culture and reform would have deprived his severest critic of the power to ridicule or censure, and awakened a thrill of sympathy with the philosopher's pursuit of an ideal perfection.

Not the least interesting episode was the account of his experiment in community life, which he gave in full, speaking of himself in the third person with much more freedom in analysis and criticism of character and aspiration than he might otherwise have used. The whole ground of reasoning by which the necessity of communal life was borne in upon the philosophic mind that simply and purely espoused it was reviewed with the fervor and enthusiasm of the day when the idea seemed ripe for fulfilment, and the beautiful principles of associative industry and enjoyment were enlarged upon with that gentle and persuasive eloquence which charms if it does not convince. But when it came to a revelation of the practical workings of the darling scheme, and to a description of the strange idiosyncrasies of character developed in the active partnership of the co-operative venture at Fruitlands, the mellow humor of the serene enthusiast played and sparkled through the relation with the brilliancy, if not the sharpness of point, that flashes in "Transcendental Wild Oats," under which telling title Miss Alcott has given the allegorical story of her father's communal experiment which involved the young critic who was to sit in later judgment on the ruins of his cloud-castles.

Yet through all one perceived the still unshattered faith of Mr. Alcott in the divine possibilities of human nature, and felt the thrill of his sublime trust in that universal bond of brotherhood which, though it may have proved too brittle for the strain and tug of material life, still makes us one in God, and must in the long sweep of ages realize his dream of perfect fellowship. As he said, smiling in sweet acceptance of a fact which is indeed the highest distinction, he was born a half-century too early for the recognition of truths that he has put religiously into his life, which, whatever its failures as viewed from the common

stand-point, has been simply and purely shaped to Christ-like ideals. There is, in fact, no age for such as he. The record of his days might go on perpetually, with no chill of hope or decay of spiritual energy. The voluminous diaries that crowd his study-shelves, if ever turned to the light, will be found a revelation of the purest wisdom and sweetest will toward men, whom he has best served in the absolute sincerity of his thought and deed.

But 66 one attempts little worth living for if he expects to complete his task in an ordinary lifetime," he writes. "His translation is for the continuance of work here begun, but for whose completion time and opportunity were all too narrow and brief.

Himself is the success or fail

ure. Step by step one scales the pinnacles of excellence. Life itself is but a stretch for that mountain of holiness. Opening here with humanity, 'tis the aiming at divinity in ever- ascending circles of aspiration and endeavor. Who ceases to aspire, dies.

"Our pursuits are our prayers, our ideals our gods. And the more persistent our endeavors to realize these, the less distant they seem. All of beauty and beatitude we conceive and strive for, ourselves are to be some time."

A. L. M.

The Mt. Vesuvius Meteorologist.

FRENCH and Italian papers lately announced the death of Luigi Palmieri, the director of the meteorological observatory on Mt. Vesuvius. He died at his post,-in a little room in the observatory arranged for his private use. He had been the director of this eyrie for over twenty-eight years, and might almost be said to have created it. He was a genial gentleman, republican in politics, and his favorite toast was "the United States of Europe." He always spoke of Vesuvius as "il mio volcano," and seemed enamoured of the monster. When his intimate friends teased him about this devotion, he used to say that his was a mistress whose heart was always warm. He left an immense accumulation of observations admirably done

by him and his pupils by means of the sysographe and other instruments which he made and installed in his observatory and in that of Naples.

During the great eruption of 1872, Palmieri, with grand courage, shut himself up in his observatory and watched the phenomena night and day. Two faithful ones-the concierge, and the soldier sent by the garrison to his relief -refused to leave him alone, although they had full permission to do so. A river of liquid incandescent lava poured down the mountain some three hundred yards from the observatory. The thermonieter marked 50° Centigrade, equivalent to 122° Fahrenheit; but Palmieri was not to be scared by anything except an eruption directly under his foundations, and in his opinion that was not likely to happen, as they were built on a little spur or shelving ridge of the mountain, and should the lava flow down this spur it would naturally fall to the right or left before reaching the observatory. But Palmieri was prepared for the lava-stream should it flow directly toward him. He had built a high and strong stone wall behind the observatory, with an opening in it for a lookout. He knew well the habits of liquid lava, and his calculations were all made. He could close up this opening in the wall at short notice with stones lying at hand for the purpose, and before the lava could reach the top of the wall he should, he said, have ample time to escape and also to save valuable papers and instruments. We are indebted to Palmieri for a full and graphic account of the great eruption of April, 1873.

Clark Mills.

