ir treasure in seeking the new
philosopher's stone!

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Nero: An Historical Play. By W.W. Story. Edinburgh and London: Wm.
Blackwood & Sons; New York: Scribner, Welford & Armstrong,

The fashion of so-called historical dramas is spreading, but the
standard is lowering. When Mr. Swinburne wrote _Chastelard_, whatever
its faults, it was entitled to the name of drama: last year he
published _Bothwell_, which, whatever its beauties, does not deserve
to be so ranked. Tennyson's _Queen Mary_ followed during the
past summer, and many similar attempts may be expected from less
illustrious pens. It is an unfortunate direction for dramatic and
poetic composition to have taken, tending to impair the excellence of
both styles, while fulfilling the exigencies of neither. _Bothwell_
and _Queen Mary_ are not historical dramas, but versified chronicles,
a certain number of pages of the annals of Scotland and England in
metre, divided into acts and scenes and distributed into parts. Such
a production, be it called what it may, must necessarily lack the
essential qualities of the true drama, while it introduces into a
branch of literature which belongs to the imagination the realism
against which art is struggling. The latest specimen of this new
school is Mr. Story's _Nero_, for, although by his preface it appears
that the publication did not follow the writing for several years, it
comes to the world in the wake of the aforementioned works. It is to
be remembered that Mr. Story's pen is as versatile as his talent is
various. He has given the public two law-books, commonly attributed to
his eminent father; the delightful _Roba di Roma_, which embodies the
actual animate beauty and interest of Roman life; a volume of poems,
_Graffiti d'Italia_, full of fine dramatic fragments and studies of
character in the manner of Browning, descriptions which are pictures,
and sweet verses which live in the heart; and a number of essays in
the pleasantest style of table-talk. Moreover, we are to bear in mind
that this gentleman is not an author by profession, but one of
the most distinguished living sculptors. But the very merit of his
productions subjects them to a code of criticism more severe than that
by which amateur performances are usually judged, and the faults one
finds are by comparison with a standard which makes fault-finding
flattery. In the first place, one cannot turn over a few pages of Mr.
Story's _Ner