hat Mr. Stockton's characters are typical
Americans, and could not belong to any other nation in the world. Nor
can he deny that they combine sobriety with pluck, and businesslike
behavior with good feeling; that they are as full of honor as of
resource, and as sportsmanlike as sagacious. That people with such
characteristics should be recognizable by us as typical Americans is a
sufficient answer to half the nonsense which is being talked just now
_a propos_ of a recent silly contest for the America Cup.

Nationality apart, if anyone wants a good stirring story, _Captain
Horn_ is the story for his money. It has loose ends, and the
concluding chapter ties up an end that might well have been left
loose; but if a better story of adventure has been written of late I
wish somebody would tell me its name.

BOW-WOW

August 26, 1893. Dauntless Anthology.

It is really very difficult to know what to say to Mr. Maynard
Leonard, editor of _The Dog in British Poetry_ (London: David Nutt).
His case is something the same as Archdeacon Farrar's. The critic who
desires amendment in the Archdeacon's prose, and suggests that
something might be done by a study of Butler or Hume or Cobbett or
Newman, is met with the cheerful retort, "But I have studied these
writers, and admire them even more than you do." The position is
impregnable; and the Archdeacon is only asserting that two and two
make four when he goes on to confess that, "with the best will in the
world to profit by the criticisms of his books, he has never profited
in the least by any of them."

Now, Mr. Leonard has at least this much in common with Archdeacon
Farrar, that before him criticism must sit down with folded hands. In
the lightness of his heart he accepts every fresh argument against
such and such a course as an added reason for following it:--

"While this collection of poems was being made," he tells us, "a
well-known author and critic took occasion to gently ridicule
(_sic_) anthologies and anthologists. He suggested, as if the
force of foolishness could no further go, that the next anthology
would deal with dogs."

"Undismayed by this," to use his own words, Mr. Leonard proceeded to
prove it. Now it is obvious that no man can set a term to literary
activity if it depend on the Briton's notorious unwillingness to
recognize that he is beaten. I might dare, for instance, a Scotsman to
compile an anthology on "The Eel in Briti