the matter, he was absent at the bedside of a dying friend. The benevolence of the two men was much alike. In 1829 Robinson sent a present of a new kind of coal-scuttle and other domestic conveniences to Mary Lamb, in acknowledgment of which the brother sends a letter in which he says: "You save people's backs one way, and break 'em again by loads of obligation." A friend of Charles Lamb, the literary disciple whom the world loves more tenderly than almost any other, bears a letter of introduction to be honored

eminent in literature, in politics, in science, in war, than almost any man who ever lived. He was born more than a year before the Declaration of Independence, and he lived nearly two years after the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, whom he designated "the noblest person in America." During this life of nearly a century, Crabb Robinson keenly observed the great events and carefully studied the great ideas of the times. After he grew up into man's estate he became personally acquainted with many of the remarkable literary men who were contemporaneous with Scott and Byron, and with their successors - with Wordsworth, Southey, Coleridge, Hazlitt, Rogers, Tom Moore, Talfourd, De Quincey, Croker, Macaulay, Landor, Jeremy Bentham, and others of less note. He well knew Goethe, Benecke, the Schlegels, Arndt, and Tieck. He had some acquaintance with La Fayette and Madame De Staël. He often visited Lady Blessington, and wondered at her marvelous beauty. He corresponded with Robert Hall, Mrs. Barbauld, and Lady Byron. He was a war correspondent of the London "Times" newspaper, first from the Danish war, and afterwards from Spain, thence narrating for that great journal the events of the last campaign of Sir John Moore. He traveled over all occidental Europe. He spent years in Germany. During nearly the whole of his life he kept a journal, or diary, noting down events and conversations as they took place. The diary alone, continuing from 1811 to the close of January, 1867, formed thirty-five closelywritten volumes. The journals were about as voluminous-the reminisences, miscellaneous papers, and letters, making still more than either. From all this prodigious amount of material, Dr. Sadler has edited the work in review.

It is the most valuable contribution

to the department which we may call belles-lettres of English literature that has been made for many years. Mr. Robinson, if not himself a man of genius, at least had the fine faculty of appreciating genius. All accounts agree that he was a remarkable conversationalist. He is an exceedingly entertaining narrator of conversations; and, seeing that he had so many more to narrate than any man since Boswell, and of many more persons than he, it is not wonderful that the work is packed full of gossipy literary information of the greatest interest and of the highest value. We get the inside history, so to say, of a large number of the most illustrious men of a period remarkable for its illustrious men, both in thought and in the conduct of affairs. Wordsworth and Goethe are his heroes, but the work is in the conglomerate style of literary architecture, and sparkles with a thousand beauties drawn from varied sources and put in place as prepared by the original workmen themselves. One of the best of Robinson's

qualifications for the preparation of a

work of this nature was his kindness of heart. This is shown all through the book, and he seems to have been capable of malevolence only toward the iconoclasts of his own idols. He allowed no one to treat his gods with disrespect. A good illustration of both the rule and the exception may be found in the last part of the first volume, where Robinson quotes Moore's account of a dinner party, and then Charles Lamb's account of the same thing.

TOM MOORE AT DINNER.

"April 4th, 1823.-Dined at Mr. Monkhouse's on Wordsworth's invitation, who lives there whenever he comes to town. A singular party:Coleridge, Rogers, Wordsworth and wife, Charles Lamb (the hero at present of the 'London Magazine'), and his

sister (the poor woman who went mad in a diligence on the way to Paris), and a Mr. Robinson, one of the minora sidera of this constellation of the Lakes; the host himself a Mæcenas of the school, contributing nothing but good dinners and silence; Charles Lamb, a clever fellow, certainly, but full of villainous and abortive puns, which he miscarries of every minute. Some excellent things, however, have come from him."

whose name will survive among the memorable names of the last age. I refer to the patriotic Arndt. He had fled from the proscription of Buona. parte. His life was threatened; for he was accused, whether with truth I do not know, of being the author of the book for the publication of which Salm had been shot. My falling in with him now caused me to read his works, and occasioned my translating entire his prophecy in the year 1805 of the insur

CHARLES LAMB AT THE SAME DINNER.

"I wished for you yesterday. I dined in Parnassus with Wordsworth, Coleridge, Rogers, and Tom Moore: half the poetry of England constellated in Gloucester Place! It was a delightful evening! Coleridge was in his finest vein of talk-had all the talk; and let 'em talk as evilly as they do of the envy of poets, I am sure not one there but was content to be nothing but a listener. The Muses were dumb while Apollo lectured on his and their fine art. It is a lie that poets are envious. I have known the best of them, and can speak to it that they give each other their merits, and are the kindest critics as well as best authors. I am scribbling a muddy epistle with an aching head; for we did not quaff Hippocrene last night, marry! It was hippocrass rather." (Vol. 1, pp. 485-6.)

