senior classes, added to his duties the work of a professor in the Divinity School, was editor of a great dictionary and final judge on every question which the vast task presented, and all the time was a vigilant and conscientious defender of his own philosophical system. In the midst of all his labors he never seemed hurried or nervous, but calmly enjoyed his toilsome life. And it is remarkable that, though a genius on metaphysical speculation, he was at the same time thrifty and practical in a worldly sense. The New England face of which we have spoken shows practicality as well as aspiration and thought. He was a type of the late flowering of the old New England stock. The roots of that stock were fidelity to the highest known law and trust in a divine guidance, and its two-fold stem was a firm grip on the material world, side by side with a searching inquiry into the unseen." The editor of the memorial has chosen two able critics to write of Dr. Porter's philosophical and ethical systems. No judgment on them can be attempted here. It is not, however, for his writings on philosophy and ethics, but for his teaching of young men, that he is and will be chiefly remembered. A part of this book speaks of the singular excellence of his teaching of graduate students, among whom he was not hampered by the presence of lazy men and dullards. But he does not seem to have impressed his ordinary classes as a fine teacher, in the sense of one who was skillful at imparting knowledge, and who communicated enthusiasm to his classes. Perhaps it was because he made the work too easy. There are many stories of how he would absolutely compel the most ignorant man, willy nilly, to make a recitation, and would never, if the most barefaced leading questions or any other means could prevent it, permit a flunk. He is said to have been known occasionally to very mildly sit on forward and omniscient young men, but the universal impression he gave was of an easy-going, indulgent temperament. Of like nature was his method of discipline in the college. If he could have had it all his own way, there would have been practically no discipline. The college would have been ruled exclusively by the law of love. In the hands of one whose noble character and great intellectual powers enforced such respect as he received, it was a safe method, and rarely was advantage taken of him. He was always ready to support other officers of the college in the infliction of punishment which they thought necessary, but this was not his own method. His method, as well in the office of discipline as in the class-room, was one of gentleness and indulgence. And perhaps it was for this reason that he was not as successful a teacher as some others, measured by the attainments of his pupils in the studies taught. But with the average college man, with all college men, it is not what is taught but what the teacher is that makes the most lasting memories. And when the philosophy and ethics that Noah Porter taught have been forgotten by his pupils, there will remain imperishable the other and higher lessons he taught of fearless, earnest, noble thought, of simple, tranquil life, of gracious, sympathetic manner, of unfaltering Christian faith, of character in all ways high and pure and lovely. That was a splendid and stirring historic drama which held the stage of Europe in the times of Henry of Bourbon, King of Navarre, and a brilliant and fascinating figure was he, a leading actor in it, so that the historian of the period needs not the help of a fascinating style to make his narration interesting. This is fortunate for Mr. Willert, for his history* certainly has very little style. This is, however, its chief lack, for otherwise it is a commendable piece of work. It is largely taken up with character study, which is used to open up this most interesting page of history. Mr. Willert is a strong partisan of Henry, but is not unjustly partial toward him. He does not hide his weaknesses and faults, and gives him full credit for his singular abilities and his good works, and for the great personal fascination which he must have exercised over those who came into contact with him, "since," as Mr. Willert says, even we, who are uninfluenced by the contact with so rich and vigorous a nature, fall to some extent under the charm of his unflagging energy, his boundless good humor, his unfeigned humanity." While the importance of the work of Henry and still more of Sully in the organization of the monarchy and the improvement of the material state of the country is not slighted, greater prominence is given, as the title of the book indicates, to the reformation in France, and Henry's life is treated mostly as bearing on that. His contradictory and perplexing relations with the Protestant cause are thoughtfully and clearly presented. Mr. Willert is not perfectly fair to Charles IX, who was more weak than bad. John Calvin receives deserved honor, beyond what he has as a theologian, as a forerunner of political freedom and reform. Mr. Willert's portraits of Catherine and Mary de Medici, of Catherine's children, and of Jeanne d'Albret, are good, but there are better ones. His Henry is certainly lifelike and just. For his history he has gathered abundance of facts, and used them in the main well, interspersing some ideas of his own, which are not always of remarkable value, but are not prominent enough to injure the history. It would have added to the usefulness of the book if the many facts, some new facts, which Mr. Willert has used, had been credited to their sources. There is room in some matters, particularly in the construction of sentences for working over. Dr. Phelps' The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement↑ commences with an attempt to get from the many definitions or attempted definitions of Romanticism, all of which present only one phase of the subject, a comprehensive idea about it. The result is a statement that Romantic literature in general has three qualities-Subjectivity, or the manifestation of "the aspiration and vague longing of the writer," Picturesqueness, or Mr. Pater's addition of strangeness to beauty," and a spirit of reaction against the preceding age, and that, taking these three things into consid 46 *Henry of Navarre, and the Huguenots in France. By P. F. Willert. pp. 478. