Each article is fixed to little rings, and a rope running through a ring at the opposite end enables them to be drawn out one after another over the court, where they hang and flap in the air until they are dry.

"On these little platforms and balconies sturdy Juliets of the kitchen carry on mysterious communications with Romeos of the stable or garden below, and when no eye is looking they let down a cord to draw up, not a bouquet of roses, but a good stout cabbage or cauliflower, which their innamoráto ties to it. Here in the winter the old padrone, in his faded dressing-gown and velvet beretta, often shuffles out and seats himself in the sun, and mumbles to himself, as he warms 'his five wits'; and shall I not confess that here also I have often stood for an indefinite space of time, charmed by the varying and homely picture, and watching the fun that goes on? Nothing can be more picturesque than these views from the back windows. Here a terrace with rows of flower-pots, there a quaint balcony broken into exquisite light and shade, above, perhaps, a tall tower looking down. into the court, or a pergola of grapes, dappling the gray floor or wall with quaint shadows; and oftentimes a garden close by, with its little dripping fountain and its orange-trees, making a golden light in a green shade,' while above is the deep delicate blue of the Roman sky, against which are cut out the crimped edges of tiled roofs. Screams of wild Campagna songs, with their monotonous drawl, pierce the air, as the self-forgetful donna di facenda remembers her Campagna home and rattles out on their wires her files of snowy clothes."

.

The liberal extracts we have made will give our readers a good impression of Mr. Story's peculiarities of treatment, as well as of the merits of his work. They will recognize an artist's sense of color and a poet's love of beauty. The amount of detail into which his descriptions run, and which might be urged as an objection against them, is a proof of the accuracy of his observation, and we can assure our readers that there is nothing in the picture which is not in the landscape. He is fond of employing as epithets and predicates words which involve a meaning, or present an image, of their own, so that we see at once a reflex or double picture; as in the expressions "nightingales bubble into song," "daisies have snowed over the Campagna," the "loosened hair" of May, "stars palpitate” in the heavens, "apricots rusted in the sun," "locust-trees tasselled with odorous flowers." Mr. Story carries this pecu

liarity rather too far for prose, so that his style sometimes loses in simplicity what it gains in effect. When we add, that his tone occasionally comes too near being flippant, and that now and then there is a want of reverence in the treatment of sacred subjects, we believe that we have conscientiously performed the ungracious task of fault-finding.

Mr. Story is not merely a poet and an artist, but a scholar also, and his volumes contain evidence of a wide range of reading and very considerable research. The habits formed in his brief service at the bar have herein borne good fruit. Some of the notices which the work has called forth, while generously commending the spirit, freshness, and grace of the style, and the substantial merit of all that is the natural growth of the writer's own mind, have treated the learning as a species of encumbrance, rather to be endured on account of the good things which accompany it, than welcomed for its own sake; but with this judgment we cannot sympathize. We have a genuine respect for learned research, even when expended. upon subjects of comparatively little importance, because of the patience and industry which such research involves. All scholarship is respectable, because no scholarship can be acquired without the exercise of qualities which are respectable. Mr. Story's chapters on the Colosseum, on the Good Old Times, on Saints and Superstitions, and on the Evil Eye, and his Appendix on the population of ancient Rome, are not, in our judgment, to be merely tolerated for the brilliancy of the descriptions and the liveliness of the sketches which may be found between the same covers; but they form in themselves and by themselves an interesting and valuable portion of the work. The armor of learning is worn with grace by so graceful a mind as that of Mr. Story. We have not found these chapters hard to read, especially that on the Evil Eye, which is full of curious learning, and takes us into that border land between the natural and supernatural into which the human mind, at all times, has been so fond of straying. We are not sure that a proper course of such reading would not leave us in a state of half belief in the superstition. Luckily the bane and antidote go together, and if you believe in the "jettatura," or evil eye, you must also believe in the talismans, charms, and de

vices by which its fatal shafts may be warded off. Some of the stories which Mr. Story tells in illustration of his theme are quite amusing, and the scholar will welcome the whole chapter as a substantial addition to his library of books of reference.

Mr. Story's account of the lottery and other forms of gaming unhappily so prevalent in Rome, and exerting so demoralizing an influence upon the people, is more full than any that can be found in any other English work that we know of.

