Women._"

Another advertisement indicates a toilet article now out of fashion:

"To be Sold by _Peter Lynch_, near Mr. _Rutgers_ Brewhouse, very good
Orange Butter, it is excellent for Gentlewomen to comb up their Hair
with, it also cures Children's sore Heads."

The next sounds quite as odd:

"_James Munden_ Partner with _Thomas Butwell_ from London, Maketh
Gentlewomens Stays and Childrens Coats in the Newest Fashion, that
Crooked Women and Children will appear strait," Same paper, date
February, 1735.

It is a curious fact that the deaths at that time, both in the New
York and New England papers, were announced not by the names of the
deceased, but by the churches to which they belonged. For example:
"Buried in the city last week, _viz._, Church of England 26, Dutch 24,
Lutheran 2, French 1, Presbyterians 3. The number of Blacks we
refer till Next Week."--_New England Weekly Journal_, Nov. 1, 1731.
Sometimes the number is recorded as four or five, or even less:
therefore the record must be very imperfect, and there seems to have
been no notice taken of those who were not buried from any church.

M.H.

LITERATURE OF THE DAY.

Dante and his Circle; with the Italian Poets preceding him.
Edited and translated in the original Metres by Dante Gabriel
Rossetti. Revised and rearranged edition, Boston: Roberts
Bros.

Dante is so great a figure in Italian literature that he hides from
sight the host of minor poets who preceded him, and throws his own
contemporaries so into the shade that we are apt to think that Italian
poetry began with him, and that its second exponent is Petrarch. Such
a view is to be regretted, not only because it overlooks much that
is in itself valuable, but because it attributes to a period of
slow development a phenomenal character. There were many poets worth
listening to before the great Florentine wrote the _New Life_ or the
_Divine Comedy_, and many whom he listened to and praised, although
his prophetic foresight told him that he would one day bear their
glory from them.

It was to make us acquainted with these forgotten singers that Mr.
Rossetti wrote some years ago his charming book. _The Early Italian
Poets_, which, after being long out of print, he now presents to us in
a revised and rearranged edition. The author's wish is not merely to
give us a glimpse of the quaint conceits of a school that continued in
Italy the waning influence of the Troubadours, but