to introduce the subject to many readers we could
have wished for a little more sympathy of tone than Mr. Goldwin Smith
has allowed himself in his otherwise admirable volume. It is hardly
necessary, for instance, to insist on the obvious narrowness of Cowper's
religion. That the book is too short is a failing on the right side, and
chargeable to the plan of the series rather than the writer, whose terse
style and excellent arrangement make it full of interest. Cowper's life
and poetry are bound together in a singularly close union. He belongs by
circumstances rather than by genius to those unfortunate minds which,
thrown off the proper balance, have gained a deeper insight and a
stronger hold upon others through their very weakness. What lends a
peculiar pathos and charm to his figure is the purity and gentleness of
his mind, the efforts by which he clung to truth in the cruel darkness
of mental disease, and the innocent gayety and light-heartedness which
alternated with gloom. Like Rousseau, Cowper had, by the very reaction
from sadness, a rare keenness of enjoyment. Little things were enough to
feast it, and hence the most trivial matters came naturally into his
verse. His poems have certainly had a varied history. Written to afford
occupation to a mind on the verge of madness, linked with the slightest
events of his daily life, it has been their fate to serve for a long
time as poetic tracts, and afterward to be exalted by critics as
prophecies of a new order of things, the beginning of a literary
revolution.

_Books Received._

Barbara; or, Splendid Misery. By Miss M.E. Braddon.--For Her Dear Sake.
By Mary Cecil Hay.--Daireen. By Frank Frankfort Moore.--Two Women. By
Georgiana M. Craik.--Prince Hugo. By Maria M. Grant.--From Generation to
Generation: A Novel. By Lady Augusta Noel.--Young Lord Penrith: A Novel.
By John Berwick Harwood.--Clara Vaughan: A Novel. By R.D.
Blackmore.--The Heart of Holland. By Henry Havard. Translated by Mrs.
Cashel Hoey.--Reata: What's in a Name? A Novel. By E.D. Gerard.--Mary
Anerley: A Yorkshire Tale. By R.D. Blackmore.--Poet and Peer: A Novel.
By Hamilton Aide.--The Pennant Family. By Anne Beale. (Franklin Square
Library.) New York: Harper & Brothers.

The Diary of a Man of Fifty, and A Bundle of Letters. By Henry James,
Jr.--Tales from the Odyssey, for Boys and Girls. By
"Materfamilias."--Life of Charlemagne. By Eginhard.--The Right Honorable
William Ewart Gladstone: A Bio