CURRENT LITERATURE.
Essays in London and Elsewhere. By Henry James. (J. R. Osgood, McIlvaine, and Co.)—To many readers, the first of these essays, a rhapsody, so to speak, curiously made up of appreciation and depreciation, will be the most interesting of all the number. Some of Mr. James's remarks are very pointed and clever ; some of his writing—as, e.g., p. 26, &43.—is almost unintelligible to us. We cannot agree with Mr. James in the opinion that "London has neglected to achieve a river-front." The view down the river from Westminster Bridge seems, to our mind, a very fine front indeed. The other essays are chiefly concerned with literary criticism, Gustave Flaubert, J. R. Lowell, Pierre Loti, Ibsen, and Mrs. Humphry Ward, being among the subjects. "Madame Bovary," we are told, in the essay on Flaubert, is "one of the glories of France." One might use the phrase "a glory" of some of Shakespeare's plays, certainly not of all, of the " Para- dise Lost," perhaps of a score of other great works, but to use it of " Madame Bovary" ! Mr. James's criticism is not always sane.
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