good singing tone, and what should be the disposition of the breath and the choice of vowels and syllables in vocalization in order to obtain it. Flexibility, purity, pronunciation, and many other topics, are also discussed. All of this chapter is valuable, and much of it is new, since few have any idea how opposed to modern custom in all these particulars was the long and careful and gradual drill of the old masters of song. The fourth chapter is devoted to the asthetic view of the art of singing, and is as thoughtful, judicious, and penetrating as the others. Some of the strong and novel points of the book may be summed up as follows:

1st. The voice has five independent modes of action for singing, as the hand has five fingers for playing; and each is to be culti vated by and for itself, until the tones produced by each mode equal, or nearly equal, in strength and fulness, the pure tones of all the other modes. 2d. The man's voice is best trained by a man, and the woman's by a woman; and no voice is to be intrusted to any but a thorough singingteacher. A mere instrumentalist or "natural singer" is not competent to teach this art. 3d. That, instead of beginning practice with inflated chest and a loud tone, at first and for a long time no more breath than is used in speech should be employed; and the tone should be soft, quiet, and entirely without effort. 4th. That the intelligent training of the voice may be, and best is, begun at five or ten years of age, as the growing organ is more susceptible of culture than the adult, and also because it takes years, instead of months, to make a singer. 5th. That singers should not be trained with a tempered instrument like the piano. 6th. That indiscriminate chorus-singing spoils the voice and the ear; and that singing should not, therefore, be taught in our public schools by persons who know of music nothing except the simple reading at sight, and of singing nothing at all; but that there should be vocal schools, where children could be trained to read music and to sing without danger of injuring their voices before they have fairly possessed them. No one who has not taught our public-school children to sing knows anything about the beautiful voices and sensitive musical organizations which abound among our little Americans. As the translator of the work says that Madam Seiler is now in this country, would that the educational powers

thereof could give her at once a hundred young girls to be trained as teachers for the benefit of just such vocal schools here as she herself would like to see in Germany!

Men of the Time; a Dictionary of Contemporaries, containing Biographical Notices of Eminent Characters of both Sexes. Seventh edition, revised and brought down to the Present Time. London and New York: George Routledge and Sons.

THE men of our time, or the eminent characters of both sexes who happened to be born in the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, enjoy very important privileges in this book, which is wrong in nothing so much as in being too generously named. For example, we infer from it that, while Mr. Leighton is a man of our time, M. Couture has not the advantage of being a contemporary; Miss Catharine Marsh, who wrote 66 English Hearts and English Hands," is an eminent living character, but Mr. George P. Marsh is not; Westmacott is a distinguished sculptor, but Mr. William Story has not yet come to the editor's notice; the editor knows all about that eminent literary man, Mr. Shirley Brooks, but he has never heard of Mr. James Parton.

Omissions like these, however, though very noticeable, are not characteristic of the book, which is one of the most difficult to make, and the most vulnerable to the faultfinder. It will serve a very good use, which it might serve better; but, remembering that it is intended for another public than ours, and a public peculiarly incurious concerning any greatness but its own, perhaps we ought rather to compliment the editor upon his success in discovering so many Continental and American celebrities among Men of the Time, than blame him for not knowing them all.

Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne. Twen ty-five Letters to a Workingman of Sunderland on the Laws of Work. By JOHN RUSKIN, LL. D. New York: John Wiley and Son.