M. H.

THE recent announcement of the death of the sculptor Clark Mills has recalled to my mind some of the incidents of a short acquaintance with him at the outset of his career. More than thirty years ago my invalid mother and myself were spending a winter with an uncle in Columbia, South Carolina. My friends were great lovers of art, and patrons of artists. The world has long been famil

iar with at least one great name which they found in obscurity and nursed into fame. They were now full of enthusiasm for another young genius in sculpture who was working his way up under all the adverse environments of poverty. Several of them had used their influence for him and given him employment, and nothing would do but that we should be added to the list of his helpers. Finally my mother roused her weak strength to the task of employing him upon a bust of herself. While he was engaged upon it, he would sometimes fall into a little chat with me as I sat by, watching his operations. On one of these occasions he related to me an anecdote of John C. Calhoun.

The city of Charleston, he said, had engaged him to execute in marble a bust of this great statesman, then so influential that his colleague in the United States Senate, Hon. William C. Preston, who differed widely from him politically, said that "when Calhoun took a pinch of snuff all Carolina sneezed." In one of his sittings, Mr. Calhoun relieved the weariness of the hour by discoursing to Mills upon his specialty in art, and, with great precision, went minutely through all the details, from the finding of the facial angle to the completion of the bust. Mills was astonished; but his astonishment was greater yet when Mr. Calhoun laughingly confessed that the whole thing was a mere narration on his part, a simple effort of memory in recalling the detailed information once given him by Hiram Powers, when sitting to him in Washington, as to his method of modelling a bust. Mills made no acknowledgment to me of the value of Powers's experience obtained in this singular second-hand way; he may have been unconscious of it; but I have little doubt that this chance conversation took the form of instruction to the untutored genius, and, if we could but lift the veil, we might trace much of the success of his after-career to its teachings.

I never lost my interest in Mills after this little episode in my history, and several years subsequently, in 1851 or

1852, when living in Washington, I gladly accepted the invitation of a friend to visit him at his foundry. The government had employed him to make the bronze equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson, to ornament the new square in front of the President's mansion; for the casting of which he had constructed his furnaces according to his own views. We found him at his workshop, very ready to give his time and attention to satisfying our curiosity as to his mode of carrying out his design.

An unsupported equestrian statue was unknown in sculpture. The great masters of the past had had recourse to various uncomely outward appliances for securing against the force of the elements the rider of a horse poised upon its hind legs. Even Falconet's colossal statue of Peter the Great is marred in artistic effect by the enormous bar which transfixes the figures upon the pedestal. Mills had determined upon a new departure in art, and had already conceived, and did eventually accomplish, by a skilful adjustment of weight, the feat of planting safely upon the stand the rearing horse and its gallant rider. It was a great achievement, and for more than a quarter of a century those clean-cut figures of the old hero and his high-mettled steed have been outlined against the western sky, an enduring testimonial to the original genius and skill of the self-made artist.

There was another difficulty, which it

This

was found impossible to overcome. was the straightness of the old general's legs. It seems a pity that that which in walking gave such grace and elegance to the tall figure should on horseback seem singularly defective. But others before Mills had stumbled upon this same trouble. Walter Scott, in one of his novels, encountered it in the case of one of his historical personages; but he boldly disposed of it by claiming that a limb somewhat curved outward gives to a cavalryman not strength alone and efficiency, but beauty also." That was all well enough in the ideal, but it did not help in this case. The sculptor could take no liberties with nature, and in inartistic truthfulness General Jackson's nether limbs were allowed to fall in stick-like straightness over the flanks of his noble charger. The steed was not an ideal but a real one,-Colonel Wade Hampton, of South Carolina, having given to Mills for his model a race-horse no longer fit for the turf. It was a beautiful animal, which at the word of command would throw himself in position and "sit for his picture" with an intelligent patience worthy of all praise. Though no longer able to compete for the gold cup with his rivals on the course, the spent racer wins his greatest fame as he stands in bronze upon the monument raised in Lafayette Square by the United States government to the hero of the battle of New Orleans.

S. C. P. M.

"The Merv Oasis: Travels and Adventures East of the Caspian during the Years 1879-80– 81, including Five Months' Residence among the Tekkés of Merv." By Edmond O'Donovan, Special Correspondent of the "Daily News." New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.

It is seldom that the world is indebted to a newspaper correspondent for a book of more than fugitive interest and value.

Immediately after the close of a war or an adventurous expedition we may be well content to retrace its course under the guidance of a writer who has collected and perhaps remodelled the letters in which he had already described the incidents that fell under his observation. But such accounts are soon superseded by more complete and artistic narratives,