The Century Magazine is so well known, that it cannot
be necessary to do much more than record the appearance of the two volumes which contain its icons for the year (November, 1886—October, 1887). They are published by Mr. T. Fisher Unwin, in England. The great life of Abraham Lincoln, by his private secretaries, Messrs. J. G. Nioolay and J. Hay, is, of course, their chief feature. It opens with the first number, and is carried down as for as the breaking out of the War of Secession. This, of course, is not the occasion for expressing a formal opinion of no important a work ; but it may be safely said that, whatever its other merits, it is eminently readable. Perhaps, too, we may quote the lines with which Mr. James Russell Lowell prefaces it. (They are given here in fac-simile) :— " Great Captains with their guns and drums Disturb our judgment for the boor; But at last silence comes:
Them all are gone, and, standing like a tosser, Our children shall behold his fame, The kindly earnest, brave, foreseeing man, Sagacious, patient, dreading praise ant blame. New birth of oar new soil, the first Amerman."
"Battles and Leaders of the Civil War," a series of articles, meant primarily, of course, for American readers, occupy an important place. Whatever the reader of the present may think of them, the historian of the future, whom they cannot fail largely to help, will he greatly indebted to them. Any description of the miscellaneous contents we most leave unattempted. It is curious that Mr. Stedman, in his" Twelve Years of British Song," makes no mention of Mr. Matthew Arnold, a name, in the judgment of many, to be ranked with those of Tennyson and Browning.
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