oubt if beyond the darkness and the distance there be yet a God
who will answer to the old rapture, a sun to rise when man's heart
rises, a love corresponding to his ecstasy:--

"Where may hide what came and loved our clay?
How shall the sage detect in yon expanse
The star which chose to stoop and stay for us?
Unroll the records!"

But the third speaker bids the records be closed, that man may worship
the God who lives, instead of regretting that He lived of old. Take the
least man, observe his head and heart, find how he differs from every
other man; see how Nature by degrees grows around him, to nourish,
infold, and set him off, to enrich him with opportunities, as if he were
her only foster-child, and to flatter thus every other man in turn,
making him her darling as though in expectation of finding no other,
till, having extorted all his worth and beauty, and cherished him to the
utmost of his possible life, she rolls away elsewhere, continually
keeping up this pageant of humanity:--

"Why, where's the need of Temple, when the walls
O' the world are that? What use of swells and falls
From Levites' choir, Priests' cries, and trumpet-calls?
That one Face, far from vanish, rather grows,
Or decomposes but to recompose,
Become my universe that feels and knows!"

This is the true religion, hallowing the poet's gifts and inviting them
to celebrate and express it. We wish that the lines would let their
meaning meet us with a more level gaze. In the poems of this class there
is riper thought and a clearer intuition, toward which all the previous
poems of Mr. Browning appear to have struggled, faring from the East to
contribute myrrh, frankincense, and gems to this simplicity.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS

RECEIVED BY THE EDITORS OF THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

Flirtations in Fashionable Life. By Catherine Sinclair. Author of
"Beatrice," "Modern Accomplishments," etc. Philadelphia. T. B. Peterson
& Brothers. 16mo. pp. 424. $2.00.

School Economy. A Treatise on the Preparation, Organization,
Employments, Government, and Authorities of Schools. By James Pyle
Wickersham, A. M., Principal of the Pennsylvania State Normal School,
Millersville, Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co. 12mo.
pp. xviii., 381. $1.50.

Hand-Book of the United States Navy: Being a Compilation of all the
Principal Events in the History of every Vessel of the United States
Navy. From Apri