As we have before said, this work has not been republished in our country, which we rather wonder at, considering its intrinsic merits, and the personal and inherited claims of its author upon the regard of the American people. We hope that the lovers of good books will erelong be able to read this in an American reprint; otherwise, now that English books are so costly a luxury, the number of those who can have the pleasure of reading it must be very small. It is not at all written as a guide-book, and has nothing to say about statues, pictures, churches, and palaces; it takes up just the points which Murray leaves untouched, or only glances at; and yet we heartily advise all persons who are going to Rome, especially if they propose to remain there any time, to take it with them. It points out many matters of interest generally overlooked, and contains sundry practical hints of value to those who take apartments, hire servants, and set up housekeeping for themselves. Those who have lived in Rome will read it with delight, because of the pictures it recalls and the memories it revives; and when we have put together those who mean to go to Rome and those who have been there, we have already assembled a considerable body of readers. If it ever be reprinted here, we hope that pains will be taken to reproduce the Latin and Italian quotations with correctness. It breaks no bones to see a foreign language mangled by an incompetent compositor, but it is very annoying to a scholarly eye.

In looking back upon what we have written, we are conscious that we may have been rather interpreting the feelings which Mr. Story's book has awakened in ourselves, than anticipating the judgment of the public. In many books the reader finds more than the author has set down. As by the waving of a

magician's wand, he has caused the present to disappear, and evoked the past from the shadowy realms of memory. Pictures which were growing dim under the influence of time have been retouched by him, and glow again in their original freshness. We see once more the sun go down behind the dome of St. Peter's, and the twilight shadows settle over the "long-drawn wave" of Soracte. The pines of the Villa Doria again rear their sombre canopy in the air; and cypresses and laurels and myrtles and box-trees weave their forms into the landscape. The faint odor of the early violets darts into the soul, mingled with the caressing breezes of the spring. We see the undying roses that bloom around the graves of Shelley and Keats. The wind makes mournful music as it sweeps through the broken arches of the Claudian aqueduct. The snowy lines of the Sabine hills gleam in the morning sun. The gray oxen, the buffaloes, the donkeys, the peasants and peasant-women, the wine-carts, the ecclesiastical costumes, the beggars, the models, the artists, the pifferari,- the figures and objects that animate the streets of Rome and its neighborhood, all come back again, and stand before the mind's eye with all the forms and hues of life.

"Was ich besitze seh' ich wie im weiten,

Und was verschwand wird mir zu Wirklichkeiten."

ART. XI. CRITICAL NOTICES.

1.1. Paris en Amérique. Par le Docteur RENÉ LEFEBVRE, Parisian de la Sociétés des Contribuables de France et des Administrés de Paris; des Sociétés Philadelphique et Philharmonique d'Alise et d'Alaise, etc.; de la Real Academia de los Tontos de Guisando; Pastore nell' Arcadia in Brenta (detto Melibeo l' Intronato); Mitglied des Gross- und Klein-Deutschen Narrew-Landtags; Mitglied der K. K. Hanswurst-Akademie zu Gänsedorf; Membre du Club Tarleton, à Coventry F. R. F. S. M. A. D. D., etc.; Commandeur de l'Ordre grand ducal della Civetta; Chevalier du Merle Blanc (LXXXIXe classe), avec plaque, etc., etc. Egri Somnia. Paris: Charpentier. 1863. 12mo. pp. 450.

2. The Same. Translated by MARY L. BOOTH. New York: Charles Scribner. 1863. 12mo. pp. 373.

THE Preface to this curious piece of satire is dated at "New Liberty, Virginia, July 4th, 1862." In a magnetic sleep, which is created by the power of the "Spiritualist Medium," Jonathan Dream, Doctor Lefebvre is enabled with his wife and family to pass the ocean, to carry Paris with him, and to dwell for a season in that new American Paris. The part of America in which his domicile is fixed is the State of Massachusetts. At first, the intention of the writer would seem to be to ridicule America, its customs and its people; and there is hardly one of the thirty-five chapters that does not bring into bold relief some ludicrous feature of American life. But very soon the reader finds that it is not things American, so much as things French and Parisian, which the writer intends to satirize; that the whole book is a covert attack upon the abuses and the absurdities of French methods and the French administration. The contrast between American manners and French manners is always favorable to America; and especially is liberty presented as the source of all that is good, comfortable, and beautiful in life. The book is a keen and scathing sarcasm upon centralization and a despotic rule. It is amazing that the Emperor's censors should have allowed it to be published.

In all the sketches of Doctor Lefebvre there is a pervading humor, but the wit is not so sparkling as that of About or Gautier. There are often attempts at wit which fall far short of their mark. It is impossible, however, to refuse admiration to the adroitness of a writer, who manages to make the very traits which are quoted in derision of the Yankees tell in their favor and against their critics. The insolent