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. The Beginnings of the English Romantic Movement. By William Lyon Phelps. pp. 192. Boston: Ginn & Company. eration, it is easy to see why the Romantic movement sought its inspiration in the middle ages, where lay the material which its spirit desired. There follows next a concise but sufficiently full account of the well-known literary characteristics of the Augustan age. Then comes the real business of the book, the tracing of the earliest sources and beginnings of the Romantic movement. The reactionary tendencies which existed early in the eighteenth century, when the Augustan pseudo-classicism was at its height, and prove that the spirit of Romanticism was never wholly dead in English literature-the tendencies represented by writers like Parnell, Allan Ramsay, and Croxall,-and the reaction in form, by which blank verse, the octosyllabic, and the sonnet came again into fashion, instead of the everlasting heroic couplet, are first discussed. The next chapter treats of one of the most important facts of the subject, the revival of the influence of Spenser, as shown by the great number of Spenserian imitations written from 1725 to 1750. Then come chapters on the influence of Milton, on the revival of the past, in the resurrection of old English and Scotch ballads, the study of Norse mythology, of old Welsh poetry, and the production of Ossian, and lastly a chapter on the position and influence of Gray in regard to the romantic movement. There has been some writing, in partial and superficial ways, about the period of which the book treats, but nothing has been written with anything like its thoroughness and completeness. The literature of the whole period has been completely read, and whatever is to the point is fully presented. A good deal of matter has been found which will certainly be very new to the average scholar in literature. The chapters on the Spenserian revival, on the new birth of the ballads, and on Gray are particularly thorough. But though there is so much completeness and abundance of detail, the main object, the tracing of the gradual progress of the romantic movement, is never lost sight of, but kept fully before the reader's mind. One suggestive fact is insisted on a good deal-the unconsciousness of the romantic movement in England, the men who first served the cause often doing so unwittingly, and being in their tastes rather classic than romantic. The chapter on Gray is very interesting, for a well defended difference of opinion from Matthew Arnold as to why Gray, with such abundance of genius, produced so little, as well as for the careful and instructive following out of the transformation of Gray from a conventional classicist to an outspoken romanticist. Greater importance, also, is attributed to him as an influence for the growth of Romanticism than is usual. The book makes accessible a good deal of material hitherto comparatively unknown, but important in its bearing on the growth of Romanticism. The reader of it will, we are sure, feel, too, that the two points are made which it sets out to prove; first that the spirit of romanticism has never been wholly extinct in English literature, and second that between 1725 and 1765 the Romantic movement existed really, if quietly, and that in these years the seeds of the flowering in the Romantic literature of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries may be found. The important matter which the book contains will make it most interesting to the literary student, and to the general reader, and furthermore a keen, vivacious way of saying things adds to its attractiveness. George W. Jacobs & Company, of Philadelphia, issue in a tastefully decorated binding and with attractive illustrations, a little Christmas story* by Dr. Weir Mitchell. It was written for children, and grown-ups may find it rather mild, but it is undeniably very pleasant and pretty. *Mr. Kris Kringle. By S. Weir Mitchell. pp. 48. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company. BOOKS RECEIVED. Paynton Jacks, Gentieman. By Marian Bower. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, Dark Care Lightened. By Rev. S. F. Hotchkin, M.A. Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Company. TO BE REVIEWED. The New Minister. By Kenneth Paul. New York: A. S. Barnes & Company. Heart Beats. By P. C. Mozoomdar. Boston: George H. Ellis. Xmas Sketches. From the Dartmouth Literary Monthly. Edited by Edwin Osgood Grover. Concord: Republican Press Association. Wayside Music. By Charles H. Crandall. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. Authors and their Public in Ancient Times. By George Haven Putnam. Within College Walls. By Charles F. Thwing. New York: The Baker and Taylor Co. The Divine Comedy of Dante. Translated into English verse by Thomas W. Parsons. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company. EDITOR'S TABLE. We have a general and abstract belief that our four years at Yale is an "ideal life." We tell our friends that we know the future can hold no such happy period, and that it is going so fast that we cannot realize its charms until all is over. But not one man in a very large collection is analytical enough to calculate just why and how this comes to be an "ideal life"-to separate this glittering abstraction into its concrete parts. When you stop to do this and get some sort of an idea of what academic life consists on a scale and figure basis; then you wipe your heated brow and wonder how any man blessed with this chance can see ought else in it than a young Elysium. I mean the average collegian in this discussion-the uniformly happy medium. The hard student who really works over his books for many hours every day, or at the other end, the conscienceless youth who is always on the razor edge of being dropped; these disturb the even way of my calculations, and must not be included. But the average Yale undergraduate who makes up the larger part of each class, the man who keeps safely within the condition limits and takes in the social and athletic or literary sides of the life here as he chooses is under discussion. For eight months of the year he is in New Haven, "preparing for his life work." He must attend fifteen hours per week of class room exercises, which is all that can be called compulsory in his campus life. Allowing for the cuts that he will take or be occasionally surprised with the gift of, his day's work is something over two hours on the average. For these class room hours, in his last two years, he will study outside an hour a day-a generous and optimistic allowance. You can now see that three and a half hours each working day for eight months will make the sum total of the regular toil for a large number of the class membership-not all, of course. That overworked brains may not be taxed to a dangerous degree, four months of vacation are allowed, judiciously distributed throughout the year. Now this modicum of intellectual labor in term time is just enough to keep the mind in a healthy condition and fit it to enjoy with zest the other features of life. It is well known that absolute idleness is simply unbearable boredom to the young and energetic, and this wisely furnished motive and directing diversion. for the intellect is an ideal sort of a foundation to build on. With this three or four hours a day of ostensible work I have no fault to find except that in these class room hours there is a large amount of time given to mind wandering and time beguiling occupations. But not to be scrimping, let it all go as "work" pure and simple. We thus are left with eight or ten hours out of the day for other occupations. These the average man finds to be in the social and athletic lines, with a small proportion of reading. He is surrounded as he never will be again in life, with young men of similar tastes and time to gratify them, and all that is good and pleasant in the communion of one man with another can be his. If there is anything in friendship he above all other men should find it out. His life is ordered in perfect and ideal fashion for the cultivation |