It was our intention to make many quotations from the pages of this entertaining work, but we find ourself in all the embarras de richesse, proverbially the most embarrassing of all things. But we can not go amiss. Here is the way he tells of meeting with Arndt:

ROBINSON AND ARNDT.

"On the 18th I dined with Frau von Helwig. She had invited to meet me a man whom I was happy to see, and

took place within less than a year of our rencontre in Sweden. This I inserted in a review of Wordsworth's pamphlet on the convention of Cintra. I was delighted by this lively little man, very spirited and luminous in his conversation, and with none of those mystifying abstractions of which his writings are full. He spoke with great admiration of our 'Percy's Reliques.'" (Vol. 1, p. 167.)

Here is an account of a pleasant call:

"June 29th.-Called on Lamb in the evening. Found him as delighted as a child with a garret he had appropriated and adorned with all the copperplate engravings he could collect, having rifled every book he possesses for the purpose. It was pleasant to observe his innocent delight. Schiller says all great men have a childlikeness in their nature." (Vol. 1, p. 277.)

Here is his description of the personnel of La Fayette :

"September 10th and 11th, 1814.These days were distinguished by my being in the company of one of the most remarkable men of the French Revolution, General La Fayette. By no means one of the ablest or greatest, but I believe, in intention at least, one of the best; and one who has been placed in positions both of danger and of show at critical moments beyond

every other individual. Of all the revolutionary leaders he is the one of whom I think most favorably; and my favorable impression was enhanced by what I heard from him. I was with Mr. Clarkson when La Fayette called on him, and I was greatly surprised at his appearance. I expected to see an infirm old man, on whose countenance I should trace the marks of suffering from long imprisonment and cruel treatment. I saw a hale man with a florid complexion, and no signs of age about him. In fact, he is fifty-seven years old, his reddish complexion clear, his body inclining to be stout. tone of conversation is staid, and he has not the vivacity commonly ascribed to Frenchmen. There is apparently nothing enthusiastic about him." (Vol. 1, p. 284.)

His

It is followed by an account of a long conversation with La Fayette, in which is given La Fayette's ideas of Napoleon Bonaparte. And here we have

MACAULAY, ÆTAT 25.

"At a dinner party I had a most interesting companion in young Macaulay; one of the most promising of the rising generation I have seen for a long time. He is the author of several much admired articles in the "Edinburgh Review." A review of Milton's lately discovered work on Christian Doctrine, and of his political and poetical character, is by him. I prefer the political to the critical remarks. * * He has a good face-not the delicate features of a man of genius and sensibility, but the strong lines and well-knit limbs of a man sturdy in body and mind. Very eloquent and cheerful, overflowing with words, and not poor in thought; liberal in opinion, but no radical. He seems a correct as well as a full man. He showed a minute knowledge of subjects not introduced by himself." (Vol. 2, p. 68.)

But we are admonished that we have not space for the more than thousandand-one good things we might cull st random from these volumes. The work of Boswell is the best of biographies, because it tells us so much of Dr. Johnson; because we learn thence how he talked, and roared, and studied, and lolled, and counted his steps and the lamp-posts, and ate like a savage, and prepared his literary works, and drank tea; because, in short, we learn all about him. We get the every-day life of a great man. Thus we get from Crabb Robinson glimpses many, and many extended looks into the inner life of not a few of the most illustrious men of modern literature. An English poet once said a knowledge of Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy" would make one a passable classical scholar. A knowledge of Henry Crabb Robinson's Diary will surely give one a clearer in

sight into the literary and much of the political history of nearly a century past than can be had from any other source of twenty times the bulk.

ESSAYS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. By the late M. Frederic Bastiat, Member of the Institute of France. Translated from the Paris edition of 1863. Chicago: The Western News Company. 1869. 1 vol. 12mo. pp. 398.

Mr. Horace White, of the Chicago "Tribune," has performed a very acceptable service to the public in collating the translation of the political essays of this very brilliant French writer, and the Western News Company have rendered a service equally acceptable in putting this translation on good paper and in clear type. We have, then, a small compact volume, not beyond the reach of the ordinary purchaser, embodying a discussion in an attractive style of the great principles which relate to public wealth. The Western News Company have peculiar facilities for distributing this work, and we hope