Tried by this definition, we believe the "White Captive" proves its
claim to genuine greatness, and that it will presently take its place,
with the world's consent, in the front rank of modern statues,--good
among the best, in the flesh-and-bloodness and the soul of it. It is
original, it is faithful, it is American; our women may look upon it,
and say, "She is one of us," with more satisfaction than the Greek women
could have derived from the Venus de' Medici, with its insignificant
head and its impossible spine.

Especially true to the American type, as compared in statues with the
familiar Greek, the head of the "White Captive" is large; but that it
is too large, or in excess of the least of a thousand female heads that
have been gathered around it since it was first exposed to the
public scrutiny, we have failed to discover in repeated and careful
examinations; and we are constrained to commend such as may be exercised
on that point to the critical flippancies of the jaunty gentlemen who
find the hips at once too broad and too narrow, the bosom too full and
too young, the arms too meagre and too stout.

FOREST PHOTOGRAPHS.

We call the attention of our readers to a series of twelve photographic
views of forest and lake scenery published by Mr. J.W. Black, Boston,
from negatives taken by Mr. Stillman in the Adirondack country. The
points of view are chosen with the fine feeling of an artist, and the
tangled profusion and grace of the forest, with the moment's whim of
sunfleck and shadow, are given with exquisite delicacy. Whatever
the all-beholding sun could see in those woodland depths we have
here,--sketches of the shaggy Pan snatched at unawares in sleep. One may
study these pictures till he becomes as familiar as a squirrel with fern
and tree-bark and moose-wood and lichen, till he knows every trunk and
twig and leaf as intimately as a sunbeam.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

_Plutarch's Lives._ The Translation called Dryden's. Corrected from the
Greek, and Revised, by A.H. CLOUGH, sometime Fellow and Tutor of
Oriel College, Oxford, and late Professor of the English Language and
Literature at University College, London. Boston: Little, Brown, &
Company. 1859. Five vols. 8vo.

In these five handsome volumes, we have, at length, a really good
edition in English of Plutarch's Lives. One of the most delightful books
in the world, one of the few universal classics, appears for the first
time i