WHAT "Mr. Thomas Dixon, a working cork-cutter of Sunderland," understands to be his duty, from the letters here addressed to him, or understands to be the

duty of anybody, is not clear from such of his replies as are printed in the Appendix; nor are we sure that the reader will be much the wiser as to what Mr. Ruskin expects than, for example, Mr. Ruskin himself. The general desire of this dreamer, whose words are still eloquent, though his mind is sorely be-Carlyled, is to a fairy despotism, which shall sustain itself in the affections and consciences of its subjects by every kind of sumptuary law, and by statutes aiming to repress all the vices and encourage all the virtues. In this state every one is to remain as nearly as can be in the rank to which he was born; there is to be slavery, but not slave-trade, and the slaves are to understand that their work, being manual, is base and degrading; there are to be nobles dwelling on vast estates, — but deriving no income from the lands, which shall neither be sold nor hired, and salaried by the government, in order that they may keep bright the image of hereditary aristocracy; there is not to be co-operation, for that tends to prevent the accumulation of private wealth by commerce, and to keep people in the station out of which they ought not to rise; marriage is to be permitted by the state as a special reward of merit, and the wicked are to go unwed; there are to be priests and bishops to inquire diligently into the affairs of every family that will stand it, and to write the biographies of their parishioners for public inspection, to be Scribes, in effect, rather than Pharisees; there shall be soldiers to act as a police in repressing crime and protecting the poor, after the manner of those obeying Governor Eyre in Jamaica (to

whose defence fund Mr. Ruskin proclaims that he gave a hundred pounds), and not after the manner of those commanded by General Sheridan in the Valley of the Shenandoah. Mr. Ruskin says nothing directly to this effect, but we suspect, from the general tenor of his reasoning, that he intends Mr. Johnson to be King of his Bezonians.

There is not wanting much beauty of thought, real aspiration, and downright good sense amidst all this rubbish, and the reader has to struggle against an absurd tenderness for the nonsense, because it is taught by one who is thoroughly earnest and philanthropic in it. But at last he has to regret that Mr. Ruskin turned aside from painting buds and leaves, in order to write these letters, and to wish that he had gone to Switzerland to look after his health and "the junctions of the molasse sandstones and nagelfluh," and had not deprived himself of the means to make the journey by subscribing one hundred pounds to the Eyre defence fund. We own, though, that we would not like to have lost, even for the sake of Mr. Ruskin's general reputation hurt by this book, one of his notions in political economy, namely, that civilization advances by the extinction of wants, and not by the creation of them; and we are very thankful for the severity with which both the success and failure of Doré are treated. Also, what is said of the degraded ugliness and vileness of modern theatrical spectacles and public entertainments could ill be spared in this country, where nothing succeeds like the success of the Japanese jugglers, and undrapery, and the cancan, at all the chief playhouses.

THE

HE word "beauty" is generally used to denote any quality in an object that produces agreeable sensations through the medium of sight; and, if we carefully analyze our ideas of this quality, we shall find them very obscure and indefinite. The beauty of a tree, for example, is of a very complex character, and almost entirely subjective. Trees, for the most part, are wanting in that kind of beauty which we admire in a flower, their attractiveness being derived chiefly from their influence on the imagination, like that of the ruder works of architecture. A tree with wide-spreading branches and a dense mass of foliage, elevated but moderately above the ground, however crooked, knotted, and gnarled its branches, and however wanting in general comeliness of form, must always awaken those complex emotions that produce a sensation of beauty. Our mental pleasure, in this case, springs chiefly from its evident adaptedness to the purposes of cool shade in summer. It is moral beauty derived from the suggestion of physical comfort. A wood, indeed, is haunted with all imaginable ideas of comfort, re

freshment, recreation, and seclusion at all seasons. We think of the delightful scenes and objects encompassed within it, of the flowers it has borne or protected in the spring, of the fruits it has showered into our paths in harvesttime, and of all the pleasant advantages it affords. There is also an endless variety in the forms and foliage of trees, and these differences have been at all times a favorite study for the painter and the naturalist.

There are trees possessing little or none of this fitness for purposes of comfort, that become agreeable objects by awaking pleasant emotions of an intellectual sort. Such are many of the slender Willows, Poplars, and Birches, that suggest the qualities of grace and refinement, and are typical of some virtue or affection of the mind. These trees have a sort of poetic beauty in our sight, being the material image of some agreeable metaphor. Thus Coleridge personifies the White Birch in one of his poems, pronouncing it the "Most beautiful